- Capitalism and Alternatives -

For Socialism.

Posted by: Red Deathy ( Socialist Party, UK ) on June 30, 1999 at 14:17:47:

In Reply to: Restating my position for the civil socialists posted by Marcos on June 30, 1999 at 00:16:33:


: This is adressed in the main to SDF and Red Deathy who have responded to my socialist imperatives with surprising aggression!
Erm, the W.S.M. has a hostility clause 'the Socialist Partyy enters the field of political contest to wage war against all political parties, whether avowedly capitalist or allegedly labour', or sommat like that...

: Red Deathy has stated " we build and campiagn, and that all we can do" but I am horrified! For this is not the revolution which leads to our socialist future! You state it is up to the proletariat to heed us, but then we wait, until the very end of the earth, for the proletariat labors under the false consiousness of capitalism, and it replaces our collective consciousness

False consciousness can be fought, people can experience the reality of their own lives, and their own misery or boredom, that in itself makes some people want to look for answers and solutions. Until people want socialism, it can't happen, that is the grand flaw of vanguardism. Democracy relies on the full and free co-operation of *all* the working class. If you try and force socialism on people, as an outside power, as a band of leaders, folks'll resent it.

You'd end up, like Lenin, fighting the working class, and them fighting you. Andso, like the Bolsheviks, you'd end up rebuilding the repressive state to try and drive your minority goals through.

: People will think they are allright whilst we shall sit ever waiting and nowing they suffer!

Erm, who are we to say others are suffering, they can and must say so for themselves, if they feel tehy are suffering, they will do something- its expressions like that as piss most workers off, and make the job for the rest of us a damn sight harder. We're not the elect, we are not given god inspired knowledge....

: What is wrong with the vanguard? What is wrong with a socialist vanguard - the courage of the collective made into a fine point to pierce the money grubbers system!

The very fact that a vanguard is a minority, that its tactics and methods must be that of a minority, it elides the agency of the working class onto others.

:You speak of workers lead to slaughter! I speak of their oppression, the oppresion of the collective under the iron fist of capital!

I speak of oppression under the bolsheviks- i don't give a bugger who is the oppressor, I want shot of the lot of them, and as a scientific socialist, I want to do it properly.

: Workers have their chains to loose, but the struggle is not without effort - as long as we the collective realize our socialist future then we have success my comrades.

And the vanguard is not the collective- thats the whole point.

: A consciousness does not raise itself, it does not raise by reading the socialist message amid a torrent of capitalist propoganda!

No, it takes place in the hearts, souls, and minds of workers as they live their lives, and that feeling must find expression, understanding and direction, and that is the task of all socialist.

Come your revolution mate, folks like me would be shot. Be prepared to shoot me.



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