Socialism in the twentieth century generally collapsed or devolved into an authoritarian bureaucratic collectivism. Have any recent movements in the Global South found a way of avoiding these dead-ends? One possibility is the radical social-democratic strategy of socialist transition; but comparative analysis suggests it is a risky, turbulent venture whose success depends upon unusual conditions.
The essence of this approach is a cohesive and programmatic socialist party that works within a largely market economy and liberal-democratic institutions to challenge inherited privileges and power structures and deepen democracy. Civil and political liberties, competing political parties, autonomous social movements and voluntary associations continue to function. As in Eduard Bernstein’s original notion of democratic revisionism, the party builds a cross-class electoral coalition. It appeals to its constituencies on both the ethical grounds of social justice and the material grounds of class interest. Generally, the party’s or coalition’s agenda of redistribution includes the removal of discriminatory practices, the extension of social protections and high-quality public services to the poor, the democratization of markets, selective nationalizations, land reform (where landholdings are concentrated) and participatory institutions. Democratic deepening involves the decentralization of powers and revenues, consultative or participatory mechanisms involving social movements, and producer and marketing cooperatives of workers and farmers. Radical social democracy is really more a process – of building citizen capabilities, participatory structures, new economic opportunities and decommodification through an expanding social-market economy – than a final destination (“socialism”).
Consider some cases. The most dramatic and famous exemplar in the Global South is the Popular Unity (Unidad Popular – UP) administration of President Salvador Allende in Chile (1970-1973). However, the UP administration, though undoubtedly bold and democratic, lacked the majority support, the unity and discipline, and probably the economic competence to carry off a constitutional socialist transformation. Allende, with 37 percent of the vote in 1970, never received a convincing popular mandate for revolutionary change. The UP proved unable to control its supporters: peasants seized land, squatters established unauthorized settlements, workers occupied factories, and allies (especially the Revolutionary Left Movement) promoted illegal seizures of property. This chaotic mobilization of social forces, combined with a crashing economy linked to a United States embargo, polarized society and eventually drove small business owners into the arms of the oligarchy. The failure of the UP to attract the support of the small proprietors doomed the coalition to a minority status and laid the foundation for the brutal military coup of September 1973. The US government’s destabilizing efforts under President Richard Nixon – by funding the opposition, sabotaging the economy and aiding the Chilean military – exemplifies the external hostility that even democratic socialist regimes faced during the Cold War.
The Sandinistas in Nicaragua, between the 1984 revolutionary seizure of power and their electoral defeat in 1990, also resembled radical social democrats. But the period is both brief and too muddled by the internal war against the US-supported Contras to draw useful conclusions.
Two states in India led for various periods by the Communist Party of India (Marxist – CPM) – Kerala and West Bengal – best exemplify the radical social-democratic model, its promise and its pitfalls. Kerala is a pioneer of radical social democracy in the Global South. Indeed, Kerala from the 1950s to the late 1980s presents perhaps the purist expression of the model, owing to its special conditions. The radical phase endured for more than three decades partly because Kerala was shielded from imperialist hostility as a state within a federation formally committed to democratic socialism (under Congress Party rule). Furthermore, the constitutional authority of Delhi to impose Presidential rule on unruly state governments motivated the CPM, after one episode of Presidential rule, to pursue a peaceful and democratic route.
The Kerala case nicely illustrates the tensions to which the strategy gives rise. The party’s radical focus on eliminating historical inequities and decommodifying labor through class struggle precipitates an accumulation crisis. This crisis creates domestic pressure to deradicalize the mobilizational model by shifting priority to accumulation. Paradoxically, radical social democracy becomes a victim of its own success. By displacing the dominant class – landlords in Kerala’s case – and fostering a comparatively well-educated and prosperous rural and urban middle class, the strategy creates beneficiaries who embrace the consumer society and accumulation-oriented neoliberal policies. These beneficiaries then reject the socialists who they hold responsible for the stagnant economy. The CPM, with considerable intra-party dissension, responded in the 1990s by tacking toward moderate social democracy to retain its support in competitive elections. Does this back-tracking represent a failure of the model? That is a debatable proposition. Kerala did not, and indeed as a state in a federation could not, achieve socialism. Yet, considering the substantial degree of equal freedom attained, it is bizarre to consider the CPM a failure.
However, the radical social-democratic strategy will not achieve even Kerala’s degree of success in the absence of unusual national and global circumstances. The socialist/social-democratic party, to be effective, must be cohesive, well-organized and programmatic in its appeal. It must operate within a class-divided society, even if communal identities also remain strong. Whereas moderate social democracy depends on a class compromise in which elements of the dominant business class participate, radical social democracy involves class struggle with a minimal or even non-existent society-wide compromise. Accordingly, the party/coalition needs a strong, mainly non-communal, political base to persist under such conditions. Civil society must manifest a density, autonomy and purpose enabling its social movements to hold the social-democratic/socialist party true to its vision. Only this degree of mobilization can ensure that the party’s commitment to equal freedom and democracy does not wane and a new privileged class of political insiders does not crystallize. Furthermore, the state must be both relatively effective and uncaptured by the dominant economic class, if leftist governments are to implement complex and redistributive social and economic policies. The national conditions alone are formidable.
In addition, the global opportunity structure is restrictive for radical national projects. Imperialist hostility to socialist experiments, though not as intense as during the Cold War, persists; the mainstay of the neoliberal order, the United States, retains the capacity (and sometimes the will) to project military power and economic pressure on a global basis. The structural power of transnational corporations enables them to punish deviations from macroeconomic orthodoxy and respect for private property. Existing trade and investment treaties constrain the policy autonomy of all countries. Socialism in one country remains improbable.
Yet there are some supportive trends. The probability of a viable radical experiment rises if a country disposes of usually high leverage within the global economy – on the basis of extensive petroleum reserves or large size and industrial muscle, for example. Also, China’s recent emergence as a non-Western alternative source of trade, credit, investment and even foreign aid has emboldened China’s partners, especially in Latin America, to undertake heterodox experiments. But probably only the emergence of a regional bloc of like-minded Leftist states could buffer a socialist experiment from the retaliatory power of global neoliberalism. In South America, only the rudiments of such a regional bloc exist. The late Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, in particular, promoted various regional organizations and foreign alliances to serve as a regional support based for anti-neoliberal alternatives, but they remain rudimentary.. For now, the veto power of private capital, the World Trade Organization and Western powers remains formidable.
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