2013 Meme, Topic #2
Jan. 4th, 2013 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maeve66Day 2: What would it take to bring down the capitalist system -- but replacing it with socialism (whatever you want to call that post-capitalist economy where people rather than profits are the priority) rather than barbarism?
When I was little, which was before there was a Hello Kitty (I think... I actually don't know the origins of that Japanese marketing concept)... I never thought that the revolution would necessarily happen in my lifetime, though I did think it NEEDED to happen. My parents were both revolutionary socialists, recruited during the anti-Vietnam war movement. But they joined the Young Socialists Alliance, the youth group of the Socialist Workers' Party, and whatever problems the SWP had (they were legion; my father holds the world record for numbers of times expelled FROM THE SAME ORGANIZATION) at least it was not one of the expectant New Left groups that thought the revolutionary moment was NOW! Or... NOW! Or maybe ... NOW? The Maoists were always amazing like that... was it the PLP who used to make up new revolutionary slogans for each calendar year, like "Smash the State in '88!"?
Anyway, our tradition held a long term view. Despite growing up as a revolutionary socialist, I did not undergo some form of teenage rebellion that transformed me into a Republican, a liberal Democrat (which might have seemed the worse betrayal, to my folks) or even an evolutionary socialist. I still find it impossible to imagine that capitalism could wither away on its own, as profit seems still to require increasing profit. But it is very hard, these days, to imagine what a revolutionary moment might be that could spiral wide enough to spark rebellions all over the world including in what Che called 'the belly of the beast.' Trotsky's theory of combined and uneven development held that revolutions were most likely to happen in so-called 'backwards' countries, not the most 'advanced' industrial (or these days, post-industrial) countries as Marx had thought. But how do such countries, in their attempts to revolt, succeed at evading the heavy hand of global capitalism?
The invention of new ways to protest and rebel -- like Occupy last year -- holds out hope. The virtual annihilation of the WORD socialism with the fall of the Soviet Union (no I did not hold it up as a revolutionary example, except insofar as it did indeed try, for a long time, to remain post-capitalist), and the ongoing neoliberal juggernaut against organized labor, those both blast hope. It will be such a fucking pain in the ass to have to reinvent the WHEEL.
I guess my answer is I don't know, but it still seems necessary, especially in the face of global warming. Oh -- the books of Kim Stanley Robinson are often helpful ways to imagine this possibility, as is Marge Piercy's He, She, and It.
When I was little, which was before there was a Hello Kitty (I think... I actually don't know the origins of that Japanese marketing concept)... I never thought that the revolution would necessarily happen in my lifetime, though I did think it NEEDED to happen. My parents were both revolutionary socialists, recruited during the anti-Vietnam war movement. But they joined the Young Socialists Alliance, the youth group of the Socialist Workers' Party, and whatever problems the SWP had (they were legion; my father holds the world record for numbers of times expelled FROM THE SAME ORGANIZATION) at least it was not one of the expectant New Left groups that thought the revolutionary moment was NOW! Or... NOW! Or maybe ... NOW? The Maoists were always amazing like that... was it the PLP who used to make up new revolutionary slogans for each calendar year, like "Smash the State in '88!"?
Anyway, our tradition held a long term view. Despite growing up as a revolutionary socialist, I did not undergo some form of teenage rebellion that transformed me into a Republican, a liberal Democrat (which might have seemed the worse betrayal, to my folks) or even an evolutionary socialist. I still find it impossible to imagine that capitalism could wither away on its own, as profit seems still to require increasing profit. But it is very hard, these days, to imagine what a revolutionary moment might be that could spiral wide enough to spark rebellions all over the world including in what Che called 'the belly of the beast.' Trotsky's theory of combined and uneven development held that revolutions were most likely to happen in so-called 'backwards' countries, not the most 'advanced' industrial (or these days, post-industrial) countries as Marx had thought. But how do such countries, in their attempts to revolt, succeed at evading the heavy hand of global capitalism?
The invention of new ways to protest and rebel -- like Occupy last year -- holds out hope. The virtual annihilation of the WORD socialism with the fall of the Soviet Union (no I did not hold it up as a revolutionary example, except insofar as it did indeed try, for a long time, to remain post-capitalist), and the ongoing neoliberal juggernaut against organized labor, those both blast hope. It will be such a fucking pain in the ass to have to reinvent the WHEEL.
I guess my answer is I don't know, but it still seems necessary, especially in the face of global warming. Oh -- the books of Kim Stanley Robinson are often helpful ways to imagine this possibility, as is Marge Piercy's He, She, and It.