Marta Harnecker: New Paths Require a New Culture on the Left
Saturday, 06 September 2014 11:38By Federico Fuentes and Marta Harnecker, International Journal of Socialist Renewal | Speech
2014 906 martChilean author Marta Harnecker (Photo: Fundació Pere Ardiaca)a stSpeech given by Marta Harnecker on August 15, 2014, accepting the 2013 Liberator's Prize for Critical Thought, awarded for her book, A World to Build: New Paths towards Twenty-first Century Socialism; translated by Federico Fuentes
...I dedicated the book to Chavez him with the following words:
To Commandante Chavez, whose words, orientations and exemplary dedication to the cause of the poor will serve as a compass for his people and all the people of the world. It will be the best shield to defend ourselves from those that seek to destroy this marvellous work that he began to build.
When Chávez won the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already foundering. The choice then was whether to re-establish this model, undoubtedly with some changes such as greater concern for social issues, but still motivated by the same logic of profit-seeking, or to go ahead and try to build another model. Chávez had the courage to take the second path and decided to call it "socialism", in spite of its negative connotations. He called it "21st century socialism," to differentiate it from the Soviet-style socialism that had been implemented in the 20th century. This was not about "falling into the errors of the past", into the same "Stalinist deviations" which bureaucratized the party and ended up eliminating popular participation.
The need for peoples' participation was one of his obsessions and was the feature that distinguished his proposals from other Socialist projects in which the state resolved all the problems and the people received benefits as if they were gifts.
He was convinced that socialism could not be decreed from above, that it had to be built with the people. And he also understood that participating democracy is what allows people to grow and achieve self-confidence, that is, to develop themselves as human beings.
I always remember the first program of "Theoretical Aló Presidente", which was broadcasted on June 11, 2009, when Chavez quoted at length from a letter that Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist, wrote to Lenin on March 4, 1920:
Without the participation of local forces, without an organization from below of the peasants and workers themselves, it is impossible to build
a new life.
It seemed that the soviets were going to fulfill precisely this function of creating an organization from below. But Russia has already become a Soviet Republic in name only. The party's influence over people ... has already destroyed the influence and constructive energy of this promising institution – the soviets.
That is why very early on I believed it necessary to distinguish between the Socialist project and a Socialist model. I understood project to mean the original ideas of Marx and Engels, and model to refer to one form that this project has historically taken. If we analyze Soviet-style socialism, we see that in those countries that implemented this model of socialism, one that Michael Lebowitz has recently called the socialism of conductors and conducted based on a vanguardist mode of production, the people were no longer participating, organs of popular participation were transformed into purely formal entities, and the Party was transformed into an absolute authority, the sole depositary of truth that controlled all activities: economic, political, cultural.
That is, what should have been a popular democracy was transformed into a dictatorship of the party. This model of Socialism, that many have called "real Socialism" is a fundamentally statist, centralist, bureaucratic model, where the key missing factor is popular participation.
Do you remember when this Socialism collapsed and there was all this talk about the death of socialism and the death of Marxism? At the time, Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan writer that all of you know, said that they had invited us to a funeral we did not belong at. The Socialism that died was not the socialist project we had fought for. What happened in reality had little to do with the kind of society Marx and Engel envisaged would replace capitalism. For them, socialism was impossible without popular participation.
Marx and Engel's original ideas were not only distorted by the actions of the Soviet regime and the Marxist literature disseminated by this country among the left; they were also downplayed or simply ignored in those countries outside of the Soviet orbit, given the opposition generated by the model that came to be associated with the name of Socialism.
It is not commonly known that, according to Marx and Engels, the future society they called Communist would facilitate the integral development of all the potentialities of human beings, a development that could only be achieved through revolutionary practice. People would not develop by magic, they would develop because they struggle, they transform (in transforming circumstances, the person transforms themselves).
That is why Marx affirmed that it was only natural that the workers with which the new society would begin to be built would not be pure beings as "the muck of ages" would weigh on them. Which is why he did not condemn them, but rather placed confidence in them, that they would go about liberating themselves from this negative inheritance through revolutionary struggle. He believes in the transformation of people through struggle, through practice.
And Chavez, probably without have reads these words by Marx, also understood this. In his first "Theoretical Aló Presidente" on June 11, 2009, he warned communities that they have to be on guard to avoid sectarianism. He explained:
... if there are people, for example, residents who are not participating in politics, who do not belong to any party, well, it doesn't matter, they are welcome.What's more, if some from the opposition lives there, call them. Let them come and work, come and demonstrate, be useful, because, well, the homeland is for everyone, we have to open spaces and you will see that through praxis many people will transform themselves.
Praxis is what transforms oneself, theory is theory, but theory cannot touch the heart, the bones, the nerves, the spirit of the human being and in reality nothing will change. We will not transform ourselves reading books. Books are fundamental, theory is fundamental, but we have to put it into practice, because praxis is what really transforms humans.
It is also the case that the "collectivist" practices of real Socialism, which suppresses individual differences in the name of the collective, had nothing to do with Marxism. Remember, Marx criticized bourgeois law for trying to make people artificially equal instead of acknowledging their differences. By pretending to be the same for everyone, bourgeois law ends up being an unequal right. If two workers collect potatoes and one collects twice as much as the other, should the first be paid twice as much as the second? Bourgeois law says yes, without taking into consideration that the worker who only collected half as much that day may have been sick, or was never a strong worker because he was always malnourished growing up, and therefore perhaps while putting in the same effort as the first person was only able to do half as much.
Marx, on the other hand, said that any truly fair distribution had to take into account people's differentiated needs. Hence his maxim: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
Marx, on the other hand, said that any truly fair distribution had to take into account people's differentiated needs. Hence his maxim: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
Another of Marx's ideas that was distorted by both the bourgeoisie and Soviet practice was his defence of the Commons or Collective property.
What did the ideologues of the bourgeoisie say? The communists (or socialists) will expropriate everything, your fridge, your car, your home, etc.
How ignorant! Neither Marx nor any Socialist or Communist has ever thought of expropriating peoples' personal belongings. What Marx proposed was the idea of giving society back what originally belonged to them, that is, the means of production, but which was unjustly appropriated by an elite.
What the bourgeoisie does not understand, or does not want to understand, is that there are only two sources of wealth: nature and human Labor, and without human Labor, the potential wealth contained in nature can never be transformed into real wealth.
Marx pointed out that there is not only real human Labor but also past Labor, that is, Labor incorporated into instruments of Labor.
The tools, machines, improvements made to land and, of course, intellectual and scientific discoveries that substantially increased social productivity, are a legacy passed down from generation to generation; they are a social heritage – a wealth of the people.
But the bourgeoisie, thanks to a whole process of mystification of capital - one that I don't have time to go into here - has convinced us that the Capitalists are the Owners of this Wealth due to their efforts, their creativity, their entrepreneurial capacity, and that because they are the Owners of the Corporations they have the right to appropriate what is produced.
Only a Socialist society recognizes this inheritance as being social, which is why it must be given back to society and used for society, in the interest of society as a whole, and not to serve private interests.
These goods, in which the Labor of previous generations is incorporated, cannot belong to a specific person, or a specific country, but must instead belong to humanity as a whole.
The question is: how do we ensure this happens? The only way is to de-privatise these means of productions, transforming them into COMMON property. But since the humanity of the early 21st century is still not a humanity without borders, these actions must begin on a country-by-country basis, and the first step is therefore the handing over of ownership of the strategic means of production to a national state which expresses the interests of society.
But simply handing over the strategic means of production to the state represents a mere juridical change in ownership, because if the change in these state companies is limited to that, then the subordination of workers to an external force continues. A new Management, which now calls itself Socialist, might replace the Capitalist Management but the alienated status of the workers in the production process remains unchanged. While formally collective property, because the state represents society, real appropriation is still not collective.
That is why Engels argued, "state-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution to the conflict", although "concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."
Furthermore, Marx argued that it was necessary to end the separation between intellectual and manual Labor that transforms workers into one more clog in the machine. Companies need to be managed by their workers. That is why Chavez, following through on his ideas, maintained a lot of emphasis on the notion that 21st century Socialism could not limit itself to being a State Capitalism that left intact work processes that alienate workers.
Workers must be informed about the production process as a whole, they must be able to control it, to review and decide on production plans, the annual budget, and the distribution of the surplus, including its contribution to the national budget.
But, then we have the argument of the Socialist managerial bureaucracy that says: how can we hand over management to the workers?
They are not prepared to participate actively in the management of enterprises! And they are right, minus some rare exception, precisely because Capitalism has never been interested in providing workers with the necessary technical knowledge to manage enterprises. Here I am referring not only to production, but also to matters related to marketing and finance.
Concentrating knowledge in the hands of Management is one of the mechanisms that enables capital to exploit workers. But this, for a revolutionary cadre, cannot be a reason to not advance towards the full participation of workers. On the contrary, processes of co-management must be initiated that allow workers to appropriate this knowledge. To do this, they must begin engaging in practical management, while at the same time acquiring training in business and management techniques in order to reach a stage of complete self-management.
And at the level of communities and communes, an issue like many others that I would like to talk about but can't go into detail here, I always remember what Aristóbulo Istúriz said: "we have to govern with the people so that the people can learn to govern themselves." I understand that President Maduro is seeking to do this by promoting the participation of the organized people in his government through what he has called Councils of Popular Government.
(See Chavez "Social Missions.")
edited....
For the complete article go to -
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26021-marta-harnecker-new-paths-require-a-new-culture-on-the-left#14100492890131&action=collapse_widget&id=7595614
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A left that understands that we have to win by consensus, that is, that we have to convince rather than impose.
A left that understands that what we do together in the future is more important than what we may have done in the past.
FEDERICO FUENES
Federico Fuentes was co-author with Roger Burbach and Michael Fox of Latin America's Turbulent Transitions: The Future of 21st Century Socialism and is a regular contributor to Green Left Weekly.
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