Wez
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Was Marx the first to insist on the full development of capitalism to make socialism possible? If so we owe to him the theory as to why all the leftist Bolshevik regimes failed.
That’s precisely the question the Socialist Party has been trying to crack for the last 100+ years! Obviously we have not found the answer although some of us have various theories to explain it. Let me ask you what was your route to consciousness? Do you feel you are somehow different from your fellow members of the working class? If there is an answer to this riddle it might be found within the psychology of socialists like ourselves. Instead of always looking for answers to the reasons for the lack of class consciousness in others perhaps we should ask how we acquired it – insight might be the route.
‘They’re not interested in even considering small lifestyle changes, let alone sociopolitical revolution’.
But you are – and you have to ask yourself what makes you so different from the rest of your species?
I didn’t say politics wasn’t about rational analysis – that would be absurd; but reactionary ideology e.g. nationalism, fascism etc., are all based on emotions (the irrational) and the process of such identification with value systems based on authoritarianism has to be understood. We’ve all attempted to communicate rationally about the need for socialism when our opponent gets increasingly frustrated and angry the more rational we attempt to be. This is the nature of 99% of the objections to socialism and why I claim that it is not only the intellect that is involved in polemics.
‘Dave, can it really be that simple though? If it were as simple to understand and as intuitive as you say then surely the SPGB would be doing a whole lot better than it is. I certainly don’t mean that as a snarky comment.’
Politics has always been about much more than merely an intellectual grasp of concepts. Most get their opinions and information from the media, family, education and peers and this is ‘ideological’ i.e. it is the result of emotional as well as intellectual conditioning. Intellectuals always make the mistake in thinking that politics is purely an intellectual riddle that can be solved by intelligence alone.
Capital is only a ‘torture’ to read for those in our culture because of the lack of dialectical knowledge and approach (something I hope to be addressing in next month’s Standard). Marx was an extraordinary polymath and since the dialectical approach to knowledge is holistic many find the multiplicity of historical/economic/philosophical/artistic references in Capital very confusing. Socialists believe in ‘from each according to his talents’ and so some have the interest and capacity for abstract thinking while others do not – but in socialism there is no hierarchy of talents so there is no danger of ‘undermining the masses’ with elitist intellectual double talk (as there is in Bolshevism etc.).
The original form of the word ‘Poppy Cock’ was Dutch for soft dung so the symbolism is obvious if a little unmarketable.
I’m not sure what Alan and Sussex socialist are advocating here. You both acknowledge that socialism is the only way to stop the degradation of the environment and that is what we’re all working for. Adding a level of hysteria would not aid our cause and no one can second guess what the hatchet men of the ruling class will do or not do. Many have not and do not care about the pollution that has killed and continues to kill millions across the globe – but suddenly when there’s a threat to the ‘first world’ people start to worry.
If they were carbon based aliens then to achieve the requisite technology to get here they would already have gone through capitalism and their visit to Scotland would hold no surprises – assuming that the process of historical materialism is universal as the original post implies. If this is so then, obviously, there could be no chance of 'imposing' socialism.
I realize that this is a waste of time (and off subject) but this 'might' be of interest to L Bird as it tells the story of the divergence between science and the bourgeoisie. More often than not these days science confronts bourgeois ideology rather than supports it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/
I believe the very first writing (discovered in Mesopotamia) was a form of accounting (digitally) and this predates the arrival of the bourgeoisie by some millenia. Marx often uses the dialectical process of quantity transforming into a quality – such as when money becomes capital. Is this an example of the digital being converted into the analogue?
