Rose Coloured Deception
A letter from 2029 – not likely!
Written By: Bob Briton
Former Greens Senator Scott Ludlam recently penned a fantasy piece (1) for the Guardian Australian edition wherein he wrote to readers from the year 2029. It relays the fictitious good news that current crises have resolved themselves for the better some time between now and the chosen future date. “Love letter from 2029: I want you to know we did it, we turned the ship around” carries the encouraging message that the many movements and actions taking place around the world in the face of massive ruling class opposition have won through to build a better world – not a Utopia, but a much better place nevertheless.
Scott Ludlam was a fairly consistent advocate of progressive change in the federal parliament with many admirers and his resignation from the Senate during the dual citizenship saga as he held citizenship of both New Zealand and Australia, saddened many. Many would love to believe his “letter” with its message for activists to just keep doing what they are doing and that it will all work out for the best but, unfortunately, his message of “hope” is not new and like its forerunners throughout the last century or longer. It is bad advice for people seeking to bin capitalism and build a more nurturing and sustainable alternative.
True to his Greens roots, his post-capitalist society is most definitely not socialist.
“He claims its (Socialism) creation after heroic revolutionary struggles mistakenly saved capitalism and unleashed it in a stronger form”
“It’s kind of weird that this is all unfolding almost exactly a hundred years after the 20th century great depression, but some form of deeply embedded collective memory held us back from making the same mistakes twice. Instead of using the tools of central planning and socialism to save capitalism and unleash it in an even stronger form, we’re using them to dismantle its predatory architectures and provide a dignified life for everyone,” Ludlam writes.
Socialism is simply central, presumably bureaucratic and uncaring planning, according to Ludlam. He claims its creation after heroic revolutionary struggles mistakenly saved capitalism and unleashed it in a stronger form. Is this a reference to China’s embrace not of socialism but of capitalism and its growing power and global influence? Maybe, but the disdain for socialism is clear.
So what will Ludlam’s post-capitalist world look like and how will it magically avoid being neither capitalism nor socialism?
“A friend of mine used to say that in a crisis, the first person with a plan on the table wins. For the first time in memory, the first people with a plan didn’t look or sound anything like the people whose plans we’d been following since colonisation. This was something different; a post-capitalist uprising, leaderless and somehow everywhere, bigger and richer than our brittle nationalisms could contain. A global grassroots network called the Progressive International serving as a mediator, clearinghouse and organising lattice for social movements all over the world to link arms in common cause,” Ludlam writes.
“All the ideas that had been subsisting at the margins – universal income support alongside universal healthcare, education and housing – those were the first plans on the table in a crisis, and so they prevailed,” the former Senator continues.
So the movement will be global, grassroots and leaderless with no white saviours. Ludlam happily overlooks that fact that many socialist revolutions of the second half of the last century were carried out in the global south by Communists who were people of colour. Gains made by workers in the capitalist countries were made easier by the slightly more conciliatory attitude of the capitalist ruling class faced with the strength of the socialist world. With the demise of this threat, it’s no more Mr Nice Guy and the intervening decades since this collapse have been ones of a “grab back” of historic gains. The Yellow Vests, the Occupy movement, the Indignados, XR and all the others have not progressed the cause of progress one inch by comparison with the world Communist movement. Why the confidence in this latest generation of “leaderless” movements?
Not to worry, the Progressive International will step into the guiding role once carried out by Marxist-Leninist parties. So who are the people who make up this leaderless leadership, and what do they want?
According to its website, the Progressive International(2) is:
Democratic, where all people have the power to shape their institutions and their societies.
Decolonised, where all nations determine their collective destiny free from oppression.
Just, that redresses inequality in our societies and the legacy of our shared history.
Egalitarian, that serves the interests of the many, and never the few.
Liberated, where all identities enjoy equal rights, recognition, and power.
Solidaristic, where the struggle of each is the struggle of all.
Sustainable, that respects planetary boundaries and protects frontline communities.
Ecological, that brings human society into harmony with its habitat.
Peaceful, where the violence of war is replaced by the diplomacy of peoples.
Post-capitalist, that rewards all forms of labour while abolishing the cult of work.
Prosperous, that eradicates poverty and invests in a future of shared abundance.
Plural, where difference is celebrated as strength.
Somehow the new society will be prosperous while eschewing the “cult of work”. Even more interesting is that it won’t be capitalist but avoids the fundamental question of the ownership of property, including the means of production. Taking sides in a meaningful way on that question would risk putting this group in the camp of the reviled socialists and communists, so capitalism by another dishonest name would survive. For decades social democrats and liberals have disguised their essential support for the survival of capitalism. For example, the question of how people’s labour power will not end up a commodity for which there may or may not be a buyer is left untouched. Another hot potato is the question of land, fundamental to Indigenous and other peoples if they are to survive on this ravaged planet.
And who are the current non-leaders of the Progressive International? I don’t recognise many but I’m the first to admit I’m not well read in literature expressing wishful thinking. Among them are Canadian author Naomi Klein, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, anarchist icon Noam Chomsky, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, and several others(3). The ones we know are strong on critique of “corporate dominance” and very light in the alternatives department.
Somehow, the future will be ushered in by the mobilisation and networking of the currently marginalised peoples of the world. It will involve school kids taking strike action and the Indigenous peoples struggling for land and relief from the institutionalised racism that enforces their dispossession. These voices will “move to the centre” and the corporate media will be bankrupted as a result of their accumulated shame. The new society will have no need to seize the property of the corporations or build the capacity to save itself from counter attack. Presumably, the nervous breakdown of capitalism and its state structures will be a simultaneous, global phenomenon somehow.
There is no doubt students and Indigenous people will be important components of the movement to smash capitalism but it is doubtful that they will be inspired by a program that looks like the list of supposed objectives that dishonest social democrats have been pedalling for a century and a half now. The additional embrace of Indigenous values and aspirations is not credible. Somebody should remind the Progressive International that many Indigenous peoples lived in communistic societies and where these haven’t been destroyed, they are striving to maintain those values and unfortunately for Ludlam, structures and.. leaders!
“The only way the new society can be assured of survival is if the major imperialist countries themselves have successful socialist revolutions – a project for which the Progressive International has no enthusiasm”
So this is the latest of the “new” visions for social change. Much like the lessons taught by Lenin on the Mensheviks and all the other social democrat critics of the working class taking actual state power. It sounds like the age of Aquarius that inspired the hippy movement and its promise to usher in a new era of peace and love. There was Tony Blair and others advocating a “Third Way” and the idea of “Socialism for the 21st Century” inspired by movements for change in Latin America.
The truth is that all these forces helped in the undermining of actual socialism, an enduring factor that took the combined efforts of the imperialist countries to erode ideologically (often using ideas not dissimilar to the Progressive International) and defeat. The only way the new society can be assured of survival is if the major imperialist countries themselves have successful socialist revolutions – a project for which the Progressive International has no enthusiasm.
I hope that in 2029 we can look back on a period of successful struggles that threw up a leadership with an actual plan for building the real and inevitable alternative to capitalism – socialism. I hope we don’t waste too much time with fads and false leads. Time is ticking on the problems this stinking system has thrown up.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jul/30/love-letter-from-2029-i-want-you-to-know-we-did-it-we-turned-the-ship-around?CMP=share_btn_tw&fbclid=IwAR2alAOcrvna_OcWQhTMxh5MNmakbi30P6HomhoUBqNs1imobzWcCCyvTzs
(2) https://progressive.international/about/en
(3) https://progressive.international/council