[Reader-list] Fwd: "Socialism's Come Back"- (fwded)

[Rohit Shetti]

Hi Venu,

One of the problems that I find with the earlier theories about governance
is that the classes of people are categorized too simplistically. Lets take
for example the term 'working class'. Presumably it refers to the people
working in the monstrous factories and line assemblies.. which presumably
are agreed upon as the pillars of 'development'.

Doesn't this amount to accosting certain legitimacy to the notion of
development based on having a thriving military-industry complex? True,
there is a lot of context that exists even while organising labourers
against being exploited, but I'm not sure if we are applying new contexts
and the present-day dynamics rigorously enough in understanding older
theories.

I would be happy to stand corrected if I'm wrong in my assumptions.

Rgds,

Rohit

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:40 AM, Venugopalan K M <kmvenuannur at gmail.com>wrote:

> "..Marx's closest collaborator, Frederick Engels, argued back in the 1890s
> that state ownership isn't equivalent to socialism. After the conservative
> German leader Otto von Bismarck "went in for state ownership of industrial
> establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen," Engels
> complained,
> "degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without
> more
> ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be
> socialistic."
>
> Marx, Engels and the revolutionary socialists who followed them also argued
> that socialism can't be achieved by voting a socialist party into office.
> The workers themselves must take the lead in transforming society by
> exerting their power in the workplace and taking control of production.
>
> That's why socialists can't be satisfied with a critique of capitalism.
> They
> have to organize and fight for an alternative, by rooting socialist
> organization in working-class struggles against the ravages of capitalism.
>
> Eugene Debs, the great American socialist who got nearly a million votes
> for
> president in 1912, made this point. "I would not lead you into the promised
> land if I could," he said, "because if I led you in, some one else would
> lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get
> yourself out of your present condition."
> http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/06/socialisms-comeback
>
>
>
>
> --
> http://venukm.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
> --
> http://venukm.blogspot.com/
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