We’ve said this often, and we’ll say it again. Cuba? Venezuela? China? The Soviet Union? European social democracy? Socialism has never been a step on the way to communism. It’s not what the masses need.
“Revolutionary socialists” (like the Bolsheviks) distinguished themselves from “democratic socialists.” They correctly criticized democratic socialists for trying to keep the masses from breaking capitalism’s chains.
During World War I, revolutionary socialists stuck to working-class internationalism. “Working people have no country. We must fight for our class.”
Democratic socialists betrayed the working class. They parroted the capitalists’ bloody nationalism.
However, revolutionary socialism thought that it needed capitalist social relations of production like wages and markets.
The material base of revolutionary socialist society subverted the goal of communism. It turned communist leaders into a new capitalist class.
And it led them, too, to abandon working-class internationalism in the name of “defending the socialist motherland.”
Now along comes New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. This self-described centrist Democrat says that capitalism and socialism can coexist (March 8, 2019).
Cohen praises the health and welfare systems in “socialist France.” He notes that “Socialist presidents have governed France for half of the past 38 years. But France has a vibrant private sector. It is a capitalist economy.”
The European rulers decided after World War II, Cohen says, “that cushioning capitalism was a price worth paying to avoid the social fragmentation that had fed violence.” In other words, to prevent workers’ revolution. To prevent communism.
Says Cohen: “socialism or its cousin social democracy (as opposed to communism)” balanced “the free market and the public sector, enterprise and equity, profit and protection.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cohen and his class thought that “ideological struggle seemed over.” They thought – or hoped – that communism was dead.
But “growing inequality and marginalization — byproducts of financial globalization — have thrust socialism center stage.”
Not to worry, Cohen assures the capitalists. “Europe demonstrates that socialism and the free market are compatible.”
“The dirty secret of European welfare states,” he adds, “is that they tend to be business-friendly.”
Cohen’s goal is to persuade Democratic Party leaders to embrace charismatic young “democratic socialists” like congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). Why?
Because “the energy in the Democratic Party lies in the progressive camp.” Without “a new era’s left-leaning energy” he doesn’t see how the Democrats can defeat Trump.
Not that he agrees with everything AOC proposes: “I don’t think soaking the rich is going to get a Democrat to the Oval Office.”
But beyond electing Democrats, Cohen has learned the lesson from Europe that socialism can be an effective way of co-opting protest.
“The basic requirement of any Democratic candidate,” says this cynical boss, “is to make the forgotten, the struggling and the invisible of American society feel visible again.”
Feel visible! That’s it? Are young radicals going to let AOC co-opt them into the Democratic Party just so the masses “feel visible”?
Or will they reject socialism’s snares? Will they learn that the masses can make revolution and transform society? That industrial workers, soldiers and sailors are key?
Will they step forward to mobilize for communism? Help figure out how to organize communist workers’ power?
That ideological struggle is not over. It’s just beginning.
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