WITH THE vote for Ukrainian independence the break-up of the Soviet Union is in full flood. The socialist movement internationally is in ferment; the official Communist parties in chaos. In the last two weeks the British CP has moved towards dissolution, while the South African CP has strongly affirmed the validity of socialism. As part of the debate we are publishing here an article by MICHAEL LOWY, a Brazilian writer living in Paris, and author of numerous works on Georg Lukacs, Permanent Revolution and Nationalism. To continue the discussion in the next issue we are publishing long extracts from an article by South African CP leader Joe Slovo, with a reply by Charlie van Gelderen.
Use cannot die before being bom. Communism is not deed, it is not yet bom. The same appnes to socialism. de nat the Western media call the Communist states Eastem official ideology 'really WCES neither. At best, one could call them 'non-capitalist societies', where private property in the main means of production had liberal media call the death of communism is in authoritarian and bureaucratic 4. decades of bureaucratic stagnatablished in the USSR in the Dec. 14. 199: No. :3 1920s and 1930s on the ashes of the Russian Revolution. It is a criticised and rejected in the name or Marxism bv a whole generation of radicals, includ• ing Leon Trotsky and Christian Kakovsky, Isaac Deutscher and Abraham Leon, Heinrich berg. Victor Serge and Andre Breton What is moribund and dying bastern Europe 1s 'Communism' but bureaucratic caricature: the monopoly of power by the TUssR in a more contradic- tis crists is unfolding in the tory form. After several tion, a vigorous process of demolition of the Stalinist heritage took place, whose movine force was we asarectic between reforms from above -bachev and his collaborators -and the democratic movement from below - the Popular Fronts, and socialist, ecological and reform clubs.
The politics of reform imple mented by the new Soviet leadership is a mixed blessing. combining a remarkable political opening (glasnost) with a restructuring (perestroika) which endangers some of the traditional rights of workers.
in the political and social struggle which is developing in the USSR and the other non-capitailst societies, both inside the nomenklatura and in civil society. severai alternatives confront each other in the search for a way out of the Stalinist model. The contending projects are:• the authoritarian política! system combined with sigreforms - the Deng Xiaoping 'Chinese' model. of political structures and the introduction market management - the USSR, Bulgaria, Romania. to the Western model and the generalisation of the market economy - that is, the restoration of capitalism - as in other Eastern European countries • the thorough democratisation of political power and a socialist/ democratic planina the programme or radical trade unionists and socialist op positionists, not implemente here is not much room for optimism about the outcome of the struggle in the short most European countries, the radical movemens watch struckie to the socialist/democratic alterMarxist tradition have been defeated, even those with a history of bitter opposition to the bureaucratic system.
A common element explains this setback: for forty years and Marxism had been identified with the Stalinist bureaucratic system That had been the only point of agreement between ( propagandists of the Eastern governments and their Western antagonists, between Radio Prague and Radio Free Europe that their leaders are implementing Marxist politics Confronted with such a 1nanimous and formidable conopinion of a small group of Marxist dissidents nave?
Nobody would make Descartes responsible for the French colonial wars, nor Jesus for the Inquisition, even less Thomas Jefferson for the US invasion of Vietnam. been made to seem that Kari narx ouir we bezin van and nominated Ceaucescu leader of the Romanian Communist Party. Tcontention, presented nereis noreason to accept ine as a kind of self-evident truth bu establishment economists, neoliberal ideologues, Westerr mainstream reitorialists that political leaders, the capitalist market economy and the profit system are the only possible alternative to the failed totalitarian command small group of (incompetent) technocrats decided what to do with the economy and despotically imposed their decisions There is another road, the democratie pianning of the economy by the society, where the propre accae. pluralist and open debate, the main economic choices, the priorities of investment, the general lines of economic policy - that is, socialist democracy.
he dogma, implied by many leaders of Eastern countries,
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