Transforming Capitalist Power: From the Streets to the State
NOVANEWS
By Prof. Paul Christopher Gray
The Bullet
The communist playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote, “The individual can be annihilated/But the Party cannot be annihilated” (1977, 29). And yet, in the neoliberal era, the Party has been annihilated – only the individual remains. Or so it seemed until a few years ago. Communist parties have become insignificant political forces, or, as in China, are establishing capitalism.
Meanwhile, social democratic parties everywhere have abandoned any attempt to achieve socialism through gradual reforms. At the most, they are resigned to preserving a more humane capitalism the permanence of which they do not doubt. Furthermore, for significant parts of the radical left, these experiences of ‘state socialism’ have not discredited the need for...