: What's worth thinking about is that this first stab at a "worker's state" (as if the state WASN'T supposed to 'wither away,' huh?)...Expecting the state to wither away within 5 minutes?
Let's check in with a point I raised with Frenchy recently:
Frenchy [who asks more intellectually honest questions than most]: Now I wonder if you could also spell out for me why it is that Marxism has produced a history that hasn't only screwed workers out of their money, possessions, rights and a higher standard of living but has also produced more corpses than any other ideology?Stoller: Recall that communism existed for UNDER a century (under exceptionally immature conditions).
Shall we compare communism to capitalism where capitalism stood when it was under a century old?
Capitalism, by 1700, still had yet to produce a single democracy.
Capitalism, by 1700, was still characterized by direct colonial plunder.
Capitalism, by 1700, was still characterized by the institution of slavery.
: Etc., etc. [Ethnic cleansing of Native Americans could be inserted here...]
If capitalism was judged SOLELY by what it accomplished in ONLY the SAME time granted to the development of communism, it would be as ugly a picture of oppressive social relations.
Capitalism 'flowered' into democracy only AFTER it began to produce more abundance (thus requiring less direct exploitation).
To ignore the role of material development upon social development is to see only a frozen image of social relations that are, in actuality, constantly in transition.
: What's to do?
[Argument against revolution---'because its dangerous'---deleted.]
: Or better yet, how about if we engage this Debate Room in a REALISTIC DISCUSSION (meaning, one dependent upon the facts of an empirically-observed world) about a POSSIBLE NON-CAPITALIST FUTURE and HOW we can realistically GET THERE.
So far, Sam, all you've had to say is that voting for the Greens in a capitalist democracy is better than nothing.
Care to try again?
