Interview with Boris Kagarlitsky

Boris Kagarlitsky is a leading Russian Democratic Socialist and
Marxist scholar. Jim Smith is editor of L.A. Labor News.

Jim Smith - Politics in Russia seem to be very complicated these days. Is
that your sense?

Boris Kagarlitsky - The political situation in Russia is
becoming very simple in the sense that we’re moving very fast towards some
kind of new dictatorship. Every day it’s more simple than the previous
day.

JS - That’s a good start.

BK - It may seem complicated
because nobody wants to articulate that current debate that’s going on.
The real debate is which kind of dictatorship do we need.

JS - Who’s going to lead it?

BK - Who’s going to lead it?
What for? There is a kind of hidden consensus among the elite and
unfortunately among the population that democracy will not survive. It’s
also important to say that today there’s no democracy. People have very
little to defend. Russia is a very peculiar system. On the one hand we
have all the characteristics of democracy. We have elections, we have the
parliament, we have political parties and we have a free press. At the
same time, everyone knows that the decision-making process is completely
authoritarian. So all these democratic mechanisms have very little to do
with the real decision making. Everyone knows that election fraud is
becoming an increasing part of the political process like in Mexico. You
have elections but the outcome doesn’t depend on voters, it depends on the
local power structure, the casiques. In Russia we started using that term
Casique after the local strongmen, the local political powers in
Mexico. "Comrade" Stalin, right after the 17th Congress, said it
doesn’t matter how they vote, what matters is how we count.

JS - It’s been that way ever since.

BK - Yes, it’s much the same in Russia today.

JS - There will be presidential elections next June?
BK - In December, we’ll have parliamentary elections and, theoretically, in
June and July, we’ll have presidential elections. The question is, will we
have them. My prediction at the moment is that we’ll have the election for
parliament in December but probably not presidential elections in June.
There are pessimists who say we won’t even have the elections in December.
The optimists say the June elections will go on but with fraud. The
problem the leading elite has now is that they cannot keep things under
control. This is the regime that has power since the coup in 1993 up
through the August 1998 crash of the ruble. This regime cannot survive for
long because its economic and also, its social base, has eroded. That
makes everyone certain that there will be a transition to something
different. The question is, a transition to what? And a second question
is, who is going to manage the transition? I think the team -the
oligarchy- around Yeltsin is really horrified by the prospective of some
other groups taking control of the political process. The ones who win
will look for scapegoats since the country is in a total mess. Someone
will have to be found guilty and punished for what has happened. Yeltsin’s
people understand they are the perfect target. The economic side is
the Russian oligarchy created a system that is completely unproductive. It
is simply consuming the resources of the country, including human
resources, rather than reproducing the economy. As a result, the economy
is shrinking. This means that there are less and less resources for the
oligarchy. This increases the competition among different groups among the
oligarchy for resources. After the ruble’s crash in 1998, everyone
understood that we had too many oligarchs. So for one group of oligarchs
to survive, they must expropriate the other group of oligarchs. We are
approaching the stage when expropriation becomes inevitable.
Unfortunately, it’s not the proletariat that’s going to expropriate the
capitalists, but one group of capitalists that will expropriate the other
group of capitalists. So the struggle is who is going to expropriate whom.
For example, is the group around Yuri Luzhkov going to expropriate the
group around Boris Berezovsky and Yeltsin, or the other way around. And
there are other groups as well, but these are the two biggest
groups. The third factor is that for the first time since 1989, the
economy is growing. It’s growing to such an extent that in the United
States, they are now taking protectionist measures against Russian imports
like steel. It is interesting that the American government always teaches
everyone about free trade but it’s one of the most protectionist markets,
particularly against the third world and eastern Europe. The public in
Russia is very shocked that, on the one hand, America is teaching us about
free trade and, on the other hand, is protecting their markets against our
products. But today the economy is growing because the ruble collapsed and
the price of labor is so cheap that the products become incredibly cheap.
In the steel industry, a Russian worker will earn $500 a month - a great
salary - while an American worker might earn up to $5,000. The skills and
education of the Russian would be the same as the American, but he is
working for third-world wages. Some would say that’s not a fair
competition but what is unfair is the small wage caused by the collapse of
the domestic market in Russia. That’s why the Russian industry is so
aggressively exporting. This economic situation has created a
crisis among the elite. There is growth with nearly zero investment. In
recent years, in most industries production slowed down, but the capacity
was still there. So when the economy started growing, they started
expanding production without new investment by recovering the old
equipment. But this kind of expansion is very limited. For example, the
equipment is falling apart. It’s growing old and becoming outmotive. To
produce quality products, you have to invest in new equipment. In Russia,
there is a labor force, a market, everything is very cheap but there is no
new equipment. The oligarchs do not want to invest. There is no structure
for investment. There is no investment research, strategy, decision-making
bodies. So there money is not capital. The money is used for buying real
estate in the Bahamas. From their point of view this is rational. Since
there is no infrastructure for investment in Russia, why not buy a hotel
in the Bahamas. It will bring money back to them and it is safe. It’s
rational for them to export capital rather than invest in Russia. At the
same time, the oligarchs want the economy to expand so it will bring them
more money. This is the contradiction. They don’t want to invest but they
want economic growth. They want the state to invest for them. And they
want to take the profits away. You privatize the profits and socialize the
losses. The kind of state we have in Russia accepts this idea. But the
state doesn’t have the money. This increases the pressure from the
oligarchs to have the state expropriate the wealth of the other groups of
oligarchs.

JS - Would the wealth of the expropriated oligarchs then become
state property?

BK - Not necessarily. The state is in debt as
are the oligarchs. The money could be used to write off some of the debt
or they could be forced to invest in state projects or state banks. This
is what they have done already to ordinary people. Now they are going to
do it to each other.

JS - Where is Lenin now that we need him?

BK - The left is weaker than it looks. In numbers it doesn’t look so weak. At least
one-third of the population votes for the left and another third is
center-left. It would seem to be an incredible prospect for the left. In
reality it’s not. First of all, Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist party
leadership is shifting from leftwing positions to nationalist, nostalgic,
czarist, even, anti-Semitic positions. The party is hijacked from its
members by the leadership. It a certain sense it’s a very Stalinist way of
doing things. The Stalinist method of organization enables the leadership
to be almost completely independent from the mass of the members. With the
members being passive and accepting almost anything the leadership does.
However, in the past, the leadership had to accept a continuity with the
revolutionary tradition. While today the leadership of Zyuganov has broken
with that tradition. Now, I can buy this Trotskyist interpretation of
Thermidor. I not a Trotskyist, but I think it’s a good interpretation. In
their view, Stalinist ideology was Bonapartist and Thermidorian with a
combination of revolutionary tradition and the pre-revolutionary ancien
regime. And now with Zyuganov, there is a dramatic shift to the
reactionary component of Stalinism with the elimination of everything
Marxist or Leninist in the tradition. It’s Stalinism purified from
Leninism.

JS - Is the Party leadership united on this?

BK - The leadership is united, but the party is not. Because of this, they have had
to systematically purge all the elements in the party not acceptable to
the leadership. People of all different types and currents have been
purged. Left-liberal types like Boris Slavin are out. Social democratic
types like Vladimir Semago have been expelled. Even traditional Stalinists
like Richard Kosolapov also have been expelled. Alexey Podberiozkin who
was not even a party member, but a Zyuganovite is ostracized. The entire
youth communist league, the Komsomol, led by Igor Maligrov was expelled.
It had 30,000 members. They formed a new pro-Zyuganov youth alliance. It’s
not even a problem of right or left. If you have any independent thoughts,
you’re out. This has created an intellectual crisis in the
party. The party faction in the Duma is becoming increasingly
corrupt. This has to do with the nature of Russian politics. I blame them,
but there are some objective reasons for this parliamentary corruption.
It’s not just that they are bad people or opportunists. The Duma has no
real power. That is completely demoralizing. Some deputies can use it to
fight for something but you don’t have a history of fighting and you don’t
have a mass movement outside the Duma to be linked with
politically. In the Duma, it’s the norm for the majority of
deputies to take money for every important vote. So for example, if there
is legislation on advertising, the lobbyists come and bribe the deputies.
They call it lobbying, but it’s really bribery. It’s much worse than in
America where they make contributions. In Russia they don’t make
contributions, they just give you money for a vote - from $1,000 up to
$30,000 for a single vote. You press the "vote" button and you get
$30,000. I know a "lobbyist," who was a left-wing journalist in 1993. She
was close to us in the Party of Labor. It dissolved in 1994 but before
that it had some influence. (Ed. note: The party of Labor was outlawed by
Yeltzin in the wake of his 1993 assault on the Russian Parliament.
Kagalitsky was beaten and briefly jailed.) After the 1993 coup, she went
to work for MosBank as an analyst. Then they moved her to another job
which simply was to bring bribes to deputies. Every time I go to the Duma,
I see her there with a bag full of bank notes. I ask her "how many souls
did you buy today?" The Duma is full of these people so it’s very
tempting to the deputies. Not every single deputy takes bribes but it is a
normal practice. It’s not even denounced by the Communist Party
leadership. There is no attempt by the leadership to fight against it. On
the contrary, it’s seen as one of the main advantages of being in the
Duma. The Party gains, in a more subtle way, from getting money for their
needs from different interest groups - in a more American style, such as
contributions. It’s kept secret how many contributors there are. The Party
leaders control that money. This creates a situation where they are
politically and morally unable to keep their party members from becoming
corrupt. Russia is a very poor country nowadays. Going into the parliament
is a good way of becoming rich. These are people of lower middle class
backgrounds who cannot join the right wing parties since they are only for
the rich, so they join the left to become upwardly mobile.

JS - This is very discouraging.

BK - It’s incredibly discouraging. The main question is why is the mass movement so weak. If it
was strong, either these people would be punished for what they are doing,
or they would have to change their ways. Many of those who are corrupt
now, could have been good comrades under different
circumstances. There are two reasons why the movement is so weak at
the grassroots level. The society has been through incredible turmoil and
disorganization. People are unable to come together because they can’t
even formulate their collective interests. Imagine, there are people who
work half-time as industrial workers and half-time as peddlers or they are
engaged in buying and selling. There are enterprises which pay their
workers with their products. If you produce china, you don’t get paid a
wage, you get paid in china which then you have to go out and sell or
exchange. After al l this you don’t know if you’re a proletarian or a
petty bourgeois merchant or even a peasant since you have to grow your
potatoes and your orchard. So it’s very hard to formulate your own
interest. The second problem is that the economy has been in
decline for 9 years with constantly growing unemployment. From your own
history, you know that the labor movement is usually stronger when the
economy is on the rise. When the economy is declining, workers are afraid
to lose their jobs and feel totally dependent on the administration of the
enterprise. Since the Soviet times, enterprises have been industrial
communities where the workers were dependent not just for their wages but
for their housing, holidays, health care and other things. That’s why the
workers can keep working without getting paid since the enterprise can
provide other benefits. This dependence on the enterprise management
contributes to the weakness of the mass movement. This year for the
first time, the economy grew. To give workers more confidence, we need at
least two or three years of minimum economic growth at 2 or 3 percent.
This is not much considering that we have lost about half of our economy.
At this rate, it would take about 30 years to regain our earlier economic
size. This small amount of growth is no solution to the problems of the
country. But it is socially important because it can give a boost to the
labor movement. The union leaderships today also are very corrupt.
The old Teamsters union would be an accurate comparison for Russian unions
today. This is why I stopped working with the trade unions. I was an
advisor to the chairman of the trade union federation of Russia but I
dropped out because I couldn’t stand the level of corruption. But once
again, this corruption is not challenged from the bottom because the
unions are weak at the grassroots. When they get stronger, they’ll change
the leadership. If the economic growth continues it will present
new possibilities for the left. But a second factor is the elections. If
they take place, the Communist Party will face electoral disaster. Not
because people won’t vote for them. They will gain or lose 1 or 2 percent
from the last election. The problem is that this time the electoral system
will work against the Communist Party to the same extent that it worked in
their favor in the first election. In the 1995 Duma election, they got 22
percent of the vote. In that election, four parties got 50 percent of the
vote. That meant that because we have proportional representation these
parties got an extra seat for every one they won. The Communist Party was
the biggest party so it benefited most from this system. With 22 percent
of the vote, it got about 44 percent of the seats. This time, the parties
that get more than 5 percent of the vote, which qualifies them to get into
the Parliament, will win around 75 percent of the vote, not 50 percent.
Therefore, the Communist Party with the same vote will get less seats. To
make things worse, it’s not going to be the biggest party this time. So
the Communist Party will benefit less than any other party. The other
parties tend to make alliances against the Communist Party. Local
governors already are forming these alliances and they are selecting who
is going to win. Most governors are not Communists. As a result, the
Communist Party will face an electoral disaster. I don’t know what they
are going to do with that. They’ve failed to create a system of alliances
to broaden their appeal. On the contrary they have alienated more people.

JS - They lost their alliance with the Agrarian Party.

BK - In this case, I think the Agrarians really behaved like pigs toward the
Communists. They backed the Communist Party during the past four years and
then all of a sudden said that everything that was wrong was the
responsibility of the Communists. They deny any responsibility themselves
and sold themselves for Luzhkov’s money. The Agrarian Party’s scandalous
behavior is just another example of the parliamentary corruption. But the
Communists’ problem is much broader than just the Agrarians. They have not
reached out to the peasants and the workers. If they had done this, it
wouldn’t matter if the Agrarians betrayed them. They would still have the
support of the peasants. Since they did not develop a real grassroots
movement, they can do nothing when the leadership betrays them. So
the question is what is going to happen after the elections, if they take
place. If there are elections, there will be a huge crisis inside the
Communist Party after they are over. I do not exclude that there will be
an attempt to remove Zyuganov from the leadership. I think that it would
fail. Some people may leave and try to form a new boarder left wing party,
more or less based on the German PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism)
model. Maybe it would be a little more social democratic. But you cannot
have a social democratic party in Russia. The conditions will not allow
it. Either you have to be more radical or you have to be just a liberal.
Even in Europe it’s getting harder to be a Social Democrat and in Russia,
just forget it. In any case, there will be a chance for the creation of a
new party. I don’t know if it will actually happen. Having faced many
political defeats myself, I want to be careful about being too
optimistic. The other possibility is if there would be a real coup
d’etat. Everything will change if there is a dictatorship. To be honest, I
don’t think it would be that bad if this pseudo democracy was thrown out.
It is so fake and so demoralizing and so corrupt that we wouldn’t be
losing much. At the same time, this would create a possibility for
creating a new democratic movement formed by the left. Even if we have a
dictatorship, I don’t think it will be that cruel.

JS - Don’t you think political parties would be outlawed?

BK - No I don’t think it would be like Chile or
Argentina. I think the dictatorship would be weak. They don’t have the
capacity to impose a strong dictatorship. I hope I’m not wrong or I will
be in trouble. But the question will become how to resist this
dictatorship. If left politics have to be based on resisting rather than
using the parliament, then you have different sorts of people and a
different type of organization. That will bring in new people. In either
case, there will be a huge change after next June.

JS - What effect is the aggressiveness of NATO having on political
thought in Russia.

BK - First of all, Russia has become
incredibly anti-American. The "anti-Yankee" attitude is dominate. Even the
Right doesn’t dare to be openly pro-American because there is such a
strong popular hostility to US hegemonistic policies. It’s across the
political spectrum. Also, we have a new generation in Russia. That
is the generation that the liberals expected to be theirs. But the new
generation rejects neoliberalism completely. First of all, it’s extremely
anti-American. These are teenagers who drink Coca-Cola, wear American
jeans, listen to Rock music, speak good English. They are computer freaks.
They are very much like their American counterparts, so you imagine they
are going to be pro-western. Not at all. They take for granted that there
are bananas in the shops and coke to drink. It doesn’t have any political
meaning. For my generation, drinking coke or wearing jeans was a political
statement, but not now. During the Kosovo crisis, it shocked the
Americans that the crowds rushing their Embassy and throwing stones and
bottles were teenagers, not old Communists. And they were mainly
middle-class teenagers. Moscow is a relatively rich city. The whole
country is ruined, but there is wealth in Moscow. It’s the only place in
the country that has such a big middle class. During the bombing, I saw
crowds of well dressed middle-class teenagers coming to the American
Embassy shouting anti-American slogans. They were not shouting
nationalist, or "Slavic brotherhood" slogans. They were anti-Imperialist
and anti-IMF slogans. They carried solidarity posters with China when the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed. During the Kosovo war,
Russian hackers conducted an attack on Pentagon internet sites and
computers. This was recognized by the Pentagon as a serious threat,
including they managed to block the White House website for half an hour.
(Ed. Note: The massive Russian hacker assault was called "moonlight maze"
by the US secutiry agencies and is still being investingated.) They
replaced the American flag on the site with a Jolly Roger. It was reported
widely in the Russian press as a tremendous success for Russian hackers.
These hacker communities are decentralized and, at the same time, very
coordinated. So it was a huge attack. After the war, the pirates who
dominate the software market in Russia issued a CD-Rom entitled
"Anti-NATO." The CD was filled with hacker software that you can use for
your own private attack on US government sites. It was a big hit.
Everyone bought it. I went to a pirate outlet in my neighborhood and
talked to an 18-year-old clerk. I asked him if it was a CD was left over
from the Kosovo war. He said, "No, the war has not ended."

JS - What do young people think about the fall of the Soviet Union?

BK - Well, middle class youth know there were a lot of
bad things about the Soviet Union so they are mainly anarchist and
anti-capitalist but also anti-communist. On the other hand, working class
kids mythologize the Soviet Union. They think it was a great country which
we lost. So they are more pro Soviet. But both grousps are
anti-capitalist. Not all, but most. There is a constituency for
progressive politics among the youth. Again, I don’t want to be over
optimistic. Most of the kids are apolitical at the same time they are
anti-capitalist and anti-American. Often their anti-communism is directed
not against communist ideology but against the Communist Party of
Zyuganov. So if you had a different type of left-wing movement within the
Communist tradition, but different from Zyuganov’s party, there would be a
response.

JS - What’s your view of the major reasons why the Soviet Union fell?

BK - Well, because the Stalinist system exhausted itself.
My point of view is that there were two decisive movements. One was in
1968, when they crushed the Prague Spring which meant that they didn’t
want any change or democratic reform. The bureaucracy wanted to keep the
system as is. The system was already exhausted. It had been a great
success in terms of modernizing and industrializing the country and
educating the people. But then the question was whether it was capable of
continuing to manage the country with the same methods that had modernized
it. It is one thing to be able to build factories and quite another to
coordinate the production of thousands of products from hundreds of
factories. All the centrist methods that worked in the 30s and 40s failed
in the 60s and 70s. That’s why some sort of democratic change was
absolutely necessary, not just from the humanist view. From the humanistic
and moral point of view it was always necessary. From the managerial and
technical point of view it was also necessary at this point. A dramatic
change within the system was necessary but when they crushed the Prague
Spring it became clear that the political choice had been made to conserve
the system as it used to be. The second turning point was in 1973
when the oil shortage happened in the west. That provided the system with
additional resources to consolidate itself on a conservative basis. By
selling oil to the west, they started getting petrodollars in huge numbers
which compensated for the inefficiency of the system. That led to several
consequences. The gap between what was needed and what was actually done
was increasing, that is, the contradictions were increasing. The
second consequence was the Soviet Union became integrated into the
capitalist world system as a supplier of raw materials. Eastern Europe
began getting financial credits from the west which were guaranteed
through Russian oil. So the Soviet Union became peripheralized through the
structure of world trade and through debt. This caused growing corruption,
not only in the bureaucracy but in the population which was corrupted by
the type of social contract provided by Brezhnev to the people of the
Soviet Union: "If you shut up, don’t ask for more rights and accept the
rule of the bureaucracy then we will supply you with consumer goods." That
is why the population was so weak in resisting the liberalism in the late
80s and early 90s. All this happened from 1968-73. In that sense, in
1989-91, we just had no choice in going the way we went. Of course, we on
the left fought against it and we had a lot of illusions about being able
to achieve some sort of self-management socialism. When we look back after
10 years, we see that the balance of forces was such that we didn’t have a
chance. The bureaucracy itself was already oriented to integration with
the west. After the Thermidoran and Bonapartist phases we got the
restoration of capitalism, dependence on the west and this old Russian
state. So that is the return into the "world civilization" as they call
it. We return, but as servants.

JS - I was in Moscow in the late 70s and saw a lot of construction
and development going on.

BK - Yes, but that was a false
affluence. It was like Saudi Arabia. It was based on oil. There is also a
lot of construction going on in Moscow today. But it is for banks and
houses for the rich. They don’t want to live in blocks of flats like the
ordinary people so they are constructing luxury homes.

JS - Are there any other formations on the left in Russia that show promise.

BK - Well, there are lots of formations but the only
serious one is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. You have
plenty of groups but they have little impact. If we have a transformation
of the political landscape, then some of these groups can become important
all of a sudden. They can provide cadre and experience, but only if there
is a transformation. You can see that in American politics as well. With
an unchanged political situation, most of the left initiatives are dying
out but theoretically there can be a moment when you get some sort of
change and there is a momentum that integrates all these groups into
something stronger and then they can make an impact. In Russia, we
have intellectual groups, left social democratic currents and the Komsomol
which is still a big formation with about 15,000 members. There are also
some very active Trotskyists. But all these groups are not strong enough
to present themselves as a nationwide political force.

JS - What do you see as good leftwing political models around the world?

BK - PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) in Germany and
the Refoundation Communist Party in Italy are two. PDS is very well
organized and is strong intellectually. Some in Germany complain that the
intellectual debate in PDS is low, but that is only according to German
standards. If you are in a country that produced Hegel, Marx, Rosa
Luxemburg, you can look at PDS and say it is a low level of debate. But if
you look at the rest of central and eastern Europe or even France, the
level of debate is much higher in PDS. France has become an
intellectual desert. In Russia, we have a level of intellectual debate
that is very high today, but it is disconnected from politics. If it were
my choice, I would prefer the German model. I don’t think that having
sophisticated intellectual debates is as important as having more lively
politics. The Refoundation Party is not comparable to PDS in terms
of success and forming an organization that will reproduce itself. They
are still struggling to survive and form their own organizational and
political model. In contrast, the PDS is a party with its own culture and
tradition. You can be very critical of PDS by the way. I think they are
becoming more social democratic. Their success in the east is causing them
to move more to the right to fill the void left by the Social Democrats
who have moved so far right as to be irrelevant. You cannot be a Tony
Blair in eastern Germany, as you can in west Germany. The space for
traditional social democracy became empty, and PDS is moving into it. They
are the only real Social Democracy in town. They are being criticized for
this by those on their left. But PDS and Refoundation are part of the same
current. Another example is the Workers Party (PT) of Brazil. Once
again we shouldn’t be too idealistic about PT. In the last 10 years they
have developed their own reformists, yuppies and post-modernists. Still it
is a good example of a party which is a success. The post-cold war left
models - politically and organizational - are still emerging. In Russia, a
renovated left will be different than the PDS. It works in Germany where
everything is well organized and there is a labor tradition. PDS is too
good for us in many ways. In Japan, the Communist Party is
recovering in terms of circulation of their newspaper, in intellectual
terms and in relations with the trade unions. The Socialist Party went so
far to the right that the Communist Party is picking up some of the space
left by it. It doesn’t mean that the left is stronger, because in Japan
they had a very radical Socialist Party. In France, the Communist
Party is not doing really well, but the Trotskyists are. There are five
Trotskyists in the European Parliament. Two Trotskyists groups have come
together and managed to have a stable coalition. They’ve also managed to
have good relations with the Communist Party. In France, they have a
coalition which is dominated organizationally by the old Communist Party
and intellectually by the Trotskyists. They all cooperate very closely. So
in a certain sense, the old debate, the old division is over. The
left has to be reshaped so that people overcome old divisions. They don’t
have to forget old traditions, just overcome them.

JS - What does your political work consist of today?

BK - I do some educational work with Komsomol, the youth Communist league. And
I write for a quarterly journal, "Alternatives," produced by Alexandr
Buzgalin, who is the leading Marxist economist in Russia today.
Fortunately he’s not the only one. Courses in Marxism are now returning to
Russian universities. I teach Marxism at the Moscow School for Social
Sciences. Buzgalin’s journal is an attempt to bring together different
currents on the left. From 1993 to 1998 was the worse period for
the left in Russia. There was no chance for an organized left outside the
Communist Party. The Party didn’t want us. People like Buzgalin and me
were ready to work with the Communist Party. Komsomol wanted to work with
us. Many of their leaders were students of ours. Academic work is not just
academic. It should be used to help form young cadre for the movement.

JS - You have a new book coming out?

BK - It just came out in London last week. They are publishing three books by me. One at a
time but they are really three parts of the same book. It’s called
Recasting Marxism. Part One which is already out is called "New Realism,
New Barbarism." It is based on an old Rosa Luxemburg phase, "Socialism or
Barbarism." Now socialism has been defeated and barbarism is triumphant. I
wanted to write a political study of this triumphant barbarism and how it
is reflected within the left itself. There is a lot of barbarization of
the left itself. For example, post modernism is a sophisticated form of
barbarism. It is anti-universalist, anti-Marxist and anti-enlightenment.
The book is about the western left, not Russia. It’s a critique of some
sections of the left, including post modernism and the social democratic
right, the Blairist right. We have to make the distinction that Blair and
others are not left anymore. The division is not whether you’re reformist
or radical. It’s whether you are left or ex-left. This is a historic
divide, like in 1914.

JS - The NATO bombing helped make that distinction clear.

BK - Yes. I was very disappointed when Bernie Sanders
supported the bombing. Also the Democratic Socialists of America supported
it. It was "human rights imperialism." But I don’t think it’s very human
to bomb people.

JS - We should know that in the US, particularly because of Vietnam,
which we bombed in order to "save it."