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The title of Bhaskar Sunkara’s new book is both bold and smart, from a marketing perspective at least. It’s eye-catching in its reference to The Communist Manifesto. I’m actually a little surprised that apparently no previous book has had that title, since it seems so obvious. The reason may be that other writers have been more humble than Sunkara, and less willing to elicit inevitable comparisons between their work and Marx’s. For no writer, and certainly not Sunkara, will fare well under such a comparison.
But I don’t want to be too harsh on the founder of Jacobin, whose magazine has (whatever one thinks of its particular political line) performed useful services for the American left. Sunkara is not a deep or original thinker, but he’s an effective popularizer—and in an age of mass ignorance, there’s much to be said for popularizations. The book is written for the uninitiated, and if it succeeds in piquing young readers’ interest in socialism, then it has served its purpose.
The title is a misnomer, however, for the book is no manifesto. It is essentially a critical history of socialism with a couple of chapters at the beginning and the end on the present and possible future of the left. The scope is ambitious: it ranges over the German Social Democratic Party up to World War I, the triumphs and tragedies of Leninism and Stalinism in Russia, Swedish social democracy, the record of “socialism” in China and the Third World, and the history of socialists in the U.S., in the process touching on the Labour Party in Britain, the Popular Front period in France, the impact of neoliberalism on the working class, and other subjects. It also has a chapter on fifteen lessons to be gleaned from the history, as well as a whimsical, speculative chapter (the first one) on what it might be like to live in a socialist society and what the transition from a social democratic to a socialist society might look like. Sunkara’s interpretations and ideas come from respectable scholars such as Michael Harrington, Vivek Chibber, and David Schweickart, in addition to younger writers for Jacobin.
Through most of the book, the arguments are anchored in sturdy common sense, however much one might contest a point or emphasis here and there. On “Third World socialism,” for example, whether in China or Africa or the Americas, Sunkara is right that it turned Marxism on its head, so to speak: “revolutionaries embraced socialism as a path to modernity and national liberation. Adapting a theory that was built around advanced capitalism and an industrial proletariat, they struggled to find ‘substitute proletariats’—from peasants to junior military officers to deprived underclasses—to achieve these ends.” None of it was socialism in the Marxist sense, as coming from the breakdown (literal or not) of capitalism and signifying the liberation of humanity from alienated and exploitative production. It was a “socialism” subordinated to nationalistic ends.
As for social democracy, Sunkara is clearly right that it always faces a “structural dilemma,” in that it exists within capitalism and depends on capitalist profitability. Historically it was safe only as long as there was an expanding economy. “Expansion gave succor to both the working class and capital. When growth slowed [in the 1970s] and the demands of workers made deeper inroads into firm profits, business owners rebelled against the class compromise.” The era of neoliberalism began.
Sunkara’s conclusion to his survey of twentieth-century socialism is appropriate: “The best we can say about socialism in the twentieth century is that it was a false start.” Personally, I would even argue (and have, in Worker Cooperatives and Revolution) that attempts to introduce socialism—which is to say workers’ democratic control of production—exclusively through the bureaucratic initiative of the state, in an international economic environment still completely dominated by the dynamics and the hierarchies of corporate capitalism, were always misconceived. If a transition to genuine socialism ever happens, it will necessarily take generations, generations of struggle around the world directed at everything from the interstitial construction of solidarity economies to the mobilization of millions on behalf of radical political parties.
What Sunkara envisions is that a new kind of “class-struggle social democracy,” of the sort that Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders advocate, may be achieved after years of popular struggle. But rather than being content with this achievement and possibly letting it be undermined by the capitalist class, as happened to classical social democracy, socialists have to keep pressing for more radical transformations, such as expansion of the cooperative or publicly-owned sector of the economy.
Democratic socialists must secure decisive majorities in legislatures while winning hegemony in the unions. Then our organizations must be willing to flex their social power in the form of mass mobilizations and political strikes to counter the structural power of capital and ensure that our leaders choose confrontation over accommodations with elites.
Eventually, this new social democracy will evolve into socialism, as the state and/or workers take over ownership and control of the remaining private firms.
Sunkara fleshes out these predictions a bit in his first chapter, but I think some skepticism is in order. Social democracy was appropriate to an era of industrial unionism and relatively limited mobility of capital. In a “globalized” age, it’s hard to see how social democracy can simply be reconstructed—in a more radical form, even, than before. History doesn’t work in this way, in which previous social formations are resurrected after they have succumbed to the universal solvent of capitalism. We can’t just return to conditions that no longer exist. That is a key lesson of Marxism itself.
In the U.S., to enact Medicare for All, safe and secure housing for all, free child care, decent public education at all levels, and other reforms Sunkara mentions would require, as he says, that socialists have strong legislative majorities. Given the power of the capitalist class, I don’t see this happening, at least not in the next twenty or thirty years. It took reactionaries decades of organization to achieve their current power—and they had enormous resources and existed in a broadly sympathetic political economy. It’s hard to imagine that socialists will have better luck.
Predicting the future isn’t exactly easy, especially not at this moment when humanity is poised on a precipice overlooking climate change, mass extinction of flora and fauna, economic crisis, complete political dysfunction, and general social breakdown. But my own prognosis would be more pessimistic than Sunkara’s. Neoliberalism has brought to its consummation the fracturing and atomizing of civil society that capitalism has entailed. The nation-state system itself seems in danger of decaying from within, from social crisis. There is no return of vitality and integration on the horizon. There is only a long period of crisis, a period of political flailing and confrontation, of stagnation and polarization, a period that will see lots of little left-wing victories and lots of defeats but few epochal triumphs. (If Sanders or Corbyn achieve power, for example, they will face a business community determined to destroy them.)
Whatever will be happening at the level of the national state, on smaller scales initiatives in the solidarity economy will be spreading around the nation and around the world, from people’s sheer necessity to survive. Activists will be pressing for changes in state policy to facilitate the growth of this non-capitalist economy, and states will be increasingly forthcoming if only because such local and decentralized projects are seen as relatively unthreatening to capitalist power. As left-wing parties acquire more influence, they will press for the expansion of this cooperative sector of the economy—along with other policies that are more directly and immediately threatening to capitalism. The reactionaries can’t control everything forever (otherwise society would completely collapse), and the left will begin to have more political victories to approximately the degree that a cooperative sector invested in the left grows. As repeated economic crises will be destroying huge amounts of wealth and thinning the ranks of the capitalist hyper-elite, a new society and economy will gradually emerge in the womb of the old regime.
In my above-mentioned book I argue that this scenario, which will unfold over many decades, is the only truly Marxist or materialist conception of socialist revolution, notwithstanding most Marxists’ hostility to any conception hinting of “gradual change.” The Jacobin social democratic scenario is naïve and ahistorical.
Nevertheless, Sunkara’s book is of value. Little in it will be new to long-time leftists, but American political culture could certainly use more popularizations like The Socialist Manifesto. We have a long, long war ahead.
Sommaire :
Aujourd’hui, il publie une plaquette réunissant les pièces du dossier polémique qui opposa Céline à Roger Vailland. Celui qui joua le rôle d’arbitre fut Robert Chamfleury (1900-1972), de son vrai nom Eugène Gohin. Comme chacun sait, il était locataire de l’appartement juste au-dessous de celui de Céline, au quatrième étage du 4 rue Girardon, à Montmartre. Après la guerre, il réfutera Vailland et affirmera que Céline était parfaitement au courant de ses activités de résistant. Au moment critique, Chamfleury lui proposa même un refuge en Bretagne. Dans une version antérieure de Féerie pour une autre fois, Céline le décrit (sous le nom de “Charmoise”) « cordial, compréhensif, conciliant, amical ». Sa personnalité est aujourd’hui mieux connue : parolier et éditeur de musique, Robert Chamfleury était spécialisé dans l’adaptation française de titres espagnols ou hispano-américains. Il fut ainsi une figure marquante de l’introduction en Europe des compositeurs cubains, et des rythmes nouveaux qu’ils apportaient. Il travaillait le plus souvent en duo avec un autre parolier, Henri Lemarchand. Lequel préfaça La Prodigieuse aventure humaine (1951, rééd. 1961) de son ami qui, sur le tard, rédigea plusieurs ouvrages de vulgarisation scientifique et de philosophie des sciences. Céline lui accusa réception avec cordialité de cet ouvrage et l’invita à venir le voir à Meudon. Dans sa plaquette, Andrea Lombardi reproduit la version intégrale de la lettre que Chamfleury adressa au directeur du Crapouillot, telle qu’elle parut, pour la première fois, dans le BC en 1990.
Antoine a donc choisi l’obscurité, décevant ainsi son épouse, qui le largue (et cesse de jouer au mécène) et, bientôt, sa fille Blandine, que viendra consoler l’attentionné Thomas. Il vivote dans un HLM de la Grand’Mare (hilarants tableautins du « vivre-ensemble ») et se contente de CDD à la médiathèque Arthur Rainbow (!), l’un des décors du roman – prétexte pour l’auteur à une description aussi comique que glaçante du dispositif d’infantilisation des masses et de leur encadrement « culturel ». Notre bibliothécaire tranche d’avec ses jeunes collègues, acquis à la culture du divertissement et conscients de leur rôle dans le dressage « citoyen » de leurs usagers. Il fera, ô surprise, l’objet d’une dénonciation en règle pour un article littéraire de sa revue consacré à un écrivain qui, dans un français parfait, ose évoquer l’actuel chaos migratoire et ses conséquences sans l’enthousiasme ni la cécité de commande. 
3) Tale conoscenza non è sapere se non è innanzitutto uno stato dell’essere; lo stato dell’essere è vedere l’Invisibile, che è l’Indicibile, ma per colui che è Essere non è che l’Uno, l’Istante che è fuori dal tempo: colui che vive nella dimensione dello Spirito è nel tempo pur essendo, nella radice, fuori dal tempo, vedrà il Divenire che è Essere, come indica l’enigmatico sorriso dell’Apollo di Veio, Egli, sorridendo della nostra stupidità, accenna, svela e rivela la Verità: l’Assoluto, il Divino è semplicemente ciò che tu vedi e che sei! Tu però non lo sai!
Si conosce solo ciò che si è e si è solo ciò che si conosce. Gli Dei non esistono a priori (per fede) ma esistono solo se si conoscono e si conoscono solo se si esperimentano, quindi esistono solo per colui il quale li esperimenta, cioè li vive e quindi li conosce; nel senso che, pur esistendo da sempre, per colui il quale non li conosce Essi non esistono. Tale è il significato della frase: “I Greci non credevano negli Dei; poiché li vedevano!”
Nel corpo della cultura europea scorre sangue «pagano». A muovere dal Settecento, filosofi, storici delle religioni e artisti, si sono prodigati nel tentativo di far riemergere le sorgenti più arcaiche della nostra cultura, richiamando l’attenzione sul suo effettivo ubi consistam. Anzi, questo sforzo è ancora in corso: si pensi, tra i tanti esempi che si possono fare in tema, alla valorizzazione del mondo pre-cristiano, presentata, nella propria opera, da Evola o, più recentemente, da autori quali Marc Augé e Alain de Benoist. Un ruolo rilevante, in tal senso, nel secondo decennio del «secolo breve», lo ha svolto il filologo svevo e storico delle religioni, Walter Friedrich Otto. Il suo lavoro più noto, Gli Dei della Grecia, fu in qualche modo preparato da un libro che egli pubblicò nel 1923, Spirito classico e mondo cristiano, di cui è recentemente apparsa la seconda edizione italiana, per i tipi de L’arco e la Corte (per ordini: arcoelacorte@libero.it, pp. 174, euro 15,00). Si tratta, come ricorda Giovanni Monastra, nell’informata e stimolante Prefazione, di un testo nel quale l’autore mostrò, in tutta la sua forza e con invidiabile spessore erudito, l’attrazione empatica per il mondo classico e, in particolare, per la religiosità ellenica. 
In Spirito classico e mondo cristiano, sono presenti: «lampeggianti intuizioni e utili indicazioni che consentono di vedere con occhi nuovi il mondo religioso ellenico» (p. 13). Otto cerca, in ogni modo, di far parlare i Greci e i loro dei, con la voce che gli fu propria. Fino ad allora, infatti, il clamore millenario prodotto dalla cultura dei vincitori, nella contesa storica sviluppatasi nel IV secolo d.c., quella cristiana, aveva impedito di cogliere il senso ultimo della visione del mondo ellenica. La critica al cristianesimo di Otto è radicale, i toni polemici decisamente aspri, in alcuni passaggi rasentano l’invettiva. Per questo, successivamente, il filologo non si riconobbe del tutto in tali affermazioni e non volle che questo studio fosse nuovamente pubblicato (la precedente edizione italiana uscì nel 1973, ad insaputa della figlia dello studioso). Il libro è scritto sotto il segno di Nietzsche. Come il filosofo dell’eterno ritorno, anche Otto distinse l’originario insegnamento del Cristo, insieme a Socrate considerato ultimo esempio di vita persuasa, dalla successiva dottrina cristiana, esito del travisamento teologico operato dalla tradizione paolino-agostiniana. In ogni caso, quale idea ha Otto della religio greca?
I Greci, al contrario, non conobbero mai la fides, la loro religio della forma era, in realtà, un susseguirsi di esperienze, di realizzazioni del sacro, da parte dell’uomo. Il tratto politeista consentiva loro di apprezzare i diversi volti dell’Uno e di viverli, di farne esperienza. A ciò contribuivano il mito e il culto. Nel secondo: «è l’uomo che si innalza al Divino, vive e agisce in comunione con gli dei; nel mito è il divino che scende e si fa umano» (p. 21). Il rapporto uomo-dio si manifestava, come rilevato da Rudolf Otto, nell’endiadi Io-Esso. Si trattava, pertanto, di una relazione centrata sull’ethos, sul modo d’essere (Evola avrebbe detto “razza dello spirito”) e non sul pathos, sulla dimensione emotiva e sentimentale. Il trionfo del cristianesimo rese esplicito che il mondo antico aveva perso la propria anima, vale a dire quest’atteggiamento paritetico degli uomini nei confronti degli dei. Ecco perché alla «buona novella» aderirono gli ultimi, i diseredati e le donne, che divennero strumenti mortiferi per lo spirito classico. In quel frangente, pochi tentarono una resistenza. Si ersero in pochi, ricorda Otto, sulle rovine di un mondo al tramonto per proclamarne la grandezza, tra essi Giuliano Imperatore. Monastra ipotizza, e la cosa va segnalata, che Evola, avrebbe potuto trarre il titolo del suo, Gli uomini e le rovine, proprio da un passo del libro del filologo tedesco, che certamente lesse.
Tragique destin que celui de ce jeune Liégeois qui n’aura pu exercer sa profession que durant une quinzaine d’années. Pour beaucoup, il demeure le découvreur de Céline auquel son nom demeure associé. Et pourtant nombreuses sont les œuvres importantes du XXe siècle qu’il aura publiées : L’Hôtel du Nord d’Eugène Dabit, Héliogabale d’Artaud, Tropismes de Nathalie Sarraute, Les Beaux Quartiers d’Aragon, Les Décombres de Rebatet, Le Bonheur des tristes de Luc Dietrich, Les Marais de Dominique Rolin, Notre-Dame des Fleurs de Jean Genet, pour ne citer que les plus connues.
In the Platz der deutschen Einheit (German Unity Square) in Düsseldorf, someone has covered the street name with Simone de Beauvoir Platz. This is one example among many that anyone living in the Federal Republic of Germany may encounter – evidence of the hatred of their country which some Germans feel. Evidence is all around. Now a book has been published stating and stressing this tendency of Germans to despise their birthright and identity.
The first essay by Lichtmesz (photo) is an overview of the notion of national masochism. In medical terms, masochism is the desire to obtain and/or the pleasure obtained from pain administered either by oneself or by others to oneself. The earliest use of the expression “national masochism,” according to Lichtmesz, comes from the actor Gustav Gründgens – ironic, if true – since the central figure in Klaus Mann’s Mephisto, Hendrik Höfgen, is a thinly-disguised Gründgens, and that book is a case study in German shame. The novel is about an actor who makes his peace with National Socialism for the sake of his professional career, drawing a parallel between Gründgens working in Germany after 1933 and Faust selling his soul to Mephistopheles for twenty-four years of youth, pleasure, and success. However, this theme had already been appropriated with vastly more skill, talent, and subtlety in his father Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus. Klaus Mann worked for American propaganda during the war and committed suicide in 1949. He himself might serve as an exemplary case of German self-loathing.
Klonovsky’s writing style is not unlike that of Tarki and other journalists at the British Spectator: intelligent, angry, snide. He recounts a program about Hans Michael Frank and an interview with his son, Niklas Frank. Niklas Frank takes masochism to new heights by explaining that everywhere he goes, he carries a picture with him depicting his father hanging from the gallows at Nuremberg. That way he can always reassure himself that Daddy “is well and truly dead” (p. 123). This must have been a repeat of an old program, since I remember a German girlfriend of mine being appalled by Niklas Frank when she watched the program on television in the late 1980s.
Pourtant les démocraties grecques antiques n’ont pas été des régimes populistes.
Dabei richtet sich die Frage nicht danach, was die Bundesregierung oder präziser die Administration des Auswärtigen Amtes oder des Verteidigungsministeriums für deutsche Interessen hält, sondern welche Interessen sich mit Blick auf die Zukunft Deutschlands ergeben.
Liberalism is also no match for realism. At its core, liberalism assumes that the individuals who make up any society sometimes have profound differences about what constitutes the good life, and these differences might lead them to try to kill each other. Thus a state is needed to keep the peace. But there is no world state to keep countries at bay when they have profound disagreements. The structure of the international system is anarchic, not hierarchic, which means that liberalism applied to international politics cannot work. Countries thus have little choice but to act according to balance-of-power logic if they hope to survive. There are special cases, however, where a country is so secure that it can take a break from realpolitik and pursue truly liberal policies. The results are almost always bad, largely because nationalism thwarts the liberal crusader.
