Socialism/Communism: Dilemma of the Past

As we advance in a 21st century which, even more than the 20th in Eric Hobsbawm’s celebrated formula, will deserve the name “Age of Extremes” (extreme violence, extreme inequalities, extreme climactic changes, extreme population movements), we feel an urgent need to critically and historically assess the categories which made it possible to think the political in collective terms. Among these are, prominently, the twin notions of socialism and communism, with a very different genealogy, but combined in the discourse of anticapitalist policies of the last two centuries. At times almost identified (or thought as successive phases of a single “transition process”), at times sharply opposed to one another (as reform and revolution, state and autonomy, determinism and utopia), they gave rise to a permanent dilemma. The great catastrophe of 20th century “State socialism” – ironically led by “communist parties” – seemed to have bury the disputes for good, together with such issues as economic planning, worker’s democracy, redistributive justice. But the looming crisis of contemporary “absolute” capitalism unexpectedly brings the tension back, albeit rather in the form a strong alternative: “Good bye Mister Socialism!” (in the name of the common), or “welcome back, socialist alternative” to neo-liberal policies. The class will read texts and discuss arguments which make it possible to cartography the landscape.