The difference is that the marxist picture of the future
is based on the analysis of the past and the present.
Socialism is depicted as a more or less natural next
and NOT necessarily final step towards a more efficient, consciously
designed social environment, which can be only pictured in
it's basic definitions as a/ democratic b/socialist, without
a step by step instruction. It is not the "Grand Design" of any
individual or God, like the xian idea.
> >None of the "Grand design" etc. is involved in a marxist analysis, as it
> happens.
> Only the description of economic mechanisms and their depictable
> consequences. Please do not follow the established sloganising about
> socialist thinking, it is false propaganda.
>
> I'm not exactly sure of what is meant by this, but in my opinion everything
> important ever written in the social fields has involved sets of
> presuppositions and desired outcomes that can be called a "grand design".
> Marx didn't simply wake up one morning and say to himself "Hmm. Today I'm
> going to start thinking about the economy and write a book on capital". He
> had given a lot of thought to how the world works before his ideas jelled
> into what can only be termed "a grand design" which took him from how the
> world actually works to how it ought to. He borrowed heavily from other
> grand designs, particularly Hegel's dialectical theory of history. If, as
> you seem to be saying, Kapital is essentially analytical, taking us from the
> world as it is to the logical outcome of this world, the Communist Manifesto
> is most certainly ideological and most certainly prescribes a revolutionary
> aftermath that is most certainly a "grand design".
>
> A more important point, however, is that, when a theory enters the realm of
> the practical, steps and consequences are attached to it which the author of
> the theory may not have intended. Crusaders, ideologues and petty
> politicians, many of whom have only a very passing knowledge of the original
> grand design, take over and create a grand design which happens to suit
> their particular purposes. The vast, repressive, enormously wealthy and
> powerful medieval church was built on the simple words of Christ, just as
> the vast, (then) enormously wealthy, repressive and powerful Soviet Union
> was created on the appealing, if not simple, ideas of Marx. I'm sure both
> Christ and Marx would have been horrified if they were able to see what had
> been done in their names.
>
> Ed Weick
>
>
>
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