The Future of Socialism By Ajit Roy (to the fond memory of Ajit Roy)

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM

-Ajit Roy

The entire world is today discussing the future of socialism in the light of the contemporary developments in the Soviet Union, Poland, the countries in Eastern Europe and, above all, China. There is no dearth of prophets of doom, who are forecasting the demise of socialism and unfortunately there are trends within the socialist countries themselves who seem to be subscribing to this pessimistic view. I, for one, however, have no hesitation in making the statement with the fullest conviction that the future of socialism has become much brighter today than it ever was. I do not make this statement in a light hearted manner or to score merely a debating point, nor do I for a moment underestimate the gravity and depth of the crises that have enveloped all these socialist countries today and the deep roots the crises spring from.

The features and expressions of the ongoing crises in the socialist countries today are quite well known and every day some new symptoms intrude upon the world people.

To take the USSR first, the largest country within the socialist world and with the longest history of socialist reconstruction which was initiated by V. I, Lenin himself. The features of the crises in Soviet Union are well known. There is a deep crisis within the day-to-day life of the Soviet people a tremendous shortage of many essential goods including food, the run-down conditions of the health services, inadequate housing facilities and so on. Recently the Soviet leadership had to decide to import consumer goods and other necessities worth 10,000 million roubles to meet the critical situation facing the Soviet people. Another striking feature of the Soviet scene is the outbreak of industrial unrest including mass strikes by segments of the working class. Then, the growing tensions among different nationalities and ethnic communities of the USSR, sometimes taking very violent forms and leading to mass casualties and large scale destruction of property which have poisoned the internal relationship in this multi-nation union of socialist republics. Many of the constituent nationalities in the Soviet Union are today raising the demand for the severing of ties with the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev has characterised the present situation as one full of `painful, contradictory and intractable problems'.

Coming to the Soviet Union's next-door neighbour Poland the situation is even more critical, because the leadership of the Polish communist party, the Polish United Workers' Party, is today not only ousted from power; but it has been humiliated and politically marginalised. The ranks of the party are demoralised and they are deserting the party on a large scale. The governmental power has passed into Solidarity's hands, Only two communist members have been taken into the government and given the portfolios of defence and interior. They are in the cabinet on the sufferance and by the grace of Solidarity. At the end of four decades of power the communist leadership of Poland has saddled the country with a huge debt of 39 billion U.S Dollars owed to the US Government and other Western agencies, besides another 10 billion US Dollars worth of indebtedness to the Soviet Union. Galloping inflation, growing shortage of essential goods and services and flourishing black markets have come to dominate the Polish economic scene, while many factories are coming to a grinding halt for want of raw materials and essential spares.

In addition to the economic dislocation exposures of many historical crimes have added to the bitterness and hostility of the mass of the Polish people. The recent confirmation by the Soviet official agencies about the secret protocols under the Molotov A Ribentrop agreement, the massacre of thousands of officers and ours ranks of the Polish army in the Katyn forest- the rigging of the referendum which gave the' legal sanction to the coming of the Polish communists to power - all this has fundamentally alienated the majority of the Polish people from she communist regime and the PUWP.

The situation in the three Baltic states, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, within the USSR is also taking an explosive form. The exposure of the historical fact that the incorporation of these three states in the Soviet Union was conditioned by a secret protocol signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany has shaken the legitimacy of their inclusion in the socialist comity of nations. The internal scene in these states has been marked by ethnic violence from both sides. During the Stalin period there were large scale repression and liquidation, besides mass deportation of the people of these three states, followed by occasional massacres of the Russian prisoners of war in the Nazi Concentration camps in the territories of some of these states. The indigenous people of these states are angered and embittered by fairly large scale immigration of ethnic Russians into their territories. Besides these, there have been many grievances relating to economic and cultural relationship with the Russian Federation.

Without going into the details, one should refer to the critical situation that prevails in the other socialist countries of Eastern Europe-acute economic crises, lack of democratic and human rights, inter-ethnic and inter-state conflicts and so on.

The situation in China has now been revealed to be quite critical. The recent incident at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing is too recent to need any elaboration. The millions who paraded the streets and the squares in the Chinese Capital bore testimony to the deep discontent at least among the urban intelligentsia in the country. There was some evidence of working class disaffection in the somewhat limited participation of the workers in the Beijing demonstrations. There are not only allegations but also official confirmation of corruption in high places. The brutal massacre of the youthful demonstrators in the Tiananmen Square on June 3-4, 1989 is a characteristic expression of the deep going crises of the Chinese polity today

All these disastrous developments naturally enough bring grist to the mills of those who hear the death-knell of socialism, and indeed Marxism, reverberating all through the socialist world. They gleefully shout to the communists and socialists ‘the bells toll for thee’.

Blinded by the hatred for socialism and human emancipation as they are, they cannot see that behind all these dark clouds the sun of socialism grows brighter and brighter.

Humanity the world over today gratefully thanks the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev for their long persistent efforts for bringing peace and disarmament to a world for decades under a death sentence hanging over its head because of the ever growing threat of a nuclear holocaust. Tony Benn, the British M. P and Labour Leader, recently told a Calcutta meeting about the steady advance towards dissolution of the rival military blocs that the Soviet moves promise the world today. He says that Gorbachev is more popular in Britain today than the British Prime Minister Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, whom he could beat in Parliament election from any constituency in Britain.

As a result of the changes taking place in the Soviet Union today the barriers between the communists on the one hand and the other socialists and progressives of all shades are breaking down. Stalin's crimes and dogmatic sectarian policies had helped the rightwing politicians in the capitalist countries to erect a wall of suspicion between the socialist countries and the Marxists in general on the one hand and large segments of the working class and progressives in the capitalist countries on the other. The new wind that is sweeping the Soviet Union is leading to the crumbling of this wall of suspicion and distrust.

The biggest and the most powerful agent of change today is -the twin programme of ruthless self -`criticism and undiluted regard for truth (glasnost) and the advance towards the extension of consistent democracy within the U S S R (Perestroika).

By exposing all the skeletons in the historical cupboard in the Soviet Union, they are taking steps that a 'murder' becomes impossible in the future. By extending democracy they are ensuring that the entire people stand guard over the future development of the Soviet society.

The Soviet leadership is taking steps to accomplish this task by drawing the public at large into the solution of the problems that concern the whole state. The Soviet Communist Party is voluntarily transferring power to the Soviets and putting itself under the public control through the elections of its members into the Supreme Soviet and local bodies. Gorbachev has declared that in a democratic society the party itself should be the epitome of the highest and the most consistent form of democratisation.

Most important, the Soviet working class, the, most fundamental base of socialism and the champion of human emancipation, is coming into its own as was witnessed in the recent mass strikes of coal miners in Ukraine, and Siberia. It is extremely heartening that Gorbachev recognises the true significance of the recent miners’ strikes.

However difficult the situation may appear to be in Poland right now, there are grounds to be quite hopeful about its prospects. In this country it is the determined and long-drawn struggles of the working class organised in Solidarity which have brought about the recent political changes. There is no reason to apprehend that the wheels of history will turn back towards capitalism in Poland. Through difficult trials and errors the Polish working class will surely move forward to a brighter future based on the collective ownership of the means of production and cooperative commonwealth of emancipated men and women in the coming days. 

“Socialism must win - has to win - in the interest of human survival and progress”. We all must realise that the alternative is the total destruction of life and civilisation.  We must understand the extremely sinister nature of capitalism today in the last decade of this century. Today about 500 MNCs have come to dominate the non - socialist part of the world. -The old conception of the two super powers has become obsolete-the main super power today is represented by the small number of MNCs who work within a framework of broad agreement. The national states all over the capitalist world and international agencies like the World Bank, IMF, The Asian Development Bank and so on have become faithful servants of these multinationals. In their quest for ever- increasing profits they are polluting the earth, water and air and fast wasting the irreplaceable resources of the globe. With their increasing recourse to robotisation and automatisation of the production processes they are threatening humanity with disastrous consequences - in the coming days.  If the multinationals are permitted to follow their course of development the vast majority of the world people would be deprived of opportunities of productive labour and would be made dependent on state doles for their subsistence; they will be controlled through mass media and turn into unthinking docile prisoners. In the mean time the economic and social policies pursued by the MNCs are gradually dividing the whole world into small islands of prosperity and abundance, of luxury and indulgence, on the one hand and oceans of human misery on the other. It is symptomatic of the future that hundreds of thousands of people in affluent west are gradually being pushed down into inhuman and degraded situation. Thousands of destitute are today floating around on the streets of New York, Paris and London.

All this has created pre-conditions for really global united actions, embracing the developed and the underdeveloped parts of the capitalist world. The alternatives that face humanity today is either socialism or barbarism and destruction. The most fundamental message that Karl Marx proclaimed 150 years ago that capitalism will historically develop the productive forces of society to such a high level -that it will be incompatible with a private ownership and control over the means of production has become too glaring today to be ignored by humanity except at the peril of total degradation of humanity, to a subhuman level.

So, socialism must win-socialism has to win.

But this victory of socialism cannot and will not come through any mystical decree of destiny. There is no question of pre-determined certainty. The victory of socialism has to be won by global struggle of conscious human beings through an enlightened human praxis.

Against this background the theoretical ballons now being floated by certain academic circles both in the Soviet Union and China about the so called ‘Public capitalism’ and ‘Social Capitalism’ are really dangerous. They embellish the sinister character of capitalism today, dominated as it is by a handful of powerful MNCs and all its sinister implication; instead of rousing the vigilance of the world people these false theories lull them into complacence and acquiescence. A very important task that faces the Marxist revolutionary socialist the world over is to expose and demolish these harmful theories. (Based on a lecture on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary celebrations of the Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, Madurai on September 10, 1989).