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>From a rough draft of a forthcoming article on socialist economic planning >being written with Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina and Brendan Sullivan. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Visions of Socialism: One of the most striking phenomena in US politics since the 2008 economic crash has been a revival of interest in socialism, especially among the Millennial generation. In fact, you would have to go back some eighty or more years ago to see a time when there was such a big interest in socialism. Even in the 1960’s, the last period when we saw the flourishing of major leftist political movements , there wasn’t so much a mass interest in socialism as much as there were movements led by people who identified as socialists or communists. Most public discussion then was over things like civil rights, black power, and opposition to the Vietnam War. There wasn’t that much talk as to what a socialist alternative to capitalism would look like, even though many political activists back then would have described themselves as being anti-capitalist. It must be said that up to now, things haven’t seemed all that different. As much as half of the Millennial generation, according to recent opinion polls, seems willing to identify as socialists. Yet, it is not at all clear as to what they mean by that term. Do they mean an economic order where the means of production are owned by workers and their use is the product of democratic deliberation, as Marx stated “a community of associated producer” (the classic definition)? Or do they mean a more humane capitalism with a more generous welfare state - more or less like what exists (and is being meticulously disassembled) in the Scandinavian countries? Right now, a major candidate in the race to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2020, Bernie Sanders, calls himself a socialist. But what does he mean by that? It would seem that for him, socialism is basically just the liberalism of FDR and Truman, something that he has reiterated time and time again in his speeches. So is socialism nothing more than a revival of the liberal reformism of FDR, or God forbid, JFK? For many, that is perhaps all they mean by the term. A matter of pouring old wine into new bottles, while sticking on somewhat misleading labels. Having said that, it is evident that many people are seeking something more radical than that. In the face of the environmental threats being posed by climate change, not to speak of the ever increasingly growth of economic inequality, reaction, racism and sexism, it doesn’t seem that a revival of FDR’s liberalism is a panacea. In other words, it doesn’t seem to be enough to just seek a reformed capitalism. That has been tried before, and we have seen that while in the short and medium run, capitalists can acquiesce when reforms are legislated, they will, over the long run, seek to gut and overturn them. This is the confirmed history of social democratic reforms, a history that has played out in the US and most other industrial countries over the last 50 years. So, what is to be done? It is clear that at least a sizable minority of the people who now identify as socialists are in fact seeking a new economic order to replace capitalism outright. This entails that working people will actually own the means of production and the market economy that we have now will be replaced by a planned economy. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ____________________________________________________________ Sponsored by https://www.newser.com/?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_taglines_more Nations Praised for Their Virus Policies Run Into Problems http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5eb6f742bee0377424eccst02vuc1 America's 'Virus Hero' Is Suddenly Taking Heat http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5eb6f742e185c77424eccst02vuc2 The Coronavirus Gets Closer to Trump http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5eb6f743fd7377424eccst02vuc3 _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
