Conclusion

Articulating alternatives to capitalism and socialism remains stubbornly difficult. This is a problem because the existing systems of socialism and capitalism are now often seen as hardly appropriate for solving any of the novel, and often unsettling, political developments we are confronted with across the globe. It is clear, however, that both these terms – socialism and capitalism – embrace a wide variety of existing models and potential models. Moreover, looking at a given existing system as in the case of China, it is by no means obvious whether the system is either capitalist or socialist or, as it appears, a hybrid of both. If it is a hybrid, it is not clear which elements, capitalist or socialist, are dominant; and it is not clear in which direction the system is moving. Russia is clearly now a capitalist society, but its capitalism is highly dependent on the state. Although different from China, Russia also has hybrid features.

The book demonstrates clearly that the transition from socialism to capitalism has not delivered what many had promised. In Russia, privatisation has benefitted only a small minority of society. Wealth inequality is one of the world's largest and poverty is again on the rise. The chapters also documented the power and patronage exercised by the wealthy in Russia and China, most of whom are closely tied to the state apparatus. A phenomenon that has accompanied the rise of the rich is ever greater corruption. Attempts by the state to get this under control have been fruitless.

Such practices are replicated on lower levels in society, albeit on a much smaller scale, and yet they are essential for survival. As such, the failure of neo-liberalism to allow ordinary people of the former Soviet states to develop decent living standards has meant that they have maintained their informal practices. An example of this is the birzha in Georgia, used by the excluded as a tool to navigate through daily life. Attempts by the authorities to undermine these have had little success.

Yet the issues raised here are only a small selection of the troubles the world is facing today. Revolving around China and the West, the alternatives raised in Parts Two and Three of the book also have relevance for the rest of the world, including the former Soviet bloc and the global South.

Whether China is socialist or capitalist, or a hybrid of the two, undoubtedly it has become a pole of attraction for policymakers in less developed countries around the world. In the tradition of area studies, the book has shown that the Belt and Road Initiative has deep historical and cultural roots. Already before the birth of Christ, products were transported across Eurasia along forerunners of the Silk Road. Today, the image of the Silk Road is powerfully symbolic both in East and West, alarming to some and engaging to others. The appeal of China's role in the world is strengthened by the movement from a unipolar to a bipolar (or multipolar) international system.

More relevant for our topic than the issue of world dominance is the question of what drives China's expansion. While the Belt and Road Initiative may appear perfectly compatible with the current world order and hence with a capitalist mode of production, the mechanism behind it has surprisingly little to do with market-economy stimuli. Instead, the whole project is very much under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, rather than being pushed by private enterprise. Xi Jinping's plans for China's foreign economic policy are closely tied to the enlargement of the party's power inside the country, particularly in relation to developing its western regions.

China's development under the Deng Xiaoping model greatly favoured the coastal east and south of the country and Xi now wishes to reduce the geographical inequalities. This reflects his desire to manage the increasing level of discontent, both among the urban working class and the peasants. While the capitalist policies pursued after Mao's death brought hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, Xi very clearly understands that the system today needs rebalancing, with a greater role for the state to prevent the cycle of capitalist crises from which the West suffers.

With regards to the West, the pathways discussed in this book were either tried and tested previously in contemporary history, such as Keynesianism, or are slowly emerging and trying to find a voice, such as the new left-wing movements. Although sustainable for several decades under favourable conditions, Keynesian policies were abandoned not least because, ultimately, they led to frequent strikes by strong trade unions, high taxation and inflation. Under the pressures of the world market from the late 1970s onwards, capitalism could no longer afford luxuries such as job security and an expensive welfare state.

By now, however, the policies of austerity, promoted by neo- liberalism, have fallen into disfavour with European voters. Despite being the pioneers of European neo-liberalism, the British Conservatives have proclaimed an end to austerity (which does not mean they would not simultaneously proceed with cuts in welfare spending and public services generally). A true return to Keynesian expansionary policies to overcome stagnation should, for a start, require corporations to become what they were meant to be initially: namely accountable to the public rather than just enriching a few shareholders. For society to live and prosper, a clean environment is essential. Hence, any Keynesian policies would have to be linked with investment orientated towards solving global and regional environmental problems, from urban traffic congestion to global climate change.

In the 1970s, Keynesian policies, which were originally intended to preserve the capitalist system, began to threaten it. Decades of full employment had led to stronger and stronger trade unions, which were not afraid to exert their industrial muscle. Strikes disrupted whole industries and many firms became unprofitable. Faced with the cruel competition of the global market, the corporations demanded shackles on trade unions and major cuts in corporate taxation. The labour movements were not willing or able to use their industrial strength to protect their jobs and the welfare state as they had done. Nor were they willing to challenge the existence of the capitalist system. In different parts of the world the Thatcherite slogan 'There is no alternative!' took hold. This implied reversing the gains of the post-war period, a return to large-scale unemployment and the gradual withering away of the welfare state.

Many today, therefore, consider that capitalism can no longer afford to return to measures it previously employed and, as some have argued, can only continue to exist by taking away democratic rights.¹ When social-democratic parties ceased to defend their main achievements, such as the welfare state, and instead adopted austerity measures, they began to lose their support. As a result, especially since the onset of the 2008 crisis, we have seen the mood become more radical, including a return of socialist ideas. The book has shown that the strategy taken by socialists in different countries necessarily reflects differences in their histories and institutions. Where the labour movement has traditionally been associated with one particular party, as in much of the English-speaking world, the socialist movements have focused on gaining influence within these parties. Elsewhere, when existing parties lack such links with the trade unions or have been thoroughly compromised, new movements are likely to develop. As these develop in strength, however, and as the allure of electoral power grows, pressures develop to compromise on policy and principle. Thus, for example, Syriza failed to prepare the Greeks for a clash with international lenders and had to back down. Such dangers will threaten other socialist movements if they are elected to office.

Even among the four movements considered here, there is little unanimity or even clarity as to what sort of socialism they are trying to create. It seems, for example, that Bernie Sanders (at least in the immediate term) is aiming at a mixed economy with a strong social orientation. The Democratic Socialists of America clearly have a more radical direction. There is agreement that there can be no return to the totalitarian, centrally planned societies of the Soviet bloc. For Western socialists the contemporary Chinese model, with its single party rule, suppression of intellectual freedom and massive repression of some ethnic minorities, also has no attraction.

An increasing number of people sense that if capitalism is not guaranteeing economic and social security, then it might well have outlived its usefulness. The most sustainable models to date seem to be those which want to see the power of private corporations severely constrained, through a large-scale extension of democratic control in society, over public services and within the corporations themselves through the involvement of their employees in managerial decisions. On this basis, housing, education and healthcare can be made accessible to all and care for the weakest parts of society can be assured. More radical ideas such as undermining private enterprise itself find little favour today. Instead, there is talk of state ownership existing alongside cooperatives, municipal ownership and private enterprise.²

Some advocates of neo-liberalism seem to believe the old adage, 'the worse, the better'. As Naomi Klein has argued, neo-liberals use disasters, whether man-made or natural, to push through changes that they want. They do not even shy away from instrumentalising tragedies such as the war in Iraq and the tsunami in the Pacific to boost private business interests. The disorientation reigning in Eastern European countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall allowed for Western private business and capital to gain a stronghold and influence the privatisation policies to come. They intensively propagated the use of shock therapy, with little concern that this would drive millions of people into poverty.³

In Britain, after the Brexit referendum many neo-liberals appeared to believe that the best outcome would be if Britain left the European Union without making a deal with it. In the ensuing chaos, there would be a bonfire of regulations and unbridled capitalism let loose to rage without constraints. This would allow money laundering to reach unseen heights and turn the United Kingdom into a tax paradise similar to those in existing offshore havens. There has been speculation that a pending EU anti-tax avoidance directive, to be implemented from the beginning of 2019, might have been an additional motive to go ahead with Brexit as rapidly as possible.⁴

In the neo-liberals' dream world, which may be in their grasp, there would no longer be any hindrance to breaking up the National Health Service, privatising it further and selling it in bits and pieces to private service providers. Trade unions would lose their remaining protection and Britain would become a low-wage economy. Life expectancy is already now going down in many parts of Britain and infant mortality rose twice in a row from 2016. The last time the latter happened was in 1939–41.⁵

In reaction against the policies of neo-liberalism of the current radicalised shade, the far right has re-emerged across Europe. In classic populist style, while they pretend to represent the interests of the people against the elite and the establishment, in reality they seek to stir up conflict and splits within the population on the basis of identity and ethnicity. Strikingly, Francis Fukuyama's view has evolved from the triumph of liberal democracy to a gloomy awareness of the consequences of identity politics. He sees the rise of the populist right all over the globe as posing fundamental threats to existing liberal-democratic institutions.⁶

Already during the Brexit referendum, violence inspired by the far right increased, with the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox. After the referendum, there were physical attacks on mosques, Muslims, and ethnic minorities, and a Polish man was murdered for speaking his native language. Trump has justified xenophobic feeling with his rhetoric against Muslim and Latin American immigrants. In Italy, the right-wing-populist coalition has launched criminal charges against the charity Médecins sans frontiers for helping refugees. Across Europe, immigrant populations are feeling intimidated, and anti-Semitism is on the rise.

In the former Soviet bloc, there has been a backlash against the consequences of globalisation, privatisation and inequality. This is reflected in the authoritarian and nationalist regimes of Law and Justice in Poland, FIDESZ in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia.

FIDESZ, the ruling party in Hungary, has for some years used anti-Semitic tropes in its attacks on its opponents in the Hungarian intelligentsia. Interfering with academic freedom, the government has forced the Central European University to leave the country, and FIDESZ has openly portrayed the university's founder, George Soros, as an evil Jew. The far right across Europe and in America has repeated these attacks. In Russia, President Obama was mocked for his race on television. The Kremlin has been financing, indirectly and sometimes covertly, far-right groups in Europe, including France and Britain. Its interference in support of Trump and Brexit in the US elections and British referendum in 2016 shows the danger to democracy posed by right-wing populism backed by Moscow. Indeed, the Russian model of neo-liberal economics combined with authoritarianism may represent the future of Western capitalist societies.

Whether ascribed to the right wing as in most cases, or to the left wing in some exceptional ones such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, populism is usually understood as opposing progressive politics. Some conceptualise things differently. Over the last decades, Ernest Laclau together with Chantal Mouffe have attempted to rehabilitate the concept of populism as a democratic movement rather than one with primarily ethnic or cultural undertones. They argue for a new politics, mobilising the people against the establishment.⁷

These socialist and democratic aims are so different from those of the right-wing populists, however, that adoption of the term may lead to great confusion. Unlike some commentators,⁸ Jan-Werner Muller is rightly critical of ascribing the populist label to Corbyn's Labour Party, Podemos or Syriza.⁹ Crucially for him, neither do these movements claim to represent 'the people' nor do any of them have xenophobic ambitions. Whenever left-wing movements gave in to opportunistic ideas and made xenophobic ideas their own, as did most notoriously the leadership of Die Linke in Germany in the mid-2010s, it backfired in no time.

Left-wing parties all over Europe have a lot to answer for about how history developed throughout the twentieth century. Repeating such mistakes would be a tragedy – and yet it is the kind of tragedy that would save capitalism yet another time. So far, the left has shown little capacity to learn from history. Too often, social-democratic parties have accommodated the demands and needs of those higher up in society instead of those of their own traditional supporters. Along the way, they buried their founding emancipatory ideas and instead surrendered (almost too eagerly) to the fashionable ideas of the ruling class. New Labour was a classic case of this surrender (both ideological and practical), as was in due course almost every social-democratic party in Europe. Almost every where, they have failed to challenge the hegemony of dominant ideas, even when those ideas have long been discredited and people have become restless because their representatives are incapable of articulating any alternatives, or unwilling to do so.

As for the more recent alternative social movements, things are very different. Instead of talking their supporters into compromise, they make bold promises of social reform which they cannot possibly keep under the economic circumstances we live in today. Even worse, they tend to fail to prepare their supporters for the resistance their promises will inevitably encounter. The result is predictable: voters will become disillusioned and may turn to unsavoury alternatives.

In order to gain theoretical clarity about aims and methods, we require empirical and conceptual inputs from the most different situations in all their historical, cultural, political and economic aspects.¹⁰ This is what justifies the present volume. The analysis of recent developments offers fresh insight into how capitalism has impacted on society and social structure in countries which, not long ago, moved partly or fully towards market economies. Investigations into models whose systemic nature is not clear-cut provides us with inspirations as to where alternatives might appear. Do we need to ponder over new potential options from scratch, or can we try to combine the best features of both socialism and capitalism in a new way?

Area studies is one of many lenses through which to approach such global questions and these lenses are good at sharpening the eye. This volume is a multidisciplinary contribution to the development of both global theories and area studies. Traditionally, area studies took the Anglo-Saxon world as the norm and regarded the rest as exotic. Not too far off from an approach advocated by Edward Said, we have broken with such outlived ideas and tried to treat any region of the world on its own terms. Today it is the societies of the West which are threatened by the disintegrative forces of protectionism, nationalism and right-wing populism.

Russia and China, in turn, are little-appealing alternatives, given their dismal record in human rights and democracy. And yet, Russia's population has a history of standing up to both the imperialist world and their own elite. China today, gruesome as it is in many aspects, runs social projects on a scale which is beyond our imagination. Revolution started a process where industrialisation followed, and the Soviet Union turned into a superpower. China is following in its footsteps. Both historically (in the case of Russia) and contemporarily (in the case of China), there must be elements which we should not dismiss from the outset. Area studies is meant to identify and critically reflect upon them. If Western Europe and North America are to emerge from the crisis which is threatening them, then they must learn from the experience of the rest of the world. Area studies must come home.

¹Wolfgang Streeck, How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System (London: Verso, 2016).

²See, for example, Alternative Models of Ownership, which is a report published by the Labour Party as a discussion document in early 2018, accessed 24 November 2018, labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Alternative-Models-of-Ownership.pdf.

³Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism (London: Penguin, 2008).

⁴European Union Council, The Anti Tax Avoidance Directive 2016/1164, accessed 24 November, ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/company-tax/anti-tax-avoidance-package/anti-tax -avoidance-directive_en. For a discussion see Chevan Ilangaratne and Dami Olatuy, 'Is This the Real Reason Why Farage and Rees-Mogg Want a Speedy Brexit?', The New European, 28 August 2018, accessed 24 November 2018, www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/is-the-anti-tax-avoidance-directive-the-reason-the-rich-want-out-of-eu-1-5669763.

⁵Danny Dorling, Peak Inequality: Britain's Ticking Time Bomb (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2018), 273.

⁶Francis Fukuyama, Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (London: Profile Books, 2018).

⁷Chantal Mouffe, For A Left Populism (London: Verso, 2018).

⁸Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

⁹Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (London: Penguin, 2017), 1, 12.

¹⁰The need for the new movements to develop firm ideological clarity if they are to succeed is argued in Rafal Soborski, Ideology and the Future of Progressive Social Movements (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).