FUTURE VISIONS

Exactly ten years ago -- Spring 1992, Volume 56, No. 1 -- SCIENCE & SOCIETY published a special issue with the title: "Socialism: Alternative Visions and Models." That project presented a spectrum of views, including market socialism and (what could be called) socialist pessimism; it also included earlier efforts by two of the participants in the current issue. (The seven participants here are five individuals, plus two two-person teams.)

The first socialism issue appeared in the shadow of the great collapse: the demise of the 20th-century "state socialist" regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Now, a decade further on, the need for a strong, theoretically grounded socialism is greater than ever. The Marxist tradition simply must be part of the answer to TINA ("There Is No Alternative"), if the flood-gates impeding massive worldwide resistance to capitalist polarization and domination are to be opened. And to this end, a vision of socialism must be developed that goes beyond a pale copy of the present, in which "the market" serves as a mask for oppressive and dangerously irresponsible social relations (see "Editorial Perspectives," Winter 2001-2002).

This issue is therefore based on a consensus: socialism cannot be founded on the "invisible hand," which has in fact become a quite visible capitalist fist since the concept was first promulgated in 1776. It must embrace participatory, democratic coordination and principled methods of evaluation and choice, adequate to the goal of human development and fulfillment that is the ultimate basis of socialist thought and activity. And it must begin to face the challenge to show how a true socialist alternative can actually work -- without, of course, pretending at this stage to be able to draw precise blueprints or detailed specifications that can only be the result of future history.

Many questions remain: how to distinguish between useful (with caution, one might even say "scientific") and utopian projections (using "utopian" here only in its negative sense); how to work out the balance between central and decentral decision making; how to make full use of local and tacit knowledge; and so on. These questions, and more, are debated in this issue. The issue's format is uniquely interactive, consisting of seven presentations -- each devoted to the elaboration of an answer to the question, What are the core features of a participatory and humane economy? -- with associated comments and replies, The resulting give-and-take is a rich source for continued exploration, and we invite further rounds of discussion, both from supporters of the overall consensus on which the issue is based, and from socialist and non-socialist skeptics!

Our deepest thanks, as always, to Guest Editor Pat Devine for his vision, and for his patient and thoughtful labors of negotiated coordination among the seven participants! He has done a great service in conceiving and developing this project, and SCIENCE & SOCIETY is proud to be the vehicle for its dissemination.

D. L.

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Building Socialism Theoretically: Alternatives to Capitalism and the Invisible Hand

INTRODUCTION

The demise of the Soviet Union was, at least temporarily, an incalculable setback to the socialist movement. Non-socialists saw it as a vindication of their arguments against the desirability, even possibility, of socialism. Socialists, including those who had long denied that the Soviet Union could be considered a socialist system, suffered a loss of confidence. Many came to the conclusion that the vision of a society qualitatively different from capitalism had proved an illusion. Underlying this was a realization that the epoch initiated by the Bolshevik revolution, in which the Soviet Union was seen as seeking to construct an alternative economic system to capitalism based on central planning, had come to an end. This posed the question, if not Soviet central planning, which had at least lasted for six decades, then what?

Until confidence in the possibility of an economic alternative to capitalism is recreated there is little prospect of a revival of the socialist movement, as opposed to movements of resistance which are inevitable and once again growing. Hence the overall title of this symposium: "Building Socialism Theoretically." However, the slowly developing discussion of socialist economic organization has been, and continues to be, dominated by models of market socialism. It is true that in recent years a debate has begun around the case for and against market socialism but there has been little systematic discussion of different non-market socialist models. Hence the subtitle of this symposium: "Alternatives to Capitalism and the Invisible Hand."

The contributors to the symposium share a commitment to democratic participatory socialism. There are many other points of agreement among all or some of them. However, there are also disagreements, over detail but also over more fundamental principles and values. In order to promote debate and interchange the following procedure was adopted.⁽¹⁾ Once the papers had been written, each paper was commented on by two of the other contributors and the original authors then wrote a reply to the comments.⁽²⁾ Apart from the commitment to democracy and participation, and of course the initial rejection of market socialism, no attempt has been made to present agreed positions. We hope the symposium will contribute to the discussion necessary as part of the rebuilding of the socialist movement.

PAT DEVINE
Guest Editor

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1. At an earlier stage contributors took part in panels at the Socialist Scholars' Conference in New York, March 1999 and the URPE program at the Allied Social Sciences Aassociation Conference in Boston, January 2000.

2. To avoid excessive duplication all references by a given participant in the symposium, whether in the paper, comments on others or replies to comments, have been placed together in the reference list attached to that author's paper.