The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development

142 Pages·2010·0.91 MB·English

by  Michael Lebowitz

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The Socialist Alternative
THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE

Real Human Development

by Michael A. Lebowitz
Copyright © 2010 by Monthly Review Press
All rights reserved Lebowitz, Michael A.
The socialist alternative : real human development / by Michael Lebowitz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58367-215-0 —ISBN 978-1-58367-214-3 (pbk.) 1. Socialism. I.
Title.
HX73.L4167 2010
335—dc22
2010019380

Monthly Review Press
146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W
New York, New York 10001
www.monthlyreview.org
www.MRzine.org
5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Preface

Introduction: Reinventing Socialism

PART 1. THE SOCIALIST TRIANGLE
1. The Wealth of People

2. The Production of People

3. The Solidarian Society

PART 2. BUILDING THE SOCIALIST TRIANGLE
4. The Being and Becoming of an Organic System

5. The Concept of a Socialist Transition

6. Making a Path to Socialism

7. Developing a Socialist Mode of Regulation
Bibliography

Notes

Index
For those who must struggle for a society in which wealth does not
appear as an “immense collection of commodities” and where “the
original sources of all wealth,” human beings and nature, are not
destroyed.
Preface

A specter is haunting the world—the specter of barbarism. Of course, that
prospect has always been latent in capitalism because nothing matters for capital
but profits; however, the drive for quantitative expansion that is inherent in
capitalism has now generated an ecological crisis. And, as the limits of Earth
become apparent, there inevitably arises the question of who is entitled to
command increasingly limited resources. To whom will go the oil, the metals,
the food, the water? The currently rich countries of capitalism, those that have
been able to develop because others have not? The impoverished producers in
the world? Following the capitalist path, we can be certain that force will decide
—imperialism and barbarism.
The purpose of this book is to point to an alternative path. A path focused not
upon quantitative growth but on the full development of human potential, not a
path of barbarism but one of socialism. And the premise is that we desperately
need a vision of that alternative. Because if we don’t know where we want to go,
no path will take us there.
To clarify and develop that vision, a number of concepts are explored in The
Socialist Alternative: socialism as a process rather than a stage; human
development as the core of socialism; the key link of human development and
practice (which has as its implication the necessity for worker and community
management); the understanding of the means of production as a social heritage
that belongs properly to no subset of humanity; expansion of the commons in the
construction of a solidarian society; socialist conditionality; socialist
accountancy; and the socialist mode of regulation.
Where did these ideas come from? Well, certainly a major source is Marx.
Indeed, much here extends my discussion of the “political economy of the
working class” set out in Beyond CAPITAL: Marx’s Political Economy of the
Working Class (1992, 2003). Further, Marx’s Grundrisse is especially important
for insights into socialism itself—both because of its concept of an organic
system and the distinction between the becoming and the being of such a system,
and also because its discussion of self-interest versus communality is an
essential link between Marx’s earlier and later thoughts on this question.
Another source of ideas for this book comes from the years I spent teaching
comparative economic systems. Some of my reflections on the experience of
twentieth-century socialist efforts appear in a 1991 article, “The Socialist Fetter:
A Cautionary Tale,” where the concept of a socialist mode of regulation first
surfaced (although not named as such until the following year). Indeed, the
original conception of this book included a section on the “real socialism” of the
USSR and Eastern Europe and one on the Yugoslav model; however, as I began
to write about the question of real socialism, the section expanded from two
chapters to five and was still growing! So, I decided to shift the analysis of these
and other experiences to a separate project, Studies in the Development of
Socialism. Nevertheless, readers will see clearly that the concept of socialism
developed here is an alternative to both the real socialism of the Soviet model
and the market self-management system of Yugoslavia.
I was surprised, though, to recognize how much here is the product of my
personal experiences and activity. Certainly, there is the echo of my time in the
Students for a Democratic Society with its slogan that decisions be made by
those who are affected by them. Further, my activity in the New Democratic
Party (NDP) of Canada (an education into the limits of social democracy) is
reflected in strategies posed here for struggle within capitalism. Greatly
influenced by the Institute for Workers Control in the United Kingdom, I
developed policies for the British Columbia NDP (where I served as economic
policy chair and policy chair in the early 1970s) for opening the books of
corporations to government and workers and nationalizing firms unwilling to
accept these new ground rules for a “good corporate citizen”—a definite
precursor of the concept of “socialist conditionality” discussed in this book.
Similarly, some themes here return to my work on free buses and neighborhood
government for the 1972 NDP electoral efforts in Vancouver and my
involvement in community organizing.
However, as will be seen, my experience in Venezuela has been most
significant in shaping this volume. Not only the privilege of being present to
learn from the exciting developments that have put socialism for the twenty-first
century on the world agenda but also for the opportunity to participate in various
ways, beginning in 2004, when I became advisor to the then-Ministry for the
Social Economy. Some of my talks in Venezuela and reflections on the process
there were included in Build It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century.
Although Venezuela is unique in many ways because of its rentist economy
and culture, many of the problems that have emerged in the context of trying to
build socialism are not. And we need to go beyond the particulars of that case to
prepare ourselves for struggle everywhere. Accordingly, The Socialist
Alternative draws upon the Venezuelan experiment to develop a general vision