W That is the challenge we face in re-establishing a socialist project and a utopian perspective, with the credibility and social weight to be a reference point for the transformation of society?
M arx and Engels lived at a time when the - problem of a utopia appeared an anachronism: for them the most important question was to develop the contradictions within capitalism, the class struggle.
That remains true. But today we are no longer in a situation where we can say 'we don't know what socialism will look like'. We can't maintain this attitude in the face of the terrible burden of 70 years of 'actually existing socialism'. The credibility of the socialist project demands of us the production of an attractive vision of socialism, explaining that it has nothing to do with the so-called 'actually existing socialism'. To return to Ernest Bloch, to day scientific socialism has also international to be utopian socialism, in a quasi-etymological sense, which does not exist anywhere at present.
If we want our answer to be credible, we must explain what this thing we call socialism is, how it differs from a more human face of capitalism or the pseudo 'actually existing socialism', why it is worth risking our lives in this struggle.
We have to give an explanation to our militants, to workers, women, youth. Without revolutionary utopianism there will not be a revolution in practice. We need to go much further along this road.
Obviously we don't start from scratch. There is a wealth of knowledge accumulated by Marxism itself which we need to dev exp. There are a listei Should cal experiences with all their limits and mistakes, with all our 1 discussions about the nature of sition to socialism, etc.
But we must be open and prepared to learn from others such as the utopian and various other socialists, and anarchists. In the current V/ issue:
They have ideas and experiences which are important for the discussion about the kind of socialism we want.
We have to relate to these ideas, as well as new problems that arise, such as ecological questions and feminism.
We need to start to elaborate -whether in a programmatic or a literary form - thoughts, reflecItions, projections, dreams made a newspapers reality, as Bloch says, what a socialist future would be. It is important in this rediscovery of the utopian dimension of some Marxist ideas; for example, in what way will production under socialism be for use values and not exchange values; this is an idea with tremendous utopian potential What does this mean for production, for consumption? The l of Em Tempo (Brazil. problem is how to abandon an established viewpoint and try to see things from a different point of view. And, finally, we must recognise that we don't have answers for everything, on some questions we are just fumbling around in the darkness. • Michael Löwy was interviewed by the editorial team