Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to present a proposal for the construction of a new society to replace the dying capitalism in the world that contributes to the complete emancipation of humanity from the secular suffering imposed on it since the 12th century by the holders of capital. The construction of a new society becomes an urgent necessity, not only to eliminate the insoluble and gigantic political, economic, social and environmental problems caused by capitalism, but also, given the prospect of this system coming to an end in the mid-21st century when the global profit rate and the growth rate of the World Gross Product will reach zero [1]. This situation shows that the world capitalist system is operating in accordance with the principle of entropy by presenting the universal tendency to evolve into a growing disorder and self-destruction towards its end, which imposes the need for a new society to be implemented throughout the world diametrically opposed to capitalism, that is, socialism, which has been defended and pursued since the 18th century, but different from that built in the Soviet Union and other countries, that is, democratic socialism.
To present the proposal for democratic socialism, the three proposals for socialist revolution and for the construction of socialism that have occurred throughout human history, described below, were analyzed: 1) The construction of socialism with the use of revolutionary violence based on the conceptions of Marx and Engels; 2) The construction of socialism peacefully through the parliamentary route based on the conception of Eduard Bernstein; and 3) The construction of socialism with the conquest of hegemony by the working class in civil society based on Antonio Gramsci’s conception. As will be shown in the following pages, the proposal of Marx and Engels to construction of socialism failed because it failed to fulfill its historic promise to transform the world after the resounding success of socialist revolutions in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Eduard Bernstein’s proposal for the construction of socialism failed because it proved impossible to carry out a peaceful socialist revolution through the parliamentary route, given that the bourgeois parties always constitute a majority in all parliaments in the world, which prevents decisions from being made that compromise the interests of capitalists. Antonio Gramsci’s proposal for the construction of socialism failed due to the impossibility of the subaltern classes becoming hegemonic within civil society, especially in the current conditions of globalization of capitalism.
Faced with the failure of these three proposals for the construction of socialism, the proposal for the construction of the democratic socialism of the future was formulated, which is detailed in the following pages. To make the democratic socialism of the future feasible, it was considered that it is necessary, initially, to carry out the reform of capitalism with the construction of the Welfare State as the one built in the Scandinavian countries which, being a hybrid of the capitalist and socialist systems, would prepare the ground for the construction of democratic socialism in the future, later, without the obstacles related to the proposals of Marx and Engels, Bernstein and Gramsci.
The construction of socialism using revolutionary violence based on the conceptions of Marx and Engels
The first proposal for the construction of socialism was based on the conceptions of Marx and Engels [6]. Socialism is a political and economic doctrine that emerged between the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century with the aim of achieving social equality. The socialist current emerged as a way of rethinking the capitalist system in force at the time. Scientific socialism, known as Marxism, was created in the 19th century, based on a historical and scientific analysis of capitalism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. According to Marx and Engels, in all historical periods society has been marked by class struggle, and this relationship is characterized by the antagonism between an oppressive and an oppressed class. In capitalism, these classes are represented, respectively, by the owners of the means of production, the capitalists, and by a mass of wage earners, the proletariat, which has only its labor power.
The first practical experience of building socialism in the world took place in 1917 in Russia, which shortly after would unite with other countries to form the Soviet Union. The socialist regime was established in Russia in 1917 with the use of revolutionary violence led by Vladimir Lenin [2, 10 and 11]. With the creation of the Soviet Union, accelerated industrialization was considered essential to overcome the backwardness of the country that had pre-capitalist economic structures. Accelerated industrialization for 70 years has made this country one of the greatest industrial powers in the world, with an industrial park with great technological development and great productive diversity (steel, metallurgy, chemistry, fuel, armaments, transport, space, etc.).
Despite the economic success achieved, the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991. The Eastern European countries that were members of the socialist system led by the Soviet Union, too, succumbed. To avoid the same fate as the Soviet Union, China abandoned the Maoist model of socialist society implemented with the socialist revolution of 1949 and adopted a mixed economic model, capitalist and socialist, called “market socialism” from 1978, which includes the presence foreign capital, as well as state and local private capital. Socialism turned into state capitalism in China. Socialism has failed throughout its history to promote economic and political progress, despite the social advances achieved. Marxist parties have failed to meet the demands of workers by leading the general population to disillusionment with those parties that have had their historic opportunity, by adopting a two-step strategy to transform the world (seize state power, then transform it) , had not fulfilled their historic promise [10].
The failure to build socialism in the Soviet Union is also due to the adoption of a dictatorship and terror regime that lasted for about 70 years, which was initially justified by the need to defend against internal counterrevolutionary reaction and external attacks during and after World War I, later, to defend the country from Nazi Germany’s aggression during World War II and to rebuild the country after this war, and finally to face the Western powers and the United States during the Cold War [10]. The adoption of dictatorships in the countries where it was implemented meant that socialism ceased to meet the demand for freedom that every human being aspires to enjoy. This fact was responsible to transform the popular mobilization in defense of socialism existing in the early days of the Soviet regime into demobilization for decades that was only resumed in the patriotic war against Nazism. After World War II, there was a new demobilization that was accentuated in the last days of socialism in the Soviet Union, when the workers and the people in general were not happy. The dissatisfaction of workers was so great that it affected labor productivity and resulted in inferior products. This created an atmosphere of apathy, bad mood, indifference and even despair. All of this explains why socialism disappeared in the Soviet Union and in the countries of Eastern Europe without the people fighting for its maintenance and, on the contrary, wishing for its end.
It can be said that the failure in the construction of socialism is fundamentally due to the fact that it has sought to achieve social equality without achieving it and has not provided the freedom and happiness for human beings that can only be obtained insofar as the motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, a legacy of the Enlightenment at the end of the 17th century, first invoked during the French Revolution, be put into practice. This motto, which is universal because it translates the yearnings of all human beings, has become the cry of activists for democracy and the overthrow of oppressive governments and tyrants of all kinds, erroneously associated only with the bourgeois revolutions that have taken place in history, it was not adopted in the socialist revolutions that took place in the world, but only the search for social equality. This was one of the main factors responsible for the failure of socialism in the world. The search for social equality is not enough for the people to achieve happiness.
The construction of socialism peacefully through the parliamentary way based on the conception of Eduard Bernstein
The first revisionist thesis of the Marxist theory of socialist revolution was the proposal to build socialism peacefully through the parliamentary route based on the conception of Eduard Bernstein [13]. At the end of the 19th century, Eduard Bernstein, a German politician and political theorist, refuted, within the German Social Democracy, the theses advocated by the leaders of the Social Democratic Party by proposing a critical review of Marx’s thought. He believed in the emancipatory potential of bourgeois democracy, stating that it would be possible for the subaltern social classes to take power to build socialism by legal and peaceful means through the parliamentary route. Bernstein supported the adoption of a conciliatory political posture and the mitigation of the class struggle advocated by Marx. Bernstein’s theses represent the first major theoretical effort to present an elaboration in defense of the reforms of capitalism as a path to socialism and not through the revolutionary violence proposed by Karl Marx. For Bernstein, the path to socialism was through democracy and the gradual implementation of reforms of capitalism. It would be enough for the workers’ party to triumph in the elections and win a parliamentary majority.
The rise of Bernstein’s revisionist current initiated the first great crisis of Marxism, introducing a new trend of opposition to the dialectical conception of history of Marx and Engels and of abandoning any revolutionary pretensions. Unlike Marx, Bernstein admitted that socialism could be achieved through peaceful means with legislative reform in democratic societies, without the need for a revolution. Bernstein admitted that socialism would replace capitalism sooner or later for moral reasons, as it is the fairest and most solidary political system. He criticized the idea of the existence of only two social classes, one oppressive and the other oppressed considered by Karl Marx, claiming the existence of several interconnected classes. Bernstein considered that the struggle for the national interest was superior to the class struggle defended by Marxism.
As an alternative to the Marxist theses, Bernstein defended the struggle for the gradual and constant improvement of the living conditions of workers, offering them the means to ascend to the middle class, he did not admit the need for mass nationalization of private companies and refused the path of violence to achieve socialism as happened with the socialist revolutions in the 20th century such as the Russian, Chinese and Cuban. The theses defended by Eduard Bernstein were, therefore, to carry out the socialist revolution peacefully with the reform of capitalism through the parliamentary route, which did not happen anywhere in the world. It is proven by the facts of history that there can hardly be a socialist revolution through the parliamentary route. The seats in Parliament are occupied by the vast majority of the ruling economic class. At the most, what can be obtained in these parliaments are some concessions that, in essence, do not compromise the interests of the capitalists. In parliamentary democracy, there is no opposition to the “status quo”, as the dominant political parties are in agreement on the essentials of preserving the current capitalist society. There are no political parties likely to come to power that doubt the dogma of the market. The representative and parliamentary form that usurps the name of democracy limits the power of citizens by the simple right to vote, that is, to nothing.
The construction of socialism with the conquest of hegemony by the working class in civil society based on the conception of Antonio Gramsci
The second revisionist thesis of the Marxist theory of social revolution was the proposal to conquer hegemony by the working class in civil society for the construction of socialism based on the conception of Antonio Gramsci [9]. Gramsci, Italian philosopher, considered that the power of the ruling classes over the proletariat and the other subaltern classes in capitalism does not lie only in the control of the repressive apparatuses of the State. This power is mainly guaranteed by the cultural hegemony that the dominant classes exert over the subordinate classes, through the educational system, religious institutions and the media. Using this control, the ruling classes “educate”, that is, “taming” the subordinate classes so that they live submissive to their interests as something natural and convenient, thus inhibiting their revolutionary action. This is how a “hegemonic bloc” is formed that incorporates all social classes around a project of society that meets the interests of capital holders. Capital’s hegemonic power combines coercion with the use of instruments of repression and consensus with the exercise of cultural hegemony.
The supremacy of a dominant social class manifests itself in two ways: first, through coercion or repression, and second, through intellectual and moral direction, according to Gramsci. A social class dominates opposing groups by subduing them with repression, in addition to directing allied groups. Gramsci affirms that a social class can and must be the leader before conquering governmental power. This, by the way, is one of the main conditions for the conquest of power. Later, when he exercises power, he becomes dominant, but he must continue to be the leader as well. For Gramsci, hegemony is the exercise of the functions of intellectual and moral direction together with that of the domain of political power. The problem for Gramsci is to understand how the proletariat, or in general a dominated, subordinate social class, can become a ruling class and exercise political power, that is, become a hegemonic class. Hegemony is exercised by uniting a social bloc creating a political alliance of a conglomerate of different social classes.
A good example of the thesis espoused by Antonio Gramsci is the rise of the bourgeoisie which, thanks to the expansion of its commercial and banking economic activities, during the Middle Ages under the feudal regime, became a ruling class before conquering power with the bourgeois revolutions carried out in France and England [2]. The bourgeoisie consolidated itself as a ruling class by supporting the centralization of the state in the figure of an absolutist king. The absolutist nation-states emerged in Europe through an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the kings who contributed to the advancement of the commercial revolution in the world. From then on, taxes were paid directly to the State, and not to feudal lords, who provided a favorable environment for the development of commerce and benefited the rise to power of the commercial and banking bourgeoisie in Europe. Although it was the economically dominant social class and responsible for sustaining the state (since nobility and clergy paid no taxes), the bourgeoisie did not exercise the hegemonic power that only happened later with the bourgeois revolutions carried out in England between 1640 and 1688 and in France in 1789.
The crisis of hegemony happens, according to Gramsci, when, even while maintaining their own political domain, the politically dominant social classes are unable to solve the problems of the entire collectivity, cannot impose their conception of the world on society as a whole and are no longer able to be leader of all social classes. Thus, the conditions are created for the outbreak of a social revolution and the rise of the subaltern classes to power. Gramsci states that the subordinate social classes will only become leaders if they manage to present concrete solutions to the problems left unsolved by the dominant classes, expanding their own cosmovision to other social strata, creating a new social bloc, which can become hegemonic. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is linked to his conception of the capitalist state, which, according to him, exercises power through both force and consent. Gramsci divides it between political society, which is the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control, and civil society, which commonly sees itself as a private or non-state sphere, and which includes the economy. The first is the scope of force and the second that of consent.
Gramsci argues that the revolutionary party is the force that will allow the working class to develop an alternative hegemony within civil society. For Gramsci, the complex nature of modern civil society implies that the only tactic capable of undermining the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and reaching socialism is the adoption of the “war of positions” (analogous to trench warfare). The “war of movement” with the frontal attack on tsarism carried out by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 was an appropriate strategy for the backward stage of development of Russian civil society. Gramsci understood that a “war of positions” was appropriate for the West, while a “war of movements” (“active revolution”) would apply to the East where less advanced societies prevailed. Gramsci draws a fundamental distinction between East and West. In the East, the state was everything, civil society was primitive and gelatinous; in the West, there was the state and a robust structure of civil society. In turn, Gramsci considers that a passive revolution (or “revolution without revolution”) takes place when a social class comes to power without breaking the social fabric, but adapting to it and gradually modifying it. The English revolution of 1640 can be framed as a passive revolution in the rise to power of the bourgeoisie in England, as well as the Scandinavian revolution of 1930 which meant the reform of capitalism with the implantation of the Welfare State in Sweden after the rise to power of the social democratic current. However, there is no instance of “passive” socialist revolution recorded throughout history.
Gramsci understood that, in the West, to be successful, leftist parties should adopt the so-called “war of positions” as a strategy, distinguishing it from the “war of movement”. In Gramsci’s view, in the West, the State is “political society + civil society”, it is “coercion + consent”, where social formation is solidly articulated by ideology. A left-wing party, in such conditions, needs to fight for hegemony in society. The construction of socialism advocated by Antonio Gramsci has not been carried out anywhere in the world to date due to the immense difficulty for the subaltern classes to become hegemonic within civil society, displacing the hegemony of the dominant classes, especially in the current conditions of globalization of capitalism . It would be very difficult to reproduce under current conditions what happened with the rise of the bourgeoisie to power in the Middle Ages. No subordinate social class like the working class would be able to impose itself economically in today’s globalized capitalism to assume the condition of ruling class before conquering hegemonic power in contemporary society.
Building the democratic socialism of the future
The failure of the above-described proposals for socialist revolutions and for the construction of socialism emphasizes the need to search for a new strategy that will contribute to the construction of the socialism of the future in view of the prospect of the end of the world capitalist system in the mid-21st century [1]. The socialism of the future should be radically democratic, aiming to create an environment of freedom, equality and fraternity among human beings for the achievement of their happiness, rescuing the ideals of the Enlightenment. To build a socialist society to replace capitalism, there needs to be a transition that can be the reform of capitalism with the construction of the Welfare State as built in the Scandinavian countries, which, being a hybrid between the most positive in the capitalist and socialist systems, it would prepare the ground for the construction of democratic socialism in the future without the obstacles that made the proposals of Marx and Engels, Bernstein and Gramsci unfeasible.
A new strategy for building a new transition society, which could lead to the socialism of the future, should consider the realization of political, economic and social changes such as those that have taken place in Scandinavia from 1930 to the present moment, which meant the abandonment of the classic model of capitalist development as practiced in all countries of the world at the time with the adoption of a model of society that incorporated the positive aspects of capitalism and socialism, constituting a hybrid system. Unlike the great social revolutions such as the American of 1776 [2 and 3], the French of 1789 [8], the Russian of 1917 [7], the Chinese of 1949 [4 and 12] and the Cuban of 1959 [5], that were carried out with the use of violence, the Scandinavian revolution[2] was carried out peacefully, that is, without bloodshed.
The Scandinavian Revolution [2] began in Sweden in the 1930s and was later adopted in other Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland) after World War II based on social democracy, which is a political ideology that supports state economic and social interventions to promote social justice in a capitalist system and a Social Welfare policy in the general interest of the population with interventions to promote more equitable income distribution and a commitment to representative democracy. It is the unfolding of the political ideology that emerged at the end of the 19th century by Marxist supporters such as Eduard Bernstein, who believed that the transition to a socialist society should take place without a violent revolution, but through a gradual social and economic reform of the capitalist system in order to make it more egalitarian.
Scandinavia is the birthplace of the most egalitarian model of society that capitalism has ever known. Its origins go back to Sweden in the 1930s when social democratic hegemony took place in the Nordic country’s government, initiating a series of social and economic reforms that inaugurated a new type of capitalism, in opposition to the liberalism of previous decades that led to the great depression 1929. The so-called Scandinavian social democratic model was born, which would quickly cross Swedish borders to become influential in Northern Europe, but also an important reference in the formulation of heterodox (progressive) economic policies across the planet. The success of this model was due to the combination of a broad Welfare State with rigid mechanisms for regulating market forces, capable of placing the economy on a dynamic trajectory, while achieving the best social welfare indicators between the capitalist countries.
The initiative of Swedish economists was decisive for the successful implementation of the Scandinavian social democratic model, headed by Gunnar Myrdal, who in the mid-twentieth century would provide the theoretical foundation for an alternative economic policy to the prevailing one at the time. The Stockholm School, as this branch of heterodox economic thought would be named, denounced the ills of capitalist liberalism and demonstrated the primacy of the demand of families to resume cycles of economic bonanza, in contrast to the innocuous supply stimuli that characterized (and still characterize ) the conservative liberal view. Today, Scandinavians are once again warning the world that unleashing market forces is tantamount to opening up a truly catastrophic “Pandora’s box.”
The Welfare State consists of a mode of economic, political and social organization in which the State acts as an organizer of the economy and an agent of social promotion. The State acts in order to ensure the interests of capitalists holding the means of production and guarantee protection and public services to the people. In other words, it seeks to reconcile the interests of “from above” with those from “below” in the social pyramid. The Nordic or Scandinavian model of social democracy could best be described as a kind of middle ground between capitalism and socialism [2 and 14]. It is neither fully capitalist nor fully socialist, being the attempt to fuse the most desirable elements of both into a “hybrid” system. In 2013, The Economist magazine declared that the Nordic countries are probably the best governed in the world. The UN World Happiness Report 2020 report shows that the happiest nations of the world are concentrated in Northern Europe, with Norway at the top of the list. The Nordics have the highest ranking in real GDP per capita, the longest healthy life expectancy, the greatest freedom to make choices in life and the greatest generosity.
Social democracy seeks to democratically reform capitalism through state regulation and the creation of programs that diminish or eliminate the social injustices inherent in capitalism. This approach differs significantly from traditional socialism, which aims to replace the capitalist system entirely with a new economic system characterized by collective ownership of the means of production under the dictatorship of the proletariat after the conquest of power through revolutionary violence. This approach also differs from the thought of Eduard Bernstein, who advocates the construction of socialism with the reform of capitalism through parliamentary means, and from the thought of Antonio Gramsci, who advocates the construction of socialism with the conquest of hegemony in civil society before the conquest of power by the working class. Through the Welfare State, which is a welfare theory, social democracy must guarantee its citizens minimum health, education, justice, housing, income and social security conditions. Many countries have adopted different policies at different scales and in historical moments according to this theory, such as the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland), France, England and Germany, among others. To a large extent, the Welfare State has been very successful in several countries, especially in Scandinavian countries.
The Scandinavian model of political, economic and social development should serve as a reference as a model of society to be pursued by all peoples of the world as a transition to the democratic socialism of the future because the Scandinavian countries are considered the best governed on the planet, those that they have the greatest political, economic and social progress and have the happiest people in the world. The democratic socialism to be implemented in the future must represent a step forward in relation to the Welfare State resulting from the reform of capitalism with social democracy put into practice in Scandinavia and must occur when, in each country, society reaches a high level of political, economic and social development and the motto “Freedom, Equality, Fraternity”, Enlightenment heritage, could become a reality in the world
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* Fernando Alcoforado, 81, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019) and A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021) .
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