A death much exaggerated.

A DEATH MUCH EXAGGERATED

IT HAS BEEN famously said that the great unreported fact of our century is the death of socialism. But there is somewhat more to it than that.

At a recent Boston University conference convened by Peter Berger, the theme question was "Is the Capitalism v. Socialism Debate Obsolete?' About thirty scholars, mainly economists, did not agree on an answer, but, after hearing reports on the state of the debate in the U.S., Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, India, Africa, and Asia, everyone agreed that it was a very good question. And that, significantly, would not have been the case even five years ago.

Socialism as a system of political economy has come a cropper wherever it has been tried. It has turned out to be politically oppressive, culturally stifling, and economically disastrous. To be sure, there are those who insist that "true socialism' hasn't been tried yet. What is called socialism is typically welfare-state capitalism (Sweden) or confused and usually despotic collectivism (most of the "socialist experiments' among the poor nations). Stubborn adherence to a "true socialism that has yet to be tried' is one reason why the socialism/capitalism debate is not obsolete. As an analytical term, "socialism' is decreasingly useful or interesting. Its status as a term of symbolic and moral meaning is something else.

"Define your terms!' Conferences such as that at Boston U. always run the risk of getting bogged down in definitional squabbling. It was a close thing, but this one did not succumb. It was generally agreed that, on the basis of common sense and historical experience, we know the difference between capitalism and socialism. Admittedly, there is a continuum, and no society is "purely' capitalist or "purely' socialist, but most societies can be plausibly placed on a scale from one to ten. State-directed economic decisions and government ownership of property, for example, place a society at one end of the scale, market decisions and private ownership at the other. Throughout the world, the momentum today is toward the capitalist end of the scale--although, for reasons that have nothing to do with economics, many defensively claim to be moving toward a truer socialism.

From all this you might expect that it would be hard to find really enthusiastic socialists today. Rear not. Not for nothing do we have religion. For religious activists of a liberationist bent, the charms of socialism increase precisely as socialism is spurned by those preoccupied with the merely economic. There would seem to be two reasons for this. It used to be that the argument for socialism--in the mode of the Fabians, for instance --was made on the basis of efficiency. Capitalism is irrational and wasteful, socialism rational and efficient. Now that experience has debunked that doctrine, the case for socialism must be made almost exclusively on moral grounds. And standing on those grounds are a host of enthusiasts, the proof of whose radicalism is their aptitude in transcending the questions of "mere' efficiency.

The second reason why discredited and discarded socialisms are given such warm asylum in some religious circles is that Christians feel a need to posit an alternative to the way things are. Behind this felt need is a perfectly legitimate, indeed imperative, insight: Biblical believers must never permit themselves to be satisfied with any condition short of the promised kingdom of God. When, however, people lose confidence in that transcendent promise, they begin to sniff around for alternatives in the present to which they might attach their hopes. For Christians and many other morally earnest folk, socialism for a long time now has been that "something else.' And if it keeps escaping our historical grasp, its very elusiveness accents the characteristic of "otherness' that qualifies it as a worthy moral vision. Thus is the moral authenticity of socialism confirmed by its practical failure.

The One True Socialism

A REMARKABLE range of people still say that they think of themselves as socialists--of one kind or another, so to speak, so to dream. They too feel called to be critical, and so they must be devoted to something other than the status quo. Democratic capitalism is presumably the status quo in which they live, and therefore it cannot be the required something other. But now it becomes increasingly hard to deny that neither is socialism that something other. It is a project familiar, tattered, tired, and failed. The something other, it is therefore suggested, must be the true socialism beyond socialisms.

Socialism is not dead, then, and the debate is not obsolete. Not so long as there is dispute over identifying the corpse as that of socialism. Not so long as the ghostly dreams that drive men's minds whisper that their name is Socialism.