lixiang:
Return to Marx
A "leftist" is often a Leninist and follower of Stalin and Mao's popularized(vulgarized?) textbooks,whose ideology is learned from, or found in at least, the CCP's middle school textbooks!
But we live in a era after Hans Georg Gadamer and Bertrand Arthur William Russell.Lenin's philosophy differs from Marx,notice this? So on philosophy ,we should return to Marx!
Fundamentally,we look forward to ensure human being's sustainable interests ,not only some elite's but also the mass's.Capitalism, capital-centered system can not serve human being's interests well.The subprime mortgage crisis of USA is an example. Lack of vigilance will put the world in danger.That is why we want to replace capitalism.
The world is changing endlessly.Nobody can tell the future for a long time while he can raise his answers to problems of his time. Fortunetelling can bring what? How far off is the next ice age? It will come too early due to the use of glass-house gas energy? People 100 year ago have this problem?
The laws of social development is objective?I think social development is, and just is, the products of aspirations, consequence of ,and context for,the struggles of people ,and the analyses, perspectives, strategies ,programs of political organizations.
Altogether, social development has no laws although you can find laws say,at the level of political science, history and strategics etc.Social development,radical or gradual,depends on improvement of knowledge of persons involved.
Social revolution is a conscious act? I think it is an "aspiring act". We act on our hope(wish) ,but not on apocalypse of some God. A better world is a matter of belief ,but not of faith.Our world ,though, probably becomes better and better , which makes us happy.
So we oppose history determinism.The "Scientific Socialism" is comfortable but transitory,will end up with abandoning like Stalinism or guessing like Maoism.
Why Leninism,Stalinism and Maoism are history determinism? One reason is that they were from unadvanced countries,Russia and China,where emperors were thrown down not long before.Another is they were politicians.Where the emperors always showed their servile people an absolutism,they had to or tried to be so too.
We look upon and evaluate Leninism at the viewpoint of act.Speaking of philosophy and some other fundamental doctrines,Trotskyism is the same as Leninism ,or a variation of Leninism.
In any case,hitherto ,socialism means ending of capitalism,but not of history.Socialism,a historic movement,is a tentative solution to problems of capitalism, based on the current knowledge of people. The world changed,the socialists's equations should change too.
"The working class",say ,consists mainly people who do manual or industrial labor some time ago.But it is more intellectual now.
Socialism is the direction,but tentative.An aspiration ,a direction, can hold all details? Only God can do this! Don't refuse any clear and immediate act but take socialism as a praxis in a whole.
How to implement public property is tentative? Many details is pending? Many hypotheses prove naive?
Another thing,;socialism in one country is impossible,ignorant or dishonest ,because people around the world communicate more and more, characteristics of a nation are in the unified global coordinates,isolation is impossible.
It is a socialist movement advancing with the times that can sublate Bush and Sarkozy's system.
The theory of Surplus Value , a purified model of an anarchical capitalism before 1900,is a criticism ,only against something some time ago. Capitalism today is much more complex.Prices are determined not only by competition but also political l,ecological and alike factors. Privileges don't include economic equalities only.
When it comes to China, a real understanding of China is essential,uhm? For example,should Mao be blamed? If there were no working class at all,with the same attitude as those in German ,in China in the 20th century,they were peasants while they worked in factories,it is natural that Mao practised as an emperor?
Especially,don't take China today as capitalism.It is an officialdom-economy.And the mass think differently from westerners to some extent,lacking modernity.Pay attention to this Chinese characteristic.
It is hard to guess the progress of politics in China.China will probably get a better capitalism after the inevitable reuniting.
It is too early to detail a strategy. First,freedom of speaking...then free election...then the technical part of changing the current system.
For more theoretics, read "Marx's philosophy as the hermeneutics of praxis" ,the interpretation of Marxism by Yu Wujin, a professor in