[lbo-talk] 36% of Americans have a positive image of socialism

[Carrol Cox]

Sinccc socialism will never be the explicit goal of a socialist
revolution, attitudes towards socialism (especvially attitudes at a time
when no mass movement exists) seem rather irrelevant politically. Mass
movements begin and develop as a demand for sompe particular change
within the existing society, usually a dmand that some structural
feature or major governmental policy be abolished. If suvh a campaign
catches on and involves some substantial sector of the public taking
militant action, more and more withn it will discover for themselves as
they discuss with others the inability of society as presently orgnized
to satisfy the demands, or (alternately) their actions will be met with
such repressive measures as to enragee them, or (altenately) some
cotingencies we can't guess a tnow, the militancey will grow (still not
necesarily "for socialism) so as to disrupt seriusly ordinary businesds
and ordinary state functions. At that point, the army will or will not
obey the order to shoot the demonctrators. If they shoot, that movement
(usually) will shrivel; if they do not shoot, a semi-stateless condition
will come into existence, and various tendencies within the movement
will fill that v acuum. 

They will find (and their will, of course, be many self-conscious
socialist _among_ them -- but not necessarily all Marxists) that the
measures they need to take both to continue expresdsons of poular
militancy and to geneerate, within that miltancy (or rther to develop
further tendencies present from earlier in the movements) a
self-discipline necessary for cooperation at a national level -- they
will find themselves instituting "socialist measures," whether or not
under that label. The nation will find itself on the road to socialism,
though that road will be a long and torurous one.

Within that kind of context, there simply is no point at which, in mass,
people step out of the action and academically debate the question, and
cpitalistically make a rational choice, Socialism or not Socialism.
Socialism is a process, not a choice in a voting booth.

Carrol

Miles Jackson wrote:
> 
> Michael Pollak wrote:
> >
> > Has socialism, as we mean it, ever existed, in any society?
> 
> Well, you can turn that question around: has capitalism ever existed in
> any society?  In a truly capitalist society, all of the goods and
> services would be market commodities.  In the U. S. at the present time,
> the value of the goods and services that are outside of the wage/market
> system is about equal of the GDP.  Does this mean the U. S. is not a
> truly capitalist society?
> 
> The point I'm trying to highlight here is that economic production in
> industrial societies is a complex mix of capitalist and socialist
> approaches.  Rather than asking questions about whether or not some
> "pure" socialist or capitalist society has actually existed, we should
> focus on how to effectively allocate resources.  Whether market based
> approaches or socialist based approaches are effective in a given sector
> of the economy is an empirical question.
> 
> Miles
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