Back to Chapter Headings Back to home page Contact Gene Lantz
The present exploitative economic systems we live under need to be changed into more interactive, less alienated, economic systems. Socialism would certainly be far better than capitalism, but a formal change of economic systems is an insufficient goal. The reason we haven’t already achieved successful worldwide socialism is alienation. Even if we wrested power from the capitalists, alienation -- our inability to trust and work with one another -- would still block our ultimate comfort.
The original idea of socialism made a lot of assumptions that weren't realistic. They assumed that people, given a fair chance, would be happy to cooperate with one another. That wasn't true then and it isn't true now. We have a great deal of ingrained culture to overcome.
Since the late 19th century, "socialism" has had a more direct, scientific, economic definition. It consists of putting the means of production under democratic control. Activists since Marx & Engels weren't utopians. They didn't think that people would just automatically start cooperating and trusting one another, but they thought that the absence of class oppression would, over time, erode away the ugly mistrust that became our second nature during the centuries of class oppression. Class differences would "wither away."
During the early years of the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara wrote about “The New Man.” He felt that Cuban children would be a lot more open minded than their parents, and the next generation of children would be even better, etc.
Socialists from Lenin forward have argued that human relations will tend to improve once the impediment of capitalism is removed. They may be correct, but it hasn’t been proven. The Soviet education system, heralded all over the world, had decades to produce “the new man/woman,” but the population allowed a reversion anyway.
Of course, Lenin and others assumed a society of plenty. The increased efficiency of a socialist society could produce enough for everyone. If there were no shortages, the argument goes, there would be no arguments among workers because there would be nothing to argue about. Everybody would have enough, and they could turn their activities toward helping everybody else instead of feathering their own nests. As far as I know, none of the socialist societies ever enjoyed a period of no shortages. It may not have been their fault, certainly capitalism remained the dominant power and deliberately forced hardships onto the socialist countries, but the thesis that socialism, in a formal sense, alone would pave the way for the end of alienation has yet to be proven.
If the United States were suddenly to "go socialist" through some magic or military action, would we really be ready to govern ourselves? Tempting and romantic as it sounds, I don't actually think so. Heck, Americans don't even use the limited democracy that we have! A significant part of our adult population is not even registered to vote, and an extremely significant section of the registered voters don't vote at all.
Our unions are probably our most democratic organizations, and the percent of union members attending meetings and actually running the union, in my long experience, is tiny. Mass demonstrations, even those focused on matters of high importance to all of us, rarely get more than a fraction of 1% of the population affected. A mass demonstration turnout of one million, less than half of one percent, would be considered enormous in 2015!
People in leadership positions use these low-turnout figures as excuses for inaction, but I don't. The present confusion and malaise is temporary and cannot last. The issues are perpetually clarifying, the solutions are coming into focus. Once they understand the problem and see the path to the solution, the American people will take action. This process of clarification is inevitable because the employing class cannot stop tightening the screws on us. "The boss is the the best organizer."
As people move into action, self-governance will be an easy accomplishment for us. As we accomplish change, we ready ourselves to be able to use it.
Back to Chapter Headings Back to home page Contact Gene Lantz