Doug's post on on Russian population leads me into thinking about the geopolitics of Leftism in general.
The world today finds only China, with all its controversial ideological reform in the name of political and economic survival, as the only remaining major power.
It is obvious the geopolitical shrinkage of socialist governments is not the natural result of the inherent dysfunction of socialism. It is however, the undeniable result of a battle lost between a rising socialist movement and an entrenched capitalistic system. This is not the first battle lost. The first was in 1848. Socialism then revived as a political force with the October Revolution in 1920 and rode the wave of anti colonial nationalism after WWII.
Unfortunately, this path burdened socialism with abject and widespread poverty and backwardness. Thus the penalties of colonialism were conveniently shifted onto socialism, as well as all the ugliness of a garrison state mentality amid pervasive capitalistic and ecclesiastical hostility, unwittingly making Western capitalism more efficient and apparently more attractive to the unthinking. The Cold War also pitted the Soviet Union geopolitically against the all mighty productive machine of American capitalism, advantaged by the uninterrupted development of the riches of its natural and human resources and the benefits of having been insulated from war damage twice in two World Wars within 3 decades. The emerging Soviet system was simply no match geopolitically for the American empire. Internally, within capitalist societies, the hostage syndrome has overtaken the oppressed who adopt a docile attitude of deranged appreciation toward their oppressors, while within socialist states, the siege mentality became normalized. The arms race played to the advantage of capitalism which is inherently predatory. Out of this history, economists are erroneously and misleadingly concluding that socialism is scientifically not a viable alternative because of its inherent defects. This heresy will be self-fulfilling if capitalism continues to dominate the geopolitical and economic structure of the world because man-made rules tend over time to assume cultural significance and tradition tend to acquire characteristics of natural laws.
It may therefore be useful for the list to discuss geopolitical strategies for global socialism. A geopolitical context is needed for socialist ideas to spread and take root. Political development in the EU is encouraging. Yet, history has shown that Social Democrats are not revolutionaries by policy or ideology. Although in the name of a united front, I personally am prepared to wait for events to develop before making a final judgment. The Asian, Russian, and Brazilian economic crises have been crying out for fundamental soul searching and new solutions. The opportunity for applying creative ideas is there for all who dare to seize it. Yet much of the discussions timidly and voluntarily stay within the intellectual construct of a failed discipline that has created the mess in the first place. It may be fair to say that the poverty of creative ideas is related to a self-imposed incarceration on the part of intellectuals, dictated by a blind loyalty to the bankrupt realm of consciousness of capitalist economics. The left, though not in possession of political or economic power, is almost equally matched in intellectual power with the right. The problem is that in order to get one's ideas distributed through capitalist controlled channels, such ideas are forced to cleanse themselves of any serious challenge to the validity of capitalism. So leftist thinkers traditionally tend to take comfort in pointing out esoteric inconsistencies of capitalism as if the best strategy is to wait for capitalism's collapse under it own weight. That, I submit, is going to be a long wait.
With the development of the internet, intellectual power can be free of this capitalist censorship. In this climate of global economic collapse, of lost intellectual direction, of establishment self doubt, the intellectual power of the revolutionary left takes on new significant.
This is a call for a global strategy from the left to seize the imagination in the minds of all people of the world towards global socialism. Specifically, the task is to devise a correct strategic umbrella toward globalization, toward capital flow control, toward market economy, toward domestic politics, toward finance capitalism, toward nationalism, towards environmentalism, towards intellectual labor, toward regionalism, toward pan nationalism..... that will add up to a cohesive geopolitical framework for a progressive future.
Henry C.K. Liu