errorRebelion: Petras Essays in English

Socialist Values and Culture

January 4, 2002

By James Petras


A discussion of socialist values and socialist culture begins with a discussion of the values and interests of the socialist intellectuals. "Values" can be understood in two ways: as verbal or written expression of ideals and as the practices in everyday life and in political activity. This distinction is essential for several reasons. For example, in the current world the U.S. and E.U. justify their military activity by referring to their defense of "democratic values." The "values" serve as ideology to mask conquest and exploitation. The best indicator of values is practice. Values can only be understood by examining the real behavior of nation-states, classes and individuals.

History teaches us that the values of many left intellectuals are contradictory, and change with their political and social situation. In opposition and exclusion, intellectuals embrace egalitarian and democratic values in theory and sometimes in practice. However, once integrated into the power structure their expressed socialist values are contradicted by their embrace of material rewards, social status and positions of power.

The distinction between mental and manual labor is an important source of class distinctions which can be reproduced in a socialist society.

In political and social movements, intellectuals "monopolize" knowledge, by only inter- acting among themselves, thus creating a hierarchy of decision making based on the "informed" elites and the "uneducated" mass base.

The style of pedagogy of left intellectuals is an important determinant of whether a socialist culture or a new class society will emerge in the post revolutionary period. A basic distinction is between intellectuals of the desk or intellectuals of the field. Intellectuals in the field educate in the working and living context of the workers and peasants ,intellectuals of the desk educate in the University or in the bourgeois urban centers.

What does it mean to be a intellectual of the field? To muddy your boots, to swat mosquitoes, to eat out of the common pot, to listen to questions, to accept criticism. To adjust theories to workers experience. To adapt to changes as well as to defend principles.

In a socialist society values have a dialectical relationship to socio-economic interests. Housing ,recreational facilities, health, education, sport, cultural activities, and livable income are available to all and are equally distributed: equality of material conditions and opportunities are basic values of a socialist society.

Socialist values include cooperation, generosity, individual and collective creativity, personal dignity, solidarity in family, neighborhood, class and nation. Responsibility in the performance of work and community duties, and active participation in workplace and community assemblies guide the pursuit of socio-economic interests. Thus class interests define the immediate content of a socialist society, while values direct the method, direction and spirit in the pursuit of those interests.

A revolutionary in a socialist society is defined by their practice in everyday life- in work, community, family and nation and the spirit with which these practices are realized.

Practice in everyday life means to be consequential fulfilling tasks agreed to by the collective - in both quality and quantity. Practice means to equitably share with workers, neighbors and family members the everyday chores. Practice means kindness and care for the incapacitated, and firm discipline toward anti-social transgressors (thieves, swindlers, etc.) and exemplary punishment to violent criminals.

Affection and love toward those with whom one shares an intimate relation. Hatred and hostility toward those imperial powers who would invade, conquer and destroy a socialist society.

A revolutionary is one who "revolutionizes" socialist society, renews ideas and practices in the evolving context. Socialist society is dynamic, it evolves not only out of capitalist society but from its earliest "heroic" stages to its "institutional" phase, and beyond. New cultural, family and individual norms, interests and values emerge and may conflict with early institutional practices. The tensions and conflicts should not be repressed, nor should new norms be uncritically accepted. A revolutionary should in open, free assemblies, debate and discuss new family, gender, age codes, while conserving the essential core values of equality, assembly democracy and collective ownership of the means of production.

The construction of a revolutionary militant based on humanitarian values is realized through example not preaching. When leaders teach solidarity but secure privileges, they produce cynicism among the bases. The ideological and practical coherence of leaders is a key element. The second is the extension of revolutionary practices from public spaces to private household. As one Brazilian militant complained, "our husbands are Che Guervaras in public and Pinochets in the house." Humanitarian values are learned not only from practice, but from open debates, the study of past experiences and reading and discussion of texts. The practice of humanitarian values is defined by the parameters of class relations and class struggle. The first priority is to act humanely among the comrades, family and friends and to resist the inhumanity of oppressors and exploiters. Misplaced humanitarianism can encourage aggression and destroy the fabric of social relations. Humanitarianism must be tempered by issues of protection of the socialist regime, the lives and livelihood of this and future generations. Universal, classless humanitarianism presumes the absence of violent antagonism to the new socialist society.

Within the boundaries of socialist society, humanitarian values are taught in schools, families and in the media; it is taught in children's stories, television cartoons and sports. Most of all it is expressed in state budgets by allocating funds for the disabled, children, elderly, etc. Incentives and symbolic rewards at the neighborhood, workplace, regional and national level for exemplary behavior reinforce collective humanitarian behavior.

While individual humanitarian acts in dramatic circumstances should be recognized, more important is the everyday occurrences which create the humanitarian culture. While humanitarian behavior is central to a socialist society, so is individual creativity, competitiveness, excellence in performance, and the right for time and place for self-indulgence. Socialist persons are not saints devoted always and everywhere to humanitarianism. Writers compete with themselves to improve their writing; boxers and runners compete to win their matches; workers take time to go fishing and not to attend all workplace, neighborhood, solidarity, etc. meetings. There is a tension between "sainthood" and "selfishness" which needs to be addressed by each individual recognizing the needs of the human being to be humane through solidarity with others and fulfilling their personal desires. Humanitarianism cannot be forced; anti-humane actions should be dissuaded. Civility and solidarity are learned, internalized and practiced best in a socialist society where people are not alienated from each other in their social relations. Under capitalism, many work and few benefit; where elites talk and masses listen; slogans substitute for analysis and debates. Under capitalism humane values are compartmentalized in certain spaces and time while inhumane values are practiced everywhere.

There are powerful reasons for believing in the possibility of living in a socialist society. First of all because even in the present society, we see and experience examples of socialist practices and values in a variety of political contexts. In everyday life, there are numerous examples of working class and peasant solidarity, sharing of resources and cooperative action.

There are numerous large scale social political movements today which are advancing collectivist values, practicing participatory democracy and the egalitarian distribution of goods and services. The "seeds" of a socialist society are found in the self-convoked popular uprisings of the unemployed and middle class in Argentina; in the mass popular peasant and landless workers movements in Brazil, the workers and peasant movements in Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay, the Zapatista Indian movement on Mexico. The growing anti-capitalist (anti- globalization) movements in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America embody socialist values. The "consciousness movements" reject competitive, consumerist practices and ideologies as well as the prolonged, authoritarian workday, adulterated food and the mainstream electoral political parties.

The micro-centers of socialist communities found within the MST cooperatives in Brazil, the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, in the demilitarized zones of Colombia provide important points of references for an eventual socialist society.

What is clear however is that socialist values can and must begin in the practice and teaching before a socialist society comes into existence.

Socialism is a process not an event: the values and culture involve a continuous inter- action between individual and collective in a multiplicity of spheres of life over time. We all come out of capitalist society, we are all affected to a greater or lesser degree by capitalist culture and values. Struggles and movements are spaces within which to teach and learn socialist values, they are not an automatic result. The transformation of property forms, provides a context for the transformation of social relations - it does not automatically produce it. The question of the administration, goals, structure and priorities of collective property can only lead to a socialist society if the collectivities which decide are infused with socialist values.

The transformation of social relations of production is an important step toward the creation of self-managed socialism. However, relations of productive are only one aspect of social relations. Transformations in the spheres of family, race, gender, ethnic and personal relations are necessary in themselves and also to ensure that every social strata participates in the self-management of production.

Today these social transformations and struggles take place in the society at large and within the spaces of social-political movements and collectivist communities. The process of creating a socialist society is long and challenging. But the examples of collective action, solidarity, workplace assemblies, gender equality in the living experiences today, with all their contradictory features, is reason for hope. We do not strive for a socialist utopia of individual thinkers, but for a socialist society derived from the collective practices and egalitarian values we experiences in our struggles today.

How about a "socialism" that isn't so total -- so much like an all consuming religion? Maybe that's a possibility.

In the past, people calling themselves socialists have advocated for eugenics, rapid modernization, elimination of religion, total collectivization of all property, been anti-gay, and numerous other "bad things" done in the name of the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

What about a limited socialism that envisions the following -- that governments are created to serve the needs of individuals above business interests, that war is to be reduced and eliminated, and that government should be small and spread out into local councils to encourage participation by the governed.

The state wouldn't seek to address all the issues of alienation (both psychological, and what Marx meant). It would not seek to address the issues of family, marriage, sex, etc. It would not try to mobilize society into a big machine for massive engines of production.

Maybe I'm dreaming.

This is very nice poetry, the nicest of which is how everyone would be nice in a socialist culture.

The most functional script here is the immediate critique of the roll of intelectuals in present society.
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"There are numerous large scale social political movements today which are advancing collectivist values, practicing participatory democracy and the egalitarian distribution of goods and services." There are also numerous examples of this among the ruling class, like gold and platinum card visas that give their holders credit benefits. And also corporate welfare which is the same thing.

I would argue that the debate isnt about some future morality, it should be about what is the role of government, or better yet, a collective, in the present.

Its interesting that James PEtras has a post revolutionary world where the only thing that has changed is morals, not class distinctions. Workers go fishing at nicer ponds.

"Blue is the color of my true loves hair, in the morning, when she rise, thats the time, I love her best."

Petras's piece reads like a Guevarista ode to the "New Man" that could have been written 30 years ago. What's missing from this picture? There's no analysis of why the left has so wretchedly failed since then.

I think part of the problem is with "the masses" in affluent countries. Even though conditions of daily existence are becoming more and more regimented, less and less free, whether in terms of political freedom or just leisure time, nonetheless, most of us believe that we've never had it better. Or, even if things might be worse than the past (pre-Berlin Wall fall, pre-rightwing neoliberal retrenchment), there's nothing to be done about it, because this is as good as it get's anywhere in the world. The alternative is Mexico City (which the "First World" is looking more and more like anyway). "The only thing worse than being exploited by the capitalists is not being exploited," goes the refrain. Better to be a wage slave than one of the disposable millions, like the street kids who are "socially cleansed" by death squads in Brazilian cities, or the homeless in our own cities (who are shot or beat up by cops, or told to "move along" and have their belongings thrown in the garbage).

This poverty of vision is something that socialists and the left generally must take a lot of blame for. Until the left develops a vision that includes LESS of a lot things, instead of just more: LESS work, LESS authoritarian BS, less complexity, there's no hope for popular interest in
what the left has to say.

Petras seems dimly aware of this, when he assures us that the "socialist man" is not a "saint." But this is cold comfort. The TV-mesmerized masses of the First World are not going to buy into his vision of unrelenting toil and noble sacrifice for humanity, in exchange for a few days off fishing. There hardly worse off personally under such a regime than the capitalist one we're ruled by now. "The masses," especially in the First World, have to be convinced that socialism (or anarchism, or whatever alternative is presented) will actually make life BETTER for THEM, and here and now, not in some distant future.
Since we can hardly promise them that any future social order will make them richer, as in better provided with more useless consumer trinkets, than present-day capitalism, which has been a ferociously powerful engine of (misdirected) production, we had better have something else.

What is that "something else"? The promise of progressive and radical politics, in the rich countries of the world, has to be a more humane future, where life is less frenetic, less anxiety-ridden, more leisurely, more convivial than currently lived under extreme capitalism. That means that there also must be more room for "frivolity," for simple living and simple enjoyment. It was impossible to detect such a future in what Petras wrote. It sounded more like Churchill's "blood, sweat, and tears," notwithstanding his weak attempts at mitigation. The Situationists and some others among the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s understood these things. Their rhetoric was much different. And it is their influence which is still most strongly felt in the radical left of the First World of today, while Che Guevara's "New Man" is viewed as little more than a misty-eyed and wrong-headed anachronism. Why is Petras so little informed by this sensibility, and his prose consequently so bloody anachronistic? It is just this sort of dunderheaded anachronism in someone as presumably well informed as Petras which makes me despair of a hopeful future for progressive politics.

great article, the revolutionary developments being achieved in the struggles of Colombia, Brasil and Mexico merit close attention for our understanding and study of a socialist society. Such praxis (revolutionary practice) is practical politics and economics at grassroots level.

Viva FARC.

Reginald: The "revolutionary developments" in Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil bear little or no resemblance to each other. The first is a country that has been wracked by senseless internecine warfare, a war of "all against all," for some half a century. A war in which there is little to choose from between the different "armed elements," a war manifestly imposed against the overwhelming popular desire for peace among the majority of people. The second country is one in which no such war is taking place, but rather, the same constant, low-level strife and daily usurpations typical of capitalism worldwide nowadays. Mexico seems to be in a holding pattern in which the dissident elements are not facing wholesale annihilation by deathsquads on a daily basis a la Colombia, but nor have they managed to make any real headway against rampaging neoliberal "globalization" that seems to everyday sell a bit more of the country off. The last country you cite is the only one in this hemisphere, maybe in the world, where significant mass movements seem to hold real promise of lasting change. And MST and the Worker's Party and the other major social movements there look nothing at all like the Guevarista model that seems to inspire Petras. Instead, they remind me more of the spirit that animated the best among the New Left, with a strongly antidoctrinaire, direct-democratic, and anarchist flavor.