Bhaskar Sunkara. The Socialist Manifesto: The case for radical politics in an era of extreme inequality. New York: Basic Books. 2019. 276 pages.
How do we keep getting taken in by capitalism? How does a desire to ensure the needs of all keep getting pushed to the bottom of the agenda?
It is no accident, but it is not inevitable.
For much of capitalism history, radicals have been sustained less by a clear vision of socialism than by visceral opposition to the horrors around them. Instead of making the case for socialism, we made the case against capitalism.
The preface is tantalizing — an image of what a socialist existence could look like, told with wit and flair. So appealing.
In fact, the critics on the book jacket told me to expect wit throughout, but I think I was too dull — or struggling too much — to get much of it.
In Part One, the first two-thirds of this work, Sunkara tells the development and history of socialism around the world — in Russia, Germany, China, America, Britain, France, Sweden, with far-too-quick forays into Central America, Cuba, the Caribbean and the nations of Africa, through both world wars, plus a Cold War, a depression, and many economic crises. This was the most challenging part of the book for me. I’ve realized as I’ve read other books on politics, especially organized labor, that I need a handy glossary to keep up with the acronyms, organizations and parties. It’s a history that spans centuries, (from the 12th century and feudal lords), through Marx and Hegel, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, Eugene Debs and so many others, eventually including Clinton, Obama, another Clinton, Sanders.
Plus words change. The Republicans today are not the Republicans of Reconstruction or of the Spanish Civil War, for example. And there were a lot of words. I kept stopping to look things up. This Part One is dense, filled with names of people and organizations, and words that have evolved over time. Lots of referring back, to try to keep up. Interesting, but I had to take many naps. Ten to 20 pages at a time was my goal. But vital to understanding how we got here. Even if you don’t read as if for a final exam, you’ll appreciate the info in this section.
He gives a saint-name for the “placeholders” in every era, those like Léon Blum of 1920-30s France, who settle for “the occupation of power,” who gain political office and just use it to keep us from moving backwards (more than a few Democrats). He also includes a shout-out to the women who took down the reign of Nicholas II, a story I’d never heard before.
The calculus of capitalism will stay with me for a long time: For most of us, the formula is C-M-C: trading a Commodity (like labor) to earn Money to purchase other Commodities. For the capitalists, it is the inverse: M-C-M’: using Money to produce Commodities to make more Money.
In Part Two, he starts to break down our current circumstance. The housing/banking crisis, 1099-ers (workers in the gig economy who don’t get a W-2), Hillary Clinton (“For enough Americans who hate politicians and haven’t thought highly of the past thirty years of neoliberal austerity, voting for someone whose pitch was that they had been in politics for thirty years was a hard sell”), Sanders (“As a student … he came to an understanding: the rich were not morally confused but rather had a vested interest in the exploitation of others”), the travesty that is the DNC, neoliberalism, the Occupy movement; this is when my blood pressure started to rise. Thankfully, this is only 1/10 of the total book, so I cruised through it pretty quickly without having a medical event.
The final two chapters are the program: How We Win is a 15-point plan for creating a world that works for us all. The reality that we can build on historic wins is encouraging enough, but we can also learn from those wins as well as the subsequent losses. His focus is unremittingly about unions (much in decline) and the working class — still 60 percent of people, who rely on wages and possess no wealth (honestly, I would have thought it was higher). He calls for changes in our electoral system, for renewed energy for striking and work stoppages (the power of the workers), for development of a real left-wing party (which all us leftists know is missing), for organizing from the ground (since organizing from above leads so easily to totalitarianism — see Part I).
Then, the closing chapter, Stay Fly, is the pep talk:
The flags of countries might not be replaced by red ones overnight, and we might not all one day sing “The Internationale” in Esperanto, but the internationalist appeal of socialism will be a far more potent challenge to nationalism than liberal cosmopolitanism.
The book ends during the 2020 presidential primary season, so he lands on a hopeful note of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbin (in the UK). Alas, we got Trump and Boris Johnson instead, and a Japanese word for looking worse after getting a haircut: age-otori.
I’m encouraged that this writer is young (he founded the left-wing magazine Jacobin as an undergrad, and says in the preface, “What follows is a book I wanted to write when I was 68. I’m writing is 40 years too soon…”). He has decades ahead to work toward this world of enough.
His goal in writing, he said: “I have tried to do something different by presenting what a different social system could look like and how we can get there …”.
I give him A on what it could look like, and B+ on how we get there. But A+ on passion for the cause.
We need to understand, though, that when the crisis comes, the next step isn’t retreat but to press on further.
Amen.