Perhaps but that could cut two ways,
as in socialism yes, good no. No
reason to assume every form of socialism
would be desirable.
mbs
> I bet if we took a count more people would consider the USSR
> socialism (communism even) than not.
>
> CB
>
> >>> Rod Hay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/18/00 09:15PM >>>
> Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what
> most people mean by
> the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call
> it what you want,
> but I don't call it socialism.
>
> Rod
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > Rod Hay wrote:
> >
> > > Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we
> have a socialists
> > > society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself
> socialist but it
> > > wasn't.
> >
> > This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a
> platonic form against
> > which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't
> "socialist." It would
> > seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes
> > in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one
> way or another,
> > many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their
> descendants
> > to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly
> contain episodes
> > at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle
> for socialism
> > has to be essentially <g> self-justifying at each step,
> regardless of the
> > (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the
> > chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism
> > for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust.
> >
> > This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is
> > everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the
> > understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the
> > struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or
> > not we ever achieve that final goal.
> >
> > Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and
> > the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He
> > saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective
> > of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the
> perspective
> > of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore
> > organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of
> > the society in which the state has withered away.
> >
> > [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of
> marxists suffered
> > from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism
> > that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication
> > of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be
> > easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!]
> >
> > The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which
> > the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes
> > the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance.
> > I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic*
> > and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy
> > (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real.
> > The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied
> > of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those
> > whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?],
> > the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of
> > the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot
> > exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past
> > has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling
> > capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable
> > that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato
> > could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment*
> > catches up this trivialization of the present by the future.
> >
> > The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he
> > implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a
> > lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern
> > equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have
> > babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would
> > have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that
> > depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism
> > and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value
> > and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class
> > which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust
> > of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value).
> >
> > And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the
> > present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as
> > the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working
> > class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task
> > is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future.
> >
> > Carrol
>
> --
> Rod Hay
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> The History of Economic Thought Archive
> http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html
> Batoche Books
> http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/
> 52 Eby Street South
> Kitchener, Ontario
> N2G 3L1
> Canada
>
