Of Socialism, Without Shame

The emergence of socialist parties in Eastern Europe was simple in the case of new parties or parties trying to get back to their roots, parties that existed as democrat-socialist before the communists took power. Those parties exist in Eastern Europe but they don't give rise to hope just as there is no hope for any party that existed prior to 1945 because of the vast structural and psychological changes in the society of Eastern Europe. But, we know that there are many other socialist parties in Eastern Europe today, whether in name only or in regard to their programs.

There is a difference between those two kinds of socialist parties. The first were formed as opposition and came to power in elections (Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria); the second are the so-called socialist parties that never fell from power (Yugoslavia, Romania). They are dried up communist parties which used all means to remain in power.

Western socialists and social-democrats must not allow the former communists to lecture them on real and formal democracy, on the need for socialism to replace capitalism and not civilize it (David Sassoon) because it raises essential ideological, systemic, philosophical questions including what is formal and true democracy. Was Mihailo Markovic, former main SPS ideologue, (still convinced of his vision of orthodox socialism with real democracy) ousted from power in the SPS by methods of real or formal democracy? Can professor Vladimir Stambuk, JUL official (very similar to many people in the opposition) who changed three socialist-in-name parties in several years, lecture Western socialists who played a historic role for the working class in creating the so-called welfare state and strengthening democracy overall? Or should they say, as Milovan Djilas did in a conversation with Adam Mihnjik, that "there is something wrong, sick in communism" and it can only degenerate as the socialist self-managing system in Yugoslavia has been degenerating over the past seven years.

The main philosophical and program question for all socialists is: if Marxism as "the eternal just war" (Taylor) was the theory of liberating the working class and Leninism its praxis in capitalist society where do you put the working class of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia or Soviet Union? What happened to the fall of capitalism as the contradiction of internal production forces? Johan Strasser was right, in late May at the Belgrade Institute for International Politics and the Economy, when he admitted that Soviet and Western socialism had the toppling of capitalism in common and the creation of a system of giving society ownership of the economy. Unlike that German professor, professor Ljubisa Mirovic is offering us, on behalf of the united Left and at the expense of Western socialists, an open society while forgetting to explain why the previous system, his system, was closed and why today's Yugoslav system is closed although it is being fed ideology by the united Left which is rich in outdated ideas and money. Or is a deep and new political thought on a humane and just society going to create an open democratic society?

Western socialists should teach today's Eastern socialists a lesson, telling them that all those achievements came from earlier Western systems without the slaughter of 1917 and later slaughters after 1945.

Just as Czech social-democrat Svetlana Navarova promised that her party had no intention of cooperating with the socialists who hatched out of the communist parties, so Yuri Krasin of the Gorbachev foundation drew attention at the round table to the fact that socialism has to give up the obsessions and utopia that capitalism has to be overthrown, that socialism must see its action as "an organic process of social development" in industrial society.

Democratic socialism must look into the overall social development in the 150 years of industrial society. On the one hand, an analysis of social development and democracy itself, an analysis of industrial progress and the progress of standards for the working class where problems of pauperization and the proletariat can no longer be raised. On the other hand, they have to undertake scientific and political analyses of socialist theory and practice in the past 150 or 70 years.

Democracy has shown itself to be endurable and stronger though more chaotic and slower than other systems. It has buried two horrible totalitarian systems, the fascists and nazis in Central Europe and communists in Eastern Europe.

Democracy and Western socialism have brought some moral principles to Eastern Europe when the one-party systems there broke down. One good thing happened to Eastern Europe in the 90s after all the evil it underwent: in the 90s if anti-communism in Eastern Europe had used Lenin's and Tito's 1917 and 1945 criteria for a humane and just society many people in Yugoslav Leftist parties would not have met in Belgrade for a free debate on their vision of socialism. Changes in the East during the 90s happened with no bloodshed, no revolutionary vengeance and that is our progress, the advancement of modern democracy. Is it final?