Reflecting, in Friday's Guardian, on the long-range significance of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Martin Kettle homes in eventually on two lessons. With reference to different variants of the socialist 'inheritance', to alternative models, if you like, of a socialist society, Martin speaks of them having all collapsed: 'They didn't work. People did not want them.' He continues:
Forty years on from the Russian tanks, the eclipse of socialism is now as general in the west as it is in the former Soviet lands further east - perhaps even more so. Most people who consider themselves to be on the left - whatever that really means in the post-1989 world - are aware at some level of this reality. Not enough of them, though, admit to it or what it implies for serious public politics. Even today, far too few of those who admit the reality seem to be prepared to think through what a credible, sellable, historically aware but modern progressive project that could really - as opposed to optimistically - command sustained majority support in our post-socialist world should consist of.
They didn't work and people didn't want them. I'll take the second of these two conclusions first.
If people don't want it, there will be no socialism. If people don't want it, there can be no socialism. For democracy is not just a political means of achieving socialism; it is the sole legitimate political form of socialism. This is because at the core of the socialist idea is the principle of a self-organizing populace, not subject to the dictates or interests of any exploitative, oppressor class, but freely associated and pursuing, each person, his or her own course, on the basis and within the limits of some agreed area of common ground and public good. Many on the left were perfectly familiar with this core principle before the implosion of Soviet-type regimes after 1989. But many on the left were not. And some of them still are not. You can tell this from the fact that the left continues to be a home, a friendly home, to those who make excuses for tyrannical regimes and anti-democratic movements. All the more reason for insisting on that first conclusion. As things are, people do not want socialism. If they don't and unless and until they do, there will be no socialism. Socialists must accept that; indeed we must insist on it.
I turn now to Martin's first conclusion: they didn't work. It's clear, in context, that he's saying something more general here than that socialism on the Soviet-type model didn't work. He's saying that there are no credible models for a viable socialism. And this is the point that interests me. For note that Martin as good as says, too, that we have no persuasive model yet - after the eclipse of socialism - for any broad alternative progressive project such as could come to command majority support. One must suppose, since he speaks in this connection of a project for a post-socialist world, that he's referring to a project for a better kind of capitalism - reformed, humanized, less unequal, more just, environmentally responsible, or whatever. But, according to his own lights, this is still to be thought through, democratically striven for, presumably tested by political trial and error, approximated, amended. That we do not already have the shape of this project, much less its outcome, is not therefore a conclusive argument against putting our hopes in it and our mental and moral energies towards making it a reality. That capitalism has existed for some long time in forms unreceptive (to put it mildly) to projects for softening inequality and promoting social justice, and in forms accommodating huge swathes of poverty, overwork and other excesses of exploitation, none of these facts, according to the logic of Martin's argument, rules out the aim of a much improved capitalism, one that the left might one day be content with.
Why not, then, the same indulgence towards a democratic socialist project - one to be thought through, democratically striven for, tested by political trial and error, and so forth? And only ever based on what can secure an electoral mandate, on respecting fundamental rights, on consolidating and furthering achievements already won while trying to improve upon the defects of an economic order that creates huge wealth, but distributes life's opportunities and resources, indeed affects the length of life itself, in ways that are deeply arbitrary?