Nineteen eighty-nine - historical landmarks in capitalism, socialism

NINETEEN EIGHTY-NINE

Certain years go down in history as landmarks--the beginning or end of an era, a major turning point. Such years were 1776, 1789, 1848, 1917, 1939. Nineteen eighty-nine promises to be another worthy of addition to the list. But for what will it be remembered especially?

Some will say for the end of Communism, others for the final victory of capitalism in the struggle between capitalism and socialism. I would like to suggest a different interpretation.

Capitalism as a viable and constantly expanding system has been in existence for about 500 years. It was always international in scope, and during the last two or three centuries it has reached global dimensions. It has always been riddled with internal contradictions, which in fact have been essential to its enormously powerful dynamic of growth. But these contradictions have generated opposition movements that proliferated and expanded along with the system. The present century has witnessed three profound and pervasive crises of capitalism--the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. As a result of these crises about a third of the world's area and population, beginning with the Russian Revolution in 1917, broke away from the global capitalist system and set about constructing economies and societies inspired by the alternative principles of socialism that were given their classic formulation by Marx in the nineteenth century.

The breakaways occurred in weak and relatively underdeveloped parts of the global capitalist system and were consequently never able to compete on equal terms with the stronger and more developed parts of the system. From the very beginning, therefore, they had to devote all their energies to the most elementary tasks of survival against the determined efforts of the capitalist leaders to bring them back into the fold. Under such circumstances, these societies were unable to construct a coherent socialist system comparable to the global capitalist system from which they had broken away. Their individual trajectories reflected not only their socialist ambitions but also their varying histories and the special weaknesses with which they were burdened from the outset.

Against this background, the cold war, which in reality included numerous hot wars, takes on its real meaning. It started immediately after the Second World War when the United States, clearly hegemonic in the global system and in sole possession of nuclear weapons, set about in earnest to reverse the defections from capitalism that were still in the process of happening at the time. With the Red Army in possession of most of Eastern Europe, Stalin at first thought it would be possible to come to a live-and-let-live arrangement with the West, at least in Europe. But after a year or so of acting on this assumption without the slightest sign of U.S. acceptance, he decided that survival demanded the most extreme measures. He imposed rigid Communist dictatorships on the neighboring countries and grouped them together in a tight military alliance capable of rapidly occupying the entire European continent in case of a U.S. atomic attack on the U.S.S.R. This, and not imperialist expansion to the West, was always the purpose of the Warsaw Pact, and it explains why Gorbachev could afford to treat the postwar military arrangements in Eastern Europe as expendable after the Soviet Union had achieved nuclear parity.

Stalin's strategy worked. With the atomic option foreclosed, the United States turned to a new strategy of its own: subjecting the Soviet Union and its Communist allies to the unbearable strains of an unlimited arms race. This worked too, and 1989 turned out to be the year in which it bore fruit.

Soviet society (especially--but by no means only--the economy) entered a crisis during the Brezhnev period. Gorbachev, a privileged product of the system, saw the need for basic reforms to save it. This meant not only perestroika and glasnost but also ending the lethal arms race and abandoning the costly commitment to maintain Communist dictatorships in neighboring countries. Absent the assurance of Soviet military support, these regimes, which had never enjoyed widespread popular support, collapsed.

So 1989 will surely be remembered as the year the cold war ended, at least that version of it that took over in Europe in 1945. What else will it be remembered for? A major turning point in the history of capitalism? The end of socialism? A few words on these crucially important but still largely unsettled questions in conclusion.

I seriously doubt that 1989 represents a major turning point for capitalism. Eastern Europe is clearly reverting to its status between the wars as a sort of protectorate and dependency of Western and Central European capital. This is of course an important development, and it could produce interesting and instructive results. Parts of the region seem likely to be "Latin Americanized," while others (East Germany and Czechoslovakia) may succeed in achieving a more Austrian-like integration into the European capitalist subsystem. But in the larger picture these are minor changes unlikely to have significant repercussions outside the region itself. As far as the global capitalist system is concerned, its internal contradictions will hardly be affected one way or another. As any attentive observer of the world scene knows, these contradictions, as in the past, continue to multiply and intensify, with all indications pointing to the maturing of one or more serious crises in the not-distant future.