Whatever else it was, 1989 and what it further presaged should have been a liberation for the Western left - a liberation from the incubus of a model of socialism that, even when qualified as "actually existing" and therefore far from any ideal conception, had discredited the whole idea of socialism in the eyes of many. It may be said that against this potential gain had to be set the loss of a visible alternative to capitalism in a large part of the globe, keeping alive the idea, at least, that alternatives to capitalism were possible. Yet the nature of the alternative on offer and display in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China was itself so rebarbative that whatever the putative theoretical loss in this respect might be, a new opportunity now presented itself for unshackling the programs and visions of the left, and the public reputation of the socialist idea, from an image of societies at once undemocratic, authoritarian, closed, and corrupt.
Twenty years on, it is impossible not to be struck by how that release and the opportunity it held out have been wasted by a substantial section of the left. For many it has turned into an unmooring also from what were valuable strands in the left tradition. So far from progressing intellectually and politically, they have deteriorated, fallen back. A broad post-Stalinist new left - schooled in criticism of the structures and practices and crimes of actually-existing socialism - has also been cut loose since 1989 from the best elements within the Marxist tradition, a tradition that had formerly kept it in touch with universalist assumptions concerning justice, democracy, and human freedom...
These are the opening paragraphs of a short piece I've written for a symposium on 1989 two decades on. The piece continues here. The rest of the symposium, with contributions from Shlomo Avineri, Paul Berman, Anna Seleny and others, can be accessed here.
