> But current empirical actuality should not obscure our
> recognition of reality: and reality is that placing personal
> responsibility on individuals, or suggesting that "hard
> work" or "self improvement" are "virtues," is pure
> viciousness, pure surrender to the fvery worst features of
> capitalism.
If overthrowing capitalism were as easy as multiplying by minus one every item capital subordinates to profit making, exploitation, etc....
In my limited experience as an organizer, invariably the people (students, teachers, peasants, workers) who were most responsible, more hardworking, more systematic (and this set intersected largely with women!) were the true engines of all political activity. Lazy, verbose men (usually men) were a drag. Nothing in organizing, politics, revolutionary processes, etc. ever gets done without work conducted by individuals. The hardest and smartest the work, the more and the better gets done. Plain as that.
Communism is the generalization of a human potential that capitalism only insinuates. Read Grundrisse (the 1857 Introduction), which Marx starts by stating that his starting point is *individuals* producing in society. Not societies producing through individuals, but *individuals* producing under existing social conditions.