Once More On Transition -- Critical Thoughts On A Debate On Goal and Strategy

Some time back I posted in this blog an article entitled “Some Thoughts On Resilience and Transition” (13 August 2014). Recently, I read in internet a debate on the same subject consisting of two articles: Ted Trainer (2014) wrote a sympathetic critique of the Transition Town Movement (in the following simply called “Transition”, with capital T). Soon after, Rob Hopkins (2014a), who is the most prominent figure in this movement, responded in defense of Transition. In addition to what I wrote in the above-mentioned blog-post (which I would not repeat), I would like to make some comments on this debate – in the hope of helping clarify some issues. Since Ted and I largely agree on the questions debated, I shall here focus on the response of Hopkins.

If readers of and participants in this discussion want to make some progress in finding the right strategy for the transition to, generally speaking, a better world, then it is necessary first to correct the mistakes in our understanding of the present situation, remove the contradictions in our own positions and, in general, create clarity about the matters being discussed. If we at the end still disagree, then we shall at least know on which points exactly we disagree. That too would be some progress in the discussion.

Different goals

When two or more persons participate in a strategy discussion, then one logical assumption is that they share a common goal. For it is nonsensical to search for a common strategy for different goals.

It is clear that Hopkins and Trainer are basically pursuing different long-term goals. That is also the reason why they cannot agree on strategy. (That does not however rule out that they would have differences on strategy even if hey pursued a fully common goal.) For Trainer, if a “sustainable and just world is to be achieved”, the rich countries’ “resource [consumption] and ecological impact rates” “must be cut by something like 90%”, a “growth economy” must be scrapped, GDP must be reduced “to a small fraction of present levels”, “market forces” i.e. capitalism, must be stopped from “determining our fate” etc.

These are important points in Trainer’s packet of long-term goals. Hopkins does not say all that is totally nonsense. He even finds most of Trainer’s arguments “entirely reasonable.” “But”, he writes, “there is no way that will happen unless we have the different models in place which are able to provide the things we need: schools, jobs, homes and so on.” Hopkins also writes: “The ambition of Transition … goes … into reimagining local economies, shifting their focus, modeling how it can meet public health ambitions better than the current approach, how it can create better and more meaningful livelihoods, create healthier communities, create safer investments offering a social return.” In olden days, all that used to be called development. Since the mid 1980s they are being called sustainable development. Hopkins now adds, they must be community-led.

The word “unless” may give the impression that Hopkins and Transition may go further after they have achieved these short-term goals and come closure to sharing Trainer’s long-term goals. At one point he even writes something like that: He criticizes Trainer for assuming “that movements like Transition [Trainer also mentions eco-village and permaculture movement] aren’t thinking in terms of deep systems change.” But he disappoints us. For he writes referring to his goals quoted in the previous paragraph, “We’re not there yet, but it’s where we’re headed.” The word “ambition” and the sentence “it’s where we’re headed.” convey an air of final goal, give the impression that Hopkins and Transition do not share Trainer’s long-term goal of scrapping the present-day economy and market forces. They only want to “shift the focus”, make things “better”, ”healthier”, and “safer” than they are today. That is of course much more than community gardens, but it is not clear how they are different from “sustainable development” of the 1980s. Only one thing is clear; they definitely want to overcome economic globalization, make the economy as local as possible.

Hopkins knows “that we live in a world of limits”, he knows about capitalism’s growth imperative. But I have not found any clear statement saying that in rich countries resource consumption must be reduced by 90%. He is thinking of investments and social returns. In an interview he gave to a German magazine Hopkins (2014b) says: “We have started a forum for local entrepreneurship, in which people with ideas for sustainable business can meet with potential investors and promoters.” He says further in the same interview: „But how big must an enterprise really be so that it can earn enough to ensure the livelihood of its employees and at the same time make profits for further local projects? I do not think that for this purpose we must open up export markets in China or set up franchise firms everywhere in the world.“

From all that one gets the impression that Hopkins and Transition, although they want to see many things change, do not want to change the system. But Trainer is striving for system change, a very radical one. He thinks not only capitalism but also industrial society has to be scrapped in order to save the biosphere and create a sustainable and just human society. This perspective is not only pessimistic, but also fearsome, particularly for the European and North American middle class. In the meantime, it is also fearsome for the middle classes of China, India, Brazil etc. No wonder that Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker in his transition perspective presented in 1992 wrote:

„To ask Europeans, Americans and Japanese to dress in sackcloth and ashes and renounce prosperity and progress, is a strategy doomed to failure. So, in order to be politically accepted by the public, the new way of running the economy should have the character of a new model of prosperity "(1992, 12).

The changes Transition wants to bring about have also been desired and striven for by previous generations of Green and social movement activists since the early 1980s. Their perspective has been called “restructuring industrial society”, “sustainable development”, “sustainable growth”, “green growth”, and “green capitalism”.

So the long-term goals of the two are clearly different, although Trainer supports the Transition movement, whose declared goals and activities he misinterprets to be only immediate ones and hence considers not to be enough. I have the sense that Hopkins and Transition do not want to go any further, because they are afraid of even thinking of radical system change. After all, they in their majority, as Hopkins (2014b) himself has noted, belong to the middle class of Europe and North America, where the movement is very popular. They would have much to lose, much more than the average middle-class African or Indian, if the present system were to be scrapped. That is why, apart from a few honorable exceptions like Trainer, most of their thinkers love to imagine that all problems could be solved through further technological developments like solar and wind energy, carbon capture and sequestering, increasing resource efficiency etc. Hopkins (2014b) finds Germany’s energy transition program “inspiring.” He thinks solar energy, wind energy and local energy combines are making the large energy corporations superfluous. The existing skepticism about renewable energies (shared by Trainer) is apparently unknown to him. Definitely unknown to him are doubts about the viability of solar energy technologies, especially in the bad-weather countries like the UK. It may also be unknown to him that even James Lovelock (father of the Gaia hypothesis) could not be enthusiastic about wind energy and therefore supported nuclear energy.

There is also a qualitative difference between the respective perspectives of Trainer and Hopkins. The local and small-scale economies of Trainer’s grassroots communities would come up in anticipation of and/or as a result of the crisis, possibly collapse, of capitalist industrial economies. They would be planned and administered in an anarchistic socialist way. Hopkins favors bringing assets into community ownership. But for his “vibrant new social enterprises”, he accepts capitalism (investors, profits), albeit one freed from globalization. Although he says he is aware of the growth imperative inherent in capitalism, he (naively) thinks the investors who would invest in local businesses would be satisfied with the meager profits that could be earned by the latter. But anybody with some knowledge of history knows that capitalism began as mainly local, small scale and embedded in society. The monstrous capitalism we see today is the result of capitalism’s inherent growth dynamics. To give one modern-day example, the solar energy industry/movement began with the conception of local, i.e. decentralized, and roof-top solar electricity generation for local consumption. Today we see projects like Desertec (huge solar power plants in the Sahara that would supply 15% of Europe’s total electricity needs) and competition between European and Chinese solar panel producers for larger chunks of the world market.

 

Finally, Hopkins also writes sentences that confuse the reader. It sometimes seems as if he and Transition are not pursuing any clear goal at all. One of his books is entitled The Power of Just Doing Stuff. In it he quotes a participant in the Transition movement as saying: “I felt …that in… my town … there were people that were in need of changing something, just like me. I thought that was amazing, … I thought ‘this is it, we can do something. We can actually change something’.”. The word “something” makes me think, any good thing is enough for this person. Finally, this person and some other people together started a small community garden in their town. Of course, nobody, not even the staunchest capitalist in town, would have any objection to a small community garden.

At one place, Hopkins writes he wants to “enable people to long for” “the world we need to create”. At another place he uses the phrase “where we need to go”. And he concludes the article with the words “…. leading to the change we all want to see”. The italicized words suggest as if Hopkins has a clear idea of his long-term goals. No, wrong. For he also writes: Transition is “evolving. It remains open to new ideas and to processes that work with people to ask questions and shape then where the process goes, what was termed ‘let it go where it wants to go’ in The Transition Handbook.“ And he caps this uncertainty by writing in the last paragraph “Time will tell”.

Such words suggest he does not know yet where the world needs to go. There is no trace of an effort to objectively and rigorously analyze the present world situation, and, therefore, no trace of trying to draw a logical conclusion as regards the long-term goals of the movement. Hopkins does not even know whether he and Transition want to reform or radically change the system. He writes: “It may be that the future will reveal Transition to have been ‘a reformist project posing no threat to consumer-capitalist society’. We’ll see.” This reminds me of the radical but multi-strand origin of the green movement and Green Party of Germany and the latter’s present role of a pillar of consumer-capitalist society.

This is utter confusion.

Different Strategies

Different long-term goals (in the case of Hopkins rather the lack of a clear one) necessarily led Hopkins and Trainer to conceive different strategies. Even in this regard, Hopkins writes contradictory things.

If Transition is only a reform project trying to improve the present consumer-capitalist society, then it is better not to use the term transition, because it connotes, at least in our context, transition to a different socio-economic system that replaces the present one. By whatever name it may be called, also a reform project is a legitimate one, because not all people are convinced that system change is possible, and because many are convinced that the present system can be improved and thus enabled to solve the problems plaguing us. But how does one do it best.

Hopkins first makes an attempt at explaining “why we [including the green Left] are so catastrophically losing the struggle to save the climate.” He stresses one of several factors: It is “the trap that some on the green Left have fallen into for 40years”. He elaborates: “It is a mindset that seeks differences rather than common ground.” We talk to everyone, but not to each other. And “there is little mindfulness about how the way in which we communicate our message comes across to people beyond the bubble.”

I beg to differ. Nobody on the Left or the green Left seeks differences. The differences are real, they simply exist, and are often based on different material interests. Yet, in my decades of experience in India and Germany, more often than not, I have seen various progressive groups in the list of George Lakoff (whom Hopkins quotes) building alliances, united fronts etc. for particular struggles (e.g. in the peace movement, environmental protection movement etc.) One glaring example of failure to do so was when in the early 1930s Communists and Social Democrats failed to build an alliance against the Nazis, which indeed resulted in a catastrophe.

As regards the second point, Hopkins criticizes Trainer for using “language” (i.e. the way in which he communicates his message) that is unsuitable for the purpose. He writes, Trainer communicates in a “language” that is “guaranteed to exclude most of the community”, “guaranteed to turn off 98% of the population.” Trainer certainly does not want to exclude anybody. But it is true that at present most people in the world are not listening to him and to people like him.

However, to make the matter clear, it is not actually Trainer’s “language” that is turning off the 98%. All his addressees understand English, and the words Trainer uses are very clear. He is also not inciting people to stage a coup or an armed uprising. It is actually the contents of his writings, not the way he communicates his message, that are the problem. For the 98% in Europe and North America, unfortunately, it is still inconceivable that they must reduce their resource consumption by 90% and abolish capitalism, that has brought them so much prosperity, in order to protect the environment and adjust to the rapid exhaustion of resources.

But what do you do then? Do you then change your goals, give up your conviction? Do you then hide inconvenient facts, say only nice things, against your conviction, in order to be loved by the majority? Or do you strain to be noncommittal and say vague things that cannot put anybody off? In that case, you are a typical politician in the worst sense of the term, and not a political activist. Even a genuine reform project needs committed activists who tell the truth and are not afraid of displeasing voters. Such activists tell people frankly what changes they think are necessary in order to improve the present system. Hopkins finds Trainer’s arguments “entirely reasonable”; yet he chastises him for presenting them frankly.

But here I also differ with Trainer a bit. In his critique of Transition, Trainer, surprisingly for me, wrote: “Sudden or noisy calls for more radical goals would harm these movements.” How? Does Trainer think that the time is not ripe yet? Or that the masses are not intelligent or mature enough? I think it is high time that all citizens of the world are fully informed about the dire situation humanity and the earth are in today. And I think all people are intelligent and mature enough to understand the basic truths of this situation. We only need to present them to the people. The goals he calls “more radical” are actually absolute necessities. True, many activists with whom you must form alliances would say this or that goal is not realistic because the rulers, or even the masses, would by no means accept the corresponding demands. In that case you can still continue cooperation with the alliance partners on the basis of a list of immediate minimum demands (which Hopkins calls seeking common grounds), while carrying on your no-holds-barred educative work outside the alliance. This quoted view of Trainer even bewilders Hopkins, who writes: “Trainer’s is a bewildering perspective. On the one hand he argues that ‘sudden or noisy calls for more radical goals would harm these movements’ and on the other he argues that the path Transition is on ‘will lead only to a grossly and increasingly unsustainable and unjust consumer society, containing a lot of community gardens etc.” 

Hopkins writes: “… whatever gets us to where we need to go will need to think bigger, reimagine the language it uses, and seek to build common ground [with the 98%] rather than talking itself into a corner while everyone else is looking in a different direction.” As I (also Trainer) have shown, Hopkins has no clear idea as to where we need to go in the long run in order to make the world resilient to the serious crises that are ongoing and impending. He therefore adopts what may be called a weathercock strategy in order not to talk himself into a corner. But in the times we are living in, it is necessary to tell the truth, however unpleasant it may be to the 98%. It is necessary, if need be, to talk oneself into a corner rather than joining the 98% on their common ground. It is the minority’s duty to honestly criticize the 98% majority, even if the personal price to be paid for that may be high. It is the minority’s duty to lead the majority to the unpleasant truth and to the unpleasant solutions to our problems and crises rather than enjoy the pleasant warmth of being a member of the majority. In practical life, for just living, we are compelled to make many compromises. Let us not make compromises even in our thinking and expressing our thoughts. Fortunately, today, people like Trainer are no longer as isolated as Hopkins imagines. People are not little children from whom you must hide inconvenient facts. There was recently a De-growth Conference in Leipzig, in which 3000 people took part. In 2011, a congress entitled “Beyond Growth” took place in Berlin.

Elsewhere in his article, Hopkins has written things in the posture of a skilful leader, although he is only following the majority. He writes for example: “But this is only going to work if we find the skilful means to take people along with us, indeed, the skilful means to enable people to long for the world we need to create, because the very possibilities it presents make their hearts sing”. I am all for skilful means of doing things. I am all for able people taking the leadership in any project. But the leaders must know clearly – on the basis of an objective, free-of-illusions analysis of the present situation – where the journey should go. However, I am doubtful about “enabl[ing] people to long for the world we need to create.” They will not long for it, when they have heard the truth. But they can be convinced that it is a matter of necessity. The possibilities this world will offer will not exactly make the hearts of the global middle class sing. But it will be a just world, for the poor of today and also for the other species that share the earth with us. And that will somehow make us happy, though not jubilant.

It is right, as Hopkins expresses it, that “banging on at people about the need to ‘revolution’ and peppering sentences with ‘radical’ and so on have clearly failed to bring about the change needed. It doesn’t work. It’s a busted flush. It has failed in nearly everything it has tried to achieve.” But these have been some of the old Left’s methods, not its strategy of bringing about a socialist society. Of course the strategy too has failed, but it is irrelevant to say this here. For neither Trainer nor other kinds of Left (for example, eco-socialists) are today proposing to follow the old strategy (class struggle, proletarian revolution etc.) of the old Left for attaining the old goal of realizing the old model of a socialist society. Why the old Left failed to attain its goal has been analyzed by various people including many leftists (for my analysis see Sarkar 1999). The old theory of change is not valid any more. New theories and strategies have been proposed by many including Trainer (for my theory and strategy of change, see ibid and Sarkar 2013).

Hopkins says he (with Transition) is taking a different route, a more skilful one. He is welcome to try it. As of today, we may safely say that no ideal path has yet been found that guarantees success in our efforts to achieve our respective goals. We can also safely say that whatever path we take, it would be full of difficulties and pain. For to forgo the comforts and luxuries resulting from economic growth would undoubtedly be painful for people who have till now enjoyed them. Sometimes people imagine it to be easy to withdraw our support for the system (Hopkins) or to simply walk out of it (Trainer). But actually it is the most difficult thing. For over the centuries we have increasingly become dependent on it. It is also not easy for activists to design whole settlements of a new kind (Trainer) or to take collective control of our town (Trainer).

However, it has been seen in the history of mankind that we humans are also capable of being inspired by ideals and values. If Transition can, through its skilful methods, inspire people for ist goals – which, of course, are not enough, but nevertheless deserve our support – if it can instill confidence (a can-do feeling) in ordinary people, then we “radicals” may also hope that our superior ideals and values will one day gain support, at least acceptance, among the broad masses, although they will not exactly “riot” for it. There are one thousand reasons to be pessimistic. But we are not dead yet. So let us go on trying.

Literature:

Hopkins, Rob & Katrin Lange (2014b) “Wir wollen das Wirtschaftssystem verändern” (interview), in Evident (magazine: a supplement in Süddeutsche Zeitung), No. 1/2014.

Hopkins, Rob (2014a): “Responding to Ted Trainer: there's a lot more to Transition than community gardens”:
https://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/rob-hopkins/2014-09/responding-ted-trainer-theres-lot-more-transition-community-gardens

Sarkar, Saral (1999) Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity’s Fundamental Choices. London: Zed Books.

Sarkar, Saral (2013) Correspondence with Kamran Nayeri:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/thesimplerway/Letter$20to$20Kamran%7Csort:relevance/thesimplerway/kiIWzW7uu2U/NUTvILJPtsQJ

Trainer, Ted (2014) “Transition Townspeople, We Need To Think About Transition: Just Doing Stuff Is Far From Enough!”:
http://blog.postwachstum.de/transition-townspeople-we-need-to-think-about-transition-just-doing-stuff-is-far-from-enough-20140801

Weizsäcker, Ernst Ulrich von (1992) Erdpolitik. Ökologische Realpolitik an der Schwelle zum Jahrhundert der Umwelt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

 

Comprendre la crise économique actuelle -- Une approche écosocialiste

Dear friends,

 In 2010, I wrote and published the paper

Understanding the present-day World Economic Crisis – An Eco-Socialist

Approach

In 2012, my francophone Belgian friends kindly translated it into French. Since I do not have a blog in French, it was posted on the German language website of the Initiative Eco-Socialism.

    Since, however, because of the language barrier, this website is hardly known in francophone countries, I am posting the paper in this English language blog of mine. I hope all educated French people can also effortlessly read English.

    If you know potentially interested people in French reading countries, I would be much obliged if you could inform them about the availability of this text in French.

With best wishes

Saral Sarkar

Here is the Link:

www.oekosozialismus.net/SARKAR_traduction.pdf

 

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism : An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism

Dear friends,

together with my comrade Bruno Kern, I had written/published an important text in German, English, French and Spanish before I could get my English language blog made by a friend. All four versions of the text – Eco-Socialism or Barbarism: An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism – were therefore posted on the German language website of ours, i.e. of the Initiative Eco-Socialism. Because of the language barrier, non-German readers hardly visit a German language website. This text therefore remained unknown to the greater part of the public for whom it was meant. I am now posting the English version on this blog

Since English is the lingua franca of the whole world, I hope this text will reach all interested people in all countries, if they are posted on this blog.

If you know potentially interested people in French or Spanish reading countries, I would be much obliged if you could inform them about the availability of this text. The French and Spanish versions are being posted separately on this blog.

With warm regards

Saral Sarkar

 

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism – An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism

 Link:

www.oekosozialismus.net/en_oekosoz_en_rz.pdf

Écosocialisme ou barbarie -- Une critique modern du capitalisme

Dear friends,

together with my comrade Bruno Kern, I had written/published an important text in German, English, French and Spanish before I could get my English language blog made by a friend. All four versions of the text – Eco-Socialism or Barbarism: An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism – were therefore posted on the German language website of ours, i.e. of the Initiative Eco-Socialism. Because of the language barrier, non-German readers hardly visit a German language website. This text therefore remained unknown to the greater part of the public for whom it was meant. I am now posting the French version on this blog.

If you know potentially interested people in French reading countries, I would be much obliged if you could inform them about the availability of this text. The English and Spanish versions are being posted separately on this blog.

With best wishes

Saral Sarkar

 

Écosocialisme ou barbarie –

Une critique modern du capitalisme

 Link:

www.oekosozialismus.net/broschfranz.pdf

Socialismo Ecologico o Barbarie -- Una critica contemporanea al capitalismo

Dear friends,

together with my comrade Bruno Kern, I had written/published an important text in German, English, French and Spanish before I could get my English language blog made by a friend. All four versions of the text – Eco-Socialism or Barbarism: An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism – were therefore posted on the German language website of ours, i.e. of the Initiative Eco-Socialism. Because of the language barrier, non-German readers hardly visit a German language website. This text therefore remained unknown to the greater part of the public for whom it was meant. I am now posting the Spanish version on this blog.

If you know potentially interested people in Spanish reading countries, I would be much obliged if you could inform them about the availability of this text. The English and French versions are being posted separately on this blog.

With best wishes

Saral Sarkar

SOCIALISMO ECOLOGICO O BARBARIE – Una critica contemporánea al capitalismo

Link:

www.oekosozialismus.net/ecosocialismoobarbarie.pdf

Unity Or Separation? -- Did The Scots decide Sensibly?

In the three days between the 18^th and the 21^st September, the media reported on two major events that, taken together, ought to give rise to some new concerns about the state of the world.

    On the 18^th the Scots took a vote on the question whether Scotland should secede from the United Kingdom (UK) and become an independent state. The majority of the voters (55%) said no. The so-called unionists, the no-voters, of course initially rejoiced at the outcome of the referendum. Later, however, many of them expressed worry about it, because it was found that a very large minority, 45 percent of the voters, wanted Scotland to leave the Union. This is too high a percentage to return to business-as-usual.

    Indeed, shortly before the referendum, after an opinion poll had predicted a majority for the yes-voters, the government in London and all the leaders of the three major parties had panicked. This was followed by big promises of reform and more autonomy for Scotland. For the English majority of the UK, and also the Scottish unionists, feared that exit of Scotland from the union would have unforeseeable negative economic and political consequences for all parts of the UK.

    The yes-voters had no such fear. They were totally confident that an independent Scotland would not only be economically viable but also be a success story. When asked about this, they said an independent Scotland with its only 5.3 million inhabitants (in a total population of nearly 64 million) would be a rich country. The main reason for this confidence was the North Sea oil. For about 90 percent of the deposits belonging to the United Kingdom would, in the case of secession, belong to Scotland.

    The other major event was a global day of action. On 21^st September, in each of over 150 cities around the world thousands of people (in New York three hundred thousand) demonstrated in order to give voice to their demand that the presidents and prime ministers of the states of the world finally take concrete and effective measures for climate protection. Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who had invited the latter to New York for a consultation on climate change, marched with the demonstrators.

Hardly convincing arguments

What I found disconcerting in the independence movement of the Scots was their argumentation. They did not say that they were being oppressed or somehow disadvantaged by the English majority. The laws of the UK were equally valid for all its member peoples – the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish. The Scots even enjoy for now several years a certain degree of autonomy. They even have their own government. They of course say they are Scots, not Britons. But how strong and how widespread is this sense of identity? All Scots speak and write English as their main language, Scottish-Gaelic is spoken by only 1 percent. They are all white (except for immigrants from South Asia and Africa), and they are all Christians. A person has after all, usually, several identities!

    One can of course say, to want to be independent is very human, both for individuals and for a people. A disappointed yes-voter said after the referendum, he could not understand that a people does not want its independence. But, in the real world, neither individuals nor a people can follow only their feelings. All must also weigh advantages against disadvantages of possible decisions. The majority of Scots, on both sides, have done that. During their campaign, the independence advocates repeatedly emphasized that secession from the United Kingdom would bring no economic disadvantages for the Scots. When the no-voters argued that the oil wealth would not last long, the yes-voters simply asserted that there is still a lot of oil under the seabed. They also wanted, for practical reasons, to both continue after independence to use the pound sterling as their currency and let the British Monarch function as their Head of state.

Not willing to share the wealth

There can be several motives for an action. Just wanting to be independent has certainly been a strong motive for the Scots. Anyhow, among them, there was a lot of antipathy toward the central government dominated by English Tories and their policies, especially toward their economic policies favorable to the rich and hostile to the poor. And the Labor Party has also been quite strong there. So, many Scots thought they could pursue a better policy for themselves if Scotland could secede from the United Kingdom. Moreover, a people cannot forget its history totally. Scotland's union with England 307 years ago was not really a voluntary one. The Scots remember they were compelled to accept it because of an economic crisis and military superiority of the English kingdom that was threatening to invade their country. However, I suspect that in the present independence movement a different motive played the main role. As mentioned above, independence advocates think there still is a lot of oil in the oil fields in their part of the North Sea. This oil wealth, the income from it, they do not want to share any longer with the other British peoples.

    Not being any longer prepared to share “their” wealth with the poorer peoples in the same state is a motive that plays the main role in other (though not all) separatist movements too. This also works in states in which large deposits of valuable minerals do not play any role. Thus Catalonia is, even without oil and other such valuable natural resources, the economically strongest province of Spain. Although it is true that Catalans have a developed language of their own, which they also use for all purposes, and although it is true that they, therefore, strongly feel a Catalan identity, it may be that not wanting any more to share the wealth produced in their province may be the unspoken main motive for their current independence movement. This can also be said about the separatism of the Flemish people (in northern Belgium) and that of the northern Italians. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the rich provinces – Bavaria, Baden Wurttemberg, and Hessen – are of course not trying to secede, but since about ten years ago they are unwilling to pay large sums of money to the poorer provinces, which they are obliged to do according to the present constitution.

    A convincing example of how far this kind of separatism can go is the tragic break up of the former socialist federal republic of Yugoslavia. It was accomplished through a brutal civil war resulting from the selfish separatism of the Slovenes and Croats. Misha Glenny, British journalist and expert on the Balkans, summarized in 1992 a conversation on this topic that he had with Mate Babic, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Croatian government, as follows:

"[T] he imbalance between Slovene sophistication and the developing-world conditions prevailing in Kosovo, southern Serbia and Macedonia could only be rectified by massive state control of the economy. This created resentment in the prosperous north, the fruits of whose productivity were transferred to the dusty climates of the south where they rotted in the sun. Above all, a taut mistrust grew up between Slovenia and Croatia [on the one side], where a more industrious work ethic was the tradition, and Serbia [on the other], the borderland of the Ottoman empire’s corrupt economic values. Being inextricably involved with the Serbian economy, which appears to be fuelled by lotus leaves, had a damaging long-term effect on the Croat and Slovene economies. When the political decay in Yugoslavia accelerated, following the multi-party elections in the republics, the economic tensions ensured that this mistrust would deepen.” (Glenny 1996: 63f.)

Cooperation is needed, not separation

But this is a very short-sighted policy. The oil age is gradually but surely nearing its end. The old oil fields and deposits of other important raw materials are rapidly getting exhausted. Who has not heard of peak oil, peak everything? With the progressive rise in the price of crude oil – this main lubricant of the world economy – the industrial countries that are still rich but are not themselves oil producers, are losing the foundation of their prosperity. That also is the main reason for the crisis (and/or stagnation) that is plaguing the world economy for the last 6 years (see Sarkar 2011 & 2012). And even if the oil age is not going to come to an end soon, global consumption of fossil fuels must be reduced rapidly in order to protect humanity from increasingly adverse climatic disasters. Humanity is in a pincer-grip crisis.

    A solution to this crisis is not in sight. One international climate summit is failing after the other. And it is totally uncertain whether at all and, if yes, to what extent, the so-called renewable energy sources can one day replace the non-renewable fossil and nuclear energy sources (see Sarkar 1999 & 2008).

    Actually, in such a situation, the peoples of the world should rather pull together. They should cooperate and jointly seek solutions to the great problems humanity is facing today. The movements for splitting up existing states are therefore a very deplorable and reprehensible development, especially since they involve the risk of violent conflict, even civil war. All peoples including minorities that live in multiracial (multiethnic), multi-religious or multilingual countries should rather fight for human rights, minority rights, and the right to equal treatment, within the existing state. Only when these rights have no chance of being accepted by the powers that be, can, in my view, a separatist movement be justified. And a violent separatist movement can only be justified, if the dominant people or the majority exercises a ruthless or brutal rule over the others. In the world today, in most countries, even small cities and towns are populated by different racial, ethnic, religious and language groups. In India, even after the country was divided up in 1947 on the basis of religion, villages have Muslim areas and Hindu areas. Should also such villages be split up?

    It has also to be considered that in today's globalized neoliberal capitalism, it is the large transnational corporations with their global alliances that are the most powerful rulers of the world. It is a truism that today's states have lost much of their former power. They are actually no longer fully sovereign. Today, in the ultimate analysis, the main opponent of all political activists, no matter what their great cause is, are these transnational corporations and their alliances. In this situation, we can say: the smaller a country is, the more powerless it is, the more it is at the mercy of large corporations, the less sovereign it is, and the more it is reduced to a stooge of the corporations.

    Eco-socialists and like-minded people know that for various reasons, in the long-term, political and economic affairs of societies must be managed in small, largely self-sufficient and largely autonomous units. But that situation is still far away. In the period of transition to our goal, we must follow the motto “unity is strength”. It is by now abundantly clear that only strong states and political unions like the USA and the EU can to some extent control large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Deutsche Bank, UBS etc. Today, separatist movements are extremely counterproductive. They only distract us from our original goal.

Literature
Glenny, Misha (1996) The Fall of Yugoslavia. London: Penguin.

Sarkar, Saral (1999) Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity’s Fundamental Choices. London: Zed Books.

Sarkar, Saral & Bruno Kern (2008) Eco-Socialism or Barbarism – An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism. Mainz, Cologne: Initiative Eco-Socialism.

http://www.oekosozialismus.net/en_oekosoz_en_rz.pdf

Sarkar, Saral (2011) Understanding the Present-day World Economic Crisis – An Eco-Socialist Approach.

http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/search?q=understanding

Sarkar, Saral (2012) The Crises of Capitalism – A Different Study of Political Economy. Berkeley (USA): Counterpoint.

 

A Debate on Socialism and Socialist Revolution

Dear friends,

I recently had a debate with a renowned Marxist scholar about socialism and socialist revolution. His name is Prof. Paresh Chattopadhyay – Indian by birth, teaches political economy at the University of Montreal, Canada. He may not be so well known among political activists; but among Marxist scholars, he is very well known and very highly respected as an authority on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin etc. The debate has appeared in Frontier, a weekly political journal published (in print and online) from Kolkata, India. I want to make the three texts – two by Chattopadhyay and one by me – available to the readers of this blog:

(1) Chattopadhyay published a short critical comment on an article, the content of which was an adulatory appreciation of the contribution of Che Guevara to socialist revolution. Chattopadhyay opined that Cuban socialism of Che and Fidel Castro was not Marxian socialism.Here is the link.

http://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-47/47-3/47-3-Che%20Guevara.html

(2) I criticized Chattopadhyay for not telling us what revolutionaries like Lenin, Mao and Che should and could have done other than what they did in the absence in their respective countries of an industrial proletariat that formed the majority of the population. I also expressed doubt about the validity of Marxian socialism in the 21^st century. Here is the link.

http://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-47/47-7/47-7-PCs%20Critique%20of%20Socialism.html

(3) Chattopadhyay responded to my criticism. Here is the link.

http://www.frontierweekly.com/views/sep-14/7-9-14-On%20Saral%20Sarkars%20Socialism.html

Below I am reproducing only the second and the third text.

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What is to be done?

PC’s Critique of ‘Socialism’

Saral Sarkar

Paresh Chattopadhyay (PC) is right in almost all points [Frontier, August 3-9, 2014]. The question that must now be asked is: Does it make any sense at all to still try to create socialist society that Marx and Engels had envisioned? I do not know whether PC has somewhere written on this question. If not, then it is essential that he does. For it is too simple to criticize every socialist of the 20th century—from Lenin to Mao and Che Guevara—without saying what they should and could have done to build a socialist society that would have gotten Marx's approval, whom they all regarded as their Guru—something other or more than what they did in order to create a socialist society. Also, PC's awe-inspiring scholarship is of little use unless he presents his conclusion as to the question "what is to be done today".

I think Marx's vision of revolution and socialism was flawed from the very beginning. But it was and it still is too difficult for Lenin and all socialists up until today to say that openly. The monumental analytical and theoretical work of Marx and Engels had achieved such a overwhelming intellectual hegemony among the radical and anti-capitalist educated people that hardly anybody dared to do so. And those few who did dare to criticize Marxist theory, even mildly, was denounced as traitor, deviationist, reformist, revisionist etc. etc. And they never had a chance to get a fair hearing. That is the normal effect of hegemony.

But today it is easier to realize and say without being persecuted or denounced that Marx and Engels had erred on several questions:

(1) The most important of them is the agency question. The great majority of workers did not and still do not have the ability to understand, let alone analyze, the complex ways in which the world functions and the direction in which it is moving (there are of course some exceptions). The majority of them has been and still are totally worn down in the process of earning money to feed themselves and their family. That has been and is the reality. It has therefore always been nonsensical, untruthful and only fashionable to assert that the revolution will happen under the leadership of the proletariat. The leadership necessarily had to come from the educated revolutionary middle class, from people like Lenin, Mao, and Guevara, and they had to be the vanguard.

In the 19th century, maybe, the proletariat formed the majority of the population in England, Germany, and France. But not in Russia (not to speak of China or India). But, in Russia, there were people like Lenin; and in the early 20th century, in China there were people like Mao. Should they have sat back and waited until the industrial proletariat became the majority? If Marx and Engels had lived longer, would they have advised Lenin and Mao to sit back and wait?

(2) Marx and Engels could not have known in their days what we know since after their death, particularly what we know today. That is why they also erred in thinking that the proletariat will be farther revolutionized through their growing impoverishment. The opposite happened in history.

(3) They had little knowledge of human nature. They erred in thinking that the proletariat had no fatherland. The First World War proved them thoroughly wrong. The colonialists and imperialists of Europe and America enabled their own proletariats to enjoy a share in the plunder of the colonies, which they gladly did.

(4) In the 19th century, Marx and Engels, and in the greater part of the 20th century Lenin, Mao, Guevara and all rank and file socialists were justified in believing in eternal development of science and technology, and hence in eternal development of productive forces. We know today that there are limits to growth, limits to the development of science, technology and productive forces. We cannot blame the masters and their followers for not knowing what we know today. But we must severely criticize the die-hard Marxists of our times for still stubbornly refusing to see these limits.

To sum up, the analysis of reality and the vision of socialism we have received from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Guevara etc. have largely become obsolete. But since capitalism will definitely ruin the whole world unless overcome, some newly conceived socialism must become the goal of all radical people's movements of today. This new socialism—which should be called the scientific socialism of the 21st century (the Marxian socialism being the Utopian)—must be based on the knowledge and understanding of the world that we have acquired since the publication of the book Limits to Growth (1972). This knowledge and understanding is a call for a paradigm shift in our thinking and activity.

As for revolution, I would like to quote Walter Benjamin. He wrote:

"Marx says revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is entirely different. Revolutions are perhaps the attempt of humanity travelling in a train to pull the emergency brake."

If it was not true when Benjamin wrote this, it is true roday. In the same sense, another German author, Carl Amery, wrote, in the general sense: Political activists have till now tried to change the world in various ways. The point however is to preserve it.

What is to be done? Our task is to preserve the biosphere and change the world.

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On Saral Sarkar’s Socialism

Paresh Chattopadhyay

We feel greatly honoured that such an eminent individual as Saral Sarkar (SS for short) living far away from India has taken notice of my humble work on socialism appearing in a Kolkata weekly. In the following lines we try to deal with what we consider as the most important points of his important contribution.

First a summary account of what he says. In his view we have criticized every socialist of the twentieth century – most prominently, Lenin,Mao and Che (LMC for short) – for building socialism without the approval of  Karl Marx. SS faults us for not saying what else they should have done. We are asked to show   what  is to be done to-day.

Marx’s vision was flawed from the start, he continues, but LMC were inhibited to declare it openly. Those who differed –the revisionists- had never a chance to do that. Now is the chance to show the errors of Marx.

What errors are these? These are: (1) workers lack the ability to understand and analyse how the world functions. They are too worn down by their effort to earn money and and support their families. It has been always “nonsensical, untruthful, and only fashionable” to assert that revolution will happen under the leadership of the proletariat. The leadership has to come from the educated revolutionary middleclass, people like LMC forming the vanguard. In the backward countries like Russia and China should Lenin and Mao have waited till the workers get the majority?

(2)Mistaken in believing that the proletariat will be further revolutionized through growing impoverishment. The opposite has
happened.

(3) Marx had little knowledge of human nature. The colonialists and imperialists enabled the proletariat a share in the plunder.

(4) Finally he does not spare LMC also, who are faulted for believing in eternal development of science and technology, and productive forces. But there are limits to growth. Due to the then ignorance, these revolutionaries could be exonerated, but not their die-hard Marxist followers. Now is the time for a new socialism, the true scientific socialism - not utopian à la Marx-Engels. This will preserve the biosphere in a desirable way.

We may now be allowed to intervene. In SS’s narrative there are at least two factual problems. First, it is not true that nobody among people like LMC dared to express opposition to the “flawed vision” of Marx. Lenin while declaring that a socialist revolution could begin in a backward land, also said that this idea was outside the vision of Marx and Engels, which in effect meant that their vision was too narrow to envisage the total historical perspective of socialist revolution, (and hence “flawed”).

The second concerns Marx’s perspective of proletarian revolution being propelled by workers’ increasing impoverishment according to the author. This is the thesis of so-called “absolute impoverishment “ of the workers under  capitalism ascribed to Marx. Now, it is undeniable that Marx for a brief period had the tendency to adhere to this idea.The origin of this idea, however, goes back to Engels in his earliest writings on the English workers, as Engels himself wrote many years later. In those early writings on the workers’ situation Engels maintained that workers’ wage, as the exchange value of their labour(power), translated into the absolutely necessary subsistence for the life and reproduction of their labour. Marx, coming later to his study of political economy, followed Engels in this regard. Lassalle took it over and formulated what is called the “iron law of wages”. But this idea of absolute impoverishment had a very short existence in Marx. By the time he started his more mature works, culminating in CAPITAL, it vanished altogether. Already in his 1847 lectures to the German workers, Marx observes that in a period of rapid accumulation of capital wages may  rise, though capital’s profit rises more rapidly. Capitalists will “allow the working class to take a portion of the increasing capitalist wealth, and remain content with forging for itself the golden chain by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train”.   In CAPITAL vol.1, in the chapter on  ‘buying and selling of labour power’ he declares that “labour power contains, from the point of view of value, a moral and historical element, which differentiates it from other commodities”.

Leaving this aspect of impoverishment of the workers, this poverty has another and more profound meaning in Marx, ignored by most of Marx’s readers. In his 1857-58 notebooks Marx holds “living labour as the complete denudation of all objectivity, bare, purely subjective existence, labour as absolute poverty, poverty not as shortage, but as  complete exclusion from objective wealth”.(This reminds one of an image which Rabindranath had created in one of his musical compositions which with some modification could be stated thus: seated in front of  a vast sea of nectar these labourers are allowed to drink only poison).  In other words, wage/salaried  labour excluded from the means of production  is as such in  absolute poverty . In his very first 1861-63 manuscript Marx calls wage/salaried labourers (manual or mental) “pauper”, whatever the level of remuneration. The very fact that you have to sell your only ‘property’ labour power in order to survive, is sufficient to qualify you as absolutely poor, a pauper..Very aptly Marx cites Shakespear in his master work:” you take my life when you take the means whereby I live”. This aspect of wage or salaried labour, this wage slavery escapes the notice of most of us. This is a part of mind set imbibed through the capitalist relations. As an illustration, we bring in the justly famous humanist, the economist Amartya Sen, a rare bird in the profession. Sen justly considers market relation, that is,  commodity production playing a liberating  role in a conservative society such as India. But wage labour as a specific form of slavery does not appear in his otherwise  valuable  work on human freedom.Like most of us he seems to accept it  as normal. In ancient Greece, even Aristotle, generally considered to be the greatest thinker of European antiquity, thought human slavery as normal.  He called slave an animated tool. Indeed, as the young Marx and Engels wrote, “the ideas of each epoch are the ideas of the ruling class”.

Now it is clear that SS at least implicitly considers the correctness of the revolutionary undertakings of LMC for building socialism and Marx wrong. As  regards the prototype of these endeavours, the October revolution followed by  the establishment of Russian socialism in a backward land, his views, he should be glad to know,were initially shared by some of the most informed   minds of the last century- E. H. Carr, I. Deutscher and P. M. Sweezy  all of whom pronounced Lenin  right , and  Marx wrong in his prognostication of socialist revolution taking place only in a situation where certain objective and subjective conditions exist , and those conditions can exist only  in advanced capitalist lands. (We return to those conditions in a moment). Then what happened in fact is well known. The evaporation of the house that Lenin built, followed by those who followed him, showed at least one thing: a clear refutation of his position. Marx remains to be tested.

It is clear, here we have two very different notions of socialism, LMC’s and Marx’s, with an unbridgeable gap in between. The first type is a system imposed on the society at large by a hierarchically formed vanguard who claims to know the real interest of the rest of society, mainly the labouring people, better than the affected. The very basis of the second type is exactly the opposite. It  is the self emancipation of the labouring people  : “Emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”  , so Marx (1864). If the working class is incapable of fulfilling this task,so much the worse. “The working class is either revolutionary or it is nothing” so Marx in a letter to a friend(1865). Equally, there is irreconcilable difference between the very meaning of socialism held by  the first group and that held by Marx and Engels. Socialism of the first group signifies and has shown in practice  a society ruled by a strong state with standing army and bureaucracy, headed by a single party with central planning, with no individual (private) property in the means of production, but with commodity production and wage labour intact. Because of the continuing production based on wage/salaried labour,(which automatically implies the existence of commodity production) this society as a matter of fact is a form of state capitalism. And politically, in spite of big talks by Lenin about following  the Paris Commune model of free election  and recall of all officials, the very opposite has turned out to be the case. In these single party strictly controlled  societies there is no really free election , not to speak of  recall, and no dissenting political view is tolerated. The opposite is the case with the second meaning of socialism. In this meaning socialism or communism (no distinction in Marx and Engels)signifies,in terms of the new society after capital(ism), a society of free individuals or an association of free and equal individuals with collective ownership of means of production along with the disappearance of all the instruments of exploitation and repression such as state, commodity, wage/salaried labour.

A socialist revolution does not come about by any body’s order, or desire of a Lenin, or even Marx’s. A social revolution like the great French Revolution of 1789-93, which is epochal and not something momentary, requires over a long period, a certain maturity of the social conditions preparing the ground. In Marx’s classic statement, too dismissively abandoned by instant revolutionaries, no social formation ever disappears before having exhausted all the possibilities of development of  its productive forces, and new , higher relations of production  do not appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. In their absence all attempts at social revolution will be Don Quixotism. It would be like trying to ripen a green jackfruit by repeatedly boxing it.  In the absence of such conditions any attempt to change society could only be undertaken by a determined group of ‘professional revolutionaries’ as the self-anointed ‘vanguard’, independently of the will of the society’s great majority, a kind of Blanqui-ism. And indeed all the so-called socialist revolutions of the last century,highly approved by SS, have been minority revolutions.  Towards the end of his life, Engels summed up the past revolutionary experiences: “ All revolutions up till now were minority revolutions. Even when the majority took part , it did so – wittingly or unwittingly – only in the service of a minority; but because of this, or simply because of the passive, unresisting attitude of the majority , this minority  acquired the appearance of being the representative of the whole society.”  Here we are speaking exclusively of socialist revolution followed by socialism since SS’s discourse is on these subjects.

As regards the point raised by SS that workers lack the ability to understand and analyse how the world functions, and that they are too worn down by their effort to earn money and support their families, we can only say that a social revolution is not an every day event.A revolution cannot be summoned at will.Revolutions arise spontaneously in moments of crisis, when the situation becomes unbearable, and the same worn down ordinary people become revolutionaries.   Trotsky in his great “History of the Russian Revolution” vividly describes the spontaneous beginning of the Russian Revolution  in February 1917,initiated not by any party or leader, but by the most downtrodden  and oppressed  section of the proletariat of Petrograd – the women textile workers.

As a matter of fact twentieth century socialism is a great myth. There has been no socialist revolution and no socialism in an emancipatory sense.  Those lands were just not ready at all for the rise of such a society. They were ready only for bourgeois revolution destroying  all the pre-capitalist relations along with freeing themselves from colonialism and imperialism,  and thus preparing for the advent of  a totally new society.The Russian Revolution was the last bourgeois revolution in Europe.

Regarding SS’s hasty dismissal of Marx, let us cite the following lines from  an  eminent Dutch scholar  Mark Blaug:”Marx has been reassessed ,revised, refuted and buried a thousand times but he refuses to be relegated to intellectual history .For better or worse , his ideas have become part of the climate of opinion within which we all think”.

However, Marx is not indispensable for a social revolution. Marx or no Marx, social revolutions have taken place and will take place springing from the very soil of a society divided into antagonistic classes. How many revolutionaries knew even the name of Marx in the Paris Commune, ditto for the uprising of the millions of labouring people in February, 1917 in Russia?

Sep 07 2014