Thomas_More
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Nazi Germany was a capitalist state. Particularly obnoxious, the same as the Bolshevik state in Russia, but essentially no different from any other capitalist state. Wage-labour and capital accumulation the principal ingredients.
It is neither more nor less the “antithesis”, as you say,of socialism than any other bourgeois ideology.
We, well I in particular, would not use the word “ideology” in referring to our convictions. We do not follow anyone laying down an ideology and we reject leadership. The Leftist parties, like all capitalist parties, follow a laid-down ideology and a so-called “vanguard.” We are all equals and we have only come together because we independently agree with our party’s object and declaration of principles. We don’t follow anyone, nor an ideology.
We are not intending to “lead” people into socialism. That would be impossible anyway. We reject all minority action to overthrow capitalism, which can only be done by the workers themselves.Apart from your saying socialism must be global, which I agree with, I don’t understand a word of your definitions above stated. They make no sense to me.
We are not Leftists because we have no intention of running capitalism: neither in a right wing nor a left wing way.
We reject the left’s common notion, whether Leninist or Labourite, that socialism = nationalisation. We say it does not. We say that if a society is based on wage-labour and capital accumulation, that society is capitalist, regardless of who controls the state. In socialism (a.k.a. communism) there will no longer be a state as there will be no one to suppress; no wage-labour and no capital, as money won’t exist.
“Otherwise, we might as well just sit back and see whether or not Socialism will or will not come.”
I’ve already answered you on that misrepresentation.
If you have no interest in what way the chain of causation proceeds, then by all means just sit back and do sod all. That would be fatalism, but it’s not my position, as already stated.
Of course motives are determind. They spring from causation, like everything else.
We want to instil in others the same motive for socialism that we have.
In us, that motive was produced by thoughts which responded to prior motives, ad infinitum.When people tell you, “There must have been a beginning to the cosmos” you will rightly say that it has neither beginning nor end. Yet, while having no problem with that, you seem unable to really accept it.
Exactly. Lizzie’s post did not motivate (move) me to anger, and there was no stronger motive than that which produced my little quip about “impatience with deep thought.”
I could not do otherwise because I didn’t. If I had done otherwise, I would not have been able to do what I did instead. We think we have the power to choose other than how we choose, but that’s an illusion. We balance, and come down on the side of the weightiest motive moving us.She read what I had written and that stirred sarcasm in her, which results from her personality and manner of thought. This MOVED (motive, from motion) her in two or three seconds at most to type the message and send it. No thought STRONGER to her than the one which motivated her action intervened.
Are you saying that one can think and act in accordance with a motive which does not impel you to so think and act?
Where do you think decisions come from? Where a thought or feeling, and hence action, comes from? Do they arise of themselves from nothing, or are they the result of matter in motion both without and within us?
Your brain is a material organ, as are your nerves, your sense organs etc. They receive and act accordingly. Thoughts and feelings are initiated by both external and internal factors. You are not a “spirit” independent of sensation. Your thoughts are materially produced. Cause and effect proceeds in a chain, one thought then producing another just as it was produced. Decisions and “choices” are likewise produced on the basis of a multitude of factors, drawn from your past experiences, your past responses, your manner of thinking, which all together make your personality. You cannot think, feel or do independent of this. You do not exist outside of natural law. Nothing is supernatural.
Yes, you can add an if clause, but that makes it purely hypothetical. You can say that, but it isn’t what happened, so therefore it wasn’t able to happen, or it would have. The chain of causation did not go that way.
The material conditions have long existed but the consciousness has not yet fully developed. If it does, socialism will happen; if it doesn’t, it won’t. We want it to, so we must continue to work for it.
Was the consciousness enough in 1890? No. Is it yet? No. Will it be? We don’t know. We must work at it. But our will for it has been produced by our life experience, based on numerous personal as well as social factors. Our will is not its own First Cause, and neither is anybody’s. It is within the chain of causation and follows the same laws of motion, of cause and effect, as everything in nature.The material conditions exist; the consciousness has yet to develop where most are concerned. If it happens, it could. If it doesn’t, it couldn’t.
