Demogorgon
19th September 2006, 02:05
I think something we all have to accept is that we won't clock off on Friday under the same old dreary capitalism and come in on Monday under a fully functioning Utopia.
I think a lot of Socialists have the problem though of wishing that were so. They want to change everything all at once because they believe to do anything else would be seling out to capitalism. Of course the upshot of this is nothing gets done as a result.
Of course I am not suggesting we sell out the movement like the Tony Blairs, Gerhard Schroeders and Thabo Mbekis of this world, rather I am saying we accept that change will most likely come gradually rather than all at once. If it is a thousand steps from here to socialism, a single step in that direction is something to be celebrated rather than dismissed as not enough.
Therefore we should be willing to co-operate with social democrats and even Liberals whenever they move in a proigressive direction. Of course we should never tolerate any moves to grind the process to a halt or make concessions to the right, but at the same time we shouldn't oppose small steps in the right direction either.
too much of the attachment to ideological purity is very much an excuse for inaction, sitting and waiting for the revolution to start is not good enough. We must do it ourselves, right here and now. And the reality of doing this means we must work for improvement in what we have as well as all out change. Once the change starts happening it will speed up and more and more change will happen and we could very well arrive at full blown socialism this way long before sitting and waiting for an ideologically pure revolution will ever yield results.
I think a lot of Socialists have the problem though of wishing that were so. They want to change everything all at once because they believe to do anything else would be seling out to capitalism. Of course the upshot of this is nothing gets done as a result.
Of course I am not suggesting we sell out the movement like the Tony Blairs, Gerhard Schroeders and Thabo Mbekis of this world, rather I am saying we accept that change will most likely come gradually rather than all at once. If it is a thousand steps from here to socialism, a single step in that direction is something to be celebrated rather than dismissed as not enough.
Therefore we should be willing to co-operate with social democrats and even Liberals whenever they move in a proigressive direction. Of course we should never tolerate any moves to grind the process to a halt or make concessions to the right, but at the same time we shouldn't oppose small steps in the right direction either.
too much of the attachment to ideological purity is very much an excuse for inaction, sitting and waiting for the revolution to start is not good enough. We must do it ourselves, right here and now. And the reality of doing this means we must work for improvement in what we have as well as all out change. Once the change starts happening it will speed up and more and more change will happen and we could very well arrive at full blown socialism this way long before sitting and waiting for an ideologically pure revolution will ever yield results.