Kelley wrote:
>
>
> again, i'm just having fun with this but, seriously, if people get so
> worked up now over what kind of clothes other people wear in public or
> whether or not other people have pedicures NOW or wash their feet the right
> way or what kind of toilet paper it is acceptable to use, what happens when
> it is _really_ obvious that societal resources are being spent on those
> choices and we have to decide if we want to continue the practice.
[Incidentally, I'm among those who (usually) just lets the water run over my feet. :-)]
If we are talking about how decisions are to be made under socialism, we are talking about a somewhat distant future. If it is legitimate to talk about the future _after_ the 'revolution' or the 'miraculous election,' it is, I think, important to include in that discussion of the distant future a discussion of what is to happen _between_ now and then. That is, it is really bizarre to talk about the future (socialism) in terms of our experiences in 2003, as if no process occurred between now and then, and that then was not overwhelmingly conditioned by that intervening process.
I would suggest that we should hypothesize that socialism arising from a state affairs which will have included the following:
1. Riots over a period of 10 or 15 years in which 10s of thousands are killed and police brutality runs rampant. (Even if the break to socialism comes by electoral means, those elections will occur only after a period of immense convulsions.)
2. There will be immense misery scattered through the land. (Imagine the recent blackout having ocurred scores of times, here, there, & elsewhere, with some of those blackouts lasting for periods of weeks if not months.
3. About 1/3 of the population will no longer have had access to clean water for most of the time over a period of years.
4. There will have been a number of really nutty ultra-left organizations (which make the Weathermen look tame) spring up, flourish, break up organizations from which they sprang, then disappear, either crushed or simply gotten burned out and their membership drifted away.
5. Numerous rightist fanatics will have rampaged, disappeared, reappeared.
6. Fill in 15 or more items according to personal taste.
------
And THEN discuss what a socialism emerging from such conditions will 'do.'
Carrol
P.S. The point is not whether my particular predictions are correct or not; the point is that you shouldn't talk about socialism without incorporating that discussion into a discussion of how we get from here to there. The world does change. Whatever happens in the next 20 years, 2025 won't be like 2003, and if socialism triumphs in 2026, it will do so in the c onditions of 2025, not 2003.