On 2010-02-14, at 7:09 AM, Joseph Catron wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 12:42 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> Answer all these questions in some detail, and then we can start
>> talking about what the new regime would start to do on (say) Day 3 of
>> the new socialist order.
>
> Is there any other human pursuit in which one first plots a strategy, then
> uses it to devise a goal? The sequence you prescribe strikes me as the
> diametric opposite of a logical one.
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I think Carrol is trying to make the point that you can't possibly know the details of how a future socialist society will function when you can't even predict the course of the mass insurrection which he is anticipating will give rise to it. I haven't followed this thread from the beginning, so I don't know what has prompted his polemic. Did anyone on LBO actually project something akin to a five year plan for a new society?
If not, it may be that Carrol is debating with himself since such issues - the nature of a mass insurrection and the tasks of a socialist government - only have relevance when the prospect of a revolutionary change in class power and property actually presents itself. The reality is that these questions have only rarely if at all been posed in the West (Paris Commune? post WWI? post WWII? Depression?) and not for generations. They're not now even remotely on the agenda, and are unlikely to be in our lifetime, though nothing should ever be ruled out. But until there is a need to grapple with these issues, am I the only one who thinks the preoccupation with them is a sterile, even surreal, exercise?