So-called socialists and Bhaskar Sunkara is barely a socialist beyond being a social democrat (? fair, everyone is hiding behind coopted terminologies), have attempted to manage some form of social democratic progressivism where the so-called revolutionary socialists are being sidelined into marginal status. Everyone is confused even as the real conditions of socialism are reappearing over the horizon.
Thus this book can only called too far to the left by system drones, and evidently they populate the LRB more or less exclusively.
We have suggested a different approach: everyone has been confused by marxism, and is bemused by the theories of Marx which are so tricky noone really understands the subject.
At a moment of crisis when it is clear that capitalism is failing still the left cannot get its act together.
We have critiqued marx’s theories because of this and suggested a simple praxis. The immense literature pro/con of professors, windbags and socialist halloween types needs to be written off. A constructive project of what we have given as an example in ‘democratic market neo-communism’ shows at once how easy it would be to create a viable postcapitalism, easy given the achievement of expropriation in some form.
Imagine the american system in which everything remains the same except for the declaration of expropriation. The whole game could continue beautifully as before, but with an immense inner change of principle. The above is actually too simple, but the point is clear.
The point is that in a smarter world we could resolve the false dilemma of liberalism/communism at a stroke. In practice there could be difficulties but the point is to elude the false opposites of liberalism and communism. Socialists get nowhere because they can’t define what they are doing, while capitalists have transformed themselves inexorably, jeckyll/hyde, from the heroes to the villains.
The point is these debates are a dead letter. We must create a system that works beyond the dualism of capitalism/socialism. Over a century of the marxist left this simple resolution has proven impossible because current marxist would rather see something fail then contradict marx. A good example is venezuela: a virtual planet of leftists ought to be trying to help this experiment, but instead we see doctrinaire consistency that would prefer to see the instance fail so the ‘real (marxist) revolution’ can occur. That is sheer idiocy.
The simple gesture of expropriation as a foundation makes the rest of the idiotic rumination from marx onward irrelevant.Marx/engels say as much in their manifesto. The later world of Capital, the book, has so confused everyone they cannot act. Expropriation might backfire and end in civil war, but the doctrines of phony socialism from DSA to Jacobin and Sanders are not going to arrive anywhere because t he bourgeoisie will remain in control.
Odd to see such a gaseous attack on Sunkara’s book for being too far to the left. It is like the centrist pile-on against Warren and Sanders last night as if they were Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/millennial-socialism-and-its-limits/
Source: [Marxism] Millennial Socialism and Its Limits – Los Angeles Review of Books
