>Marx wrote in Capital: "The advance of capitalist production develops
>a working-class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the
>conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature.
>The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully
>developed, breaks down all resistance." One mystery is, though, how
>Marx squared this thought with another idea he also held: transition
>to socialism is most likely in advanced capitalist society. If the
>former is true, the latter can't be.
>
Did he say it was most likely? I thought he said it was most likely to
succeed -- due to the absence of scarcity, due to the fact that
technology had been sufficiently developed to support the population
without there having to be a struggle for the means to live.
I think Trotsky echoes this in Revolution Betrayed -- where he talks about the failure of the revolution in Russia. He said something like, where there is scarcity, there is a queue: where there's a queue, there's a policeman; and the rest of the crap follows.
Joanna