By JUAREZ GUIMARÃES*
In the dialectic of the relationship between the rise of neoliberalism and the crisis of socialism, it would be necessary to understand how the former seeks to deconstruct the value of hope that is at the basis of the identity of revolutionary militancy.
In the first half of the 20th century, as already documented in the book Democracy and Marxism. Critique of Liberal Reason, what is called “historical determinism” prevailed in Marxist culture, through a philosophy of history (as if history had a previously defined orientation of its future course), a science of history (as if there were iron laws that would define the course of societies) or a theory of history (as if there were a transhistorical method for thinking about social change).
It was a time for generations of Marxist activists to believe that socialism, even if its advent was delayed, would certainly come. This historical certainty was fueled by a dogmatic view of Marx's work, thought of as providing this historical certainty.
The three waves of expansion of determinism were, in historical order, the widespread philosophical systematization of Marxism by Engels, the Marxism of the Second International in its pluralism and the so-called diamat, the crystallization of Marxism in the Stalinized USSR. There were certainly from the beginning, critical Marxisms, partial or proposing a coherently alternative vision to historical determinism, but they did not become predominant.
In this universe of certainties and dogmas there was certainly no place for hope.. It would not be necessary. Doubt itself was often seen as a “petty-bourgeois” hesitation. Apparently confirmed by the great Russian revolutions of 1917 and the Chinese revolution of 1949, the notion that socialism was an unavoidable trend of the future even went beyond the culture of Marxism, and can even be found in the work of a great liberal economist like Joseph Schumpeter. The idea of a growing tendency towards the socialization of life was even expressed in a papal encyclical.
With the rise and dominance of the neoliberal tradition from the 1980s onwards, the situation was reversed. The notion that human history had completed its cycle towards a market economy and liberal democracy, that there were no alternatives to capitalist market society, became dominant. And the notion of socialism was stigmatized as a mistake that history itself had taken care to leave behind.
From a non-place or a marginal place, hope has become fundamental to the reconstruction of the culture of Marxism and the tradition of democratic socialism. Recent decades have been those of frustrated experiences, whether revolutionary or reformist, of Eurocommunism and the attempt to build a left alternative to it, of the Central American revolution, of a transition to democratic socialism in Eastern Europe, of the recovery of the identity of English Labour, of the Greek radical democratic attempt to emerge from austerity, of a new left in Germany, of an agonizing crisis of Peronism, of the neoliberal evolution of the post-apartheid governments of South Africa and of the impasses of the revolutions in Angola and Mozambique, in Bolivia and Venezuela, of Podemos in Spain, etc.
More than fear, it is “hopelessness” that today constitutes a central obstacle to the construction of comprehensive political alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. It is hopelessness that underlies the mass conformism that sustains neoliberalism in the face of its unfulfilled promises of massively opening the path to wealth and consumption. It is to a mass of impoverished workers or those in the process of becoming impoverished and losing their rights, with no horizon for the future, that the leaders of the neoliberal extreme right and religious fundamentalists appeal to build their massive voting base.
It is this hopelessness that corrodes the socialist tradition of the left, lowering its political horizon to a pragmatism incapable of confronting the bases of neoliberal rule, which seeks to negotiate with it or, at most, act in its gaps.
In this context in which despair plays a central role, the very notion of criticism, so dear to the non-dogmatic left, should be conceived as a critical hope, that is, as one that builds alternatives, identifies potential for change, remembers and values exemplary moments of struggle, is sensitive to dialogue with feelings of impotence and anguish, builds lovingness around it and, above all, is capable of dreaming with open eyes. Criticism cannot be merely negative, discouraging, much less nihilistic.
Hope and its reasons
Unlike faith, not only of transcendental origin, but even those that present themselves in a secular language, of the order of certainties, hope humbly claims the possible and, in its practice, feeds on doubt to ask the necessary questions, correct paths and establish the necessary conditionality of perspectives. Hope needs reasons to move forward, pointing out possible paths.
Thus, it differs from illusions, that is, from a political practice that feeds on precarious or supposedly consoling judgments of reality. It is part of a voluntarist practice, one that presents itself beyond the possible, even without creating the conditions for this, placing the emphasis on potentialities and diminishing or underestimating the difficulties inscribed by class domination at each moment.
It is not a question of resorting to the optimism/pessimism pair, through the formula “pessimism of reason, optimism of will”, as if mere will, stripped of a critical evaluation of reality, could assert itself. Hope must be realistic, not in the positivist sense of simplifying social reality as the dominant one, but of identifying the structural and moving contradictions typical of capitalist society.
Marx's method is that of immanence and seeks to establish a dialectical relationship between the dynamic analysis of capitalism, its class contradictions, and its possibilities for revolution. This relationship should not be separated by the formula of objective conditions given for socialism versus adverse subjective conditions, as if there were a structure and a superstructure of capitalist society that could be thought of in isolation. The crises of capitalism are also moments of crisis of its domination, its stability and its capacity for reproduction.
In times of great political instability, such as the era of neoliberal capitalism, which was heightened after the 2008 international financial crisis and amid the systemic crisis of the geopolitical domination of the US state, the very concept of correlation of forces must be historically contextualized. In situations of crisis of civilization, such as the one we are experiencing today, there is a very strong dynamic of changes in political culture, which establish possibilities for sudden changes in the correlation of forces within the same context.
It should be considered, based on this very dynamic understanding of the correlation of forces, that there is an important dialectic between resistance to neoliberal capitalism and the hope of building alternatives to it. There can be no lasting resistance without the principle of hope. And hope must be nourished by resistance, even if it is localized and partial. For example: when Lula was imprisoned, which was a clear moment of resistance, it was essential to launch his candidacy for president as a way of opening up the horizon of the dispute. With Lula elected president, hope must drive the struggles of resistance to neoliberalism.
From this perspective, the hope of democratic socialism should not be thought of as something restricted or a privilege enjoyed by the vanguards of the left. There must be a popular translation of the principle of hope for the working classes. Having to suffer the hells of neoliberal capitalism, hatred, violence, inequality, and the most basic needs on a daily basis, the heart of the oppressed must have the right to hope as their daily bread. If it is through the struggle for their fundamental rights to freedom and a good life that we are able to mobilize millions, the realistic imagination of an alternative social life to neoliberal capitalism is necessary to form the energies of social transformation.
Below we identify five ways in which neoliberalism seeks to undermine the principle of hope that drives democratic socialist activism.
Democratic socialism is a necessary alternative to the growing dynamics of the barbarity of neoliberal capitalism
As a guideline for political culture and not understood only as a geopolitical situation, the so-called “Cold War” did not end with the fall of the USSR, but gained in intensity and scope with the political rise of neoliberalism. In this sense, while liberalism throughout the 20th century mobilized its most important and sophisticated minds to criticize Marx and socialist traditions, opposing the liberal tradition as a kind of secular religion of freedom, neoliberalism, in its fundamentalist matrices, already starts from the execration of socialism to organize its hate campaigns.
The effect of this new “Cold War” on the consciences of even the working classes, after decades of neoliberal rule with its new communication machines, should not be underestimated. It would be a huge mistake to link the defense of socialism to experiences, parties and political movements that, in the name of confronting US imperialism, commit all kinds of violations of human rights, of workers themselves, of women, of the LGBTQI+ movements and against democratic freedoms.
To confront this radical execration promoted by neoliberalism, it would be necessary to combine three lines of reconstruction of hope. The first involves the documented affirmation that the political tradition founded by Marx and Engels and continued by critics of Stalinism in the 20th century never separated socialism from the defense of radical democracy, the collective management of the economy and the means of production through democratic planning with the unprecedented deepening and universalization of human rights.
There is no important human right, whether related to the emancipation of labor, women, those oppressed by racism and colonial dynamics, freedom of expression and organization, or civil rights, that has not played a leading or decisive role in the traditions of democratic socialism throughout history.
The second is the abundantly documented demonstration in the contemporary world of the regressive and barbaric dynamics promoted by neoliberal capitalism in the face of human rights, ecology and peace. The dynamics of accumulation and commodification of social life, according to scientists, not only create a crisis of civilization but also threaten the very survival of humanity. The international left, and even more so the Brazilian left, are far behind in organizing the public and popular denunciation of neoliberalism.
The third line of confrontation against the execration of socialism, in order to overcome a merely propagandist and discursive vision, is to link the rights achieved, the successful experiences of social movements, even of a local nature, to the very hope of building an alternative society. Democratic socialism is a praxis of permanent transformation of the world and of life and, contrary to any reformist, parliamentary or corporatist vision, it always establishes transitional connections between immediate demands and the alternative socialist society that we want to build.
The construction of alternatives is possible due to the profound crisis of legitimacy and reproduction of neoliberal capitalism
The third decade of the 21st century has made it increasingly clear that, rather than a consolidation of neoliberal rule, there is a growing dynamic of crisis in its legitimacy and in its capacity to deepen or even stabilize its conditions of reproduction. The epicenter of this crisis of neoliberal rule is the United States, its political system, the competitive capacity of its capitalism, and its capacity to coordinate the world order it maintains under its influence. The rise of China plays a decisive role in this, but so does the NATO crisis evidenced by the Russia/Ukraine war, the formation of the BRICS and the search for a new alternative currency to the dollar, and the international isolation of Israel.
The rise of the neoliberal far right, especially with Trump’s victory in the presidential elections and the rise of the AFD in Germany, a key country in the process of European unification, has the potential to aggravate the crisis of civilization and increase international political polarization, but not to stabilize neoliberal rule. This rise is umbilically linked to the historic defeats of the attempts of the American Democratic Party and the programmatically neoliberal European social democracy to reestablish a stability of domination within the framework of a liberal democracy, albeit a strongly minimalist one.
It is therefore through a characterization of the dispute over directions in the face of the crisis of civilization created and aggravated by the rise of neoliberalism that we must conceive of the long-term situation in which we find ourselves. In this dispute over directions, hope plays a decisive role: the gravity of the crisis prohibits pragmatic solutions that adapt to the neoliberal order in crisis. And it brings to mind the political and even existential situation of the socialist left and its militants, confronted by the crisis of civilization after the First World War and the rise of Nazi-fascism, without a democratic socialist alternative to guide the direction of the struggles.
Instead of a fatalistic vision, defeated before the fight is fought, it would be necessary to trust that in the face of the catastrophes promoted by neoliberal capitalism there is a whole historical opening for the construction of the mass legitimacy of a democratic socialist society.
Against competitive individualism and impotence in the face of the dynamics of neoliberal capitalism, rebuild the transformative capacity of fraternity and sisterhood of the democratic socialist tradition
One of the central dimensions of neoliberal capitalist society is the maximum concentration of capital in the face of growing pressure for the atomization of workers. This relationship finds its organic expression in neoliberal reason itself, which radically disbelieves in the capacity for self-government, exalts methodological individualism, violently persecutes organizational forms of resistance, and advocates individualistic competition in mercantile networks of exploitation. The only thing left is the individual in the fierce competitive struggle to become part of the tiny minority that wins or to make up the great mass that fails.
The identification of fraternity as central to understanding the crisis of democratic socialism in neoliberal times is already in Antoni Domenech's beautiful book, The eclipse of fraternity. A republican revision of the socialist tradition (Barcelona: Crítica, 2004). And one of its epigraphs is the beautiful phrase by Simone Beauvoir: “In the heart of the world that is given to us, man must make the kingdom of freedom triumph; to achieve this supreme victory it is necessary, among other things, that, beyond their differences, men and women unequivocally affirm their fraternity.” In the tradition of democratic socialism, the emphasis on the fraternal dimension of the struggle for emancipation – splendidly revisited in the recent period with the slogan “No one lets go of anyone else’s hand” – is central to the resumption of hope.
It is definitely not a matter of campaigning in favor of collectivism and against individuality. If Marx already differentiated his humanist vision from a “crude communism” that did not allow for the full development of individual powers, if Rosa Luxemburg defended a socialism that allowed for different individualities, Gramsci already drew attention to the fact that socialists should not be against individuality in itself but against what is organic to capitalist, competitive and selfish mercantile society. For the culture of democratic socialism, each story of oppressed life is above all a testimony and a romance in search of emancipation.
Thus, for all the reasons, there is a sociological crisis of hope in neoliberal capitalist societies: an advance of mercantile networks over community, collective and associative forms rooted in socialist traditions, starting with the worlds of work, and even the capture of the meaning of welfare and religious forms of association. Without a new culture of fraternity and sisterhood in new collective experiences, it is not possible to regain hope in a society that is an alternative to neoliberal capitalism.
Reorganize the temporality inherent to the traditions of socialist activism in the face of the neoliberal monetization of life time.
The rise of neoliberal domination has deepened the crisis of the traditions of democratic socialism not only from a programmatic and organizational point of view, but also in the temporal dimension of tradition, that is, of the feeling of belonging to a rich history that precedes us, that is present in our lives and that will continue beyond us. The uprooting of the traditions of democratic socialism is fatal to hope, which is always a bet on a possible time that can be.
In fact, in neoliberal capitalism there is a monetization of life time, whether through the precariousness of employment relationships and the lengthening of working hours, or through the privatization of public spaces in which life takes place, or through the attack on community forms and their traditions, or, finally, in the case of women, through the exacerbation of the time dedicated to care and domestic life. Monetary time is always that of utility, of the compression of the vital rhythm, of breathlessness, of frazzled nerves, of continued stress.
The temporality of hope is, par excellence, the time of aspiration. For the democratic socialist activist, re-inserting oneself into the history of a tradition of emancipation is already, in fact, giving time a meaning other than that of mercantile life. This possibility of extending one's view, backwards and forwards, of feeling at once newer as a builder of a possible future and older, a witness to an ancestry and a legacy of struggles.
The almost always dramatic times of the present do not necessarily need to be thought of as tragic. Overcoming oppression is a magnificent perhaps. Daily over-effort is already part of the construction of this possibility. With full lungs, it is possible to blow and encourage the winds of change. We no longer breathe confined air without alternatives.
In the medium temporality, on the horizon of each situation, it is possible to foresee goals, shift the space of the possible, inscribe the time of collective militancy in milestones of achievements, accumulate forces for change.
This average temporality, in turn, is part of the broader sense of utopias, which are more achievable because they are built on the very ground of class struggle. There are no stages here, but a communication between the time of now, of the immediate future, and the future that is dreamed of: hope is a way of binding them firmly together.
Against the drives of anguish, violence and death, restore the praxis of filia and libertarian love of democratic socialism
If the patriarchal dimension of the liberal tradition confined relationships of sentimentality and love to the family dimension, prescribing impersonality in the relations of mercantile civil society for social life, neoliberalism in its dynamics of polarization has exacerbated the dimensions of violence, resentment and hatred. There is certainly a harsh dehumanization of social life in the times of neoliberal capitalism.
This political polarization is certainly at the service of legitimizing the deepening of social inequalities and the construction of societies of social, ethnic and racial separation. The neoliberal city naturalizes the scene of the destitute who inhabit the streets and, at the same time, exalts the display and ostentation of luxuries and wealth.
In these very difficult times of social class struggle, in which even the logic of hatred incites the left to respond in kind, hope is essential to keep the democratic socialist heart warm and humane. Socialist practice must protect friendships, a culture of encounters, and love even in relationships. It must have eyes for beauty, be moved by a gesture of solidarity, celebrate every reduction in oppression and deprivation, and gain in humanity what neoliberal capitalism takes away from social life. If we do not proclaim in our actions, words, and feelings the new world we want to build, hope runs the risk of becoming a false or unconvincing currency.
Thus understood, hope is a revolutionary morality.
*Juarez Guimaraes He is a full professor of political science at UFMG. Author, among other books, of Democracy and Marxism: Criticism of Liberal Reason (Shaman) [https://amzn.to/3PFdv78]
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