Are you suggesting that
Are you suggesting that no-one will be able to take dictation in the future? That’s my novel out of the window, then…Just my little joke! DJP, forgive me if I seem a little impertinent, but, Shklovsky-like, I’m having to fill a gap or two in replying to your post. Just as we, as revolutionary socialists, have to help our proselytes with their filling-in of gaps. (Putting the case for socialism is, of course, our praxis. And so it should be!)I act as though socialism could happen tomorrow. It keeps me alive. As Ron Cook said to me many years ago, ‘being a socialist is a great way of coping with the depredations of capitalism’. (Actually, I’m fairly convinced that Ron didn’t use the word ‘depredations’, but that’s what I took him as meaning. Come to think of it, I never heard Ron use the word ‘depredations’ ever. How is Ron, by the way? I always looked up to him more than my father, who was an even bigger asshole than I’m capable of being.) And, as we all know, socialism could – in theory – happen tomorrow. All we need is a majority of the electorate worldwide who think that the revolution is worth getting out of bed for. Or maybe switching off the tv for. Or whatever. My point holds. We could live in a classless, stateless, moneyless society based on common ownership and democratic control tomorrow if the political will were there to establish it. But it isn’t…The problem I have with your response is that it does nothing to address the concerns that non-socialists have with the revolution. Let me put it this way: If 50. 00001% of the planet’s population wants socialism then,so far as I’m concerned that’s more than enough. (Personally, I think that once 20% of the planet’s population wants socialism it’s ‘game over’ for capitalism. But that’s another debate!) Now, of course it’s true to say that with the abolition of private property and the advent of a society that is based on the ethos of ‘from each according to their ability and from each according to their needs’ we will be looking forward to a society in which people don’t even recognise the concept of ‘race’, but – and let’s also be very clear about this – there will be a period of time in which a fledgling socialist society will have to deal with the kind of shitheads that capitalism spawns.We do ourselves a grave disservice, it seems to me, when we attempt to explain away this problem by merely saying ‘Oh, well, you know, people won’t behave that way when all of their needs are satisfied…’ It simply doesn’t stand up. The revolution will not – except in the wilder dreams and waking fantasies of the more utopian amongst us – abolish pure nastiness. And, in fact, we’re going to be faced with a situation – inevitably, it seems to me – in which anything up to 49.99999% of the population are still stupefied enough to think that it’s a neat idea to stab people who don’t look quite the way that you do.I don’t pretend to have an answer to this problem, but to suggest that a socialist society will offer ignorant, depraved and racist cretins some kind of psychiatric rehabilitation whilst we have a planet to feed is ridiculous beyond belief.