Branko Milanovic — A reassessment of socialism: many questions

I was just at a conference that looked at the importance of Piketty’s most recent book for the future of capitalism. In talking about it, several participants mentioned the VoC literature. The acronym (which I thought at first referred to the Dutch West Indies Company) refers to the literature dealing with the “varieties of capitalism”. That made me think of the fact (which I discuss in my forthcoming book “Global inequality…”) that for the first time in history the entire globe is capitalist. In effect, for the first time in history, capitalism, defined as a system of the private ownership of the means of production, free wage labor, and rational pursuit of profit, does not have to share the globe with the “varieties of feudalism” or “varieties of socialism”. It has won.

But it also made me think of a project that I had in mind for some time and which I do not think I would manage ever to do, namely a reassessment of socialism. I think that the project would have to deal with two issues. First, to explain the rise and fall of socialism within a Marxist framework of successive modes of production. And second, to look at the legacies of socialism. Let me briefly go over both.…

Global Inequality
A reassessment of socialism: many questions
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Here is my comment, which Blogger would not let me put up there.

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It seems to me that you have overlooked perhaps the dominant force in the so-called failure of socialism as result of the triumph of capitalism globally. That was the combined political and military force directed against socialist countries from the time of the Russian Revolution. This opposition persists to the present and it is as virulent as ever.

Socialism did not develop in a vacuum but instead in an intensely hostile context. It is hardly surprising under the circumstances that an authoritarian hierarchical military-based organizational approach was adopted and resources committed heavily to countering the persistent and accelerating threat rather than to developing a managed social welfare state in contrast to a "liberal" market state that is also managed by class structure and class power.

Even though capitalism has triumphed at this stage, the socialist experiment did not fail. Rather, it was distracted and ultimately defeated (Russia) or blunted (China) politically and economically by a stronger opponent. While the outcome was thankfully not decided militarily, copious blood was spilt through clandestine operations.

And the game is not over yet. The nuclear standoff persists and is increasing rather than decreasing.

As a result no conclusion can yet be drawn about the inherent superiority of capitalism to socialism from the capitulation of socialist countries to the strongest in the global economic context at this time.

The idea and ideal of socialism are not dead by any means, and the capitalist world has not let down its guard against it either.

Therefore, that capitulation to an accord with capitalism may be temporary. There seems to be little doubt the Chinese leadership sees it that way with China poised to the dominant economy eventually.

The CCP has no plans to turn the reins of power over to the ownership class and self-destruct. The US leadership knows this, of course, and it committed to doing to China what it believes it did to Russia, with a new arms race heating up through development of new military technology.

The present moment is just another stage of the dialectic and not "the end of history." The world has not heard the last gasp of socialism yet and its capitalism that now is under duress from its own internal contractions as dialecticians foresaw.

Actually, neither socialism nor capitalism have actually been tried. Feudalism shifted from one form to another, away from one ruling class based on control of land wealth to another based on control of industrial and financial wealth as well.  This is amply demonstrated in the focus on inequality of income and wealth at present.

Even if capitalism does manage to carry the day globally, the historical dialectic does not cease however long a moment in the march of time lasts.

Some socialists would welcome this as the sign that the time is ripe for socialism to rise and replace it as the next phase of historical unfolding of ideas. See Sukomal Sen, Marx and the Cataclysmic Crisis of Global Capitalism