Socialist Register 1991 Preface

Abstract

This twenty-seventh volume of the Socialist Register is primarily devoted to the daunting questions posed for socialists by the transformations which the USSR and the former Communist regimes of Eastern Europe are going through. The editors of and contributors to the Socialist Register over the past quarter century have fostered no illusions regarding the dictatorial nature of these regimes, and have presented over the years many analyses of their limits and contradictions. The emergence of "glasnost" in the USSR since 1985 followed by the dramatic democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989-90 were events of great historic importance, and they appeared to offer some promise for positive developments in international relations as well as for democratic socialist prospects. Today, we must ask what already remains of such promise as we witness the prospects for democratic socialism marginalized by capitalist and chauvinist forces and sentiments in Eastern Europe and the USSR, not to mention the growing economic and military ruthlessness of an unchecked global capitalism lustily proclaiming its "new world order". The Left must reassess the whole Communist experience, and draw appropriate lessons, in light of the collapse of authoritarian communism; it must do so, however, also mindful of the costs and consequences of an authoritarian capitalism rushing in to pick up the pieces. The essays in this volume attempt to understand the aftermath of Communist regimes in terms of its global as well as local political, economic and ideological implications, including the implications it has for the meaning and prospects of democratic socialism. While they also analyze the long-term, internal and external, causes of the crisis of the authoritarian communism, their primary focus is on providing detailed accounts of current developments, above all in relation to investigating the contradictory nature of the simultaneous processes of "democratization" and "marketization", and the complex old and new social forces, ideas and struggles involved. Regardless of whether our contributors see the Communist regimes as having represented the distortion and ultimate failure of a particular kind of socialism, or as never having amounted to any kind of socialism at all due to their divorce between socialism and democracy, the conclusions they draw regarding what is happening in the aftermath of Communist regimes still point to democratic socialism as the only humane alternative. The most daunting questions this volume raises, therefore, are those concerned with how to go about making viable the vision and prospect of democratic socialism at the end of the twentieth century.