New York, New York -- For anyone wondering about the vigor of socialist academics in a post-Soviet world, the 10th annual Socialist Scholars Conference would have erased most doubts.
Judging by the heavy turnout, socialist values are far from dead in the academy. However, many scholars said they were re-examining certain political assumptions and qualifying their use of the labels “Marxist” and “socialist” in light of the collapse of governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Defining a political vision that would be more responsive to women and minority-group members was another central theme of the conference, held last month at the City University of New York’s Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Some academics came to the conference as individuals with socialist political views. Others came as scholars whose work in sociology or literature or economics was influenced by Marx’s theories of class differences. And many came as both.
To some, the mood here was somber; to others, it was more upbeat than it had been since 1990. As they were on many issues, conferees were split over how much credibility socialists had lost because of the recent failures of numerous socialist governments.
Non-academics, particularly those in conservative circles, like to quip that the only socialists left in the world are at American universities. But a common argument among scholars here was that the socialist models operating in China, Cuba, and, until recently, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were undemocratic “caricatures” of socialism.
Perhaps so, but that was socialism as the world knew it, argued Stanley Aronowitz, professor of sociology and director of cultural studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Scholars who refused to recognize a link between their own socialist ideals and the failures of “really existing socialism” were being defensive and naive, he said.
“We are suffering a theoretical crisis as well as a political crisis,” he told his colleagues. “Those of us who call ourselves socialists do not know what an alternative to this global capitalist economy is.”
Mr. Aronowitz, who stopped describing himself as a Marxist in the 1970’s, only recently discarded the socialist label. He calls himself “a radical democrat” who is influenced by -- but critical of -- Marx.
“I think a lot of people here feel beaten up,” he said later. “But they’re not defeated.”
That was apparent. About 2,800 scholars and political activists attended the conference -- slightly more than last year. Every brand of socialist politics was represented: There were old-school leftists from the 1930’s who griped that today’s Marxists no longer studied Marx. There were Vietnam-era leftists. There were multicultural leftists, feminist leftists, gay and lesbian leftists, abortion-rights leftists, environmental leftists, Trotskyist leftists, Social-Democratic leftists in the European style, foreign leftists, and, according to some conferees who used the term to describe others, “Stalinist” leftists.
“It’s the most democratic conference I’ve ever been to,” said Joseph S. Murphy, a political scientist at the graduate center and former CUNY chancellor who attends every year. “Anyone can go.”
And did go, it seemed.
In the main entrance hall of a building that lay in the shadows of the World Trade Center, dozens of activist groups and publishers had set up tables. Conferees could buy books, sign petitions, pick up literature on the plight of American auto workers, and, depending on one’s politics, defend or condemn the tactics of the Peruvian Maoist group called Shining Path. One table was hawking “Mao more than ever” T-shirts. At another, posters of the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara were $1 -- “free if you’re broke,” a sign stated. A box held two $1 bills.
Conferees could choose from plenary sessions organized by such groups as the Radical Philosophy Association and the Revolutionary Sisters of Color, or by scholars who simply wanted to analyze health care or unions.
The conference program stated that organizers discouraged all-white or all-male panels. Otherwise, they imposed no restrictions. Citing the importance of free speech, they allow virtually any group to hold one session. Thus the presence, explained one conferee who did not want to be named, of “fringe” activists who offered unqualified praise for the Cuban leader Fidel Castro. “A Stalinist nightmare,” the conferee muttered.
An earlier series of socialist scholars’ conferences began in the 1960’s, but folded. The meeting was reconstituted in 1982, on the 100th anniversary of Marx’s death.
The labels “socialist” and “Marxist” have always been somewhat ambiguous in academe. They mean different things to different people, and that proved to be the case here as well. But while the conferees were a diverse lot -- so diverse that U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont, warned them not to let their differences keep them from uniting -- a mainstream view was clearly apparent among the academics. Many said they were “democratic socialists” or socialists “in the Western European tradition” who wanted social reforms within a market economy.
For example, they favored a national health-care system, a more environmentally responsible corporate sector, dramatic cuts in defense spending, and a more equitable tax system. “None of the above” was a popular choice for President, but many conceded they would support the Democrat.
Few academics were calling for a Bolshevik-style revolution. As Mr. Aronowitz put it, “Nobody wants state farms in the United States.”
He said he reached that conclusion years ago. But other academics here admitted, sometimes sadly, that they had held out hope until only recently that socialism would work somewhere in the world. “We wanted to believe in it,” said Lynne Belaieif, a retired philosophy professor at CUNY’s College of Staten Island. “Now we’re trying to find out why it didn’t work.”
She said her hopes for China were dashed during a visit several years ago. “I was riding around on my bicycle, watching poor people. I wondered, Why would they want to be socialists? They’re still trying to get enough to eat.”
Some critics aren’t sure why academics would want to be socialists, either, and question whether such scholars can avoid becoming ideologues. Among them is Eugene Genovese, who teaches history at four campuses affiliated with the University Center in Georgia. A Marxist himself until recently, “I don’t have much use for people who go on believing in something after the evidence shows they were wrong,” he said in a telephone interview. “Like many people, I long believed the socialist countries would evolve into democratic political regimes. But I no longer see any possibility for socialism.”
Many speakers suggested that future leftist movements would be organized around race and gender as well as class. That was something Marx did not foresee, said Frances Fox Piven, a political scientist at the CUNY graduate center.
“Does identity politics supersede class politics? In a way it does,” she told a large crowd.
In an interview, she said that as the Marxist tradition has broadened in recent years, “new currents in the tradition are challenging the old-guard Marxists.”
Bogden Denitch, the conference chairman and a sociologist who is also at the CUNY graduate center, alluded to that fragmentation. He urged his colleagues to study the failures of the U.S. left as well as the failures of capitalism. He noted that the left in Western Europe had been more successful. “Why is the left so miserably weak in the largest industrial society in the world? We do not know how to organize ourselves out of a paper bag.”
At another session, several scholars were actually discussing the work of Karl Marx. The topic was the relevancy of his theories 125 years after the first volume of Capital was published. Held in a classroom, the session was originally to be given a larger lecture hall, but switched locations with a feminist panel because there was so much interest in the latter.
That conferees seemed more interested in feminism was not a reflection of Marx’s relevancy, said Anwar M. Shaikh, a Marxist economist at the New School for Social Research, who spoke on Capital. “Marx is relevant because capitalism is relevant,” he said. “Nobody has ever given a more penetrating analysis of capitalism.”
Later, he said he had sensed “a tremendous energy” here. “What drives socialism is a hope that people’s lives will improve,” he said.
It was a theme echoed by other conferees, including Betty Enfield, a self-described political poet who recited, impromptu, a poem:
Rich men have no compassion. When properly attired It’s simply not required.
It was dedicated, Ms. Enfield said, to “Reagan and Bush and others who look good on the outside but have nothing inside.”
“These people have certain hopes,” she said, gesturing to the conferees milling about. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be here.”