>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 01/11/00 01:36PM >>>
There are degrees of sub-utopianism, and god and original sin have nothing to do with it. Human life is very complicated, and we have a long history of brutality and conflict that won't go away anytime soon.
Tell me, how do we get from the actually existing world in 2000 to a world in which HistMat is no longer necessary?
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CB: Please forgive any dogma in my answer here.
Historical materialism didn't apply for most of the time of the existence of humanity. Historical materialism is the theory of the development of exploitative class society. Humans arose at least 100,000 years ago, and exploiting classes arose 7,000 years ago. So, historical materialism doesn't apply to at least 93,000 years of human society. This is important , by the way, because it gives hope that humans can exist without exploiting classes, and even "brutality and conflict."
Historical materialism holds that class struggle is the ultimate motor of change of society, but that people don't know that, and that they explain history to themselves in terms of the actions of God or of Big and Great Men and their ideas.
Note historical materialism does not hold that good ideas shouldn't guide the activity and development of society, but that ideas actually have not determined in the era of classes. So, historical materialism inherently contemplates its own obsolesence. The goal of historical materialism is to END the determination of human development by anagonistic class struggle , in part by our becoming aware of the fact that that is what has been happening.
The full idea of Engels's ( Hegel's) "freedom is the mastery of necessity" is that once we become conscious of economy determining superstructure , we will have mastered that necessity , and we will be FREE of that necessity. We will still have physical necessities, but our fulfillment of them will not blindly control us in the way it has in class society. As Sahlins put it, we seek to have mastery of our mastery of nature. The goal of historical materialism is to allow the control of development of society by ideas and consciousness , or the self-abolition of historical materialism.
Your question above implies that it is unrealistic to think of a transition to socialism with capitalism so dominate in 2000. And capitalism does obviously dominate in many ways. It would be foolish to deny that. But if we step back and look at the historical long run, on balance, reality or actuality of historical materialism accomplishing its own abolition is closer than the 1800's when historical materialism was first formulated, despite the recent fall of the SU and the undeniable major victories of world capitalism.
I'm trying to think how to say this succinctly. Even though actually existing socialism has and had enormous problems and even total collapse in its main center, the fact that it exists and existed and seriously challenged capitalism ( and capitalism's actions themselves demonstrate that capitalism "thought" itself seriously challenged) makes historical materialism much more real and not just a utopian dream as compared with all other ideas for how to improve society.
So, the non-spectacular, almost common sense answer is : learn from the mistakes and failures of the first efforts to end capitalism based on the theory of historical materialism. Make adjustments. Take account of how capitalism has changed since the era of Marx and Lenin. Especially note how the capitalists have become very conscious of historical materialism and have adjusted themselves to fighting its practice. I think the biggest barrier is that the capitalists are completely ruthless and willing to use ultimate violence.
But the goal of historical materialism is still its own abolition, the end of "history" in the sense of history as the era of class exploitative driven society. The goal is not the end of the development of human society. New contradictions will drive that development. Contradiction and change are eternal.
CB