Democratic Coordination: Towards a Working Socialism For the New Century

摘要

On the one hand, we are not Utopians. We must avoid "writing recipes for the cookbooks of the future," as Marx once put it. On the other hand, we need to apply the greatest possible degree of scientific imagination to the visualizing of alternatives to capitalist exploitation, polarization, instability, alienation, corruption of the human spirit, despoliation of the environment, and general out-of-control rush to destruction. Are we trying to ride two horses in different directions? No. The models and visions are ingredients in a thought process that will ― must ― involve increasing numbers of people. The goal and the means of attaining it are inter-defined. As we think about alternatives, the visions enter into politics: working people adopt not any particular set of specifics, but the project as a whole ― and thereby become a stronger force. Then, as that force confronts the power of capital and conquers some limited territory within the existing society, new experience brings newer and better versions of the vision to the fore. These, in turn, strengthen the movements in the present, and so on.