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Subject: 	[Marxism] Communism: a viable alternative?
Date: 	Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:09:14 -0400
From: 	Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
Reply-To: 	Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
<marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
To: 	aorta <aorta at home.nl>



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/16/communism-philosophy-communist-party
Communism: a viable alternative?
As the epoch of liberal capitalism and the free market falls apart, the
question of an alternative must be re-opened
by Bernard Keenan

Let's get one thing out of the way to begin with: history is back in
fashion. A generation on from Francis Fukuyama's claim that the fall of
the Soviet Union marked the "end of history", the epoch of liberal
capitalism and the free market fell apart in spectacular style during a
few short months last autumn. As jobs disappear and anger rises, the
bare bones of ideology that prop up the present system are exposed.

The speedy panic with which our governments agreed to throw billions of
pounds away to restore "confidence" suggests that the dream is over and
we are awakening to a strange new socialism, in which an increasingly
authoritarian government has taken public control of financial
capitalism in order to save it from itself. We read today that equal pay
reviews no longer matter. Migrants are left to starve on the streets as
the government heads off the far right by pandering to it. And so it's
precisely now that the question of an alternative must be re-opened.

Against this backdrop, Birkbeck College this weekend hosted a symposium
on the idea of communism. Originally planned as a meeting of
philosophers and those who enjoy hearing their debates, the unexpected
material circumstances of history instead gave the event a genuine sense
of urgency. Even the BBC came to hear Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou,
Jacques Ranciere, Michael Hardt, Toni Negri, and others speaking on the
possibilities and challenges of reinventing the communist ideal today.

The conference was happily free of dogmatism. No one on the stage was
there to represent a particular party or doctrine. There were
disagreements, but at heart was a simple proposition. Communism is an
idea that has been with us in different forms for thousands of years, as
Terry Eagleton pointed out. The task is now to think what the concepts
of egalitarian voluntarism, self-organisation, common ownership of
common means of production, abolition of class-structured society, and
freedom from state power can mean today.

It's a bold statement, declaring oneself a communist. The cultural
revolutions of 1968 were the beginning of the end of the party-state,
when programmatic communism was replaced by a more postmodern, abstract
idea of "the left". Freedom of thought and nomadic thought undid the old
certainties of Marxist political knowledge. No one has quite figured out
how to replace them, and this perhaps more than anything else can
account for the current weakness of the left, even as capitalism is in
crisis: what is to be done?

First, the question of the role of the state and the economy remains
open. While Judith Balso, Toni Negri and Alain Badiou insist on creating
new political movements at a distance from the state, Zizek and Bruno
Bosteels point to the experiences of Bolivia and Venezuela as
contemporary proof that by taking power, a progressive radical movement
can survive even against overwhelming reactionary forces. For Zizek, to
reject the idea of a revolutionary state in the absence of a clear
alternative is a cop-out.

However, such considerations all seem to beg the question of how to
organise. It is difficult to imagine a new Communist party, but without
one, the idea of communism remains just that: a quasi-religious article
of faith. This was perhaps Eagleton's point when he observed that it is
not so difficult to imagine a communism of scarcity, foisted upon us by
disaster rather than rapture.

Perhaps the true question is: why communism? It does no harm to remember
that for Marx, communism was not something anachronistic and
programmatic. Marx insisted on the simple idea that we and no one else
are responsible for remaking the world. Communism can only be enacted
from what really exists. The party-states attempted to bend society to
match some abstract idea. A true philosophy of communism cannot provide
all the answers, because it has not yet encountered the problems.

Separating the promise of communism from the disasters of the 20th
century is no easy task. But it feels necessary. Already we know that
choices will have to be made and sides taken. Impending ecological
disaster suggests that this could be our last chance to do so. If
another world is possible, it will happen in action, not abstract
theory. The first choice is very simple: to begin.

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