RADICAL QUESTIONS
321
as a bridge toward some new radical humanism, I do not know.
Socialists remain: a few. They are people devoted to a problem,
or a memory that gives rise to a problem. The socialist idea signifies,
first, a commitment to the values of fraternity, libertarianism, egali–
tarianism and freedom.
It
means, secondly, commitment to an en–
visioned society in which a decisive proportion of the means of pro–
duction shall be commonly owned and democratically controlled. What,
however, is the relation between these two commitments?
One great failing of the socialist movement in the past was
that it did not recognize, or recognize sufficiently, the inherent tension
between the values it claimed to embody and the social scheme it
proposed to enact. Traditionally, it was assumed that a particular change
in property forms and relations would be adequate to, or at least
largely prepare for, the desired change in the quality of life. (At its
most Bourbon-like level, this meant the notion that mere state owner–
ship or nationalization of the means of production would
be
a sufficient
criterion for bestowing the label "workers state.") Now we know from
sad experience that the transformation of economy from private to
public ownership is not necessarily "pr:ogressive," and such transforma–
tions seem, in any case, to
be
part of a general worldwide drift.
The dominant stress of the Marxist movements has been upon
political means (strategy, tactics, propaganda) concerning which it often
had sophisticated theories; but in regard to the society it envisaged,
the content of its hope, it had surprisingly little to say, sometimes no
more than the threadbare
claim
that once "we" take power, "we" will
work things out. Martin Buber is right in saying:
To the questions of the elements of social re-structure, Marx and
Engels never gave a positive answer, because they had no inner
relation to
this
idea. . . . The political act remained the one
thing worth striving for....
By now the more reflective socialists feel differently, but as often
happens in human affairs, a growth in awareness does not necessarily
facilitate confidence in action.
If
today we are asked what we mean
Of
envision by socialism, our first instinctive response---even if it never
reaches our lips--is likely to be in negative terms: "we don't mean such
and such ... we don't mean simply nationalization of industry...."
OUf
first response, that is, rests upon a deviation from a previously-held
norm, and thereby constitutes a kind of self-criticism. (That listeners
may not even know the tradition from which we are deviating is one
of the perils of the passage of time and American ahistoricism.)
We now try to describe our vision of the good society in terms of
