The point is not to understand the world, but to change it.

[RedMaterialist]

I wonder, is changing the world possible any more. Or is it a case of waiting for capitalism to transform into a welfare state, then 50 yrs later into a democratic social state like, maybe, Sweden?

[#FF0000]

Considering how shitty things are even for european social democracies now, I'd say "nope"

[Lokomotive293]

I wonder, is changing the world possible any more. Or is it a case of waiting for capitalism to transform into a welfare state, then 50 yrs later into a democratic social state like, maybe, Sweden?

None of this was achieved through "waiting", what capital can do and what it can't is always dependent on the strength of the workers' movement.

[Rusty Shackleford]

yes, it is possible to change the world.

every second the world is changing :cool:


but beyond that, the action of an individual will not change the world in a great way.
the action of a thousand individuals wont do so either.



"Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand."

to change, the relationship between people must fundamentally change. social democracy does not change the way people interrelate in a fundamental way. to raise the question of going from one to another social system, one must look at the economic relationship that exists. the class relationship.

if there exists an exploiting class, there exists an exploited class (or classes). the relationship is exploitative so long as the exploiters are in power. now, one exploitative class system can move onto another exploitative class system like the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Class and exploitation came from a non class and non exploitative system. As things developed and people became more productive, the exploiters changed but out aim is to build a non exploitative and non class society.

and a quick clarification. one class cannot exist on its own as a class like positive cannot exist just as positive. with class there is an exploiting and an exploited class. As for positive, there is a positive and a negative. the mere existence of class means there is its counterpart and that the whole society in which it exists is inherently exploitative.

like i said, change can happen on a small scale but those small changes could be called quantitative changes, but for a BIG change it would be qualitative.

that qualitative change is that fundamental change in relationships.

the individual may be a catalyst for a series of actions but the action that makes a qualitative change is the ascendant and decisive action of one exploited (or subject exploitative like the bourgeoisie in the 1600s) against its exploiting or ruling class.


What causes that ascendant action by one class against another to happen is a change in consciousness within that society based on the conditions of that society.

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

theres also the whole "The ruling idea is that of the ruling class" (or however it goes) but though this is true, it is not constant. that is where a change in consciousness comes in. to go from living and acting on the ideas of those who rule, to rejecting those who rule and moving forward.

usually events (which you could call the quantitative changes) like economic crisis, war, personal hardship, political infighting within ruling circles, etc... cause for a rise in consciousness. Going back to the individual, it is up to people like you or me to help build that consciousness, connecting the dots and in a sense, though in a very low-key and non agressive manner... proselytizing. In fact, that is the point of this website.

Sure you could boil it down to an individual changing another individual as being the core source of inspiration or whatever liberals love to use that 'it only takes one' sermon for. But, the individual cannot will a fundamental change whenever they wish. And even when conditions are right for such an action, an individual alone cannot claim to have made revolution.

people are beholden to their surroundings and relationships. and unless the foundation for that relationship is in crisis, it cannot change. King of like how you cannot turn a chunk of iron into a spoon without first heating(quantitative) it up and making it malleable(qualitative). then you have to hammer it and re heat it over and over until you have a spoon.

Yes, it is possible to change the world. The world is constantly in motion and is never static. class formations are not permanent and have not existed for the entirety of humanity. Because it seems difficult now, does not mean its impossible later. The current period is a non-revolutionary period for much of the globe. the foundations of capitalism, though rocked and not fully repaired since the 2008 crisis, are still sturdy.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I know its a double post but forgive me. walls of text are annoying and breaking them with separate posts may be beneficial. plus, this is a bit of an addendum and follow up to my previous post.

On the spoon metaphor. it doesnt quite fit for society. society, unlike the iron, you cannot force it to go into crisis or 'heat up.' society has its own contradictions that cause it to 'heat up' or go into crisis. but once it is in crisis it is possible to attempt to change it.

also, on raising consciousness, it is not enough to say capitalism is bad or that it is exploitative. it is necessary to know how it is exploitative and how exploitation manifests itself.

its manifestations in capitalism are primarily economic but there is also oppression which is rooted in economic exploiation. the oppression of sexes, genders, nations/races, and so on are integral to the question of exploitation and should not be subjected to the economic problem alone. womens oppression is class oppression. the oppression of national minorities is class oppression and exploitation. the persecution of religious minorities and non-normal gender expressions is oppression.

the various forms of oppression and the people who are oppressed helps to solidify the foundation of exploitation and oppression. it segregates and divides workers and overcoming the various forms of oppression is just as necessary for raising consciousness as explaining basic economics.

a united workers' movement is one that can change the world.

[Kindness]

I hate to play the pessimist, but I agree that the world is in a non-revolutionary stage right now, and that a fundamental change in social relations (for instance, from capitalism to socialism) is unlikely in the near future.

Capitalism, unfortunately, isn't being questioned on an appreciable scale, and academia -- once a bastion of socialist and Marxist thought and theory -- has moved on. Today, academics in philosophy and the social scientists are either accepting of what they call "liberal democratic capitalism" (the vast majority of academics today), advocating a return to some kind of postmodern / neo-premodern traditional conservatism (Milbank and Blond are the biggest proponents of this mode of thought), some new form of postmodern conservative communitarianism based on the notions of civil society and "social capital" (Etzioni, Fukuyama, and Putnam are the most prominent proponents of this view), or else are just espousing all-out individualism and radical apathy (Derrida, Foucault, and their follows are the most prominent here). Serious Marxist thought is all-but-gone in academic discourse, and the few Marxist scholars that remain (Zizek comes to mind) don't seem to believe any kind of large-scale class struggle is even possible given today's world.

The only true remaining Marxists are a few diehard ideologues -- mostly over the age of 60 -- still working to organize labor, and a few idealistic teenagers and twenty-somethings who will soon have those ideas metaphorically beaten out of them by their university professors, employers, peers, and / or the mass media. Among academics, policy-makers, and intellectuals, radical left-wing politics are dead and buried, killed by the collapse of the Soviet system and popular desires for "freedom" and "democracy."

Academia, however, isn't the only place where socialism is moribund. The proletariat (at least in the West), once drawn to communism for its' emancipatory value, now is one of the most vocal defenders of capitalism, having bought the bourgeois myth that every person can be rich if she only "works hard," "makes sacrifices," and "pulls herself up by her own bootstraps." Even more disturbingly, working-class people who are skeptical of capitalism sometimes turn to fascism, finding it easier to blame "the other" for their problems rather than the system of global capitalism that is actually exploiting them. Any talk of leftist politics among proletarians is seen as unrealistic at best, treasonous at worst. With that kind of attitude pervading what Marx held to be the revolutionary class, it's hard to see how any push toward socialism could occur in the near future.

While philosophically speaking I'm far from a reformist, I don't see any better option, while trapped in this dark cave of anti-socialism, than trying to hold on to the gains made by worker's movements of the past (the welfare state, living wages, etc.) and pushing for moderate pro-economic-equality reforms (while not abandoning the quest to raise consciousness among the workers, of course). In this climate, it's the best option for helping workers live human-level lives, the kindest thing we can do in the near future.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I hate to play the pessimist, but I agree that the world is in a non-revolutionary stage right now, and that a fundamental change in social relations (for instance, from capitalism to socialism) is unlikely in the near future.While I doubt there would be world-wide revolution in time to celebrate 100 years since the Russian Revolution, I think right now we are re-entering a period of capitalist instability which may produce new movements and new consiousness among people (and even new revolutions depending on how conditions and subjective actions by workers play out).


Capitalism, unfortunately, isn't being questioned on an appreciable scale, and academia -- once a bastion of socialist and Marxist thought and theory -- has moved on.I think it's questioned there more than in the mainstream and more explicitly than it is among the working class population (where I think we can probably say in many areas there is a high-level is disatisfaction with things, even vocally, but no clear consiousness or organization). But, true, it's not dominant even among political/activist oriented academics (maybe more the case in the 1970s) - however even if it was, I don't think that would make much of a difference for class struggle. At best such a situation would give militants and workers better information or analysis on which to conduct their fights - but it wouldn't by itself make the struggle more widespread or rooted among the working class.

In fact, I think the consiousness flows the other way: if there is a lot of class struggle and radical consiousness, it is more likely that academics will take a more critical look at capitalism and take working class agency more seriously. The Intellectuals who became the early Marxist activists in Russia came to Marxism because of needing answers for the existing struggle against the Tsar, Marx himself did not come up with these ideas because he studied but because he was trying to understand the existing struggles both for greater democracy as well as the emerging workers struggles of that time.


Today, academics in philosophy and the social scientists are either accepting of what they call "liberal democratic capitalism" (the vast majority of academics today), advocating a return to some kind of postmodern / neo-premodern traditional conservatism (Milbank and Blond are the biggest proponents of this mode of thought), some new form of postmodern conservative communitarianism based on the notions of civil society and "social capital" (Etzioni, Fukuyama, and Putnam are the most prominent proponents of this view), or else are just espousing all-out individualism and radical apathy (Derrida, Foucault, and their follows are the most prominent here). Serious Marxist thought is all-but-gone in academic discourse, and the few Marxist scholars that remain (Zizek comes to mind) don't seem to believe any kind of large-scale class struggle is even possible given today's world. Again I think it's action which produces thought and analysis, not the other way around and action or lack of action can produce negative or postive developments in people's analysis of the world. So post-modernism and a lot of the trends since the midcentury came out of a situation where working class struggle was contained and largely passified, where the USSR's promise was exposed as non-revolutionary, and scientific progress was seen as leading to atomic weapons and "scientific genocide" with NAZI Germany. So in this period of decline, IMO there was also generally a decline in optimism and the belif that anything can change - or that if things change that it could be any better.


The only true remaining Marxists are a few diehard ideologues -- mostly over the age of 60 -- still working to organize labor, and a few idealistic teenagers and twenty-somethings who will soon have those ideas metaphorically beaten out of them by their university professors, employers, peers, and / or the mass media. Among academics, policy-makers, and intellectuals, radical left-wing politics are dead and buried, killed by the collapse of the Soviet system and popular desires for "freedom" and "democracy."Popular desires for freedom and democracy don't mean the same as the "freedom" and "democracy" offered by the ruling classes and so I'd say these are the basic building blocks for a new organic worker's movement.


Academia, however, isn't the only place where socialism is moribund. The proletariat (at least in the West), once drawn to communism for its' emancipatory value, now is one of the most vocal defenders of capitalism, having bought the bourgeois myth that every person can be rich if she only "works hard," "makes sacrifices," and "pulls herself up by her own bootstraps." I think this is largely a myth and where it does exist, these sentiments are a mile wide and an inch thick. This is especially true after the start of the crisis and people are less willing to buy into these arguments now than in the 1990s in my experience.

This perception that everyone believes in the "bootstraps myth" isn't just a result of propaganda though. There are two aspects of it I think: on the one hand "self-reliance" is just a fact of life in the US irregardless if people actually support it or not. People just have to "buckle-down" and make it work because a lot of people are just a little ahead of rent or mortages and many are in debt. So there's a practical side to it: many black people buy into Obama's (racist) argument about black fathers needing to help their kids in schools not because they are libertarians but because they don't think that it's possible that there could be an alternative. On the other hand then there are the "true believers" in the population, but even here I don't think when you look at most national polls on single-issue things that they represent anything more than a fraction of self-identified conservatives. These are the outspoken libertarians and tea-party supports and they have influence, but it's not because they represent a majority opinion among the population, it's because their views are supported by sections of the ruling class and supported by the political establishment as far as being a popular bulwark against much more popular views among the population supporting things like the right to unionize (which is supported despite a decline in actual union membership) and universal healthcare and other reforms.


While philosophically speaking I'm far from a reformist, I don't see any better option, while trapped in this dark cave of anti-socialism, than trying to hold on to the gains made by worker's movements of the past (the welfare state, living wages, etc.) and pushing for moderate pro-economic-equality reforms (while not abandoning the quest to raise consciousness among the workers, of course). In this climate, it's the best option for helping workers live human-level lives, the kindest thing we can do in the near future.Well a christian charity or an anarchist or Black Panther Party charity are equally as "kind" but I think the main task for revolutionaries right now is to try and engage with workers who are struggling and seek to expand these struggles, deepen them politically as much as we can subjectivly, and try and connect these struggles to a larger working class revolutionary view.

In the US, working class movements were initially built largely in the Depression of the late 1800s and then in the 1930s Depression. This doesn't mean economic crisis automatically produces movements (the early 20th centruy saw a growth in US industry and radicalism, the 1960s saw social struggles produce a wider radicalism), but it does make it more possible for such a movement to develop as real questions about the system and about the working class's place in it begin to be posed in a very direct way.

I agree we should engage in practical struggles where workers are already begining to fight, but I think we can't see these things as just a way to make people's lives better in the short-term, we should evaluate the potential of short-term struggles based on their ability to draw more workers into struggles and their potential to develop class consiousness and organization. In this way more workers will begin to fight for their own interests, confront questions of the system which make revolutionary class politics more relevant and "practicle" to people, and begin the rudamentary networks and skills and experience in struggle that can one day lead to a real revolutionary movement.

[Orange Juche]

Capitalism, unfortunately, isn't being questioned on an appreciable scale

True, but if you compare now to the months before the recession started,it's far, far more questioned than it has been in years, and this trend is increasing. If the conditions of Greece start becoming the norm, I tend to think it may become "an appreciable scale". History can have a way of a lot of not much happening over a long period of time, and then a lot happening very quickly.

[Art Vandelay]

'I meet people everyday, who can't bring themselves to believe that the world is going to change, as if it has ever done anything else.'

[markb287]

Don't worry about changing the world. Worry about changing something first. Foucault teaches us that where there is power, there is also resistance. And where there's resistance there are openings for attack. You don't need to change everything about society: start with little changes you can make to resist oppressive or debilitating discourse.