[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 7 07:25:16 PDT 2009


Matthias Wasser


> Individual self-interest doesn't get you there, though. As far as any one
individual is concerned, your material-reward-to-effort ratio is going to be a lot higher trying to get into the ruling class than overthrowing them. You can push out the boundaries of the self to include the community, of course, but that encroaches on the territory of - gasp! - morality.

^^^^^^^

CB: So far, yes. So far it hasn't gotten us there, but the struggle continues; victory is certain.

^^^^^

Shane Mage :

But the "self-interest" of the proletariat, as Marx conceives it, has nothing to do with "interest" (economic advantage) as conceived by individuals, including individual proletarians, in bourgeois society. The "self-interest" of the proletariat as a class *fur sich* consists of its *abolition as a class*. This is an entirely moral, not amoral, motive because it grounds communism in a concrete teleology--the planetary historical mission of human consciousness as the embodiment of what Hegel called "objective spirit."

^^^^^

CB: Yes, I think as it has turned out historically, the failure to achieve socialist reovolutions, especially in the Western, big power nations, means that there is an ironic convergence of Marxism with the Christian trope of pie-in-the-sky-in-the-bye-and-bye or ,individual Marxists and workers sacrificing their immediate and short-term self-interests for the cause of the interests of others to be fulfilled in the longer run in the planetary mission. The Party bookstore in Highland Park 10 -15 years ago was "Longview Bookstore".

However, Marx seemed to seek to help make revolution in his lifetime, not to say that he opposed it in the long run. And each generation of Marxists "should" look for a way to make revolution within their lifetime, even if as with Sisyphus, the revolutionary rock has rolled some ways back down the hill again.

Note that Marx -and Engels, Lenin , Angela Davis, et al, (most LBOers ) - not being in the working class were thoroughly morally motivated, I.e. they could have met their own individual self-interests much easier or at all, in the case of Marx and Lenin, by working for the rich rather than the poor.



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