By Renfrey Clarke
BUDAPEST — Years after the "old left" Communist party regimes collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the results are clear: not peace and an expansion of democracy, but a licence for the forces of capital to go on a worldwide offensive against the rights and living standards of workers.
Fighting back against this offensive requires the creation of a new left. In the Hungarian capital on September 16-18, the task of building this movement took a step forward, as more than 60 people from countries as distant as Argentina, Australia and the US assembled for an international conference.
With the title "Social and Political Restructuring and Perspectives: the Left at the Dawn of the 21st Century", the gathering was hosted by the Hungarian group Left Alternative, and followed a similar conference in 1991. Left Alternative is a political current descended from a group of dissident Hungarian socialists who came together in 1988.
The latest conference began with a session aimed at defining the present dynamics of the world political system, and the prospects for socialist and working-class forces on the historical level. Speakers returned repeatedly to these themes during the days that followed.
German scholar and left activist Judith Dellheim sought to pinpoint the essence of socialism in the concept of indivisible human rights. In charting a future course for the left, she maintained, it was necessary to focus on the goal of the emancipation of every human being, while retaining the analytical methods developed by Marx and Engels.
The "real socialism" that expired around the beginning of the 1990s, Dellheim argued, should be considered as a "socialist experiment", to be analysed but not recreated.
For Russian economist Alexander Buzgalin, the post-capitalist societies of the 20th century needed to be seen as the first mutant beginnings of socialism, distorted by immature material conditions and by an overwhelmingly hostile international environment. The failure of these attempts to create durable post-market economies, Buzgalin argued, by no means amounted to the "end of history" proclaimed by liberal ideologues.
Drawing a series of bold historical analogies, Buzgalin observed that the rise of the first market economies at the end of the middle ages had also been a complex process marked by defeats and setbacks, including the overthrow of early efforts to create states based on the new economic principles.
In the view of Polish philosopher Adam Schaff, technological revolution has brought profound changes to the tasks of the modern-day left. Mass unemployment is now a permanent feature of capitalism; faced with the waning of labour in the traditional meaning of the word, socialists, Schaff said, need to set themselves the goal of creating a civilisation not of full employment, but of full "wage-earning occupation".
Meanwhile, other challenges confront the left movement: dealing with the continuing threat of nuclear holocaust, with environmental degradation, and with the unequal and unjust relations between North and South. To meet these challenges, Schaff told the conference, the left needs to forge new alliances with forces such as the environmental, women's and youth movements.
Various speakers addressed the shortcomings of existing new left groups. Berlin scholar Michael Heinrich noted theoretical deficiencies that included a failure to develop adequate analyses of Soviet-type socialism; unclarity about the forces that should fight for socialism; and programmatic vagueness that reduced many leftists to campaigning around "a set of nice desires".
Hungarian scholar Tamas Krausz spoke of "sectarianism, abstract doctrinaire theoretism, 'over-ideologisation', and endless repetition of the final goals".
British leftist Robin Blackburn warned of puritanical attitudes within the left movement; lively debate followed his insistence on the need to "raise the banner of socialist consumerism".
Especially from the second day, the participants focused increasingly on concrete issues of contemporary society, and on the particular strategies needed to revive and strengthen the left. Vienna socialists Hannes Hofbauer, Andrea Komlosy and Susan Zimmermann discussed models of catching-up industrialisation and the question of "delinking" — that is, the process of cordoning off a particular territory from the distorting mechanisms of the world market in order to pursue a rational program of economic development.
Other speakers described the impact of neo-liberal policies in specific national settings. Moscow economist Andrei Kolganov and sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky analysed the collapse provoked by "reform" in Russia; Kagarlitsky made a strong impression when he insisted on the need for a strategically powerful sector of state property.
French socialist Catherine Samary described the situation in the former Yugoslavia, pointing to the effects of neo-liberal "stabilisation" policies in fracturing social solidarity and fuelling ethnic conflicts. Roman Viorel of the University of Bremen detailed the catastrophe brought about by monetarist policies in Romania.
Even where "reform" has been relatively successful, as in the Czech Republic and Slovenia, the costs have been borne above all by workers and other traditionally oppressed layers. Prague socialist Adam Novak described the anti-labour campaigns waged by the Czech government, and the country's repressive labour code.
Addressing the question of "What a new left social policy could be", Slovenian scholar Sonja Lockar outlined the deterioration of working-class living standards in her country since the late 1980s, and the gutting of social welfare programs.
The third and final day was devoted largely to summaries of the debate during earlier sessions, and to the adopting of a general declaration. The essence of new left politics, this declaration noted, lay not just in moving beyond hierarchic "state socialism", but also in pressing ahead with the political and intellectual struggle to overcome the capitalist world system, and in defending "the social, economic, ecological and cultural structures that are potential sources of resistance to world capitalism".
An important precondition for fundamental change, the declaration made clear, was a rejection of sectarianism and dogmatism. Activists of the new left were urged to work together with all democratic currents and movements opposing the logic of capitalism, and to support all social initiatives in line with the left's basic values and goals.