Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: If Socialism Fails: The Spectre of 21st Century Barbarism

From the first day it appeared online, Climate and Capitalism's
masthead has carried the slogan "Ecosocialism or Barbarism: there is
no third way." We've been quite clear that ecosocialism is not a new
theory or brand of socialism — it is socialism with Marx's important
insights on ecology restored, socialism committed to the fight against
ecological destruction. But why do we say that the alternative to
ecosocialism is barbarism?
Marxists have used the word "barbarism" in various ways, but most
often to describe actions or social conditions that are grossly
inhumane, brutal, and violent. It is not a word we use lightly,
because it implies not just bad behaviour but violations of the most
important norms of human solidarity and civilized life.[1]
The slogan "Socialism or Barbarism" originated with the great German
revolutionary socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg, who repeatedly raised
it during World War I. It was a profound concept, one that has become
ever more relevant as the years have passed.
Rosa Luxemburg spent her entire adult life organizing and educating
the working class to fight for socialism. She was convinced that if
socialism didn't triumph, capitalism would become ever more barbaric,
wiping out centuries of gains in civilization. In a major 1915 antiwar
polemic, she referred to Friedrich Engels' view that society must
either advance to socialism or revert to barbarism and then asked,
"What does a `reversion to barbarism' mean at the present stage of
European civilization?"
She gave two related answers.
In the long run, she said, a continuation of capitalism would lead to
the literal collapse of civilized society and the coming of a new Dark
Age, similar to Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire: "The
collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation,
desolation, degeneration — a great cemetery." (The Junius Pamphlet)
[2]
By saying this, Rosa Luxemburg was reminding the revolutionary left
that socialism is not inevitable, that if the socialist movement
failed, capitalism might destroy modern civilization, leaving behind a
much poorer and much harsher world. That wasn't a new concept – it has
been part of Marxist thought from its very beginning. In 1848, in The
Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote:
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles. … that each time ended, either in the revolutionary
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the
contending classes."
In Luxemburg's words: "Humanity is facing the alternative: Dissolution
and downfall in capitalist anarchy, or regeneration through the social
revolution." (A Call to the Workers of the World)
Capitalism's Two Faces
But Luxemburg, again following the example of Marx and Engels, also
used the term "barbarism" another way, to contrast capitalism's loudly
proclaimed noble ideals with its actual practice of torture,
starvation, murder and war.
Marx many times described the two-sided nature of capitalist
"progress." In 1853, writing about British rule in India, he described
the "profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois
civilization [that] lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its
home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it
goes naked."
Capitalist progress, he said, resembled a "hideous, pagan idol, who
would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain." (The
Future Results of British Rule in India)
Similarly, in a speech to radical workers in London in 1856, he said:
"On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and
scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever
suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far
surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman
Empire." (Speech at the Anniversary of the People's Paper)
Immense improvements to the human condition have been made under
capitalism — in health, culture, philosophy, literature, music and
more. But capitalism has also led to starvation, destitution, mass
violence, torture and even genocide — all on an unprecedented scale.
As capitalism has expanded and aged, the barbarous side of its nature
has come ever more to the fore.
Bourgeois society, which came to power promising equality, democracy,
and human rights, has never had any compunction about throwing those
ideals overboard to expand and protect its wealth and profits. That's
the view of barbarism that Rosa Luxemburg was primarily concerned
about during World War I. She wrote:
"Shamed, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping in filth, this
capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles
of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics — as a
roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as pestilential breath,
devastating culture and humanity — so it appears in all its hideous
nakedness…
"A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of
bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression
into barbarism." (The Junius Pamphlet)
For Luxemburg, barbarism wasn't a future possibility. It was the
present reality of imperialism, a reality that was destined to get
much worse if socialism failed to stop it. Tragically, she was proven
correct. The defeat of the German revolutions of 1917 to 1923, coupled
with the isolation and degeneration of the Russian Revolution, opened
the way to a century of genocide and constant war.
In 1933, Leon Trotsky described the rise of fascism as "capitalist
society … puking up undigested barbarism." (What is National
Socialism?)
Later he wrote:
"The delay of the socialist revolution engenders the indubitable
phenomena of barbarism — chronic unemployment, pauperization of the
petty bourgeoisie, fascism, finally wars of extermination which do not
open up any new road." (In Defense of Marxism)
More than 250 million people, most of them civilians, were killed in
the wars of extermination and mass atrocities of the 20th Century.
This century continues that record: in less than eight years over
three million people have died in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and
elsewhere in the Third World, and at least 700,000 have died in
"natural" disasters.
As Luxemburg and Trotsky warned, barbarism is already upon us. Only
mass action can stop barbarism from advancing, and only socialism can
definitively defeat it. Their call to action is even more important
today, when capitalism has added massive ecological destruction,
primarily affecting the poor, to the wars and other horrors of the
20th Century.
21st Century Barbarism
That view has been expressed repeatedly and forcefully by Venezuelan
president Hugo Chavez. Speaking in Vienna in May 2006, he referred
explicitly to Luxemburg's words:
"The choice before humanity is socialism or barbarism. … When Rosa
Luxemburg made this statement, she was speaking of a relatively
distant future. But now the situation of the world is so bad that the
threat to the human race is not in the future, but now."[3]
A few months earlier, in Caracas, he argued that capitalism's
destruction of the environment gives particular urgency to the fight
against barbarism today:
"I was remembering Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg and the phrase that
each one of them, in their particular time and context put forward;
the dilemma `socialism or barbarism.' …
"I believe it is time that we take up with courage and clarity a
political, social, collective and ideological offensive across the
world — a real offensive that permits us to move progressively, over
the next years, the next decades, leaving behind the perverse,
destructive, destroyer, capitalist model and go forward in
constructing the socialist model to avoid barbarism and beyond that
the annihilation of life on this planet.
"I believe this idea has a strong connection with reality. I don't
think we have much time. Fidel Castro said in one of his speeches I
read not so long ago, "tomorrow could be too late, let's do now what
we need to do." I don't believe that this is an exaggeration. The
environment is suffering damage that could be irreversible — global
warming, the greenhouse effect, the melting of the polar ice caps, the
rising sea level, hurricanes — with terrible social occurrences that
will shake life on this planet."[4]
Chavez and the revolutionary Bolivarian movement in Venezuela have
proudly raised the banner of 21st Century Socialism to describe their
goals. As these comments show, they are also raising a warning flag,
that the alternative to socialism is 21st Century Barbarism — the
barbarism of the previous century amplified and intensified by
ecological crisis.
Climate Change and 'Barbarization'
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been studying
and reporting on climate change for two decades. Recently the Vice-
Chair of the IPCC, Professor Mohan Munasinghe, gave a lecture at
Cambridge University that described "a dystopic possible future world
in which social problems are made much worse by the environmental
consequences of rising greenhouse gas emissions."
He said: "Climate change is, or could be, the additional factor which
will exacerbate the existing problems of poverty, environmental
degradation, social polarisation and terrorism and it could lead to a
very chaotic situation."
"Barbarization," Munasinghe said, is already underway. We face "a
situation where the rich live in enclaves, protected, and the poor
live outside in unsustainable conditions."[5]
A common criticism of the IPCC is that its reports are too
conservative, that they understate how fast climate change is
occurring and how disastrous the effects may be. So when the Vice-
Chair of the IPCC says that "barbarization" is already happening, no
one should suggest that it's an exaggeration.
The Present Reality of Barbarism
The idea of 21st Century Barbarism may seem farfetched. Even with food
and fuel inflation, growing unemployment and housing crises, many
working people in the advanced capitalist countries still enjoy a
considerable degree of comfort and security.
But outside the protected enclaves of the global north, the reality of
"barbarization" is all too evident.
    * 2.5 billion people, nearly half of the world's population,
survive on less than two dollars a day.
    * Over 850 million people are chronically undernourished and three
times that many frequently go hungry.
    * Every hour of every day, 180 children die of hunger and 1200 die
of preventable diseases.
    * Over half a million women die every year from complications of
pregnancy and childbirth. 99% of them are in the global south.
    * Over a billion people live in vast urban slums, without
sanitation, sufficient living space, or durable housing.
    * 1.3 billion people have no safe water. 3 million die of water-
related diseases every year.
The United Nations Human Development Report 2007-2008 warns that
unmitigated climate change will lock the world's poorest countries and
their poorest citizens in a downward spiral, leaving hundreds of
millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats, and
a loss of livelihoods.[6]
In UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervi's words: "Ultimately, climate change
is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency
with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who
face the immediate and most severe human costs."[7]
Among the 21st Century threats identified by the Human Development
Report:
    * The breakdown of agricultural systems as a result of increased
exposure to drought, rising temperatures, and more erratic rainfall,
leaving up to 600 million more people facing malnutrition.
    * An additional 1.8 billion people facing water stress by 2080,
with large areas of South Asia and northern China facing a grave
ecological crisis as a result of glacial retreat and changed rainfall
patterns.
    * Displacement through flooding and tropical storm activity of up
to 332 million people in coastal and low-lying areas. Over 70 million
Bangladeshis, 22 million Vietnamese, and six million Egyptians could
be affected by global warming-related flooding.
    * Expanding health risks, including up to 400 million more people
facing the risk of malaria.
To these we can add the certainty that at least 100 million people
will be added to the ranks of the permanently hungry this year as a
result of food price inflation.
In the UN report, former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu echoes
Munasinghe's prediction of protected enclaves for the rich within a
world of ecological destruction:
"While the citizens of the rich world are protected from harm, the
poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh reality
of climate change in their everyday lives…. We are drifting into a
world of `adaptation apartheid'."
As capitalism continues with business as usual, climate change is fast
expanding the gap between rich and poor between and within nations,
and imposing unparalleled suffering on those least able to protect
themselves. That is the reality of 21st Century Barbarism.
No society that permits that to happen can be called civilized. No
social order that causes it to happen deserves to survive.
Ian Angus is Editor of the online journal Climate and Capitalism, and
an Associate Editor of Socialist Voice.
Footnotes
[1] In "Empire of Barbarism" (Monthly Review, December 2004), John
Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark provide an excellent account of the
evolution of the word "barbarism" and its present-day implications.
The best discussion of Rosa Luxemburg's use of the word is in Norman
Geras, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (NLB 1976), which unfortunately is
out of print.
[2] The works of Marx, Engels, Luxemburg and Trotsky that are quoted
in this article can be found online in the Marxists Internet Archive.
[3] Hands Off Venezuela, May 13, 2006
[4] Green Left Weekly, August 31, 2005
[5] "Expert warns climate change will lead to 'barbarisation'"
Guardian, May 15, 2008
[6] United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report
2007/2008
[7] "Climate change threatens unprecedented human development
reversals." UNDP News Release, Nov. 27, 2007

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il radioso futuro del capitalismo selvaggio è quello