EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES (continued)
The South African Communist Party became a major force in the African
National Congress, which by 1952 was able to overcome the apartheid regime, unify
a number of countries under the banner of the Southern African Peoples Union
(SAPU). Nelson Mandela, a charismatic young leader who had been imprisoned
briefly by the apartheid regime, was freed by popular pressure and became the first
President of the new Southern African Peoples Republic (SAPR). He was installed
in an inspiring ceremony that was televised worldwide; this was held in
Johannesburg in July 1963, with the father of the Pan-African Movement, Dr. W.
E. B. Du Bois, on the platform with him, just weeks before Du Bois' death at age 95.
The most recent breakaway from Second World domination has been the
formation of the United States of Central America, a union of Nicaragua, Honduras,
Costa Rica, the Chiapas region of Mexico, and Cuba. The latter country had a
popular revolution and socialist transition beginning in 1959, and the Second
World axis had long sought to strangle that revolution, but without success.
So today, the sphere of cooperation among socialist countries and federations
is slowly growing, amid considerable debate about the proper balance between
coordination and autonomy, between common social goals and the enormous
diversity of conditions, including those involving earlier forms of property, income
distribution, and so on. As the new millennium commences, the process is
advancing, although not without major resistance and sabotage from the Second
World powers. Some of these powers have threatened to get ahold of
thermonuclear technology to deploy a massive bomb — a weapon of mass
destruction — but so far, with the vigilance of the peoples of the United Nations
and socialist federations, this threat has not been realized.
One key goal at present is to maintain the base for massive popular support
for the Socialist Federations/UN. This requires firm and increasing confidence
that the material living standards of the most advanced socialist countries can be
achieved throughout the world by a leveling-up process, within the constraints
imposed by planetary resources. This is by no means certain, but there are two
factors that permit us a cautious optimism. First, industrial development in the
progressive countries (the "First World") has increased the scope of the
Demographic Transition — the falloff of population growth as people come to
believe in and share the socio-political contract guaranteeing medical, survivor and
general retirement support throughout an individual's lifetime. While population
pressure continues, mainly in the Second World, with continued social progress
scientists now project that world population will stabilize at six billion around the
year 2015.
Second, the information technology revolution, centered at Akademgorodok
but subsequently spread around the world, continues to open up new vistas for
democratic planning and coordination. The conflict between local autonomy and
macro stability will never disappear, but it is increasingly possible to use Internets
and Intranets to coordinate diverse production and creative activities, without
bottlenecks, cycles, waste, polarization, bureaucratism, and the other evils long
associated with either spontaneous capitalist market coordination, or authoritarian
planning from the center. The new culture of participatory socialism was the
subject of a major symposium in one of the world's leading theoretical journals,
Science & Society; this was called "Horizons of Democratic Mathematics," and
appeared as the journal's 75th anniversary issue (Vol. 75, No. 1, January 2010;
press run 200,000 copies).
So while capitalist power and exploitation have not yet been uprooted
everywhere in the world, there is good reason to hope that this final dispensation
will occur in the not-too-distant future. Your generation, then, will be able to take
major new steps in pursuit of a principled, egalitarian and democratic society that
promotes unlimited human development, both material and spiritual, within the
natural resource constraints of Planet Earth.
****
Hey, we are entitled to dream, aren't we?
D. L.
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Dr. Annette T. Rubinstein, member of the Science & Society Editorial Board
since 1964 and author of over 50 articles and book reviews in our journal,
celebrated her 95th birthday (three days early) last April 9 at the new headquarters
of the Brecht Forum. Along with many speakers, S&S Editor David Laibman
entertained the more than 200 friends and colleagues of Annette's with
inspirational songs.
Annette's accomplishments — as a master teacher in the Jefferson School
and, from its founding 30 years ago, the Brecht Forum (where she just finished
teaching a course on Brecht); as a high school principal until she was deposed by
McCarthyism; author of five books and over 200 articles; leader of and candidate
for the American Labor Party; founder of the Charter Group for a Pledge of
Conscience; and activist in a wide range of movements — are monumental. These
activities caused the FBI, as revealed in its files, to repeatedly characterize her as
"dangerous." For the left, she has been invaluable.
Annette closed the celebration with a recitation of a six-line poem by Bertolt
Brecht, in which, she believes, "he succeeded in summing up the laws of dialectics":
Everything changes.
You can begin a new life with your latest breath.
What has happened has happened.
The water you poured into the wine cannot be drained off,
But everything changes.
You begin a new life with your latest breath.
Annette, who one speaker explained "has everything," suggests that in lieu of
presents, friends, students and other well-wishers can send contributions to
support the capital fund of the Brecht Forum, which is currently renovating its new
headquarters. The address is: 451 West Street / New York, NY 11014.
J. M.
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IN THIS ISSUE
We are pleased to present another in our series of special issues: most
recently "The Spanish Civil War," edited by Marvin Gettleman and Renate
Bridenthal (Fall 2004); "Marxist-Feminist Thought Today," edited by Martha
Gimenez and Lise Vogel (January 2005); and "The Deep Structure of the Present
Moment," edited by Renate Bridenthal (July 2005).
The current issue is called "Biography Meets History: Communist Party Lives
in International Perspective." The Guest Editors, Richard Cross and Andrew Flinn,
explain in their Introduction that the papers originated in a conference held in
England in 2001, to further the work of political biography as a tool in
understanding the legacy of Communist activism around the world. A number of
the participants have quite reasonably focused on the United Kingdom, and an
earlier exemplar of their work appeared as a special issue of S&S (Spring 1997), on
"Communism in Britain and the British Empire," edited by Kevin Morgan. The
general guiding philosophy was then (and is now) to avoid both hagiography and
the dismissive cold-war mentality; to find the links between the personal and the
political; and to embrace the uncertainty and richness of lived experience in the
Communist movement, the interplay between strengths and weaknesses. In this
current project, the scope has been extended to Finland, Poland, Germany and the
United States, bringing a truly international perspective into play.
Refer to the Guest Editors' Introduction for further orientation, and to the
articles themselves for truly fascinating information about some remarkable
individuals and times. This historical-biographical — perhaps I should say
"prosopographical" — project could well be extended, both geographically and
politically, as an ongoing effort to not only recuperate parts of the historical record
that should not be lost, but to shed new light on old questions, questions that still
concern us today and will, one imagines, continue to concern us in the future as
well. As always, our most sincere thanks to the Guest Editors, Richard Cross and
Andrew Flinn, for their vision and endurance in pulling this project together.
D. L.
