What Should Socialism Mean in the Twenty-First Century?

‘Socialism’ is back. For decades the word was considered an embarrassment – a despised failure and relic of a bygone era. No more! Today, politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wear the label proudly and win support, while organizations like Democratic Socialists of America attract new members in droves. But what exactly do they mean by ‘socialism’? However welcome, enthusiasm for the word does not translate automatically into serious reflection on its content. What exactly does or should ‘socialism’ signify in the present era? In this lecture, I provide some preliminary thoughts in search of an answer. Drawing on an expanded conception of capitalism, I shall suggest that we need an expanded conception of socialism, which overcomes the narrow economism of received understandings. Disclosing the capitalist economy’s contradictory and destructive relations to its ‘non-economic’ presuppositions, I contend that socialism must do more than transform the realm of production. Over and above that desideratum, which I wholeheartedly endorse, it must also transform production’s relation to its background conditions of possibility – namely, social reproduction, state power, non-human nature, and forms of wealth that lie outside capital’s official circuits, but within its reach. In other words, as I shall explain, a socialism for our time must overcome not only capital’s exploitation of wage labour, but also its free-riding on unwaged carework, public goods, and wealth expropriated from racialized subjects and non-human nature. The result will be an expanded conception of socialism. But expansion is not mere addition. The point is not to add more features to received understandings while leaving the latter unchanged. It is rather to revise our views of both capitalism and socialism by incorporating into them structural accounts of matters that are usually considered secondary – above all, gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity/nationality/empire, ecology, and democracy. The effect will be to cast a new light on all the classical topoi of socialist thought: on domination and emancipation; on class and crisis; on property, markets and planning; on necessary labour, free time, and social surplus.