Socialism, utopian and realistic

IN RESPONSE to "Socialism in a new era": As I feared would happen with many friends on the left, Alan Maaas has missed the point of my short piece "Be Utopian: Demand the Realistic," which appeared as part of the Nation series on "Reimagining Socialism."

The key point I made was to propose that we see socialism as a series of questions and challenges, not as a package of obvious and ready-made solutions. That is, we need to begin to construct a socialist society from two key points: 1) A vision of what we think should be the fundamental attributes of an egalitarian, democratic society; and 2) A very clear-eyed understanding of where the world is today, and how we can realistically move from where we are today to where we want to be in the future. That is what I meant by combining utopianism and realism.

I don't believe there is a single serious person in the world today who can lay out persuasively how exactly a democratic egalitarian economy should function and how we get there, step by step, from where we are today. We need to learn through the process of struggle and adaptation--that is, by asking questions, experimenting, learning from experience and moving forward in a disciplined way.

If my comrades on the left would consider this point dispassionately, I would have thought it would be non-controversial. The fact that lots of socialists seem to find it disturbing or setting the bar too low suggests to me that rhetoric and hubris are playing more of a role in discussions over the fight to build a viable democratic egalitarian economy than careful thinking and a commitment to really get things right.

I don't think, either in the short or long terms, that excessive rhetoric and hubris truly help the cause of socialism.
Robert Pollin, Amherst, Mass.