Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 12
How the Alienating Features
of the
Socialist/Progressive Movement Contribute to Its Failure
While many people have become increasingly cynical about this social system, their growing dissatisfaction is combined with political and emotional indifference that only exacerbates their alienation. In the last analysis, social consciousness that derives from political struggles is critical for the development of real changes, in particular when such struggles are combined with a dynamic change in awareness in regard to alienation.
The alienated marketing character and his/her impotency that incapacitates most people ability to participate in political struggles against the system is generally ignored by the left. But unless such a character is undermined, the people in power will always be able to sap the will to struggle by manipulating the weak market personality for their fundamental capitalistic greed for maximum profit.
The failure of the socialist and progressive movement to provide a genuine alternative to capitalism is perhaps the biggest tragedy of the 20th century. The failure drove many millions who were willing to fight for socialism to a state of despair and demoralization. The decay of the socialist movement resulted in the rise of reactionary movements throughout the world. The downfall of the socialist alternative also encouraged the current aggressive, unbridled expansion of global market capitalism which includes the destruction of the environment as well as the killing of many humans through wars — as manifested in NATO’s involvement in Yugoslavia and the massacre of many in Iraq.
The advanced segment of the population that recognize the need for a fundamental change in society — the left and the progressive movement — failed to overcome alienation because they focused only on the social/economic ills of society while ignoring what these ills do to the people’s psyche, including their own alienated psyche; or to put it differently, as long as a person’s character reflects the values of society, the alienated person cannot change society no matter how correct is the person’s general critique of society.
The Key Problem: the Estranged Psychological Traits of the Movement
Thus the roots of the failures are not the socialist ideas themselves. These roots should be traced to the capitalistic political and social character of socialist and communist parties with mass following. The Socialist and Communist parties distorted and betrayed the ideas socialism. It is not possible to explain seriously in a book about alienation how the political and the social evolution of the Communist and Socialist parties fouled up the socialist ideas, and how their degeneration disillusioned many millions of people. I want to say only in passing that the establishment of a monstrous bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and the rest of the “socialist” countries is a chief reason for the defeat of the socialist movements. Another reason is, of course, the degeneration of the Social Democratic parties and the integration of their leaders into the capitalist political and economic structure.
A lot was written about the material basis for the Stalinist dictatorship in the Soviet Union (that it is based on the material privilege of ruling bureaucracy). These material privileges which are similar to the privileges of the capitalist class, assisted the Stalinists in the former “socialist” countries to become capitalists at the end of the 1980’s without any difficulties.
Very little was written, however, about the bourgeois psychological make-up of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and how such psychology debilitated the healthy elements of the socialist ideology. The bureaucracy’s privileges induced within its ranks a bourgeois and capitalistic personality to the core. I believe that the effects of bourgeois psychological make-up of the Communist Parties’ leaders and members was devastating to the cause of socialism and for the persistence of rest of the anti-capitalist movement. A bourgeois psychological make-up, however, is not restricted to the mass Stalinist and Socialist parties. The bourgeois psychological make-up effects most the Trotskyist, anarchist and all of the progressive organizations who claim to fight for socialism or be against the oppressive features of capitalism. It is a chief obstacle for the inability of the left to unite and fight capitalism effectively.
What do we mean by a bourgeois psychological make-up that dominate the life of the organization? Most people who are attracted to a progressive or a socialist organization do not change their psychological alienated character after they adopt socialist ideas or become “marxists”. In their emotional world and their way of thinking they do not really break with the functioning and general ideology of this society. This is true in particular in times when there are no signs of revolutions or social change. For many individuals emotional considerations are mixed up extensively with the ideology of the organization or the party. Underneath the exterior of “revolutionary” or “socialist” ideology lies the real social/psychological structure of the group and the people involved with the group. The social/psychological structure in these groups is not very different than the social/psychological structure in the rest of society. Most of the top leaders in the parties, who never dealt with their own alienation and humanity, act like bourgeois politicians. They are driven by the passion for power triggered by the impotency of their ego (like Clinton, for example), and their failure to be a compassionate loving person. They enjoy the domination and manipulation of other people, and they use the theory of socialism and Marxism in a demagogic and manipulative fashion, that is, to make the members of the group dependent on them. In the hands of such leaders, socialism and Marxism have little to do with scientific objective thinking and practice. Such socialism and Marxism are rather manipulated and used in a demagogic way by the leaders to defeat their opponents and to wrest control of the movement.