But that's another debate. What you're overlooking here is that even when people become "socialists", they attach different meanings to the term. Most typically, the division is between those who see this mainly in terms of redistributing wealth and controlling the corporations (social democrats) and those who want to replace private with public ownership and politically eliminate the capitalists as a class (Marxists). It seems to me that's what the current discussion about the welfare state and Sweden is, att bottom, about. It's an internal debate as old as the labour and socialist movement, and always resurfaces because, beginning with Bernstein, the left has found the overthrow of capitalism and the replacement of the traditional parties to be a much tougher slog than it had bargained for.
You're a frequent participant in this debate, including in the past few days, so I don't know what you mean when you say "I never have and never will discuss socialism on this list." Anyway, keep doing so.
MG --------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 12:05 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] When to Talk About Socialism
> 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.
>
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>