[lbo-talk] RE: Democratic Communism

[Michael Dawson -PSU]

Thomas wrote:
"Selfishness", according to the creed, is supposedly a
bourgeois attribute that has no place in proleterian
society.  It must be therefore "eradicated".  It
should be instead recognized as a human attribute,
alongside another human attribute, "selflessness".
Instead, it is to be stamped out, or socially
engineered out of existence.  Of course, it doesn't go
away and because it is not supposed to exist, it
resurfaces in a most virulent form.  I suspect this
blind wishing away of selfishness is not particular to
leninism but also of other tendancies on the left as
well.

-Thomas

I agree.  The left has also been ridiculously dismissive of psychology,
ethics, emotions, and the self, I'd say.  And what a shame, since the
findings of brain research are confirming what I've always understood to be
the bedrock of socialist thought -- i.e., that we human beings are heavily
dependent on group life and we function best when we are plugged into
loving, egalitarian relationships.

In fact, IMHO, the ultimate "substance of value" that Marxists have never
quite named in none other than LOVE.  I believe historical materialism could
now be re-explained and deepened on the basis of this observation, if only
we'd stop treating the topic as mere "bourgeois ideology."

Socialism = cultivation of the political economy of love.