The unconditional commitment to global justice and the radical democratization of society are therefore often material contradictions. A transformative project can help meet this contradiction: A shared vision connects struggles and actors toward a societal block. Such a project is also an indicator: Who is included and considered in the struggle for justice? What kind of utopias are developed? Here, too, we see our task as uncompromisingly representing the interests of minorities and the oppressed without abandoning the aspiration toward a project that is capable of winning a majority.
A transformative left-wing hegemony project is currently barely recognizable. Nevertheless, struggles for the socialization of housing and other social infrastructures point towards the outline of such a project. Socialization as a transformative demand and strategy is central to the build-up of a left-wing hegemony project. It may lead out of the helplessness of the left, because it shows the possibility of a solidaric future, even under the conditions of global crises. That distinguishes a left-wing hegemony project from “green” capitalism as well as the right-wing project. The latter two only provide responses to the crises for the cost of closing borders, and ever-increasing militarization and oppression.
Socialization means the comprehensive democratization of production and reproduction by liberating it from the control of state and capital. The former operates on three levels:
- a change of the property structure from private to collective ownership;
- a change of the political control from privately dictated to democratic and
- a change of the intended purpose from profit maximization to the satisfaction of needs.
Nationalization does not automatically equate to progress. Experiences with state-run companies show that they often operate under the same conditions as private capital. Socialization is thus an important transformative demand because it replaces the dualism of state or market with collective ownership. When employees, users and tenants administrate themselves and consider global interests as well as the society as a whole, the revolutionary potential of socialization is realized.
Currently, capitalism prevents democratic decisions over climate-harming production, and enforces permanent growth, emissions and resource consumption. An economy that is socialized and based on climate justice operates according to the actual wants and needs of the people, not according to constraints of growth or profit. It must be compatible with the planetary boundaries and the globally just distribution of resources.
Socialization of social reproduction is an important component of a feminist and solidaric economy, in which the care economy is strongly enhanced in status and justly distributed. Socialized, democratic administration also allows enforcing antiracist principles. Structurally racist functions would be replaced and explicit racism fought. That does not mean that the strategy of socialization solves all societal problems and oppressive relations such as patriarchy and racism. Neither does it automatically dissolve global inequality. Socialization is a starting point enabling a new way of living, producing and encountering each other.
Socialization is, from our perspective, suited to function as a central axis of a left-wing hegemony project, because as a strategy it improves living conditions and pushes back state and capital in the socialized areas for the benefit of democratic self-administration. As a transformative demand, socialization has a utopian excess. It shows how we imagine a society after the revolution. All the stronger is the resistance by state and capital against socialization projects such as Deutsche Wohnen und Co. enteignen. This strengthens our conviction that it is not enough to solely speak about socialization. We must put it into practice and fight for it - together, disobedient, and in solidarity.