21st century socialism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

21st century socialism is a political term and slogan intended to define new forms of socialism in the 21st century . The only state in which this form of government was formulated as a goal was Venezuela as part of the Bolivarian Revolution .

concept

The term socialism of the 21st century is the title of several publications: AW Buzgalin developed and published his concept under the title "Socialism of the 21st Century" in 1996 in Russian and in 2000 in Spanish. The book by Heinz Dieterich is more recent, was only written in 1996 and has been distributed since January 30, 2005, especially by the former President of Venezuela , Hugo Chávez , since the time of the fifth World Social Forum .

The model of socialism in the 21st century is only partly based on Marxist philosophy and economics . In particular, the economy of equivalence is a non-Marxist author, the Bremen scientists Arno Peters back who made himself as a geographer and historian a name before the theory of equivalence economy developed.

The approaches to the further development of democracy towards a direct participation of the citizens are not genuinely Marxist thinking, but an approach based on democracy theory. In this respect, Dieterich's focus on socialism in the 21st century is more eclectic than Marxist.

In his work “Socialism of the 21st Century”, Heinz Dieterich recalls Karl Marx's thesis that the history of humanity is a history of class struggles . According to Dieterich's analysis of the experiences with capitalism and the collapsed Eastern European socialism under this premise, neither approach could have solved the pressing problems of humanity - he names poverty , oppression , the destruction of resources and real participation of people in decisions in democracy .

Heinz Dieterich

The pivotal point of Dieterich's thoughts are the basic element of the equivalence theory, according to which the contribution of a person to the achievement and improvement of prosperity in society should no longer be measured via exchange value (= money , capital , see also exchange economy ), but via the rendered work . According to this, a director or owner of a factory is only paid better than one of his workers if he has invested more time. In Germany there are already groups in the private sphere that try to implement this.

The second core idea of ​​Dieterich relates to the possibilities that the Internet opens up for democracy: For the first time in human history, everyone could potentially have all the information they need for political decisions. Without additional costs or delays, any kind of important political decision can be made on a grassroots basis with the participation of all citizens via the Internet. All previous arguments against grassroots democracy, such as a lack of knowledge among citizens, costs for additional votes and disadvantageous delays in decisions, would, according to Dieterich, be obsolete due to the Internet. There would therefore no longer be any logical argument against grassroots democracy or participatory democracy , except for the question of power .

According to his own statement, Heinz Dieterich developed his concept of socialism in the 21st century in 1996 and has published on this worldwide since 2000, with a focus on South America. Dieterich is regarded as an (informal) advisor to the ' Bolivarian ' development process represented by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez . According to Dieterich, neither “industrial capitalism” nor “historical real existing socialism ” succeeded in “solving the pressing problems of humanity such as poverty , hunger, exploitation , the oppression of an economic, sexist and racist nature, the destruction of the natural foundations of life and the lack of one to solve real participatory democracy. ”Both systems were subject to“ similar overpowering objective development conditions ”. Dieterich names, among other things , the need for capital accumulation , Fordism , the world market , system competition as well as the "undemocratic vertical party, society and state structures - which mercilessly restricted the degrees of freedom of developing both system designs against the will of their protagonists."

The present age stands under two "world historical signs": "the exhaustion of the social projects of the bourgeoisie and the historical proletariat as well as the transition of the present bourgeois civilization to a non-capitalist world society: the universal grassroots democracy." Dieterich calls for the establishment of four fundamental institutions of the new reality of post-capitalist civilization:

  1. the non-market economy based on use value and value theory , democratically determined by those directly creating value;
  2. the majority democracy, which proceeds plebiscitarily on the essential questions of society as a whole ;
  3. the grassroots democratic state as a representative of general interests with adequate minority protection and
  4. the rational-ethical-aesthetically self-determined citizen as a critically responsible subject.

This is "the fundamental institutionality [...] that gave the historical project of Marx and Engels its strategic direction."

Since the existing society is to be replaced by a "qualitatively different (system contrary)", "the program of socialism of the 21st century is necessarily revolutionary ."

The concept of an equivalence economy has been criticized as a misunderstanding of Marx's " Critique of Political Economy ". It is impossible to make value the basis of an economic system because it is not measurable.

Dieterich had already recognized in 2006 that socialism was not developing in Venezuela. In September 2017, he saw the country heading for a military dictatorship .

In January 2018 Dieterich described the probability of the survival of the regime in Venezuela (again) as very small with the use of the expression "one to twelve", but gave the strengthening of the hawks in the US for the end of the Maduro regime in his view -Government blame it.

Venezuela

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez proclaimed the slogan of socialism in the 21st century . He first mentioned them on January 30, 2005 at the World Social Forum . Components of the "path" to socialism of the 21st century in the course of the Bolivarian Revolution would include the state expropriation of closed plants and resumption of production under workers co-management (for example, 51% of the shares are owned by the state and 49% in a cooperative of employees) or workers control . Other aspects are the nationalization of key industries and infrastructure as well as the regulation of the length of the working day.

For a few years, Venezuela followed Dieterich's suggestions on essential points. As part of the Bolivarian Revolution, Chavez had signaled that in order to achieve this socialism, a transition phase was necessary, which he called revolutionary democracy . In 2006 he said in a speech: “We are determined to lead the Bolivarian Revolution directly towards socialism and to make a contribution on the way to socialism, a socialism of the 21st century based on solidarity , brotherhood, love, freedom and the Equality Based ". This socialism is not given either. Rather, Chavez said: "We have to change the mode of capital and move on to a new socialism that has to be built anew every day".

Chávez had run around 10 elections and referendums within 10 years and was therefore described by Dieterich on the one hand as the “most formal democratically legitimized president of the world”. However, Dieterich later criticized Chávez's political leadership model as a " charismatic - Bonapartist model of rule" based on the semi-religious identification of its followers with the leader and his revelations (speeches) and which, like that, should be avoided for socialism in the 21st century Leadership model of Fidel Castro, who was publicly revered by Chavez . In August 2011 Dieterich declared his break with Chávez and wrote that Chávez 'great opportunity to establish the first scientific and democratic socialism of the 21st century was "lost forever".

As early as 2003, Hugo Chávez presented Giulio Santosuosso's proposal for socialism of the 21st century in an edition of his weekly radio show “Hello President”, “Socialism in a liberal paradigm ”, in which the author believes that the world is part of a comprehensive ideological realignment will be the result of ongoing paradigm shifts in business; the old model is dead, but the new criteria that allow a conceptual reorientation have not yet appeared. To help find these criteria, he suggested rereading The History of Political Economy because, in his opinion, some of these criteria would not be revealed due to conceptual ambiguities in the discipline: the first ambiguity we see in the Experience in the last hundred years, identify capitalism with liberalism , the second appears in this century and identify socialism with statism . His thesis is that the quickest way to achieve the just society that everyone strives for is to achieve an alliance between socialism and liberalism, so that on the one hand socialism is separated from statism and on the other hand liberalism is separated from capitalism.

Instead of socialism, a clientele economy developed in Venezuela: the Chavists "cultivated" an actual privileged ruling class, which after the loss of the parliamentary majority in 2015 clung to power by all means. The loyalty of the army to the Khavist government was based on privileges: Despite all the (war) rhetoric, a payment default against the USA never occurred during the supply crisis of 2015-2017, because the government needed open financial channels for the dollars with which it was dealing Loyalty bought.

literature

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Interview with Heinz Dieterich
  2. ^ Entrevista a Heinz Dieterich
  3. ^ A b c d e f Heinz Dieterich: “Socialism of the 21st Century - Economy, Society and Democracy after Global Capitalism” , introduction
  4. ↑ Ingo Stützle : On the track of the value : About the impossibility of measuring the value without canceling one  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.stuetzle.in-berlin.de   (10 pages pdf), in Z. Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung , No. 71, 2007, pages 154–163
  5. ↑ Heinz Dieterich: "Venezuela is one step away from the abyss, it is moving towards a tragic end" , clarin.com, September 15, 2017
  6. ↑ Heinz Dieterich dice que Venezuela se encamina a golpe militar , DW, September 5, 2017
  7. ↑ Maduro regime to be overthrown , Echo der Zeit , January 9, 2019
  8. ↑ Dario Azzellini : Venezuela: Occupied factories, expropriations and workers' co-management. President Chávez thinks about the "turn to socialism of the 21st century" , from: Friday 43, October 28, 2005
  9. ↑ Juan Forero: Chavez Restyles Venezuela With "21st-Century Socialism" ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , From: New York Times , November 3, 2005 Peter Burghardt: “Socialism of the 21st Century”, Venezuela nationalizes key industries. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez is serious about his “socialism of the 21st century”. The telecommunications, electricity and oil sectors are to be nationalized. , From: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 10, 2007 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zmag.org
  10. ^ The mistakes of the Stalinist bureaucracy in contrast to the socialism of the 21st century and "socialism of the 21st century" .
  11. ↑ Heinz Dieterich: La conducción política de Fidel y Hugo Chávez in: aporrea.org of July 12, 2011, accessed on June 15, 2012 (Spanish)
  12. ↑ Heinz Dieterich: El día de la ruptura con Hugo Chávez ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Kaos en la Red of August 15, 2011, accessed June 14, 2012 (Spanish) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / old.kaosenlared.net
  13. ↑ Heinz Dieterich, the ideologue of the 21st Century Socialism, breaks with Chávez in: El Universal from August 16, 2011, accessed on June 14, 2012 (English)
  14. ↑ [1]
  15. ↑ Alex Baur: Bankrott Weltwoche 14.17, page 12
  16. ↑ When will the state go bankrupt? NZZ, April 11, 2017.