Argument: Michael Walzer Replies

Argument: M. Walzer Replies

The following is a response to Horst Brand’s critique of the Summer 2010 symposium on socialism.

Horst Brand is certainly right to point out that the class struggle has not been going well lately, and that this subject did not get sufficient attention in our symposium or in my essay. It is probably true to say that the labor movement and its political allies have not been this weak since sometime in the early 1930s. I don’t know how to explain the fact that significant gains for minorities, like blacks and gays, and a significant improvement in the status of women in our society have come along with a radical decline in the political clout of ordinary working people. These days the liberal-Left can prevail, at least sometimes, on so-called “social” issues, but almost never on economic issues. Figuring out why this is so, providing a clear analysis of capitalism today (it’s optimistic to call it “late”)—well, this is something that we have not yet done.

Brand is also right to argue that the welfare state is not the same as social democracy. In its current form, however, it is largely the achievement of social democrats, and we should not hesitate to claim credit for it (even if Bismarkian conservatives also saw the need for some kind of state provision). Together with democratic politics and state regulation of the economy, welfarism constitutes what we might think of as “actually existing social democracy”—which isn’t yet the real thing, as I tried to argue in “Which Socialism?” The real thing, for me, is the concrete, practical self-determination of working men and women, which takes place in civil society—and which is right now not taking place with anything like the necessary strength.

Hence the need for steady work and for a “new insurgency.” The steady work I know about; I can’t predict the insurgency; with Host Brand I can only hope for it.

Michael Walzer is the co-editor of Dissent.