Reply To: Review of book about the CNT’s integration into the State

If all you were trying to say was that accurate predictions in physics and astrophysics are easier than in fields which involve human action then you are not saying anything new. But if historical materialism is “unscientific” on that account, then so are a lot of other theories, including the view that capitalism will be the only game in town for ever or at least for the next million years.

The “collision” between those two galaxies is more certain than the other two futures to socialism that you mention (nuclear annihilation, climate catastrophe — you forgot to mention, an asteroid hitting earth or, the latest, a super-intelligent robot killing off the human race). Does that mean they have to be discounted as “unscientific”?

Anyway, none of these would invalidate historical materialism even if they made socialism impossible. It would still be the case that the basis of any human society would be how its members are organised to survive and the means at their disposal to do so, and that societies change as this does, especially technology.

Other planets? Mars would be the obvious one in our solar system but I was thinking more of some of the planets in other solar systems that astrophysicists are always identifying. After all, you were talking of something that will happen in billions of years. Humans haven’t existed even for a half a million years. I imagine that even in a million years it should be possible for humans to visit some of those planets (don’t ask me how). In fact, they might even find that socialism already exists in some of them. So obvious is it that the absence of private property over productive resources and cooperative production and allocation of wealth directly to meet the needs of society’s members is the best way for a technologically-advanced society to survive