Carrol Cox wrote:
> 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.
Except that "science" in this case means developing from the self-estrangement that defines capitalist reality ""the true human being" as "its obligation and its final goal," this being Hegel's elaboration of the "business of science" in terms of "the higher dialectic of the conception."
The "true human being" is the enlightened being able to imagine and create "the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man."
The relations that define this form, i.e. that characterize how we would produce if "we had carried out production as human beings," are described by Marx as follows:
"Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature. 3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love. 4) In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature.
"Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.
"This relationship would moreover be reciprocal; what occurs on my side has also to occur on yours." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/
In what sense is this description of "what socialism will be ... embryonically if not overtly authoritarian"? In particular, how can it be imposed "on the masses for their own good"?
Ted