Mike Beggs wrote:
>
> But I'm with Julio in saying, 'so
> what?'
Nothing, if with Julio you believe in the mytology of Progress; that ever upwards and onwards is structured into the nature of human hisoty, and that by endless small steps we we will endlessly improve.
But if you can't accept that, if with Marx & Darwin & others you see the enormous role of contingency in human history, (beginning with that asteroid which by destroying the dinosaurs made the existence of homo sapiens possible). Luxemburge caught thenature of that problem with great precision, "socialism (freedom) or barbarism," meaning not that that was a choice we had but that they were at best equally probable outcomes.
For what Marx discovered, translated into political terms, was the identity of capitalism and barbarism, that capitalism was a totally new 'system,' an aberration as it were in human history, that offered no escape. The alternative is not the gradual 'evolution' (peaceful or violent) through changes within capitalism. But if Marx's analysis of the nature of capitalism, and if he an others (including me) are right as to the power of contingency, then we see that human thought offers no toolbox of methods (reformist or revolutionary; keynesian or Leninist) by which we can "fix" our condition. Barbarism will triumph. Then it is not a matter of whether revolution is desirable or possible: either claim is ridiculous in its pretensions to a mystical capacity to foresee what cannot be foreseen. Rather, the nature of capitalism makes revolution a NECESDSITY. (Not in the sense of certainty but in the sense that if your boat sinks 5 miles from shore it is a necessity that you swom or float that distance.) Barbarism, on the other hand, is not a prediction: it is a simple description of the world we inhabit. The necessity is to escape that barbarism before it destroys us all. (I missed the post in which Angelus introduced the term "toolbox," but I see its relevance now: I have had many arguments with Julio myself, and that is precisely is conception of human thought (of, "economics"): that it is a toolbox of methods by which we can namipualtre capitalist society to fit our desiresd.)
So what? I have expressed this before in insisting (usually in response to DRR) on the importance of the tautology, Capitalism is Capitalism. (It would be false to assert that Feudalism is Feudalism or a Palace Economy is a Palace Economy. Those are merely empirical generalizations. But Marx's analysis, seen as Angelus and others now see it, does establish that all capitalist systems will be barbarisms.
Carrol