Confessions of a True Believer
By John B. Judis May/June 2009
The collapse of Soviet communism never relegated Marx’s ideas to the dustbin of history.
In 1995, a magazine published by a conservative Washington think tank brought together a group of writers and scholars to debate a question that seemed to have a foregone conclusion: “Socialism: Dead or Alive?” Twelve of the participants voted for dead.
A single dissenting voice risked “derision,” in his words, by insisting that “once the sordid memory of Soviet communism is laid to rest and the fervor of anti-government hysteria abates, politicians and intellectuals of the next century will once again draw openly upon the legacy of socialism.”
I was that lone dissenter. In the 1960s, I had been a member of the radical antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and even after that organization descended into violence and chaos, I kept the faith alive and edited a Marxist theoretical journal that advocated democratic socialism. Subsequently, I suffered my share of disillusionment with Marx and socialism, but I never bought into the facile view that the collapse of Soviet communism had altogether relegated these ideas to the dustbin of history.
And although I felt isolated in my viewpoint in 1995, I think I have been proven prescient. In recent months, the onset of the severe global economic downturn has undermined faith in the magic of the market and resurrected the specter of socialism. John Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, the same think tank that years ago hosted that panel on socialism’s demise, recommended that the Obama administration nationalize the banks. American politicians and policymakers—not known for their admiration of Scandinavian socialism—have begun looking to the experiences of Sweden and Norway for inspiration. A recent Newsweek cover even announced, “We Are All Socialists Now.”
Socialism, once banished from polite conversation, has made a startling comeback. But what about socialism as a remedy for today’s crisis?