[R-G] Review of Lebowitz's 'The Path for Human Development'

[Ivan D. Drury]

*21st Century on the Move - Reflections on 'The Path for Human Development'*

By Ivan Drury. 

Within an otherwise bleak reality of capitalist crisis, Mike Lebowitz has provided us with an eloquent restatement of the case for socialism – The Path for Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism? This short text is now circulating widely in Venezuela, in Spanish, as a pocket-sized pamphlet, has been published in Monthly Review, and is about to be published in Canada in pamphlet format by Socialist Project.

This is not the first text Lebowitz has published on the need to argue, fight for, and build socialism. The Path was written on the foundation of Lebowitz’s 2004 book Build It Now! Both works were written with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela in mind. This is no accident. Lebowitz, a professor from Canada, has been living in Venezuela for years and has been an active participant in the Bolivarian revolution. The imprint of that revolutionary process is strongly stamped on this
short work.

The Path argues that:

    1. Full development of creative human potential is the goal of life for human beings.
    2. This full development is impossible under capitalism.
    3. Socialism – protagonist democracy in the economy and all aspects of social life – is the path to human development.


*Path breaking: a return to a socialist offensive*

In the minds of many workers and anti-capitalist activists, the positive attributes of the socialist goal are obscured by the monsters of 20th century bureaucratic states. The general points raised by The Path stand as corrections to this legacy of Stalinist horrors. Such states that claimed the mantle of communism have nothing in common with Lebowitz’s “development of human potential.”

The Path states, “Our goal cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capacities and others are not: we are interdependent, we are all
members of a human family. The full development of all human potential is our goal.” This recalls the manuscripts of the young Marx, where he sketches the blocks capitalism puts up against the free development of the creative, “sensuous” life of people. Lebowitz returns this theme in asking, “What do we all
want?” and answers “To be all that we can be.” 

From decades of defense and retreat, in which socialism has been defined by excuse or apology for Stalinist crimes, The Path forges, yes, a path. It is a return to the offensive – defining the ideological terrain of 21st Century Socialism.  

[cont'd through below links]

Socialist Voice: http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=379#more-379

Against Exceptionalism: http://ivandrury.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/ml/

Also; the Lebowitz article "The Path for Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism?" can be found through Monthly Review: http://monthlyreview.org/090223lebowitz.php

and as a printable pamphlet from Socialist Project: http://www.socialistproject.ca/upload/lebowitz.pdf


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