IRVING
HOWE
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socialists, especially those from the anti-Stalinist Marxist groups,
had been raised was one that stressed institutional changes and
transformations in the relations of power. In making this shift of em–
phasis, these socialists were doing something historically overdue,
morally imperative, politically defensive, and tactically damaging.
For unless plausible social mechanisms and agencies could be
located for realizing the values that were now being placed at the
center of socialist aspiration, we were finally left with good will.
Nevertheless, the clarification of socialist values was an essen–
tial task- a whole generation of the democratic Left had to expend
itself in doing this. And if today such propositions as (a) there is no
inevitable sequence from capitalism to socialism; (b) retrogressive
societies can appear along the course of historical development;
(c) the abolition of capitalism is not, in and of itself, necessarily a
step toward liberation; (d) socialism cannot be "defined" simply as a
society in which the means of production have been statified; (e) the
idea of a total transformation of humanity under the guidance of a
"vanguard" party is a corrupt fantasy; (f) the fundamental goal of
socialists is the democratization of every area of social life, from
politics to the workplace- if, as I say, these propositions are mostly
accepted as truisms on the Left, that is because a not very large
number of people fought for them bitterly, against a variety of dog–
matisms, over the past several decades.
Several years ago Leszek Kolakowski succinctly described the
present condition of reflective socialists:
What we lack in our thinking about society in socialist terms is
not (I'd say, no longer-
I.
H .] general values which we want to
see materialized, but rather knowledge about how these values
can be prevented from clashing with each other when put into
practice and more knowledge of the forces preventing us from
achieving our ideals . . .
During the past fifteen or so years, as Stalinism has gradually
lost its influence in the industrialized nations, and the socialist
movement, under pressure from its own awareness of crisis, has
clarified its democratic commitment, there has occurred a significant
shift in the direction of socialist thought. A clarification of values
having, at least for the moment, been achieved, socialist writers like
Alec Nove and Radoslav Selucky in Europe and Henry Pachter and
Michael Harrington in the United States have turned to the study of
