[lbo-talk] Re: Political Cartography

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Mon Nov 22 12:26:48 PST 2004



>From: Jon Johanning <zenner41 at mac.com>
>
>On Nov 21, 2004, at 2:41 PM, Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>Here are some talking points off the top of my head:
>
>These are very hard-hitting criticisms, but exactly *not* what I'm looking
>for. They are all reasons to think that something is wrong with capitalism.
>We have tons and tons of those. What I want is a clear, practical-looking
>(who knows if it is really practical until it is tested?) picture of what
>the opposite, socialist society, will look like.

I'm sure if I look farther down in my inbox I'll see some incandescent post from Carrol denouncing "cookbooks of the future." And yes, it is difficult to itemize the ingredients of an equitable, efficient socialist society without sounding like Charles Fourier, Edward Bellamy or some other old-timey, starry-eyed, utopian control freak. I think it *is* best right now just to focus on the myriad things that are wrong with capitalism.

Totalitarian communism is a menace receding so fast in history that you can't even see the taillights; it no longer provides the establishment an effective bogeyman to terrorize the people (and the designated replacement, Islam, is hardly as useful a threat to demonize socialism). I think at some point Americans will look around them and ask, is that all there is? They will tire of living in a capitalist society in turbocharged decline, growing cruder and crueler by the day, and they will be desperate for something new that permits greater genuine democratization of the economy. Cultivating awareness that capitalism's savagery is inherent to the system and not a transient problem will accelerate this desperation. At that point it will be more productive to ponder the functional details of a socialist society.

Carl



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