JOBNAME: EE3 Hodgson PAGE: 1 SESS: 5 OUTPUT: Thu Jun 27 12:00:07 2019 Introduction These are the times that try men’s souls. Thomas Paine (1776) The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones. John Maynard Keynes (1936) In 1977 the ‘neo-conservative’ (and former Trotskyist) journalist Irving Kristol famously declared: ‘The most important political event of the twentieth century is not the crisis of capitalism but the death of socialism.’ At that time, about 35 per cent of humanity – mostly in China and the Soviet bloc – lived under self-declared socialist governments, where the bulk of the economy was in public ownership. Kristol foretold the demise of these regimes and pointed to a rising intellectual tide against socialist ideas.1 Kristol seemed vindicated when, late in the following year, Communist China turned away from decades of Soviet-style central planning and began to introduce widespread markets and private enterprise, albeit within a state-dominated economy. Subsequently it enjoyed decades of spectacular growth, raising hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty. Then, in 1989–91, came the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which seemed to offer further confirmation of Kristol’s claim. Afterwards, all that remained of the former Soviet-style economies were beleaguered Cuba and isolated North Korea. These two made up less than 1 per cent of the world’s population. Capitalism was triumphant elsewhere. For many, socialist ideology seemed dead. The political theorist John Gray wrote in 1993: ‘The intellectual hegemony of the New Right in economic theory, and the collapse of socialism in both Eastern and Western Europe, rule out any doctrinal survival of socialism.’2 The dramatic events from 1978 to 1991 did not simply undermine hard-line socialism or communism. The Socialist and Social Democratic 1 Kristol (1977, p. 30). The near-interchangeability of the terms socialism and communism is discussed in Chapter 1 below. 2 Gray (1993, p. 278). 1 Geoffrey M. Hodgson - 9781789901627 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 10/01/2021 08:09:22AM via free access Columns Design XML Ltd / Job: Hodgson-Is_socialism_feasible / Division: 01Introduction_GH /Pg. Position: 1 / Date: 7/6 JOBNAME: EE3 Hodgson PAGE: 2 SESS: 3 OUTPUT: Thu Jun 27 12:00:07 2019 2 Is socialism feasible? parties in Europe were founded on tacit alliances between the organized working class and socialist intellectuals. Both partners in that coalition faced problems. The abandonment of the former big socialist experiments in Russia and China put the intellectuals at sea. Some of them stuck to their previous views, as if the world had not changed. Others differed in the degrees and directions of their revisionism. Buffeted by relentless globalization, the working class had already splintered into countless occupational specialisms, and their communities had become ethnically segregated. A large segment of the working class became unemployed, disengaged or socially excluded. Many blamed immigrants for their problems, and this group became prey to racism and extreme nationalism. Both Marxism and social democracy saw the organized industrial working class as the driver of social transformation. But this view of a unified proletariat as the motor of change had become ever more remote from reality. Increasingly, the working classes in major capitalist coun- tries have become occupationally, culturally, ethnically and politically fragmented. Because of these fissures in guiding ideology and social base, both socialism and social democracy foundered. At the dawn of the new millennium, it seemed that nothing had undermined Kristol’s claim: socialism was in its death throes and capitalism was triumphant. Then, in 2008, capitalism suffered its biggest crisis since the 1930s. Banks had to be bailed out and governments had to rescue financial markets from destruction. There had already been decades of real-wage stagnation in the US. This torpor spread to other developed countries. Widely discussed studies revealed growing eco- nomic inequality and its deleterious consequences for society as a whole. Millions became disillusioned with the existing economic system.3 The faltering of capitalism aroused socialist ideology from its slumber. After the financial earthquake of 2008, the spectre of Marxism also returned to haunt the Western corridors of political power. Sales of Marx’s works including Capital enjoyed a dramatic rise. People in their millions turned to socialism – whatever that was taken to mean.4 This revival of Marxism did not correlate with any substantial growth in the militancy of the working class, which was supposed to be the motor of socialist transformation. Instead, many activists behind the revival of socialism and Marxism were drawn from the increasingly insecure middle class, particularly from professional positions in state or 3 Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), Piketty (2014). 4 Jeffries (2012). Geoffrey M. Hodgson - 9781789901627 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 10/01/2021 08:09:22AM via free access Columns Design XML Ltd / Job: Hodgson-Is_socialism_feasible / Division: 01Introduction_GH /Pg. Position: 2 / Date: 25/4 JOBNAME: EE3 Hodgson PAGE: 3 SESS: 5 OUTPUT: Thu Jun 27 12:00:07 2019 Introduction 3 academic institutions. Socialism and Marxism today are not the ideolo- gies of an advancing proletariat; they are more the doctrines of middle- class professional employees, many of whom rely on public funds.5 According to a 2017 survey of American adults, 37 per cent preferred (what they described as) socialism to capitalism. Among millennials (meaning those reaching adulthood in the early twenty-first century), 44 per cent preferred socialism over capitalism. This survey broadly con- firmed previous American polls from about 2015, which showed a surge of support for socialism, especially among younger people. In 2015 socialism was the seventh-most-consulted entry in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. Communism and capitalism were not far behind.6 Polling in the UK found that 39 per cent of adults have an unfavourable view of capitalism, while 33 per cent were favourable.Yet 36 per cent of this UK sample viewed socialism positively, compared to 32 per cent negatively. Germans were reported as even more upbeat about socialism, with 45 per cent being favourable and 26 per cent unfavourable.7 Although several major socialist parties have been in retreat – includ- ing in France and Italy – 2015 saw the election of the traditional socialist Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the British Labour Party. In the 2017 general election Corbyn led an energetic campaign, increasing Labour’s vote share to 40 per cent, up from 30 per cent in the 2015 election (when the Labour leader was Ed Miliband). Corbyn is the most radically socialist leader of the Labour Party, at least since Clement Attlee. His advance moved the Labour Party away from decades of moderate policies. Labour returned to its classical socialist roots. Corbyn appointed the self-proclaimed Marxist John McDonnell as his Labour Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, who 5 Gray (1993, p. 94) claimed perceptively that Marxism can flourish among ‘a radical intelligentsia which perceives its social status to be lower than that of business, which is accordingly estranged from the dominant values of its parent culture, and which is substantially marginalized from the political process’. It ‘has attempted to legitimate its interests by the adoption of an anti-market ideology’. A 2016 survey (ESRC, 2016) found that 77 per cent of UK Labour Party members were professionals, managers or similar (from the ‘ABC1’ middle classes that make up about 56 per cent of the total population) and that 57 per cent of Labour members were university graduates (compared with 42 per cent in the overall population). Labour’s 2017 upturn in the UK was not associated with any increase in the strength or organization of the traditional working class. Social class has become a poor predictor of voting intention in the UK and US, where political inclinations increasingly correlate with education and age. In both countries the older, less-educated and rurally located are more likely to vote for Conservative candidates (The Guardian, 2017; Tyson and Maniam, 2016). 6 American Culture and Faith Institute (2017), Merriam-Webster (2015), Meyerson (2016), Moore (2015). 7 Dahlgreen (2016). Geoffrey M. Hodgson - 9781789901627 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 10/01/2021 08:09:22AM via free access Columns Design XML Ltd / Job: Hodgson-Is_socialism_feasible / Division: 01Introduction_GH /Pg. Position: 3 / Date: 7/6 JOBNAME: EE3 Hodgson PAGE: 4 SESS: 3 OUTPUT: Thu Jun 27 12:00:07 2019 4 Is socialism feasible? listed in his entry in Who’s Who that one of his hobbies is ‘generally fermenting [sic] the overthrow of capitalism’. Unlike Attlee, Corbyn has pronounced an ‘anti-imperialist’ foreign policy including opposition to NATO.8 The long-declared socialist Bernie Sanders campaigned for the Demo- cratic presidential nomination in the US in 2015–16. In the primary elections he received over 13 million votes. He won 23 primaries and caucuses and approximately 43 per cent of pledged delegates, compared to 55 per cent for Hillary Clinton. Polls taken in 2017 found Sanders to be the most popular politician in the US.9 Sanders was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has its roots in the Socialist Party of America – the party of Eugene Debs (1855–1926). The DSA embraces a version of traditional socialism in its aims. The DSA is today the largest socialist organization in the US and the largest ever there in over a century. It has a young and rapidly growing membership, reaching 50,000 in 2018. In late 2017, the median age of its membership was 33, compared to 68 in 2013. In November 2018, two DSA members – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib – were elected to the US House of Representatives.10 Socialist ideas have made such an advance in the US that in 2018 the Council of Economic Advisors to the US President was alarmed enough to report: ‘Coincident with the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse.