Manifestos and Socialisms for the 21st Century
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- Published on Wednesday, 12 June 2019 01:12
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1844 ... June 12, 2019
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Manifestos and Socialisms for the 21st Century
Chris Wright
The title of Bhaskar Sunkara’s new book is both bold and smart. It’s eye-catching in its reference to The Communist Manifesto. It is a little surprising that apparently no previous book has had that title, since it seems so obvious. Other writers have likely been less willing to elicit the inevitable comparisons between their work and Marx and Engels’ great pamphlet. For no writer will fare well under such scrutiny.
But I don’t want to be too harsh on the founder of Jacobin, whose magazine has performed valuable services for the American left. Sunkara is not an original thinker, but he’s an effective popularizer -- and in an age of mass ignorance, there’s much to... be said for popularizations. The book is written for the uninitiated, and if it succeeds in piquing young readers’ interest in socialism then it has served this important and much-needed purpose.
The title is a misnomer, however, for the book is no manifesto. It is essentially a critical history of socialism with a couple of chapters at the beginning and the end on the present and possible future of the left. The scope is ambitious: it ranges over the German Social Democratic Party up to World War I, the triumphs and tragedies of Leninism and Stalinism in Russia, Swedish social democracy, the record of "socialism" in China and the Third World, and the history of socialists in the U.S., in the process touching on the Labour Party in Britain, the Popular Front period in France, the impact of neoliberalism on the working class, and other subjects. It also has a chapter on fifteen lessons to be gleaned from the history, as well as a whimsical, speculative chapter (the first one) on what it might be like to live in a socialist society and what the transition from a social democratic to a socialist society might look like. Sunkara’s interpretations and ideas come from well-known and respected scholars such as Michael Harrington, Vivek Chibber, and David Schweickart, in addition to younger writers for Jacobin.