Building
a Living Democracy
Beyond Socialism
and Capitalism
by Gar
Alperovitz
Sojourner,
April 1990
Content:
Page
1 of 9
A
New Way of Thinking About Politics and Economics
For most of the 20th century, the progressive vision of
the future has in one form or another revolved around the
socialist idea that equality and democracy can best be achieved
by a system in which the ownership of society's wealth ("the
means of production") is vested in a structure beholden to,
and controlled by, society. In practice, for the most part,
this structure has been the state.
The
crisis in East European and Soviet socialism confronts progressives
throughout the world with a fundamental challenge: What happens
if the traditional socialist ideal collapses, particularly
if socialism's "distant cousin"--the liberal welfare state--also
loses its capacity to achieve fundamental value goals?
It
is well to begin with an honest acknowledgment: In criticizing
the socialist idea, thoughtful conservatives (as opposed to
demagogues and self-serving right-wing politicians) have for
more than a century argued that vesting both economic and
political power in one institutional structure must inevitably
lead to the destruction of individual rights, democracy, and
the human spirit. They have applied a similar critique to
the expansive welfare state. Freidrich Hayek, whose book The
Road to Serfdom became a conservative bible, pushed the argument
well beyond narrow economic ideas:
"The
most important change which extensive government control produces
is a psychological change, an alteration in the character
of the people... the will of man is not shattered but softened,
bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they
are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not
destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize,
but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies
a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better
than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government
is the shepherd."
Most
progressives rejected the general conservative argument because
it was largely oblivious to the moral and political importance
of equality, and because it often served simply to mask a
base form of hack conservatism willing to use any argument
to justify private enterprise exploitation. They urged (correctly
in my view) that to vest the ownership of the means of production
in private hands inevitably produces great inequalities of
income and wealth, very powerful private interests which tend
to subvert democracy, the desecration of the environment,
and an equally disastrous spiritual result--the worship of
money, of materialism, and greed.
Most
threw the important conservative "baby" out with the dishonest
bathwater for these reasons. Only a very few argued the importance
of listening to the main point of the honest critique, and
of engaging serious conservatives in a serious dialogue on
serious matters.
It
is undeniably true that the socialist ideal in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe was severely handicapped by the devastation
of World Wars I and II, and because it was introduced into
essentially underdeveloped societies which had only the most
minimal historic experience with democracy. Further, the Cold
War generated an environment that gave priority to national
security, military expenditures, rigorous internal security
measures, and a Soviet imperial occupation. The events of
the last forty years provided numerous reasons that permitted
many progressives to avoid reflecting deeply upon the conservative
argument and upon similar themes in anarchist and libertarian
anti-statist thought.
Now
the fatal underlying flaw has demonstrated its tremendous
importance, and millions in the East have begun a sweeping
rush away from a disaster they know directly to a seeming
solution they know only vaguely: "democratic capitalism."
But if--as
many in the West know so well--democratic capitalism also
contradicts important values, what possible alternative can
we begin to conceive and affirm for the future? Access to
the ballot, Western-style, and freedom of association, of
the press, and of individual liberties, are fundamental requirements
of Constitutional democracy. But they are only some of the
building blocks of meaningful democratic participation, and
the evidence that this is so is now abundant:
Any
American reporter in any American city easily finds numerous
people chosen at random who express an extraordinary depth
of disillusionment with the actual operation of democracy.
They do not need to be instructed in the limits of what some
have called "electionism"--a process in which mud-slinging,
distorted advertising, and a lack of significant issues make
a mockery of the idea of "democratic" decision making in connection
with important public matters.
Here,
for instance, are selections from a few recent news interviews.
Construction
worker Bobby Machicek, on politics and politicians: "When
it comes time to vote they all pretend they care about people,
and they start cutting on each other, but it's all just a
rat race. It doesn't mean anything. One guy says he'll change
things, he gets in, and then he leaves and the next guy talks
about how bad the last guy was. It goes on and on like that."
Twila
Martinzea, a 38-year-old San Franciscan: "It seems like another
world to me. It goes on, it functions, but I don't feel like
it really directly affects us."
Mechanic
David Bradley: "I used to write in candidates when I was unhappy,
but I decided that was a waste of time....Our political system
is totally ineffective."
Lee
Atwater, Republican Party Chair: "Bull permeates everything.
In other words, my theory is that the American people think
politics and politicians are full of baloney."
So,
too, sociologists studying the "crisis of confidence" regularly
discover rampant disillusionment with American institutions
in general, and the political process in particular. The percentage
of people who bother to vote, for example, even in presidential
years, slips steadily. In the most recent presidential election,
only one eligible person in two voted; this is down from the
80 percent range just before the turn of the 20th century.
And
it was not a radical critic but Ronald Reagan who pointed
out that in the U.S. House of Representatives, "with a 98%
rate of re-election, there is less turnover...than in the
Supreme Soviet"--before the recent Gorbachev reforms! It is
not too much to say that democracy in America is a slowly
dying form: It has all the constitutional appearances of a
vital practice, but its heart seems quietly to be weakening.
Is
there any meaningful way forward that promises to honor equality,
liberty, democracy, ecological rationality--and, even perhaps
community? A direction that might begin to define a viable
third way beyond both traditional socialism and traditional
capitalism as we approach a new century? What is needed is
not simply a set of rhetorical goals, but the beginning outlines
of an alternative system of institutions and relationships
that might nurture, rather than erode, our most cherished
values in an ongoing fashion over time.
More
urgently and directly: What are the central elements of a
new vision which must be considered if we are to replace the
two once-great traditions, when the fatal underlying flaws
of the capitalist model explode the superficial consensus
in the West and a Western demand for true perestroika--for
"restructuring"--also one day rushes into the open?
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