[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]
Note: This text is adapted from the appendix of the book Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government (Verso Books, 2007) by Gregory Wilpert.
Venezuela‘s President Hugo Chávez has recently popularized the idea that we should re-imagine society on the basis of what he calls "21st Century Socialism." Unfortunately, while Chávez and his supporters provide a number of hints as to what this type of socialism might be, there is no precise program or definition of the concept. Mostly, Chávez has proposed a series of ideals and some institutions, such as communal councils, communes, and socialist enterprises, but no concrete outline for how these fit together what the ultimate goal would look like. Not providing such an outline has its distinct advantages because it opens up the space for discussion, debate, and experimentation. Nonetheless, it is important that people begin debating on the basis of what they believe might be the best forms the institutions of a better should take.
In what follows I present my conception of what 21st Century Socialism might look like, which is based to some extent in the Venezuelan experience, but mostly derives from Parecon and a variety of other sources. This discussion begins with a description of the ideals, then presents a few guidelines for building institutions based on those ideals, and then presents a set of proposals for the institutions of 21st Century Socialism. I conclude by pointing out that such a program, by itself, is not enough for achieving a better society because, in addition to developing a strategy for getting there, we must be clear that the institutions proposed here presuppose a certain kind of consciousness that would allow these institutions to function well. Exactly what kind of consciousness is needed is the topic of my second essay.
Ideals of 21st Century Socialism
The ideals of 21st century socialism, as described by Chavez, are basically the same ideals as those that most of humanity seeks to fulfill at least ever since the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and social justice/solidarity. However, since most 20th century socialists, capitalists, conservatives, anarchists, etc., would probably agree with these ideals, these ideals, by themselves, do not distinguish 21st century socialism from anything else. Rather, it is the analysis of contemporary society and the recommended path and solutions for achieving these ideals that distinguishes different ideologies from each other. Certainly, the exact meaning of each of these three concepts also varies from one ideology to another. It thus makes sense to briefly clarify what is meant here by each of them.
Liberty in this context refers to a combination of what has been called negative liberty and positive liberty. That is, both the individual’s freedom "from" outside constraints (negative liberty), such as from repression or hardship, and the individual’s freedom "to" engage in political activity, such as organizing, running for office, or having an influence on matters that concern him or her. Of course, liberty is always constrained by the rights of others. That is, individuals should not be free to prevent the exercise of other people’s liberty.
Second, equality refers formal equality in this discussion; that everyone enjoys equal rights and duties, that no one has a privileged status with regard to the law. This concept is different from, but closely related to, substantive equality (or equality of condition or material equality). It is one matter for a political or economic system to treat everyone equally (formal equality) and a completely different matter to live in a condition of substantive or material equality with everyone else, in terms of one’s material wealth. People who use the slogan of equality often do not differentiate the two forms of equality, which leads to much confusion. For this reason this analysis will reserve the term equality for formal equality and the term social justice for substantive equality.
The third ideal of the French Revolution, fraternité, brotherhood, has a wide range of possible meanings, but in this context it makes sense to equate it with the demand for social justice and for solidarity. In other words, it reflects the general human desire that no one should be much worse or much better off than everyone else – that all have more or less equal conditions for life and that inequality of condition is the result of an individual’s personal effort and decisions and not the result of good or bad fortune. Solidarity and social justice, while distinct, are closely related because it is the sense of solidarity with others that produces the demand for social justice for others.
Finally, many political philosophers have recognized that these three classical demands of the French Revolution are not enough for today’s world because we are threatened by the possibility of extinction, due to humanity’s own actions in destroying the planet’s ecological balance. A fourth ideal thus becomes necessary, which could be called sustainability. Under the heading of sustainability we can also include the ideals of efficiency (no waste), diversity (which greatly aids sustainability), and the ideal of promoting the greatest development for the greatest number of beings (extending solidarity beyond the realm of humans).[i]
Five Guiding Principles for Institution Building
What, exactly, are the institutions that could fulfill the above-named ideals? Proposed here is a model that is inspired by libertarian socialism in its general contours, by participatory economics[ii] (Parecon, for short) in its details, which also includes some considerations about a better political sphere, and five guiding principles for developing an institutional model.
Given the all too often tragic history of socialism in the 20th century, it is important that we learn some of its lessons if we hope to avoid repeating its mistakes. The following five guiding principles for institution building could serve as five of the main lessons to be learnt from that history.
First, and perhaps most importantly, we cannot build institutions where we say that the ends justify the means. If there is any lesson to be learned from the horrors of the 20th century, where noble ideals were sacrificed in the present for a better tomorrow, it is this. Rather, new institutions should embody and pre-figure our values and ideals. If they do not, we risk creating institutions that might appear to be necessary for a better future, but that in the long run undermine our efforts to reach our goals. In other words, institutions that are supposed to work towards a better future, such as social movement organizations, should embody our ideals of liberty, equality, social justice, and sustainability to the greatest extent possible. This is not always possible, due to circumstances beyond our control, but to the extent that we can control them, this is what we ought to strive for if we are to have any hope of actually creating this better society. This means that this principle precludes the establishment of discriminatory or authoritarian structures, such as democratic centralism, and of exploitation within our own institutions today, just as much as it precludes them from institutions of the future.
Second, ideas for developing institutions for a better future cannot be dogmatic. That is, they cannot treat texts, ideas, or leaders’ statements about anything as unquestionable dogma. Another way of putting this is to say that the model and its analysis and justifications must be based on an open mind and must be open to revision and modification in light of new ideas and new evidence. Too many movements for a better society have deteriorated because they took the ideas of a certain individual or text as the last word on all matters. Also, dogma leads to authoritarianism and thus violates the ideals.
Third, we should try to avoid privileging one ideal over the other. If we agree that we all want liberty, equality, social justice, and sustainability, we should not say that one of these is much more important than the other and that we thus ought to be satisfied if we achieve one or two of these ideals at the expense of the others. Rather, we need to recognize that these ideals are all fundamentally inter-linked and that the denial of any one of them implies the lessening of all of them. It is the privileging of liberty over social justice that allows capitalism to provide neither for the poor and it was the privileging of social justice over liberty that allowed state-socialism’s oppression of nearly everyone. Also, if we say today, in light of the ecological crisis, that we must privilege sustainability over the other ideals, we might survive the ecological crisis in the short term, but at the cost of living in an eco-fascist society, which is not sustainable in the long run.
Fourth, closely related to the previous point, we should avoid privileging either the individual or the collective because privileging one leads to the neglect of the other. Rather, we need to recognize that one cannot thrive without the other, which means that both must be fostered simultaneously. For too long have political ideologies favored either the collective or the individual, when, in actuality, we need to live up to Marx’s dictum where, "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." Anarchism, libertarianism, and capitalism, for example, have generally favored the the individual, while socialism and Christian conservatism have traditionally favored the needs of the collective. Another way of putting this distinction is to contrast individual freedom with social order. Again, both are needed for a functioning society.
Fifth, as we build institutions, we should pay attention to their place in the existing network of relationships and of meaning. In other words, institutions, just as individuals, do not exist in a vacuum, but are embedded in webs of relationships and of meaning. What happens in one institution has effects on others. In practice, this means, for example, that if we create economic institutions, such as cooperatives, which contribute to the fulfillment of our ideals, we also ought to be simultaneously building political institutions that complement and support the economic institutions we create. Similarly, we cannot create new institutions without paying attention to the meaning-making, the values, culture, and world views of the people who will be working inside of these. If the participants in the new institutions have values and world views that are at odds with the goals of the new institution, then these will fail in the long run. This means that we need to pay an equal amount of attention to how institutions are organized as we do on their organizational culture.
This last point also implies that the institutions we build cannot be utopian. Instead, they should recognize the historical, social, psychological, cultural, and physical realities of today’s society. This point is rather similar to Friedrich Engels’ critique of utopian socialism, which he contrasted to scientific socialism, saying that we need a careful analysis of what is possible in a given moment in history, not just fantasies of what we would like.[iii] Certainly, institutions can change the way we think about things, but this causal relationship between institutions creating new forms of consciousness has its limits. Institutions can push people towards new forms of consciousness, but not if too many of those in those new institutions have values that are diametrically at odds with the ideals embedded in the new institutions.
Proposal for Institutions that Fulfill Socialism’s Ideals
Armed with the ideals for a better society, these five guidelines for institution building, and the history of past and present efforts to create a better society, it is now possible to venture some ideas about what the institutions for a better society ought to look like. The proposal can then serve as a means for evaluating the probabilities of success or failure the Chavez government will have in moving towards a society with liberty, equality, social justice, and sustainability for all its citizens.
New Economic Institutions[iv]
1. Self-management
Based on the fact that privatized means of production will almost always mean greater inequality, due to the owners’ unearned income, and greater unfreedom, due to the owners’ (or managers’) ability to control all aspects of the workplace, it makes sense to call for the socialization of the means of production. In practice, this means, first and foremost, self-managed cooperatives, where all workers have an equal voice in the manageme
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
Gregory Wilpert
Gregory Wilpert is a German-American sociologist, journalist, and activist who has covered Venezuela extensively for a wide variety of publications. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology (Brandeis University, 1994) and is author of the book, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government (Verso Books, 2007). He is co-founder of the website Venezuelanalysis.com, was director of the teleSUR English website, and host and managing editor for The Real News Network. Currently he works as deputy editor at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
