World Revolution or Socialism, Community by Community, in the Anthropocene?

Abstract

Like Robinson, Sklair is critical of Amin's state-centrism, and he sees the international system of hierarchical states: “The power of capitalist hegemony today is so overwhelming (allied as it is with the military and police powers of states) that the only viable strategy for change is by a process of negating, avoiding, and eventually consigning capitalism and the state to the dustbin of history.” He argues that, “Putting all our energies into world socialist revolution” (as Amin argues) “seems increasingly like a self-defeating strategy.” For Sklair, “[t]he only way out of this mess, the only chance of having a liveable planet for the generations to come …is to organise for small-scale socialist communities to create new forms of less destructive and hierarchical economy and society.” He envisions a project of locally-grounded “anarching,” where autonomous producer-consumer cooperatives (P-CCs) advance a “double strategy” that serves to “slow down capitalism” and to “bring into existence a new mode of production based on the different principles and [new] mentalities.” “[A] reconstructed political community could create more genuinely democratizing forms of economic, social, and political organization to encourage and facilitate networks of P-CCs [and…t]he transition from the present capitalist-statist hegemony to the new form of society.