R. Shay

Their Socialism and Ours R. Shay

Socialism has been a failure everywhere that it has been attempted. This is the refrain heard time and time again as examples like Stalin's USSR are conjured up for good measure. The defenders of the current crumbling capitalist system argue that it is simply ?human nature? that brought about the misery within, and eventual demise of, the ?Socialist Bloc.? For the remaining leftists who still cling to the tattered banner of one form or another of ?Really Existing Socialism,? it was this or that strategic or tactical error (don't worry, they promise to do better next time). Rarely seen from any side is a genuine examination of the underlying class forces involved in the rise and fall of the so-called Communist Countries. This little book is an attempt at exactly that. The author traces the struggle between classes with varying interests to its logical conclusion: the bureaucratized administrative socialism that came to exist in a large part of the world. But rather than have proved the ?failure of socialism,? the author argues that the existence of these regimes within and alongside a faltering global capitalist order has proven the need to move beyond any and all forms of class society. An international working class revolution, he argues, is the only way forward. It is that revolution, carried out by a class with nothing to claim but its own liberation, that will sweep away the very basis for the existence of class rule and dictatorship along with the muck of ages.