On Socialism Dr. Thomas Maack's critique of my Thirtieth Anniversary Essay, "Socialism is Dead; Long Live Socialism," (Letters, March/April 1998) discards my specific assessments of why social- ism failed in particular Latin America countries, arguing that all socialist projects collapsed because they "occurred in the context of underdevelopment." He also states that I downplay the importance of "cooperation between workers in underdeveloped and developed countries." Because of my need to focus on Latin America, I did not fully artic- ulate a new approach for revitaliz- ing socialism, that of postmodern Marxism. Elsewhere, I argue that a critical flaw of classical Marxism is the demise of its principal social actor, the proletariat. It is not that I Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, NACLA Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. Letters can be sent by e-mail to: nacla@nacla.org. am innately opposed to the idea of workers overthrowing capitalism. The problem is that changes in the nature of capitalism itself, particu- larly in the epoch of globalization, have reduced and altered the role of the working class. Today societies and classes are fragmented. Workers, peasants, indigenous soci- eties and other social groups have very specific identities depending on their location, culture, history and other factors. These realities compel us to turn our attention towards two major groups which have emerged as agents of transition-the social movements and the castaways, or marginalized sectors of society. Certainly no major alterations of the current order can occur without the participation of the working classes, but neither can fundamen- tal change occur without the active involvement of the civil rights and ethnic movements, the feminist and the environmental movements, the peace and antiwar movements, and others, depending on the configura- tion of a given society. Regarding the castaways and their largely subsistence economic activities, Maack says that I am mistakenly elevating "some of the most desperate struggles for sur- vival" to building blocks for social- ism. I would insist that revolution- ary change and new societies can only emerge from the mobilization and involvement of the most dis- possessed and alienated sectors of society. What is needed today is not a cri- tique of one social sector or another as being more revolutionary, but an increase in cooperation and con- sciousness among all sectors, espe- cially between and among the social movements, workers and the grow- ing underclass that are marginalized by late capitalism. In a certain sense, we need to do for the epoch of globalization what Marx did for the era of industrial capitalism- namely, describe the economic and social processes at work and present a new approach for transforming the world as we know it.
