File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9705, message 3


From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: BHA: Transitions. Re "Market Socialism"
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 14:19:48 -0500 (CDT)


    Howie is correct, I believe, to argue that we must give very
broad definition indeed to Marxism; further, it seems clear to me
that the majority in any anti-capitalist revolutionary movement are
not even going to consider themselves "Marxists," however broadly
defined. (My wife and I would have been pretty lonely here in central
Illinois over the past 27 years if we had been willing to work only
with "Marxists" or "revolutionaries.) We belong to no national
organization now, and I suspect that when a viable socialist movement
is formed it will include many who call themselves "Market Socialists."
I will work with them.

    BUT. I'm not going to try to give the arguments for the following;
those arguments are long and complex. I am simply going to lay down
some heuristic propositions, and predictions based on them.

    (1) Market Socialisms, in their most sophisticated versions,
are forms of utopianism (by which I mean any social goal separated
from the means of struggle by which it might be achieved)

    (2) When the chips are down, and when the old slogan "Which side
are you on" ceases to be a slogan and must be answered in action,
"Utopians" will more often than not decide that the people are not
to be trusted, that the revolution will lead to some form of
totalitarianism, and that it is best, at least for the present,
to side with (whatever then will be the disguised form of fascism). See
Phil Ochs, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal."

    So I will work and live with market socialists: I will never
wholly trust them. And that is based not on differences

    Carrol


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