> Marvin Gandall
>
> -clip-
> The historical experience of these revolutions has been such
> that future generations will be more cautious about embracing socialist
> solutions if these conditions reappear.
>
> ^^^^
>
> CB: How do you know that ?
>
> On the contrary, future generations are more likely to embrace socialist
> solutions because of the historical experience of these revs.
---------------------------------
You clipped too much. My next sentance reads: "But then again historical
memories are short, and most people act not on the basis of ideology or
what's gone before but what problems they are practically required to solve
in the present." In other words, if the system of private ownership should
collapse, they may of necessity ultimately have to ressurect the economy
through public ownership, so we are not as much at odds as you seem to
think. But I don't pretend to "know" this for certain or anything else; like
you, I can only speculate on what may be "likely" in certain circumstances,
based on what we've learned before. I don't agree, incidentally, that the
failed revolutions in the USSR and China have made people more rather than
less receptive to public ownership and planned economies. Try asking your
neighbours and workmates and see what they say.
------------------------------------
In a related vein, Wojtek S. wrote:
Socialism is one of those ideas that made sense 100 years ago because it was an efficient label identifying a coherent political programme aiming at increasing power of labor vis a vis capital in the 19th century Europe and regulation of the economy for the purpose of improving living standards of the working class as a whole. However, after the implementation of welfare state and Keynesianism this programme became obsolete. It does not mean that welfare state and Keynesianism solved all social problems or that the conflict between haves and have nots is over. It means that specific programmes labeled in the late 19th/early 20th centuries as "socialism" are no longer relevant for the particular set of socio-historical conditions that exist in the early 21st century. ------------------------------------ I'm more agnostic. I think it depends on whether trade unionism, from which the mass socialist parties originated, will one day be seen as an historically specific expression of industrial capitalism, which died out as these economies become transformed into ones based on services, or whether it is a permanent expression of the wage relationship in capitalism, period, which waxes and wanes with economic conditions and the state of the labour market. In this case, you would expect to see a revival of trade unions and socialism - the programmes if not the names -if conditions should revert back to what they were when workers were driven to combine in both the political and economic arenas. I think it may still be premature to assess their historical significance. Capitalism has produced constantly rising living standards since the 30s, except for some brief and shallow interruptions - a period coinciding with the decline of the labour and socialist movement. It could be different if conditions reversed. I'd like a little more time to see whether this happens and what results before closing the book. But I can certainly understand people doing so after a century and a half of futility.
MG