Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy And Imagination - Softcover

Panitch, Leo

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9780813398211: Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy And Imagination

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813398215 ISBN 13: 9780813398211

Publisher: Perseus, 2001

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Renewing Socialism opens with an exploration of the contemporary meaning of revolution and reform, beginning by stressing the appropriation of both terms into the rhetoric of the political right. Panitch examines the failure to realize socialisms revolutionary promise through an analysis of social democratic parties and the politics of compromise they advanced and their loss of radical vocation today. Panitch turns to an examination of the limitations of the Communist regimes and offers an account, based on personal observations in 1990, of the demise of Communism in Russia. The failure of Radical intellectuals in the West failed to take sufficient responsibility for the improvement of Marxist political theory, and especially of its theory of the state in any transition to socialism. Indeed, one of the greater ironies of the socialist experience is that the remarkable relevance of the Manifesto for developing an agenda for the renewal of socialism in our own time really became clear after the demise the Communist regimes. Panitch argues the salience of class will have to be brought more centrally back into the analysis and strategy of the left. The capacities of working people, so stunted under capitalism, must be allowed to develop to the furthest extent possible through their own organizations that incorporate both the diversity and issues represented by the new social movements. The first the challenge before any process of socialist renewal is that of getting people to think ambitiously once again. This ambition means not abandoning Marxism, but rather reviving what Bloch called its visionary warm stream alongside the cold stream of political economy. It means adding a new layer to Marxist theory to help socialists appreciate that we need to figure out how to foster the accumulation of capacities in addition to analyzing the accumulation of capital.

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Synopsis:

Renewing Socialism offers a committed new vision for the renewal of socialist theory and practice in the 21st century.. Intellectually and politically engaging, Renewing Socialism examines the failures of socialism in the twentieth century with candor, trenchantly explores the nature of global capitalism, and offers a vision of a reinvigorated socialism that ambitiously counters debilitating pessimism. While democracy and equality remain the goals of socialism, new conditions require imaginative strategies. Panitch stresses the need for refounding, reorganizing, and redemocratizing labor movements and calls for a movement away from the focus on the accumulation of capital to an emphasis on the accumulation of capacities: political, economic, social, environmental, and human. As an affirmation of optimism at a time some despair, this book revitalizes socialist thought and rethinks socialist practice towards a realistic utopianism. Renewing Socialism opens with an exploration of the contemporary meaning of revolution and reform, beginning by stressing the appropriation of both terms into the rhetoric of the political right.

About the Author:

Leo Panitch is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the co-editor of The Socialist Register, published annually in London and New York. His books include The End of Parliamentary Socialism (Verso 1997), The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms, Working Class Politics in Crisis, and Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy .

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