"Socialism, once banned from polite conversation, has made a startling comeback."
- John Judis, distinguished scholar

Newsweek magazine recently declared in a cover feature: 'We Are All Socialists Now'. The crisis in global capitalism has buried a number of banks, companies and countless dreams, but it has resurrected the socialist dream.

Visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior editor of the New Republic magazine, John Judis, in an article in the May/June 2009 issue of Foreign Policy ('Confessions of a True Believer') says: "In the United States, even liberal socialism has always been a hard sell. But today it is clear that some of the barriers toward socialist ideas are coming down, notwithstanding the socialist name-calling of President Barack Obama by some of his more outspoken GOP foes." Socialism is back.

Judis mentions that in 1995 a conservative Washington think tank put together a group of writers and scholars to debate the issue 'Socialism: Dead or Alive'. Only one, Judis, voted 'alive'. Today things are different. In the left-leaning Nation magazine, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr recently touched off a storm of responses with their piece, 'Rising to the Occasion', in the March 4 issue.

Resilience of capitalism

The writers began their article by noting that "if you haven't heard socialists doing much crowing over the fall of capitalism, it isn't because there aren't enough of us to make an audible crowing sound". While they acknowledged the legendary resilience of capitalism - indeed, boom and busts are integral to standard economic theory - they say, "but this time the patient may not get up from the table, no matter how many times the electroshock paddles of 'stimulus' are applied. We seem to have entered the death spiral where rising unemployment leads to reduced consumption and hence greater unemployment".

This is the 'big one', many believe. Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced last September that "self-regulation as a way of solving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished". And so is Fukuyama's End of History. History has not ended. It might have just begun.

The problem is that the socialists - in this case, the Marxists - have always been brilliant at analysis and dissection of problems but dismal in proposing practical solutions. Marxism has profound sociological, historical and economic insights but is woefully deficient as practical strategy.

There is an abundance of evidence - and inundation of data - to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Marxian economic practice is problematic. The Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites did achieve significant economic and industrial growth, but it proved unsustainable. The Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites were not destroyed by the Central Intelligence Agency or United States (US) Imperialism. Their own economic follies eventually tripped them up.

But, of course, many Marxists, just like their fundamentalist religious counterparts who, after each failed Apocalyptic End of the World date failed to materialise reinterpret history to sustain their illusion; these Marxists now say the Soviet model was not "the real Marxist model"; that the Soviets - "the Stalinists" - betrayed the revolution; that socialism has not rally been tried yet. Just like the popular Christian statement that Christianity has not been tried and failed; it has simply been deemed difficult and left untried.There is no 'real existing socialism', no socialist model; no example of a society which has followed Marxian prescriptions and which has delivered on sustainable economic growth and liberation.

Inexorable laws of history

But the Marxist illusion persists. The moderator of the Caribbean Dialogues, Trevor Campbell, and his fellow travellers to Utopia are 'true believers'. They still pronounce authoritatively about the inexorable laws of history. Like the ancient gnostics, they know 'the secrets' of history; the mysteries which lie beneath appearances; the Grand Design and Meta-Narrative of History. They know how to turn Hegel on his head.

The first major problem with Marxism is its scientistic epistemology. It has a naive view of science and knowledge. Marx could perhaps be forgiven for not having "arisen from his dogmatic slumbers" by reading David Hume or the ancient Pyrrhonians carefully, but after Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which brought about a sea change in the philosophy of science, modern Marxists are guilty of the unpardonable sin for still clinging to their stubborn Enlightenment heritage.

It is highly debatable whether one can speak dogmatically about the "inexorable laws of history"; about history moving unceasingly towards some end-point. Marx took all of that from his Jewish religio-philosophical heritage.

A major epistemological blunder of the Marxists, and this has been fostered by Engels particularly, is to view the social sciences in the same way as the natural sciences. History is not like nature. The tools that can be used to understand nature, to understand its laws, cannot be used to fathom human affairs. This is not to say one cannot learn from history or make any prognosis, but it is to say that the kind of precision that one can have with certain natural scientific experiments and phenomena cannot be applied to the humanities and the social sciences. That would be a categorical mistake.

The main contributors on Caribbean Dialogues demonstrate no recognition of this. They blithely throttle off ideas from their religious texts (Das Kapital, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts etc) as though nothing has changed since the 1840s. If you question their settled dogmas, they respond like all fundamentalists, with abuse, scorn, insults, ridicule, and ad hominen attacks. Anything but serious intellectual engagement.

So here are my charges against Marxism socialism. It has a naive epistemology and anthropology. That the "world out there"; what Kant calls "things-in-themselves" can be objectively apprehended by pure reason is seriously questionable. That it is within our epistemic ken to grasp the "laws of history" and all its patterns "scientifically" has come under sustained scholarly assault over the last few decades.

Postmodernist thinkers

I suggested the postmodernist thinkers in my last column not to "drop names", as disingenuously suggested by Trevor online, but to invite Marxists to interact with their insights (Perhaps he could start by reading the essay published last year in the Marxist journal International Socialism, issue 118: 'Michel Foucault: Friend or Foe of the Left?' It's good to read beyond the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times occasionally, Trevor.)

Whether Foucault, Lyotard or Derrida provide psychological comfort to the masses is irrelevant. It might be that their vision is pessimistic but what if it is true? Shall we persist in myths just because they are soothing? (That's what the religious fundamentalists do).

Also, Marxism is naive about human nature (Yes, I know the very concept of human nature is questionable as some doubt whether 'man' has any essence). In other words, Marxism does not really understand human beings and does not account the trans-class potential for evil and barbarity. It is this overly optimistic view of human beings and the error that it is only class society that provides the basis for oppression and cruelty that partly accounts for the despicable abuse of power that we saw in communist societies and which resulted in multiple millions of lives sacrificed for the communist revolution.

If you believe that oppression, injustice and barbarity are confined to a certain class, then you won't have the necessary safeguards for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The American Founding Fathers, most of whom were deists, had a profound sense of the potential and proclivity for human beings to abuse power and to be oppressive. That's why the Federalist Papers are so strong on the separation of powers and competitive branches in democratic society. The Founding Fathers understood some things atheist Karl Marx did not.

The other issue is one of sheer practicality. The Marxists grossly underestimate the difficulties in building a socialist society (of the Marxism variety). They don't have a meaningful and practical programme to get us from capitalist oppression to socialist paradise. Listen to their proposals. They are fantasy-driven, fuelled by wishful thinking.

Ehrenreich and Fletcher make an important admission in the March 4 Nation article: "The only relevant question is, do we have a plan, people? Can we see a way out of this and into a just democratic and sustainable future? Let's put it right out on the table; we don't."

They go on, "We don't have some blueprint on how to organise society ready to whip out of our pockets." Not so the vulgar Marxists. They have all the answers, understand the "laws and dynamics of capitalist accumulation" and socialist transformation. There is no such humility on the part of orthodox, vulgar Marxists. They have the Gnosis. They have the 'science'. If bourgeois Ponzi intellectual people like 'Pastor Boyne' would only believe and give his heart to Marx!

There is a highly sophisticated scholarly essay in the Marxist journal Socialist Register (Vol.36, 2000) titled, 'Transcending Pessimism; Rekindling Socialist Imagination'. Say the authors (Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin): "Analytical and rhetorical criticism of this flawed democracy can score points but without practical experiences that show that something else is possible come up against a resigned acceptance that in a complex society this is as good as democracy can get. Our criticisms have to be tied to practical steps." The Caribbean Marxists have no set of practical steps which would make the Caribbean ruling classes preside over their own liquidation.

Socialist consciousness

They underestimate the power of the bourgeois media to circumscribe people's thinking about possibilities (though they will say I demonstrate that). "The argument that at unique moments of deep capitalist crisises and intensified struggle, socialist consciousness and vision wall explode onto the stage of history is unconvincing or at best incomplete. What would sustain such struggles?"

Our Caribbean Marxists have no credible answers to such questions. Indeed, because they are so inextricably wedded to their dogmas, they seem not to even have the capacity to understand the questions.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalistwho may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.