Building a Living Democracy
Beyond Socialism and Capitalism
by Gar Alperovitz
Sojourner, April 1990

Page 9 of 9
Reconstruction

These thoughts on some potential elements of a long-term vision are offered in the hope that they may contribute to a serious discussion of possibilities. Only through a wide-ranging dialogue can a solution to the deeper problems of an alterntive system be developed as many people--in diverse walks of life--work and talk together over an extended period of time.

I have three final points. First, perhaps the most important lesson of recent developments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is that fundamental problems in any society--despite misleading appearances of superficial calm--are very difficult to "paper-over" forever. Unresolved issues--especially ones of deep significance involving profoundly important human values--may be suppressed for a long period, but they have a way of eventually coming to the surface. People know the difficulties, pain, contradictions, and hypocrisy all too well. Sometimes it only takes one spark to ignite the flames of deep-rooted resentment.

Social scientists who study trends, media commentators who offer opinions on current events, politicians who benefit from the status quo--all tend to believe nothing fundamental can change. Indeed, they have a vested interest in this view, because the alternative possibility--that there is something missing from their analysis--directly threatens their own work and credibility. So, too, most ordinary people assume very little can change until a minor event--sometimes only one person refusing to accept an existing practice--ignites an explosion that reveals far more widespread alienation than any one person, alone, might have believed existed.

Despite repeated boasting that we have "won the Cold War," there are fundamental problems in the West as well as the East. Values of equality and liberty, of meaningful democracy, are proclaimed, yet the people do not believe. The silence concerning fundamental issues at the very core of the meaning of democracy is as thundering as it was for years in the East--before the recent explosions. It would be surprising if the superficial calm lasted forever.

Quite simply--for this reason alone--there is a need to abandon cynicism and begin thinking about a fundamentally different positive vision for the future. This is especially true as the two great traditions, systems, and visions that have dominated most of the 20th century lose their capacity to inspire.

Second, implicit in the above suggestions--and, I believe, in the modern world--is a conception of a possible path to long-term change. It is a path which is different from conceptions that have characterized most 20th-century thinking about real-world options available for industrial and post-industrial societies. "Revolution," I believe, is unlikely in the West, and if attempted would likely lead to consequences that contradict the values of the proponents of change. Again, however, "reform" as it is usually conceived also appears unable to achieve the fundamental value objectives that give power and meaning to its efforts.

"Reform involves attempting to achieve proclaimed goals without altering underlying structures. The central idea of reform--liberalism or social democracy--is that the institutions of corporate capitalism exist and, in practice, should not be considered for fundamental change. But if 20th-century experience teaches us anything, it is that despite the gains of the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the New Deal, and the Great Society, progress toward reducing real world inequality of fundamental economic circumstances has been virtually nil.

Real inequality between real people has grown, not diminished. So, too, in connection with the most important institutional underpinnings of liberty, there has been regress, not progress. The result is what I hve called a "dying democracy," not a 'living democracy:" a society in which money gives more, not less, undue influence to elites and corporations; and in which democratic participation as a whole, despite occasional and important bursts of success, fades in its capacity to alter the larger dynamics of the system.

This does not mean that reform efforts should be abandoned. Quite the contrary. Whatever gains can be achieved--and, more important, whatever capacity reform has to prevent a greater worsening or a faster deterioration of the unfavorable trends--are important. People are in pain; the environment is threatened; military interventions abroad are an ever-present reality. However, an uncritical affirmation of the achievements of reform all too easily obscures and mystifies larger and deeper trends of failure.

Since reform involves accepting the basic structure of the existing system and then attempting ("after the fact" as it were) to improve what can be improved, and since this conception of change, it appears, cannot promise positive fulfillment of important values affirmed by millions in the West, a fundamental truth must be recognized. If there is ever to be a way forward to a living democracy it will almost certainly have to involve a different conception of change than that which is embodied in either the tradition of revolution or of reform.

Martin Buber used the term "reconstruction" long before the word perestroika had entered modern vocabulary to denote and connote a third way.

Buber was developing a particular approach to long-term change which, unlike reform, aimed to change the most fundamental, underlying structures of the system and, unlike revolution, aimed to do so in an evolving, nonviolent fashion. The central notion is that it may be necessary--and possible--to accept a slow, steady, elaboration of alternative institutions, building "within the shell of the old society" step by step until enough experience, vision, moral energy, and political organizing has occurred--enough social and political momentum has been built up--to allow a more general perestroika to take place. As we have noted, Buber urged especially the need to begin developing cooperative local community economic institutions which embrace many more aspects of community life, and that provide the possibility of an evolving social environment and culture different from the dominant culture.

This is the long view of change--an organic view. It assumes, indeed, that were the system to collapse tomorrow, the dominant institutions of the Right would likely control events. The notion of reconstruction--of the difficult path of slowing building new ways, and as these gather force, adding to them both institutionally and through political demands oriented to new institutional goals--may be particularly appropriate to a time in history when a full-scale collapse is not likely. But reconstruction is also appropriate when reform has lost its force. In the emering context of a possibly long era of decay and disillusionment, the traditional ways of change, as well as the traditional systemic alternatives, may well be closed.

All that may be left--the only open door--may be to start now, where we are, building the new society from the ground up--and hoping (confidently expecting!) that because meaning is collapsing all around us, others will inevitably be forced to consider both what really makes sense and how a new society can be reconstructed, starting here and now.

The African-American historian Harold Cruse recalls W.E.B. DuBois in is comments on the depth of the crisis facing the black minority as well as the larger crisis of the society. He too urges an approach which "involves much more than sheer economics. It takes a certain community point of view...in order to exert impact (political, economic and cultural)....It means the studied creation of new economic forms--a new institutionalism--one that can intelligently blend privately-owned, collectively-owned, cooperatively-owned, as well as state-sponsored, economic organizations."

From a very different perspective, the late British cultural historian Raymond Williams observed:

"The making of a community is always an exploration, for consiousness cannot precede creation, and there is no formula for unknown experience...It is, in practice,...a long conversion of the habitual elements of denial; a slow and deep personal acceptance of extending community. The institutions of cynicism, of denial and of division will only be thrown down when they are recognized for what they are: the deposits of practical failures to live."

A third and final point: for political activity to be powerful requires committed energy. Committed energy requires both ideals and values--and a very clear sense of direction. Committed energy is precisely what the old systems and the old politics cannot inspire. They do not have the capacity to fulfill the deep values that people affirm as fundamental to any meaningful, living, democratic vision of the future.

That is why it is so important to grapple now not only with the immediate problems of a society in pain, but also with the most difficult questions of a positive long-term future. The combination of a new vision and a clear conception of a process that might lead to it is required to ignite the human energy, power, and commitment needed if we ever hope to lay foundations for a new society to be built in the coming new century and new millenium.