Beyond Utopia: Building Socialism Within and After Capitalism

Abstract

The article focuses on several figures who are particularly interesting in terms of identifying a radical critique of capitalism that does not shrink from the possibility of designing and imaging a different future. Following Michael Löwy, in our study we have identified relationships of ‘elective affinity’ between figures who might appear different and dissimilar, at least at first glance: the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, the German communist Paul Mattick, the Italian Socialist Raniero Panzieri and the French social scientist Alain Bihr. After providing some biographical information, we analyze their respective paths to a socialism based on, and achieved through, self-organization and self-government.We do not intend to build a new tradition with this review of thinkers, most of whom were also political militants; rather, more modestly, we hope to suggest a path forward for both research and political activism. In order to show how significant the questions raised by these four intellectuals-militants still are even today, in the Conclusions we analyze the social and political experiment carried out by the Movement for a Democratic Society of the Rojava region in Syrian Kurdistan.