How Swedish Socialism Failed

And in the most remarkable formulation that should weigh heavily on the minds of those hoping to see a revivified socialist movement spring from the bowels of the Sanders campaign, Wilde describes the folly of thinking in terms of building socialism in one country—even if it is something as theoretically workable as the Meidner Plan:

Have we seen the end of ‘social-democracy in one country’ in the same way that we have seen the demise of ‘actually existing socialism in one zone’? And if the inglorious end to the dictatorships of Eastern Europe signals the end of ‘Marxism-Leninism’ as a doctrine, does the Swedish experience mark the end of ‘Marxism-Kautskyism’? Do socialists have to concur with a pessimistic economic determinism in which there is ‘no escape from the laws of world economics’ (Frank, 1990)?

This brings me back to the contrast I drew earlier between the repentant Leninist left (at least those of its former members who have chosen to deal with reality rather than fantasy) and social democracy that remains much more confident of its rectitude. To some extent, this is naturally the outcome of an actually existing socialist international that has enjoyed state power from time to time, is funded by powerful trade unions, and that has vast resources capable of hiring bright young Ivy League graduates to work in any number of think-tanks devoted to “progressive” solutions to the vexing problems of contemporary society. In “The Eighteenth Brumaire”, Marx drew a comparison between the bourgeois and proletarian revolutions. Compared to the former, proletarian revolutions “constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals…”

While we would be well-advised to continue in the same vein, always being ready to “criticize ourselves”, there may be a time before very long in which we will be called upon to fight for the principles that have served our movement for the past 150 years or so. No matter how tiresome it is to swim against the current, we have a duty to defend class independence, proletarian internationalism and the belief that scientific planning based on the production for human need must replace private profit.

If both social democracy or Soviet style socialism in a single country are impossible, we must begin to rethink the way we talk about socialism. Keeping in mind that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, and Luxemburg always considered socialism to be the result of a worldwide struggle against a worldwide system, it is necessary to return to the roots of our movement and revisit the project of the early days of the Comintern when Marxists coordinated their struggles across national boundaries in the same fashion that Volvo and Ikea strategize over which impoverished nation could best meet their profit-driven business plans.

New technologies are being born each year that make communications easier than they have ever been, the same kinds of technologies that allow a capitalist in the USA to build factories in Asia, fly the manufactured goods here at a low cost, and then sell them at a handsome profit in a Walmart located in an economically devastated town where all the local businesses have gone down the drain. We should use them to mount an attack on their privilege and power.

In 1903 Lenin was grappling with the problem of building a revolutionary movement in Czarist Russia where there was little communication between circles of socialists focused exclusively on local struggles. His solution was to create a newspaper that could put everybody in touch with each other and allow them to act in a nationally coordinated manner against the class enemy.

As the 21^st century moves forward facing ever increasingly disastrous economic, ecological and military crises, the momentum will increase toward a truly global movement that will permit the billions of working class people to move together in a coordinated fashion. The ruling classes might have the money but we have the numbers. Don’t ever forget that.