Embracing socialism

...Finally, even though we forgo the immanent utopianism of Marxism, we retain its utopian strain...

...That is, our first encounter with socialist thought crystallized vague feelings or sentiments about poverty and inequality that we saw about us...

...Reflecting on socialism as a tradition is, in part, an attempt to preserve those components that can serve us in the present, and to identify oneself as a socialist is to interpret and adapt a socialist tradition to present needs and circumstances...

...But even before the final disintegration of the command economies many socialists had begun to rethink basic ideas such as "planning," "nationalization," and the place of "markets" in democratic socialist economies...

...Some shrug off the question by saying that our enemies will identify us as socialists in any case, so we might as well accept the label and get on with the important job of determining what it now means to be a socialist...

...In one direction the socialist tradition overlaps the tradition of political liberalism, since the commitment to democracy and equality is also a commitment to racial, ethnic, and gender equality as well as religious freedom...

...The history of a tradition is a history of interpretation and reinterpretation, a continual selective understanding of the past and present...

...It is a "problem" because Marxism is at the root of both the socialist tradition that thinks of itself as social democracy or democratic socialism and the tradition that mutated into Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism...

...More positively, socialism represents a profound belief that people can construct a truly democratic society, a society in which the rights and privileges of citizenship can be extended from the political to the economic order, and one in which poverty will be a thing of the past...

...a tradition contains recognizable elements that persist throughout its existence, and they are markers enabling us to distinguish one tradition from another...

...These core ideas can be and have been elaborated and extended in many ways and directions...

...That is, almost all Marxian writings assume the historical inevitability of the triumph of socialism...

...After all, the welfare state, many of the advances in political democracy, and mitigation of the soul-destroying grind of the industrial work place were very much the result of the passions, work, and power of social democratic movements...

...In terms of practice this has meant that socialism has become synonymous with "a planned economy," an idea that is one of the more obvious casualties of recent history...

...In his Tradition (University of Chicago, 1981) he writes that a tradition "gives form to [a] prior impulse which has potentialities for many forms...

...This almost visceral reaction is reinforced by an understanding that these are "unnatural" evils, they are not inherent in the nature of society as such...

...If a tradition is mutable it is not totally so...

...To self-consciously maintain a SPRING • 1993 • 241 Notebook socialist identity today is to maintain that distance and critical stance...

...As with other identities, it is hard to be a socialist...

...First, no form of Marxist or neo-Marxist thought can claim a privileged position...

...The belief in a "scientific socialism" and socialism's inevitability helped nurture the mutant strain of socialist thought that developed into Stalinism...

...An answer, of course, depends upon what one considers Marxism to be...

...It is within this historical moment that people on the left, who in the past have defined themselves unhesitatingly as socialists and as part of a "socialist tradition," face the question of whether they are misguided in clinging to that identity and tradition...

...Although Marx used "utopian" as a term of derision, his own theory, as well as nearly all versions of neo-Marxism, have a characteristic "immanent utopian" cast, to adapt the title of Axel van den Berg's critique of Marxism...

...What then of the Marxist heritage in the socialist tradition...

...it is one among the many approaches and theories that can be drawn upon to understand the world and to chart courses of action...

...A tradition that is truly a tradition, rather than a nostalgic or ideological simulacrum, is shaped and reshaped as it is lived, transmitted, and received...

...Change is inevitable, because, if only for survival's sake, people must "make sense" of the natural and social worlds they inhabit...

...In the process it changes...

...But this is to concentrate excessively upon the tradition's failures...

...A tradition links present and past, and to place oneself in a tradition is to assume the burdens of its failures and the satisfactions of its successes...

...The person so disposed finds ready to hand a more differentiated picture and a more differentiated plan already in being...

...This implies, in practical terms, that a primary focus of socialist theories remains the interests of groups and classes that are the objects of domination...

...At the center of socialist tradition is a profound detestation of the disparities of political and economic power, social inequality, and the miseries of poverty...

...In embracing socialism we ally our242 • DISSENT Notebook selves with these past triumphs and with predecessors who persevered in the face of daunting obstacles...

...To embrace socialism is to commit oneself to the uncertainty of achieving the goal of socialism, discomforting though the thought may be...

...Or, perhaps in other instances, that encounter awoke us to an awareness of problematic aspects of the social world that heretofore we took for granted as being something "natural...

...It also condemns chauvinism, whether masquerading as patriotism or nationalism, while recognizing the importance of those sentiments to individuals and the society as a whole...

...We are tempted, therefore, to disavow a socialist identity, which means reconciling oneself to the bleak prospect of living without much hope for the future...

...The rhetoric of conservative troglodytes—as at last year's Republican Convention— illustrates Max Horkheimer's remark, "Precisely the fact that tradition must be invoked shows that it has lost its power...

...If socialism overlaps political liberalism it departs radically from the liberal tradition in its emphasis on the importance of state power in furthering economic equality and the elimination of poverty...

...The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union— "the only existing socialism" according to some friends and foes alike—seems to make socialism an obvious candidate for the dustbin of history...

...On the other hand, if we hold to utopian visions we subject ourselves to the stress of the critical posture and distance from the society around us...

...Today, socialism's failures, real and presumed, bulk large in our consciousness, particularly the charge that it is responsible for its mutant offspring...

...Any reinterpretation of socialism must ask, To what extent is Marxism integral to a socialist tradition...

...Or, to put the matter another way, rather than thinking of a socialist identity as a cross to bear, it is better to consciously embrace it as a starting point for thinking about the future of the socialist idea...

...By seeing ourselves as socialists and part of a socialist tradition we distanced ourselves, emotionally and intellectually, from some dominant social institutions...

...a tradition at one time in its history is not substantively identical with the tradition at a later time...

...Since this commonsensical approach assumes that the idea of socialism, if not the name, is still valuable, it seems more consistent to start from a more positive premise...

...When all is said and done, to embrace socialism is to become part of an honorable tradition with a past that justifies hope for the future...

...In practice this means, for example, that though we surrender the idea that class conflict is the dynamic historical force, we continue to stress the importance of class and class conflict...

...That is, we continue, in Irving Howe's words, "to dream of a truly human existence...

...Rather, because the person has "an aversion to poverty" or dislike of the power of private property, "his mind inclines or is disposed in the direction set by experience and sentiment, toward general beliefs acquired from tradition...

...The conclusion seems inescapable: there is no necessary connection between socialism and Marxian thought or, more simply perhaps, one may be a socialist without being a Marxist...

...A clue to some of the elements that distinguish socialism through time are suggested by the sociologist Edward Shils...

...Second, stripped of its scientific pretensions and reductive tendencies, Marxian thought remains a powerful example of a social theory with a critical stance toward capitalist social systems...

...Today, few would defend a definition of Marxism as "scientific socialism," but other difficulties remain...

...There is, of course, no one socialist tradition that can be identified as the socialist tradition...

...The argument for the inevitability of a classless society, comforting and inspiring as the prospect is, cannot be rationally justified...

...A person does not become a socialist because "he has thought it all out for himself...

...Here Shils touches on an essential experience in the lives of many socialists...

...Any tradition, in this instance a set of beliefs and ideas, is handed down through generations...

...Questioning these and other familiar ideas means confronting the problem of Marxism, since traditional socialist political and economic programs have been derived from Marxian thought...