During the 1980s, when the
bulk of this book was written, it made sense to think of our species as
undergoing a global transition from capitalism to socialism. Socialism might be
an unrealistic dream to most Americans, but its growth over the past two
centuries suggested that it might indeed be the wave of the future.
From a utopian dream at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, socialism grew to a mass movement by the
beginning of the twentieth century.
The terrible devastation of
the two World Wars were the death throes of dying social order, each resulting
in a world-shaking revolution. In 1917, the October Revolution led to the
creation of the Soviet Union and the victory of the People's Liberation Army
led to the creation of the Peoples Republic off China in 1949.
The Second World War
discredited both capitalism and colonialism, and the earlier imperialist powers
were either defeated (Germany, Italy, Japan) or severely weakened (Great
Britain and France).
Communism emerged with
tremendous prestige, given the leading role that the Soviet Union had played in
the defeat of Fascism and that Communists throughout the world had played in
the resistance to Fascism.
By 1950, one third of
humanity was involved in the conscious attempt to build socialism. Whatever the
shortcomings of Soviet and Chinese societies, they dramatically improved the
lives of their people, and provided hope for a better world. The Soviet and
Chinese models were inspiring revolutionaries throughout the world.
But no ruling class gives up
power willingly. The United States emerged from the war as the undisputed
leader of world imperialism (or, as they like to call it, the "free
world"). Even before the end of WWII, the leaders of U.S. imperialism began
establishing the institutions that would enable imperialism to endure.
Of these, none was more
important than the Atomic Bomb. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August
1945 marked not so much the end of WWII as the beginning of the Cold War, the
war against Communism.
The next four decades,
through the 1980s, saw two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union,
each armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy our species. Although it
seemed as though the world had gone MAD, for Mutual Assured Destruction, the
world revolutionary process was unfolding. If we could escape nuclear
annihilation, perhaps a saner, socialist world could be born.
The 1990s, however, saw the
apparent triumph of U.S. imperialism. The bold efforts of glasnost and perestroika
initiated by the Soviet leadership led, not to a new stage of socialism, but to
the overthrow of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in what had been
the Soviet Union. As the imperialists began to construct their New World Order
in earnest, people began to speak of "the end of history" and TINA
"There Is No Alternative." Resistance was futile in the face of the
world's single and supreme superpower, the United States.
The struggle persisted
however, even in the darkest hours. As the century drew to a close, the world
was electrified by WTO protests in Seattle. In the words of Amy Goodman, the
momentum of world history shifted from the corporate suites to the Seattle
streets. Struggle was possible again. We saw the emergence of a new movement against
corporate-style globalization, which only grew in strength, even after the
renewed assault by the imperialists after 9/11, the so-called "war on
terror." In March of 2003, during the resistance to the war against Iraq,
this movement was anointed the world's "second superpower" by the New
York Times.
The world has changed
dramatically since 1990, but in many ways its underlying structure has remained
the same. The history of the present is still a history of class struggle, and
we need to understand it as such. As the Hungarian philosopher, Greog Lukacs
noted, we still need Marx:
There is, of course, plenty of
darkness around us now, just as there was between the two wars. Those who wish to despair can find
cause enough and more in our everyday life. Marxism does not console anyone by playing down
difficulties, or minimizing the material and moral darkness which surrounds us
human beings today. The difference
is onlyÑbut in this "only" lies a whole worldÑthat Marxism has a
grasp of the main lines of human development and recognizes its laws. Those who have arrived at such
knowledge know, in spite of all temporary darkness, both whence we have come
and where we are going. And those
who know this find the world changed in their eyes: they see purposeful
development where formerly only a blind, senseless confusion surrounded
them. Where the philosophy of
despair weeps for the collapse of a world and the destruction of culture, there
Marxists watch the birth-pangs of a new world and assist in mitigating the
pains of labor. (Lukacs 1948:2)