> On Mar 26, 2008, at 5:03 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>>
>>
>> Presumably, the idea of a better world has that
>> "better" adjective attached to it because it is better
>> according to the system of values of one describing it
>> as such, not the system of values of people in the
>> hypothetical world. This is why we are not agitating
>> for a society of widespread human sacrifice,
>> regardless of whether the people in this society
>> approve of ripping out people's hearts and offering
>> them to the sun god or not.
>>
One need not understand "better" in the sense Chris does here. One could imagine a quasi-Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" in which the those choosing the best society know, among other things, the distribution of preferences in these alternative societies. The "better" society - the one preferred behind this veil of ignorance, would presumably be the one which satisfies best the preferences it engenders. No system of values need attach to this choice - one is amoral with respect to the moral goodness or badness of the preferences themselves.
Carrol's point is somewhat like this. A future revolutionary society may satisfy the preferences of those who live in it better than our current society satisfies the preferences of those who live in it, even though those of us living in this current society find our preferences better satisfied by it than we would by the future revolutionary society. On the quasi-Rawlsian grounds sketched above, that would make the future revolutionary society preferred.
As several have noted, this does create a huge "getting there from here" problem. Who in the present would struggle for a society because it will better satisfy the preferences of people who are not yet around to struggle for it? Presumably you have to tell a more complicated story here. First, the ability of the current society to satisfy the preferences of those already living here declines. Second, this gap has to get wide enough for a significant number of people to be willing to bear the costs of the revolutionary interregnum, a short period of time during which things get harder for almost everyone, in return for the promise of a post- revolutionary period in which things get better (according to the preferences of a pre-revolutionary society). The immediately post- revolutionary society had better be able to cash in on these promises if it expects to survive. Finally, there is a period of post- revolutionary development (almost certainly spanning several generations), during which preferences and the revolutionary society's ability to meet those preferences both change and converge.
All of this is building castles in the air, it might be objected, with some reason. But what I'm trying to show is that (a) there are rational grounds for saying that a future revolutionary society is preferable to ours, even though none of us might like that society very much, and (b) one can tell a very broad and not-entirely- implausible story about a pathway that gets us from here to there, maintaining a congruence between the preferences of really-existing people and the revolution in development.
In the meantime, what is to be done? (1) You intervene politically where the system is most obviously unable to satisfy people's preferences. You try to demonstrate that the problem is systemic, not accidental - something you can only really accomplish by changing the system and making things better (as with, for example, a change from the current health care system to any number of other models of public health care, all of which work better than what we have now). (2) Identify (or, in a pinch, create) institutions that have the power to make change when history provides an opening, work in those institutions, make them more democratic, fight hard in their current struggles. For all its ups and downs, I think my organization, Solidarity's Rank and File Strategy is a model here. Labor unions are not the only institutions that should be considered, of course. (3) Sit your ass down in the library and study. You need to understand the real contradictions of the form of capitalism in which you live, not wait around hoping to read the auguries for the long- delayed manifestation of the falling rate of profit, or put on sackcloth and ashes when you think the final crisis has finally arrived. You also need to have some rational basis for an immediate post-revolutionary society (and here parecon, for all its very real and perhaps decisive flaws, at least helps advance the debate). And it wouldn't hurt to know a few things about how to actually make things work. You know - engineering, accounting - the sorts of things that make you look like you have poo on the end of your nose. (4) If you have to engage in propaganda, understand that in the current period your real audience is the relatively small pool of potential cadres, not a mass audience. (5) Realize out of the gate that your chances are small, that socialism may never recover from its 20th century debacle, that irreparable ecological degradation may well occur before your project ever gets off the ground, that repression may get worse. And so figure out a way to live in this world. Get fucked as often as you can. Enjoy better living through chemicals. (Both preferably set to music). Indulge in guilty pleasures. Try not to take your frustrations out on your comrades. Find solace in unlikely places (even Matthew Arnold):
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Michael McIntyre