Bill, the problem is partly found in your answer. That is you see proletarian socialism as the objective, as an abstraction which must be sold to the people. It is, by this thinking, already a sometime-in-the-future-thing. It is the error of these past decades of the movement that we have reduced ourselves to the role of educators.
My point is that historically this is not so, that the level of socialisation already established by the bourgeoisie, effectively means there is no great day when leading elements of capital must be socialisied, as this is already achieved. What is missing is proletarian power, that is something that can be built, built around struggles to change, in its interest, what works against it. No one needs to be convinced of this, they don't have to embrace the socialist cause to struggle for changes that are in their interests - they do not have to be won over. What they do need is some hard-headed types take up a bundle of needed changes and weld them together into a coherent political platform - why mention socialism, surely that is an educative question and not a meaningful struggle? The utopianism which collectively poisons us, is the idea that essentially we are about winning everybody to the utopian ideal. In struggle there will be plenty who want to know more and understand the historical forces involved, but for most folks this is mere garnish in the more material struggle to get things running right. In a sense the way you have put the question places the cart before the horse and then dispares because it will not move. Try it around the other way, in the struggle for proletarian change, more people will be won over to the notion and magically without prejudice, their socialism will become the expression of the struggle they are already engaged in. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "William S. Lear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 08:21:49 -0600 Subject: [PEN-L:19684] Re: Socialism Now Sorry, but I find this a bit facile. There is a tremendous entrenched power that knows very well how to wage class warfare and it has been doing so quite effectively. To say that "nothing" is needed, save the left get out of its own way, ignores the immense work to be done to convince, for example, the vast majority of Americans, that socialism does not mean Soviet-style rule. Bill
