Someone suggested that socialism is dying. Exaggerated, but there is no doubt that we need one very different from the past
Data
On Sunday, the left won the elections in Greece and recently also in Portugal, but not so loose. In contrast, the Socialists in Spain are on the defensive, the British Labour lost direction and lost emotion and the geographic heart of Western Europe-Germany, France and Italy, is dominated by the right, and it confirmed the recent German elections. The leadership of Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi even seem to have no competitors viable. In Eastern Europe, and in reaction to the Soviet era, the left is particularly weak.
In Latin America, Brazil is the country that stands out for its dynamic and ambitious national project, there remains a pretty good left-wing government led by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. On the outskirts of Brazil dominate various shades of left but all face serious problems, from Venezuela to Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Paraguay, and distance, Chile. It is difficult to classify the Kirchner of Argentina, because as is typical of Peronism, their governments have items across the political spectrum. Anyway, in contrast, the focus clearly on the right region ranges from Colombia to Mexico to Honduras in the midst of the coup.
And the U.S.?
For a while no one was being asked where to put the United States politically. Since the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the beginning of the Cold War, the U.S. government and American political world were, by definition, the homeland of anti-communism and the right. With the U.S. victory over the USSR after a struggle that lasted nearly half a century, and the disappearance of the latter, the situation changed. But with the triumph in 2000 of George W. Bush and his team of neoconservative Republicans, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, all eager to realize the project called "New American Century, it reaffirmed the United States as the political and intellectual thought and world politics right. However, with the surprising electoral victory of Barack Obama in 2008, and its platform for social issues highlighted by any other (see his autobiography Dreams from my father and that specifically includes its political project, The Audacity hope), and appointments of the Puerto Rican people like Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the United States today can no longer be simply classified as the geographical heart or ideological right. If the above is added to the ferocity with which Republicans and conservative Americans are attacking Obama proposed to reform the health system to the extent of calling it socialist, then we can conclude that, in terms of the history of American policy, Obama is leading a management center. Where we
Seen in the distance, the political landscape on both sides of the Atlantic seem to indicate that there is a kind of a tie: the right dominates in Western Europe and the center-left in America. Then, depending on preferences, the glass may be half full or half empty. However, there are some Observers from the European scene have no hesitation in pointing to the Conservatives as the rising force otherwise, how come today, despite the anti-is no longer the political force that moved half a world-ago 20 years that brought down the Berlin Wall and that capitalism is again going through one of its worst crisis as a result of their abuses and excesses, the right wing parties are firm and even countries as they advance in power as Germany, France or Italy? In an analysis by Steven Erlanger in the International Herald Tribune (29 September), the author hypothesized even the death of socialism.
Erlanger's question is sustained by an argument in European countries of advanced capitalism, large claims were socialist flags after the Second World War and became assimilated to the political mainstream, ie, are now issues already ceased to be disputed that the right policy because the fought, and accepted and assimilated. Such is the case of public health systems, unemployment insurance, pensions, environmental protection and even greater supervision of major financial players.
other hand, the European left today just do not have leaders of weight, and other charismatic figures, however, is full of something very typical of this current from the very beginning of socialism: the internal divisions and personal squabbles that lead to those closest groups or programs, ie, the "fellow travelers," the enemy to be fought with more courage instead of investing time , resources and energy to face an opponent who is on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
What to do?
This subtitle was in 1902 the title of one of the most famous of Vladimir Ilich Lenin (inspired, in turn, in a Russian novel.) At the beginning of last century, when capitalism was not yet fully developed, Lenin, impatient, suggested to his fellow left- do not let the change process to run its natural pace slow and erratic and act on it: form a party of professional revolutionaries who would force the situation, they were the catalyst for a story that Marxism meant default. If it was inevitable that socialism replacing capitalism, then the sooner the better. His proposal was successful and she came out, for better and for worse, the Soviet Union and all that it was derived.
Today, for the left what to do? requires a different response and largely opposed. Lenin must be taken not only the idea of \u200b\u200bletting the inertia dominate and individuals must be willing to act, but nothing more. In contrast to Lenin, is now obliged under the assumption that the course of history is not written in advance or that someone has the key to knowing what will this future and therefore has the right to impose its project to others even by force. On the other hand, the history exists and is full of errors and horrors of both the "real socialism" as the others, and recognize them not to repeat is a moral and a practical necessity. In the past he should understand but do not justify their dark sides.
The struggle for power is always brutal, but there must be limits. History, the Left must accept that the quest for social democracy without democracy policy is to risk a return to incubate the egg of the snake. A left without a real commitment to ethics in political practice-the same within its own organization in competition with opponents at the ballot box, "just not worth the effort and pain anyone.
In Greece, George Papandreou's Socialists won largely by the corruption of the government open its adversaries, Kostas Karamanlis, but the history of these socialists is not free of that sin. And here is a central point: the corruption of the left in many countries, certainly in Mexico, is unacceptable morally and practically, it is an egregious and inexcusable error give in the privileged realm of fair and honest about opponents who have no historical title to claim it as their own.
In conclusion, there is the theoretical challenge. Marxism and its variants provided to the left with a holistic understanding of the world that eventually led to not look directly at reality, to the point that if it did not fit the theory, a theory was really demanding, so much the worse for reality. In contrast, non-Marxist social science, from economics to sociology, he was never quite sure of his premises or conclusions and therefore better able to deal with reality. So capitalism also understood better their faults, and acted for diminish-not to eliminate them, "something that did not Marxist intellectual fathers of the left.
In short, inequality and social injustice are present in all societies, even in the most prosperous, and that fact alone makes it indispensable to the left, but not any left, but with a capacity to learn from the past and above all, to have a real commitment to their own values.
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