[lbo-talk] When to Talk About Socialism

[Carrol Cox]

Over the last 37 years I have talked to various people at various times
about socialism, past, present, future. What _all_ those occasions had
in common was that the person I was talking to was already engaged in
various kinds of social/political struggle, and _on his/her own_ had
reached the point where he/she consciously needed to know more about the
enemy. That involved necessarily looking at the present as history --
i.e. looking _back on_ the present from a perspective in the future --
looking at capitalism from the perspective of a socialist society. And
that, of course, involved talking in general terms about socialism. But
I have _never_ talked about socialism for the purposes of persuading
someone to be a socialist. One does not "convert" people to socialism.
It is not a religion of which one can say "Whosoever believeth in me
shall not perish" (or something like that). There is no moral or
metaphysical merit in believing in socialism -- it gets you no brownie
points with the god who doesn't exist. People become socialists when and
only when they find that it is the only way to make sense of the world
they are living in _now_.

That is why I never have and never will discuss socialism on this list.

Carrol

"The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape." (MECW 28:42)
Nowhere does Marx suggest that the anatomy of the ape is of much help in
understanding the anatomy of h.sapiens.