"A Left Politics for an Age of Transition"⁽¹⁾

by Immanuel Wallerstein

©Immanuel Wallerstein 2001 <iwaller@binghamton.edu>

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Two years ago, in 1999, I gave a talk at the Caucus for a New Political Science on left politics today.⁽²⁾ In that talk, I summarized the situation of the world left at present in the following way:

(1) After 500 years of existence, the world capitalist system is, for the first time, in true systemic crisis, and we find ourselves in an age of transition. (2) The outcome is intrinsically uncertain, but nonetheless, and also for the first time in these 500 years, there is a real perspective of fundamental change, which might be progressive but will not necessarily be so. (3) The principal problem for the world left at this juncture is that the strategy for the transformation of the world which it had evolved in the nineteenth century is in tatters, and it is consequently acting thus far with uncertainty, weakness, and in a generalized mild state of depression.

I would like to take these three points as assumptions, which I cannot argue here but have done so elsewhere at length,⁽³⁾ and ask what these assumptions imply for a left strategy over the next 10-20 years.

The first thing it implies is that we have in no way been defeated globally. The collapse of the Soviet Union was not a disaster for the world left. I am not sure I would even call it a setback. It not only liberated us collectively from the albatross of a no longer useful Leninist strategy and rhetoric, but it also imposed an enormous burden on the world liberal center, removing the structural support they in fact received from the Leninist movements, which had held in check popular radicalism for a long time by their guarantees of "shining tomorrows" via faith in a Leninist developmentalist present.⁽⁴⁾

Nor do I think the global offensive of neo-liberalism and so-called globalization has strangled our possibilities. For one thing, a lot of it is hype which will not survive the coming deflation. For another thing, it will breed, it has bred, its countertoxin. For a third thing, world capitalism is actually in bad shape structurally, rather than enjoying a "new economy."

Here again, let me summarize my position without arguing it, for lack of time and space.⁽⁵⁾ In addition to the political difficulties caused by the collapse of Leninism and the end of the Cold War, capital is running into three structural asymptotes which are cramping irremediably its ability to accumulate capital: 1) the deruralization of the world, ending its ability to check the rising share of expenditure on labor-power as a percentage of world total value created; 2) the ecological limits of toxification and non-renewal of resources, limiting the ability of capital to reduce costs of inputs by continued externalization of these costs; 3) the spreading democratization of the world, evidenced by ever-expanding popular pressures for expenditures on health, education, and lifetime income guarantees, which have created a steady upward pressure of taxes as a share of world value created.

To be sure, capital seeks to reduce these structural pressures all the time. This is what the neo-liberal offensive of the last twenty years has been about. But the long-term curve looks like an upward ratchet. They succeed regularly in reducing these pressures but always to a lesser degree than the next upward bump augments them. In order to fight against this, they preach TINA (there is no alternative), in the attempt to reduce counter-political will. This is also nothing new. Gareth Stedman Jones, seeking to explain relative political stability in late nineteenth-century Great Britain, attributed it to the "apparent inevitability of capitalism" and its "apparent invulnerability."⁽⁶⁾ The First World War undid such sentiments, at least for a long while. They are being resuscitated now, or at least the right is attempting to resuscitate them.

If we are to look at a left strategy for the twenty-first century, we must first remind ourselves what the left strategy has been. The left strategy developed in the second half of the nineteenth century and more or less rejected in the last third of the twentieth century (symbolically 1848-1968) was a very clear one. It was the so-called strategy of two steps: first, gain state power; second, transform the world. Three things should be noted about this strategy. (1) It was probably the only one possible at the time, since movements with any other kind of strategy could be simply crushed by the use of state power. (2) It was adopted by all the major movements: both branches of the world socialist movement, the Social-Democrats and the Communists, as well as the national liberation movements. (3) the strategy failed because it succeeded. All three kinds of movements came to power almost everywhere in the period 1945-1970, and none of them was able to change the world, which led to the profound disillusionment that presently exists with this strategy, and the serious anti-statism that has been its sociopsychological result.⁽⁷⁾

In the period since 1968, there has been an enormous amount of testing of alternative strategies by different movements, old and new, and there has been in addition a rather healthy shift in the relations of antisystemic movements to each other in the sense that the murderous mutual denunciations and vicious struggles of yesteryear have considerably abated, a positive development we have been underestimating. I would like to suggest some lines along which we could develop further the idea of an alternative strategy.

(1) Expand the spirit of Porto Alegre. What is this spirit? I would define it as follows. It is the coming together in a non-hierarchical fashion of the world family of antisystemic movements to push for (a) intellectual clarity, (b) militant actions based on popular mobilization that can be seen as immediately useful in people's lives, (c) attempts to argue for longer-run, more fundamental changes.

There are three crucial elements to the spirit of Porto Alegre. It is a loose structure, more or less approximating what was called by Jesse Jackson "the rainbow alliance." It is a structure which has brought together on a world scale movements from the South and the North, and on more than a merely token basis. It is militant, both intellectually (it is not in search of a global consensus with the spirit of Davos) and politically (in the sense that the movements of 1968 were militant). Of course, we shall have to see whether a loosely-structured world movement can hold together in any meaningful sense, and by what means it can develop the tactics of the struggle. But its very looseness makes it difficult to suppress and encourages the hesitant neutrality of centrist forces.

(2) Use defensive electoral tactics. If the world left engages in loosely-structured, extra-parliamentary militant tactics, this immediately raises the question of our attitude towards electoral processes. Scylla and Charybdis are thinking they're crucial and thinking they're irrelevant. Electoral victories will not transform the world; but they cannot be neglected. They are an essential mechanism of protecting the immediate needs of the world's populations against incursions to achieved benefits. They must be fought in order to minimize the damage that can be inflicted by the world right via control of the world's governments.

This makes, however, electoral tactics a purely pragmatic matter. Once we don't think of obtaining state power as a mode of transforming the world, they are always a matter of the lesser evil, and the decision of what is the lesser evil has to be made case by case and moment by moment. They depend in part on what is the electoral system. A system with winner-takes-all must be manipulated differently than a system with two rounds or a system with proportional representation. But the general guiding rule has to be the "plural left," the current slogan in France, which in Latin America has been called the frente amplio. There are many different party and sub-party traditions amongst the world left. Most of these traditions are relics of another era, but many people still vote according to them. Since state elections are a pragmatic matter, it is crucial to create alliances that respect these traditions, aiming for the 51% that counts pragmatically. But no dancing in the streets, when we win! Victory is merely a defensive tactic.

(3) Push democratization unceasingly. The most popular demand on the states everywhere is "more" - more education, more health, more guaranteed lifetime income. This is not only popular; it is immediately useful in people's lives. And it tightens the squeeze on the possibilities of the endless accumulation of capital. These demands should be pushed loudly, continuously, and everywhere. There cannot be too much.

To be sure, expanding all these "welfare state" functions always raises questions of efficiency of expenditures, of corruption, of creating overpowerful and unresponsive bureaucracies. These are all questions we should be ready to address, but they should never lessen the basic demand of more, much more.

Popular movements should not spare the left-of-center governments they have elected from these demands. Just because it is a friendlier government than an outright right government does not mean that we should pull our punches. Pressing friendly governments pushes rightwing opposition forces to the center-left. Not pushing them pushes center-left governments to the center-right. While there may be occasional special circumstances to obviate these truisms, the general rule on democratization is more, much more.

4) Make the liberal center fulfil its theoretical preferences. This is otherwise known as forcing the pace of liberalism. The liberal center notably seldom means what it says, or practices what it preaches. Take some obvious themes, say, liberty. The liberal center used to denounce the U.S.S.R. regularly because it didn't permit free emigration. But of course the other side of free emigration is free immigration. There's no value in being allowed to leave a country unless you can get in somewhere else. We should push for open frontiers.

The liberal center regularly calls for freer trade, freer enterprise, keeping the government out of decision-making by entrepreneurs. The other side of that is that entrepreneurs who fail in the market should not be salvaged. They take the profits when they succeed; they should take the losses when they fail. It is often argued that saving the companies is saving jobs. But there are far cheaper ways of saving jobs - pay for unemployment insurance, retraining, and even starting job opportunities. But none of this needs involve salvaging the debts of the failing entrepreneur.

The liberal center regularly insists that monopoly is a bad thing. But the other side of that is abolishing or grossly limiting patents. The other side of that is not involving the government in protecting industries against foreign competition. Will this hurt the working classes in the core zones? Well, not if money and energy is spent on trying to achieve greater convergence of world wage rates.

The details of the proposition are complex and need to be discussed. The point however is not to let the liberal center get away with its rhetoric and reaping the rewards of that, while not paying the costs of its proposals. Furthermore, the true political mode of neutralizing centrist opinion is to appeal to its ideals, not its interests, and calling the claims on the rhetoric is a way of appealing to the ideals rather than the interests of the centrist elements.

Finally, we should always bear in mind that a good deal of the benefits of democratization are not available to the poorest strata, or not available to the same degree, because of the difficulties they have in navigating the bureaucratic hurdles. Here I return to the 30-year-old proposition of Cloward and Piven that one should "explode the rolls," that is, mobilize in the poorest communities so that they take full advantage of their legal rights.⁽⁸⁾

5) Make anti-racism the defining measure of democracy. Democracy is about treating all people equally - in terms of power, in terms of distribution, in terms of opportunity for personal fulfillment. Racism is the primary mode of distinguishing between those who have rights (or more rights) and the others who have no rights or less rights. Racism both defines the groups and simultaneously offers a specious justification for the practice. Racism is not a secondary issue, either on a national or a world scale. It is the mode by which the liberal center's promise of universalistic criteria is systematically, deliberately, and constantly undermined.

Racism is pervasive throughout the existing world-system. No corner of the globe is without it, and without it as a central feature of local, national, and world politics. In her speech to the Mexican National Assembly on Mar. 29, Commandant Esther of the EZLN said:

The Whites (ladinos) and the rich people make fun of us indigenous women for our clothing, for our speech, for our language, for our way of praying and healing, and for our color. which is the color of the earth that we work.⁽⁹⁾

She went on to plead in favor of the law that would guarantee autonomy to the indigenous peoples, saying:

When the rights and the culture of the indigenous peoples are recognized, ...the law will begin to bring together its hour and the hour of the indigenous peoples.... And if today we are indigenous women, tomorrow we will the others, men and women, who are dead, persecuted, or imprisoned because of their difference.

6) Move towards decommodification. The crucial thing wrong with the capitalist system is not private ownership, which is simply a means, but commodification which is the essential element in the accumulation of capital. Even today, the capitalist world-system is not entirely commodified, although there are efforts to make it so. But we could in fact move in the other direction. Instead of turning universities and hospitals (whether state-owned or private) into profit-making institutions, we should be thinking of how we can transform steel factories into non-profit institutions, that is, self-sustaining structures that pay dividends to no one. This is the face of a more hopeful future, and in fact could start now.

7) Remember always that we are living in the era of transition from our existing world-system to something different. This means several things. We should not be taken in by the rhetoric of globalization or the inferences about TINA. Not only do alternatives exist, but the only alternative that doesn't exist is continuing with our present structures.

There will be immense struggle over the successor system, which shall continue for 20-30-50 years, and whose outcome is intrinsically uncertain. History is on no one's side. It depends on what we do. On the other hand, this offers a great opportunity for creative action. During the normal life of an historical system, even great efforts at transformation (so-called "revolutions") have limited consequences since the system creates great pressures to return to its equilibrium. But in the chaotic ambiance of a structural transition, fluctuations become wild, and even small pushes can have great consequences in favoring one branch or the other of the bifurcation. If ever agency operates, this is the moment.

The key problem is not organization, however important that be. The key problem is lucidity. The forces who wish to change the system so that nothing changes, so that we have a different system that is equally or more hierarchical and polarizing, have money, energy, and intelligence at their disposal. They will dress up the fake changes in attractive clothing. And only careful analysis will keep us from falling into their many traps.

They will use slogans we cannot disagree with - say, human rights. But they will give it content which includes a few elements that are highly desirable with many others that perpetuate the "civilizing mission" of the powerful and privileged over the non-civilized others. We must carefully dissect their proposals and call their bluffs. If an international judicial procedure against genocide is desirable, then it is only desirable if it is applicable to everyone, not merely the weak. If nuclear armaments, or biological warfare, is dangerous, even barbaric, then there are no safe possessors of such weapons.

In the inherent uncertainty of the world, at its moments of historic transformation, the only plausible strategy for the world left is one of intelligent, militant pursuit of its basic objective - the achievement of a relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian world. Such a world is possible. It is by no means certain that it will come into being. But then it is by no means impossible.

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1. Talk at Socialist Scholars Conference, New York City, April 13, 2001.

2. It was published as: "A Left Politics for the 21st Century? or, Theory and Praxis Once Again," New Political Science, XXII, 2, June 2000, 143-159.

3. In addition to the article in New Political Science, see Utopistics, or Historical Choices for the Twenty-first Century, New York: New Press, 1998.

4. I argue this in detail in After Liberalism, New York: New Pres, 1995.

5. But see, for the case laid out, "Globalization or an Age of Transition? A Long-Term View of the Trajectory of the World-System," International Sociology, XV, 2, June, 2000, 249-265.

6. Languages of Class, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982, p. 74.

7. See this analysis in greater detail in Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins & Immanuel Wallerstein, Antisystemic Movements, London: Verso, 1989, plus the essay by the same authors, "1989: A Continuation of 1968," Review, XV, 2 Spring 1992, 221-242.

8. Frances Fox Piven & Richard A. Cloward conclude their book on public welfare thus: "In the absence of fundamental economic reforms, therefore, we take the position that the explosion of the rolls is the true relief reform, that it should be defended, and expanded. Even now, hundreds and thousands of impoversihed families remain who are elegible for assistance but who receive no aid at all" Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, New York, Pantheon, 1971, p. 348 (italics in original).

9. <http://www.ezln.org/marcha/20010320.htm>