Each state must design its own strategy for transition: Marta

Hyderabad: The struggle for socialist alternatives has grappled thinkers, writers, academics and social activists for long. Marta Harnecker, Chilean sociologist and educator, spoke about the need for societies to embark on reconstruction keeping the economic character of that country but also the way the class struggle is waged there. History and cultural traditions, the specifications of the inherited economic structure, the levels of development of the forces of production, the way in which daily life expresses itself and the education level are to be considered. She was speaking at the ongoing international seminar on Democracy, Socialism and the visions for the 21st century in the city.

“It is necessary that the foundations of the new political system are built by the revolutionary government using the power it is able to employ, creating adequate spaces for popular participation, preparing the people to exercise power at all levels, from the most simple to the most complex. By promoting the creation of the new state from below, or a non-state that will replace the old state based on the bottom-up approach,” she said. Elucidating the initiatives that the government needs to take, Marta spelt out details. State companies should move from formal ownership to real appropriation by creating workers council that would allow workers to play a part in running the company, organise production to satisfy community needs, allow workers to exercise social accounting function and combat waste, corruption and bureaucratic interest, encourage cooperatives, forge links between cooperatives and communities, use system of prices and taxes that obliges them to transfer a portion of their surplus to other sectors of the economy, thus making it possible to set up new companies. Citing an example in Venezuela she explained, “The concept of participation with regard to drafting laws was called ‘social parliamentarianism of the streets’.

21st century socialism

Marta argues that 21st century socialism requires the construction of a new state from below. Communal system of production, distribution and consumption with participation of communes, a communal parliament, own financial entity with communal bank deposits would be the way forward.

The new model of development also has space for a model that is not based on the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, but instead seeks to gradually re-establish the necessary harmonic metabolism between humans and nature.