By MAURO BOSS*
And the first step for the left to rebuild trust is to stop the lying magical thinking, to end the self-deception.
1.
The results of the municipal elections in Brazil and the presidential elections in the US have left much of the Brazilian left understandably apprehensive about our future. Without a correct analysis, not only of the current situation but also of the structure, and without the necessary changes in direction resulting from it, our future is likely to be quite bleak indeed.
In this situation, the phrase “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will” often used by Antonio Gramsci about a century ago in a context as adverse as ours, if not more so, with the emergence of the fascist movement in Italy, applies. However, few people know that this phrase was not originally coined by Antonio Gramsci, who took it from the French left-wing writer Romain Rolland (who would later campaign for Antonio Gramsci’s release from prison), in a 1920 review of the novel Abraham's sacrifice, by Raymond Lefebvre.[1]
Antonio Gramsci first used the phrase in his “Address to the Anarchists”, published in L'Ordine Nuovo in April 1920, at a time when the situation in Turin was accelerating towards a general strike.
Before addressing more specific and concrete issues, I will address more general and abstract issues. It is necessary to correct the path taken by the left since the French Revolution, intensified by the romantic optimism of the 19th century. For example, Marx correctly identified several utopian aspects of anarchist proposals, but in his disputes with other revolutionary camps, he defended ideas that were beyond utopian, such as, for example, in this passage: “Within human relations, on the contrary, punishment will really be nothing other than the offender’s judgment of himself. It will not be a matter of convincing him that external violence, imposed by others, is violence that he imposes on himself. In other men he will find, much earlier, the natural redeemers of the punishment he has inflicted on himself, that is to say, the relationship will be completely reversed.”[2] The Jacobin, Bolshevik and Maoist failures, regardless of their possible good intentions, showed in practice how far we are from these utopias.
Here it is important to emphasize that the current historical task is not to think about the ultimate possibilities of human liberation, especially because these possibilities will never be ultimate. The current historical task, and increasingly urgent, is to overcome capitalism, defined as the system structured on economic accumulation through private ownership of the means of production. The logic of private accumulation, with all its inherent consequences, including the class struggle (capital versus labor), is the main contradiction that must be overcome for the effective realization of any substantive form of democracy.
2.
I would like to argue that the left should not assume human possibilities that we do not even know really exist and that we will only discover their eventual reality at much higher stages of social development. It is essential that we abandon this naive optimism about nature, the social and the individual. The most modern theories about the origin and evolution of life show that one of the main characteristics of the biosphere is the permanent progress of technology.
The cells of the simplest organisms are dynamic nanometric structures far more complex than the most sophisticated machines developed by mankind. The technical development of nature is simply incredible, from the photosynthesis of plants to the precision of the human hand, from the vision of animals to the rational capabilities of the human brain. Therefore, the technical development of mankind can be seen as a continuation of this natural technical development.
We human beings are part of nature. The dark side of this is that all this technical development is largely driven by the brutal struggle for survival. The great novelty of humanity is not the emergence of technical progress, but rather of ethical progress. In the brutal struggle for survival, from viruses that devastate entire populations to orcas that play with seals as if they were shuttlecocks before devouring them, nature lives beyond (or below) good and evil.
Without a doubt, reactionary theories, such as sociobiology, which fail to recognize the qualitative changes in nature that have arisen with the emergence of humanity, must be denounced for their reductionist nature. However, we cannot be naive about the limitations of humanity itself. The most modern theories on the origin and evolution of human beings show that we emerged from a common ancestor with the great apes.
But unlike our cousins, we have undergone a process of self-domestication similar to the domestication processes we apply to other species, such as wolves turning into dogs. Despite all the human violence, we are orders of magnitude less violent than the least violent of the great apes, the bonobos. The alpha males of our direct ancestors were progressively suppressed by an alliance between females and less powerful males.
Thus, the very origin of humanity can be seen as a political process driven by the desire for liberation of the oppressed majority. Ethical progress was therefore from the beginning as difficult or even more difficult than technical progress. Furthermore, ethical progress influences and is strongly influenced by technical progress, which makes the situation even more complex.
It was this interaction between technical progress and ethical progress that produced and developed language itself, which in turn drove both technical and ethical development. And this same self-domestication, which allowed the development of language and with it also the development of rational capacities, also led to this dependence of each human being on other human beings and to this tendency towards social conformity, which is at the basis of various mass phenomena, from religions to fashions to various forms of fascism.
The interaction between technology and ethics also produced, much later, the development of writing, arithmetic, currency and the State, which emerged simultaneously in the Middle East after the Neolithic Revolution with the sedentary lifestyle and the development of agriculture. And the development of the State, and of the various social and political formations that resulted from it, can also be seen to a large extent as a political process driven by the desire for liberation of the oppressed majority.
It is precisely because of this human fragility, diagnosed through the pessimism of the intellect, that the optimism of the will to overcome capitalism is urgent. It is not because of positive human tendencies that we need to build socialism, but rather because of negative human tendencies, their self-destructive capacities. Capitalism clearly drives technical development much more than ethical development, as is very clear at the beginning of the 21st century with digital technologies and their brutal impact on the psychology of human beings, and as has been clear since its inception with war technologies.
3.
The logic of private accumulation is in many situations contradictory to democratic interests. It is possible to prove mathematically that, even if humans were all clones, possessing the same cognitive capacities, the same talents, the same tastes and the same effort and dedication to work and undertake, private accumulation still produces a substantial and inexorable inequality of wealth and, therefore, of power. The political system most consistent with capitalist dynamics is, therefore, the census vote, in which the weight of each vote is proportional to the voter's private wealth.
Capitalism is therefore neither meritocratic nor compatible with democracy, where each vote carries the same weight. And the central problem of capitalism is not the existence of markets or the existence of money, which already existed thousands of years before its advent, but the logic of accumulation through private ownership of the means of production. From a theoretical point of view, it is perfectly possible, and desirable, to socialize ownership of the means of production, while maintaining money and markets, including the labor market.
A market socialism without capitalists has not yet been tried in practice, where entrepreneurs act in a similar way to executives of private companies, but seeking socially relevant objectives beyond the pursuit of profit, maintaining the advantages of private initiative, but without the contradictions that the logic of private accumulation imposes on democratic procedures, such as the class struggle between capital and labor.
It is therefore necessary to resume the theoretical and practical construction of scientific socialism, and to do so it is necessary to recognize the theoretical errors and successes vis-à-vis the practical failures and successes, especially in the 20th century. It is essential to face head-on the negative characteristics of human beings in the current historical context, without counting on overcoming these characteristics on the visible horizon, especially because we have no way of knowing which of these negative characteristics can be overcome, even in much more favorable future social contexts.
It is naive and incorrect, from a scientific point of view, to postulate a kind of reformulation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's myth of the noble savage, in which in this new version current human beings would supposedly begin to act in an ethically utopian manner by simply eliminating or reducing the repressions to which they are subjected. In fact, apart from the fact that knowledge about human psychology is still very incipient, human subjectivity in capitalism is constituted by several conscious and unconscious mechanisms of propaganda and training that act effectively based on the tendencies of sociability present in human beings since their emergence and that will not cease to act by the simple suppression of explicit repressive mechanisms.
In any case, the left must stop postulating how current human beings behave and start observing empirically how they are actually behaving, so that it can act more effectively in reality. It is therefore essential to recognize the many problems associated with traditional leftist practices, which are maintained both by inertia and conservatism, and by this naive belief about how current human beings behave.
These traditional practices on the left include, for example, the almost exclusive use of the same assembly format for collective decisions, when there are several problems associated with them, from low representation vis-à-vis digital forms for collective decisions, to the recognized power of manipulation of assembly tables through arbitrary referrals, to the well-known coercion and control over participants allowed by open voting.
Another example of a traditional practice widespread on the left is the near-taboo of adopting incentives for good practices through various types of awards and also adopting inhibitors for bad practices through various types of reprimands. This is, in fact, one of the reasons for the increasing failure of left-wing organizations and also for the enormous difficulty of left-wing governments in improving the quality of public services.
Measures such as user evaluation of services and servers are rejected a priori, regardless of the specific details, which are fundamental to determining the reactionary or progressive nature of these initiatives. As a result, the democratization of the State and the much-mentioned grassroots control never leave the realm of utopia, making more advanced future measures unfeasible, such as the socialization of ownership of the means of production.
It is also essential in this sense to adopt a less dogmatic theoretical and practical stance, allowing the development and innovation of socialist experiences, as China did, especially after its opening in the 1970s with Deng Xiaoping, summarized in his famous phrase in the early 1960s: “It doesn't matter what color the cat is, but what matters is that it catches the mouse.”[3] In a recent debate in a WhatsApp group, some comrades mentioned China as an example in the current challenging situation we are experiencing.
When I asked them what they thought of the following sentence: “Even if we become more developed and financially stronger in the future, we should not set excessively high goals and provide excessive guarantees, so as not to fall into the trap of ‘welfare’ that encourages laziness,” these same comrades expressed great aversion. But when I revealed that the sentence was from a famous speech by Xi Jinping in 2021, they all remained silent.[4]
The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party probably focuses too much on the issue of economic production and gives too little importance to its distribution. On the other hand, the left in Latin America probably does the opposite. It focuses almost exclusively on distribution, while largely neglecting production. Of course, China should serve as a model and inspiration for us, given all its economic and social success, having managed to lift the largest number of human beings in history out of poverty in a short period of time.
But we need to look more closely beyond superficial prejudices and fantasies. For example, does everyone know that China’s public health system was largely dismantled in the late 1980s? That it has only recently been partially restored. That public universities charge tuition fees? The most important thing to learn from the Chinese, as well as from other pragmatic peoples, is this willingness to experiment, to keep practices while they are effective, but to discard them when they become ineffective.
4.
With this preparation, I return to the initial theme of the article, about the apprehensions of the left following the results of the municipal elections in Brazil and the presidential elections in the USA. My focus will be on the PT, as it is the largest party of the Brazilian left, but many of the points apply to other parties on the left and center left. After the first round of the 2024 elections and with the Direct Elections Process approaching in 2025, some people concerned about the direction of the PT advocate returning to its origins. On the one hand, this is correct, on the other hand, it is not. It would not be correct to disregard the many lessons learned by the PT throughout its history of struggles.
However, the PT should indeed regain its capacity to innovate. It should once again be able to listen to the population and, above all, learn from its successes and mistakes. A more scientific approach to listening to the population would be very important, with specific empirical research on the reasons for the rejection of the PT. Without this empirical data, I will only raise some points that seem fundamental to me.
Obviously, the rejection of voting for the left and the PT has always been and continues to be a function of the enormous inequality of power between the left and the right. However, there are some contradictions between what the left says and what the left does, which are obviously exploited by the right. If until 2016 these contradictions were not so important for the right to convince the majority of the population not to vote for the PT, since then, they have been effectively exploited by the right.
I will only mention two contradictions that I consider relevant: (i) contradictions between what the left defends about how the state and society should be organized and function and how left-wing parties and social movements actually organize and function, given the restrictions of reality. For example, there is much less participation in left-wing institutions precisely from the less favored sectors that the left supposedly claims to represent. Another example is that left-wing proposals such as transparency portals, participatory budgets, plebiscites and referendums are not (almost never) used in the organization and functioning of left-wing institutions.
(ii) Contradictions between what the left advocates about how the State and society should be organized and function and what left-wing governments and parliamentarians actually propose and manage to achieve, given the constraints of reality. For example, user control of public services always clashes with the corporatism of many of us public servants, which prevents even a minimal evaluation of public servants by users. Another example is that the reality of developed countries is hardly used to make it clear that higher quality public services and less social inequality also depend fundamentally on a more progressive tax system.
The contradictions could be greatly reduced if there were a continuous process of improving left-wing institutions. Unfortunately, what we have is infinite inertia due to structural difficulties (including emotional ones) in learning from mistakes. The contradictions could be reduced if there were a continuous process of improving left-wing governments, including government programs that make it clearer that certain stages need to be reached before we can reach others.
There doesn't seem to be much willingness in the PT leadership today to learn from its mistakes and change course. The PT is no longer a structure in constant learning and innovation. There are people who appeal to the PT's traditions so that nothing changes. It almost seems like a discourse of Tradition, Family and Property. The only tradition that should really be rescued and preserved is that of constant learning and innovation.
Some argue that the PT should move further to the left, while others argue that it should move further to the center. The question seems to me to be another: what kind of left-wing causes should we defend? Causes that focus mainly on the symbolic (superstructural) aspects of inequalities or causes that focus mainly on the material (infrastructural) aspects of inequalities. The problem with focusing on the symbolic aspects is that the majority of the population is generally more sensitive to and concerned about the material aspects of inequalities.
And to achieve this, it is essential to focus on the democratization of the State and on improving the quality of public services. A more democratic State is the only social institution with enough weight to counter the logic of capitalist accumulation and, as I said before, it is a necessary condition for us to take more advanced steps towards the socialization of the means of production and the construction of a substantive democracy. Another problem is magical thinking, believing that positive thinking in analyzing the current situation will make the situation more positive.
This attitude of lying to oneself and lying to others is reminiscent of the hippie delusions so well translated in this famous excerpt from a song by Raul Seixas: “A dream that is dreamed alone is just a dream that is dreamed alone. But a dream that is dreamed together is reality.” Nowadays, both in mass mobilizations and in daily grassroots work, there is a huge gap of distrust between the leaders and the base and between the base and itself. Acts and events are scheduled, but since trust is low, everyone assumes that no one will show up, and in fact no one shows up.
To reverse this, it is necessary to rebuild trust. And the first step to rebuilding trust is to stop lying magical thinking, to end self-deception.
I would like to conclude with one last observation that I believe is important. The left has come to be identified with the status quo, while the far right presents itself as anti-establishment. Kamala Harris’ campaign in the US was structured around the theme of “joy”, while bombs manufactured in the US were falling on Gaza, in what could be considered the first genocide to be broadcast in real time. Not to mention the economic inequality that remains extremely high in the US. Obviously this strategy did not work and Donald Trump won again as the anti-establishment candidate, because a large part of the US population remains angry and is not interested in this fake joy.
The same goes for the PT in the Brazilian reality. After the PT won five of the last six presidential elections, it is much easier for the right to make a large part of the population identify the party with the status quo and hold him responsible for the very serious problems that continue to affect a large part of the Brazilian population. Isn't betting on happiness asking for the PT and the center left to achieve in 2026 the same failure that the Democrats achieved in 2024?
*Mauro Patron is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Brasília (UnB).
Notes
[1] Haider, A. Pessimism of the Will | 28/05/2020: https://viewpointmag.com/2020/05/28/pessimism-of-the-will/
[2] Engels, F. and Marx, K. The Holy Family, Chapter VIII.
[3] Cat theory (Deng Xiaoping):
[4] Full Text: Xi Jinping's Speech on Boosting Common Prosperity:https://www.caixinglobal.com/2021-10-19/full-text-xi-jinpings-speech-on-boosting-common-prosperity-101788302.html
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