When we speak of the
When we speak of the revolution and how it may take shape we must necessarily speculate. None of us can actually know what’s going to happen. And it is, of course, quite possible that once the movement reaches what we – somewhat nebulously – call ‘critical mass’ there will inevitably be a sudden mushrooming of socialist ideas. But even if that does happen we are not going to see it happening within a short span of time. So the possibility of there being 50.1% of the population wanting socialism and 49.9% not wanting socialism is a situation that we are likely to have to address at some point. You can’t just brush it aside by saying it’s not going to be like that. I’m not suggesting that 49.9% of the population are potentially racist murderers at all. What I am suggesting is that even when we have a majority in favour of socialism, and, indeed, even when we’ve established socialism, there will very likely still be elements in society that will continue to behave in an unacceptable fashion. We are at a point now where capitalism has churned out millions of disaffected, dysfunctional and thoroughly anti-social people who are incapable of thinking for themselves and are completely unable to reason. People whose raison d’etre revolves around Friday night’s alcopop-fuelled punch-up. Such people are likely to oppose socialism for the very reason that it will take away their reasons for fighting… Now, it’s true that capitalism has created these people, and that the establishment of socialism will remove the social forces that turn people into brutal, ignorant apes, but it is foolish to think that such creatures will change their ways overnight in a society that is fundamentally different from the one that produced them. Which leaves us with the problem of how a socialist society will deal with – to put it in your chosen non-judgemental terminology – people whose circumstances lead them to behave in violent and anti-social ways. I agree that the machinery for feeding the world is already in place, but once again you are underestimating the sheer enormity of the problems we’ll face in terms of organisation. And it seems to me that in prioritising the big problems – like getting huge amounts of food to places where it’s needed, we won’t have a great deal of time to spare for psychoanalysing and rehabilitating the sick people that capitalism creates as a matter of course.