The great radical historian Howard Zinn once told me, half in jest, that one of the greatest disasters to befall socialism was when the Soviet Union put it in the official name of the country: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I asked him to explain and he said, The USSR, which had little to do with socialism, it was an authoritarian state, wanted to capitalize on the almost universal good name that socialism had. And the capitalist countries played along by smearing socialism and conflating it with the USSR. If you expressed interest in socialism the response would be: “Why don’t you move to a gulag in Siberia? Today, because of growing wealth and income inequality and the Bernie Sanders campaign, he got more than 13 million votes, there is a resurgence of interest in socialism. Many young people are fed up with predatory capitalism and are looking for alternatives. Worker-owned and operated coops are springing up. These initiatives can proliferate and grow. And as Howard Zinn always said, authentic socialism must be small “d” democratic.
Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and currently a visiting professor at the New School in New York. The New York Times calls him “America’s most prominent Marxist economist.” He is the author of numerous books including Democracy at Workand Occupy the Economy with David Barsamian.
- KBOO