A few weeks ago there was a lengthy thread on pen-l set off by someone claiming that what was wrong with the socialist movement was its failure to present a convincing picture of the socialist future. I do maintain that this demand for describing what socialism will be _is_ embryonically if not overtly authoritarian. That is the trouble with some versions of "scientific socialism" as developed in the 20th century in terms of a 20th-c understanding of "science." (I understand that Bensaid has argued pretty convincingly that this conception of science was _not_ that of Marx or other German writers of the mid-19th century) If one claims to describe in advance what a socialist society will be, one is claiming that there exists a fromula, a fixed paln, which any socialist society must follow. Since one canot trust non-scientists to follow that formula accurately, you need experts to impose it on the masses for their own good.
That is the background of my suggestion that you did not trust the people. (They are _not_ trustworthy within capitalist relations, hence the need for elaborate constitutional safeguards of individual rights.
Noter: this slogan of Trust the Peole does not rest on any certainty that the trust will be warranted. Socialism might well turn out to be a nightmare. The slogan simply states a _necessity_ of trusting the people if one wants to overthrow capitalism, because there is nothing else to trust. If the workintg class doesn't do it it won't be done. In fact, I base none of my political arguments on either the desirability or the possibility of socialist revolution but only on the necessity, since nothing else offers any possible future. This is my construalof Luxemburg's "socialism or barbarism." It might well turn out to be barbarism period, but we have to try.
It is also in that sense, I believe, that Marx spoke of capitalism preparing us for socialism; humanity might well have gone on for an idefinite period rotating more or less happily throgu various forms of pre-capitalist society. Capitlaism cuts that off: now it issocialism or sheer destructiveness.
Carrol
Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> I was just rereading Carrol's post and I think I found what set him off:
>
> >No! Not only do we not _need_ to have an idea about what to do (50 years
> >from now) "when it does happen," but it is positively WRONG, reactioary,
> >totalitarian, to have such ideas.
>
> That's not what I said Carrol. When I wrote "when it does happen" I
> was talking about when serious crime happens, now or anytime. I
> wasn't talking about what is to be done in 50 years.
>
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