File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-03-31.000, message 345


Date: Sat, 25 Mar 95 19:01:18 GMT
From: Ron Press <anclondon-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: Stalin/chaos


  I find the following in the list.

  >>>>>>>> Someone--Mostern, I think--reminded us that we cannot
  guarantee the outcome of a revolution. It unleashes forces which
  no group can control.  Given that revolutions take place under
  situations of disruption and conflict, horrific outcomes are
  always possible. I think Mostern (if it was he) went to far when
  he said he could not see the difference between Stalinism and
  our current situation (we are having this discussion, after all,
  and do not anticipate the secrete police coming for us as an
  immediate consequence). But I agree with him if what he meant
  was that the current and projected situatiuon is terrible enough
  to make the risks of revolutionary action worthwhile, if we can
  do it. Luxemburg posed us with the choice of socialism or
  barbarism. Well, Stalinism shows you might get both. But if do
  not get socialism, we will certainly get (more) barbarism.  So
  revolution is a Pascal's wager--I think. I haven't constructed
  the matrix. Any, bad as it might be, it's our best bet. Which
  doesn't necessarily say much for our chances. <<<<<<<<<<<<<

  I will once again face the danger of being tedious, or perhaps
  too erudite?

  The above passage reflects in a quite concise manner the ideas
  of chaos theory.

  A rigid complex system fails to satisfy the demands for its self
  preservation. It suffers from internal and external pressures
  which leads to the breakdown of its organisation. The system
  boarders on chaos. It has a choice relapse into complete chaos
  and selfdestruct or a new system emerges from the borderline and
  reestablishes a system which can survive.

  If the new system is inflexible and again unable to survive the
  pressures it too relapses into chaos.  And the process repeats.

  The arrow of time implies that the first system is replaced by a
  second and subsequently a third.

  However the ideas of non-linear processes and strange Attractors
  allows for the possibility that the first system is followed by
  the second but theat the third system is a variant of the first.

  For first read Capitalism, the second socialism, the third
  communism.

  I do not deny that things are much more complex. But I submit
  that the above scenario is not only consistent with marxism (
  small m) but an extension of marxism.

  Ron Press.

  A voice on the outside lookin in???
  .





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