CB:
> Affirmative action exactly in the direction of abolishing classes.
"Reverse discrimination" would be a right wing way of describing it, and it sort of robs them of the good credit they should get on exactly moving to classnessless: affirmative action for peasants.
Gar
>Umm - this was irony Charles. I was comparing Joannas complaint to that made against affirmative action.
^^^^^^^
CB:
>Was she complaining ?
Sounded like it to me. But maybe I misread her. If so I'll apologize.
^^^^^
CB:
> What version of the transitional phase called socialism are you using ? Marx's discussion of this says the socialist phase will likely still bear the marks of the old capitalist society in it for a long while, which it would seem likely to include "social mobility".
Gar
>If you still have classes it is not socialism.... I don't care how early. (Well maybe not the first month). Socialism that has existed for any length of time had better be a classless society. If not, it is not
socialism.
CB:
> Social mobility is not the same thing as classes. If in socialism, a general rule is "to each according to work", then there would be different social mobilities for different work. Also, as socialism is a transitional phase in which there is still a residue from capitalism, the poverty and its effects of some classes in capitalism remains for a period in socialism. So, differential social mobility in the form of affirmative action is necessary as part of the process of abolishing classes. Classes are not instantly abolished with the insurrection.
Any entity that existed as long as the Soviet Union did could have been expected to eliminate both classes and castes.
This, by the way, is one place I think Marx got it very wrong, (Interestingly enough an area where you and JKS and Yoshie and Carroll all agree). I do think socialism (not communism which may or may not be attainable, but socialism) requires extremely strong levels of equality.
We cannot live without division of labor - but that division need not be set up in such a way that jobs consist of all the unpleasant and unempowering jobs, and others of the most pleasant and empowering. You can argue how equally tasks may be distributed, to what jobs may be reworked. But even some pro-capitalists argues that we need not distribute work as hierarchal as now. It need not consist of a majority doing only drudge work, and a minority doing artistic, administrative, and technical work.