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This text is a pebble: we’re tossing into the water in the hope that it will make waves. Our goal is to initiate a debate about what socialism can mean today. This project began with a podium discussion at the 2023 Sommerakademie der Bewegungslinken on substantive left-wing visions for the future. Numerous participants asked why, as a socialist party, we have not been able to propagate a more-or-less popular narrative about socialism.
Bernd Riexinger is a member of the Executive Board of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and a Member of Parliament for Die Linke. He was previously general secretary of Ver.di in Stuttgart for many years and co-chair of Die Linke.
Raul Zelik is an author and translator. He currently works for the daily newspaper nd. His most recent book is Wir Untoten des Kapitals: Über politische Monster und einen grünen Sozialismus (Suhrkamp, 2020).
The point is well taken. The Left in society and Die Linke are well-practised at identifying social ills. They are significantly less self-assured when it comes to analysing whether and how the multiple crises of the present are interconnected. And they are typically very quiet when it comes to talking about alternatives to capitalism. “Too far off”, “completely unrealistic at the moment”, “who actually wants a change of system and who’s going to carry it out?” — these objections are often raised, effectively relegating the issue of systemic change to the distant future.
Yet we remain convinced of the need to generate more detailed descriptions and articulations of what an alternative to capitalism could look like. The Left needs a concept that clarifies the difference between the socialism towards which it aspires and the failed experiments of really existing socialism. The point is not to wish upon a star, but to take up and further develop approaches for which people are already fighting. Primary among these are examples of self-organization, solidarity, struggles for the common good, and participatory democracy, which emerge again and again among people in society, even if they are often quickly destroyed by the laws of the market and the valorization of capital.
Precisely at a time when we are witnessing a shift to the right and strengthening fascist tendencies, it is politically fatal for leftists to confine themselves to defending liberal democracy (with its regime of social inequality) against the Right. Instead, we need a realistic vision of an alternative, meaning: how can a better life be achieved, what social preconditions need to be created for it to become possible? We need a project that enables the vast majority of people to enjoy better working, living, and environmental conditions than the stunted ones offered by capitalism, whose destructive forces have become a danger to the survival of a large part of humanity.
The ability of the Left in society to gain in strength and go on the political offensive again will depend on our capacity to provide a convincing answer to the question of what we mean by socialism today. We see this brochure as an invitation to discussion addressed to the many people, young and old, who are active in left-wing circles, initiatives, and movements, or in Die Linke, and who give thought to the issue of an anti-capitalist alternative.
According to the late cultural critic Mark Fisher, capitalism in the twenty-first century has succeeded in presenting itself as completely without alternative. If we want to break the hegemony of a capitalism that acts as if there is no alternative, we need to strive to tell a positive story. In the pages that follow, we attempt to explain why we continue to refer to this project as socialism.