[lbo-talk] clarification

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Feb 13 06:23:33 PST 2010


SA wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Can you name one person who in recent times has claimed to describe in
> advance what a socialist society will be?

No. But that isn't how the topic ordinarily arises. Rather, someone (as on Pen-L a month or so ago) argues that Socialists or a Socialist Party OUGHT to present such a scenario. (And in the present case, I mistakenly thought that Dennis wwas making that demand.) So it is a continuing and crucial question within leftist thinking.


> > 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.
>
> But how do you know socialist revolution offers a possible future?
> Especially since you can't even begin to anticipate what socialism would be?

I don't. No one does. I just know that capitalism gurantees a disastrous future. "Socialism" is the provisional name we give to the seisure of power by an anti-capitalist movment.

Carrol



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