Within the socialist movement (workers' movement) there also exists considerable differences over what exactly that emancipation was to consist in.E. P. Thompson, for example, believes that it consists in the working class becoming the ruling class. I am pretty convinced by Tamas that it consists (according to Marx) in the Working Class abolishing itself. That is another debate, and for it to be a meaningful debate it has to take place within a mass movement against capitalism. And that raises questions of what such a movement would be. I would argue (at least this is where I am now) that it would be a mass 'reform' movement compelled by repression to overthow the state or give up.
As to the "theoretical expression of the proletarian movement," that has in practice been conceived as being formulated by an elite vanguard. That s what led Paul Sweezy to deny that socialism _could_ be a science. At least in the current sense of "science," it is the realm of an intellectual elite. Whatever socialism turns out to be, it won't be analogous to quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity, something planned in advance and taught to the lay congregation of workers. It will be worked out democratically within the struggle, both before and after a successful insurrection.
And there is no certainty that any of this will actually happen. The future remains cloudy at best. And to bring it back to what trigtgered my post in the first place, debates now about what a socialist society should/must/ reflect authoritarian tendencies in those who conduct these debates. They are also silly because social systems simply are not competing brands of canned string beans.
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Ted Winslow Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 4:44 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The Horrible Swiss
Carrol Cox wrote:
> There is no evidence whatever for _any_ prediction of what a nation would
do
> coming out of a long, complex, probably bloody process by which a
> constituent assembly would come into existence.
>
> Such a transformation would _also_ bring about an utterly unpredictable
> transformation of the residents of scuh a nation.
Whatever this is, it isn't "scientific socialism" as elaborated by Engels in the passage I recently quoted.
"To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism."
Ted
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