Anders writes >>Someone could argue that only by having a clear vision of the future we want can we hope to make progress. But I've been in plenty of meetings with lefties who have such a vision, and it doesn't seem to do much in helping to figure out what we do right now. As often as not, it turns into a reason to have a knock-down fight over differences that are trivial in the here-and-now, or it becomes a rationale for taking actions that at best could be called "liberal" (or simply "stupid," such as planning "revolutionary" actions with the assumption that your funding will mostly come from foundations).<< I am familiar with this problem. But I think we can deal with this kind of problem by (1) realizing that if socialism comes to the world, it will be a creation, from below, by the oppressed and exploited and (2) all that intellectuals can do is advise people about how to do that creation. They cannot do it _for_ them, since that simply sets up a new ruling stratum, imposing a pre-digested vision on people. If we know that intellec- tuals/activists/etc. are simply helpers and not a "vanguard" that knows what's good for people better than they do themselves (a vanguard such as that which has run the "Leninist" and social-democratic parties), a certain modesty and anti-sectarianism is encouraged. As I understand Marx (via Hal Draper's exhaustive study of his politics), old Karlos was all in favor of "utopian" visions, even though he thought they were by no means sufficient. He saw utopian thinking as potentially being part of the collective self-education of the proletariat; a collective self-education in which intellectuals can only be helpers, not indoctrinators or prophets; and a collective self-education which is an essential part of the process of the oppressed developing the power and consciousness needed to eject the oppressors from the seat of power and set the stage for the abolition of oppression. BTW, one of the problems with most schemes of "market socialism" or "centrally-planned socialism" is that they are hardly exciting to the people that these socialisms are supposed to help. Can you imagine the response to the idea of establishing a bureaucracy to centrally plan the economy? or to the idea of setting up a bureaucracy that is supposed to guide the market under socialism so that it serves the social welfare? On the latter, I can see that many would like the idea of workers' coopera- tives, but there's a lot of drab stuff associated with market socialism. We need to be more willing to ask people how they would like to run the economy if they "had their druthers," i.e., what their utopian visions are. We'd probably would learn a lot. Maybe then we could design models of socialism that would be merely transitional phases to such visions. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
