If it is the mass of commodities by which the wealth of a capitalist society is measured, in what way is the wealth of a “good society” beyond capitalism measured? How does it appear? Karl Marx began his main work with the following sentence: “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities’, its unit being a single commodity.” Defining socialism thus means defining its central contradictions. The value system of this socialism relates equally to the values of emancipation of the individual and to the communal development of all in solidarity. Each and every one is thus given the chance to live a full, rich life. The actors and institutions of socialism mediate between this sky and this earth. Freedom, equality, and solidarity are its fixed stars in the “sky”. The communist foundations form the common “earth” of this society. As such, socialism actually represents the path of survival that goes beyond liberalism and old forms of communism. I view the socialism of the twenty-first century as a way of mediating between liberalism and communism on a new institutional basis and with new property and power relations, in a new political form, on a new basis of values. Until now, it has not able to combine these both currents into a new Left. The Left is split between those tending towards a left social liberalism and a Left tending towards a kind of closed social nationalism. One reason why the Left in Europe and the US is weak is that, at least for the moment, it is not able to deal properly with the class-based contradiction of neoliberal capitalism and lacks (not least) a proper concept of socialism.
#Democracy 3 socialism free#
Precisely because socialism has always been understood as a society free of contradictions, the socialist movement - and with it the Communist movement - often became entangled in precisely those contradictions that a socialist movement must have, and ultimately fell victim to them. What is special about the new approaches is that, unlike in the past, they are able to understand socialism as an organic system of contradictions.
This article is based on a presentation given at the conference “The Values of Socialism”, organized by the Institute of Philosophy at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Hanoi Office on 2–3 November 2022. His recent publications include Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution & Metaphysics of Domination (Palgrave, 2019) and, together with Jörn Schütrumpf, Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Marxist at the Limits of Marxism (Palgrave, 2021). Michael Brie is chair of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Academic Advisory Board. Digitalization with Chinese Characteristics.Social-Ecological Transformation and Climate Justice.Infrastructure, Social Rights, and Social Justice.Antifascism and the Politics of Remembrance.
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