Originally posted by Matty_UK+January 17, 2007 08:05 pm--> (Matty_UK @ January 17, 2007 08:05 pm)
[email protected] 17, 2007 06:59 pm
The cry for equality is part of the political ideals and programe of capitalism - notwithstanding (or maybe because of) the inescapable difference between capitalist ideals and capitalist reality.
Could you explain a bit further, please...? [/b]
Any society creates ideals, which inevitably it doesnt live up to. For example the ancient Messopotamian and Egyptian Empires fostered an ideal of an enlightened monarchy in which the poor were treated justly and the rich were put in their place by a wise - God sponsored - ruler. This 'ideal' was clearly unrealisable as it suggested that the ruler was in some way distant from the wealthy elite from whom - in fact - he had come.
But it is not a problem for a society to advocate an ideal which it cannot realise. On the contrary, the nourishment of ideals which contradict basic economic realities of a society usually prove essential to the maintenance of its stability
For a revolutionary really trying to overthrow dominant social relations there is always the threat of getting traped into merely advocating the fulfilment of the ideological ideals of that society, rather than pushing forward to new social relations.
Thus advocates of capitalism within feudal and absolutist social relations would often have been tempted to couch their radical alternative in terms of a 'return' to mythical original rights supposedly eroded by unreasonanble kings. This ideology of return was in fact a set of ideals spun by and for the feudal aristocracy as a gloss on their conflicts with the feudal monarchy. Radicals who got trapped into this way of thinking rarely saw the way forward with any clarity. (that said, even as late as the submissions from around the country to the French national assembly after the 1789 Revolution, you still see submissions formulated in terms of the demand for a return of lost rights - so the fact that the form of ideals of the falling society is adopted is not necessarily always fatal to the progressive potential of a political movement.)
In this case, capitalism promotes an ideal of 'equality', originally the ideal of equality before the law as a response the differentiated treatment of certain elites (priests, aristocracy, favoured merchants) by the Courts and practices such as Lettre de Cache (a form of internment without trial) and Star Chambers. In time, particularly with the growth of trade unions, capitalism alters its ideal to include a more substantive concept of equality of opportunity. To date, such ideals continue to drive the dominant political debates within the capitlaist political layers.
It is very tempting for communists to suggests that what they are doing will fulfill the ideals which emerge within capitalist society - that is very appealing because most people have been brought up to believe in those ideals - that is part of what coming from a capitalist society means.
So when I talk of communism adopting those ideas in its youth I am taking up Engels ideas from Anti Duhring about the different ways communist movements understand their purpose while existing within capitalist society : a weak commmunist movement will see itself as the true agent of the ideals capitalism nourtures; a mature communist movement on the verge of power is more likely to begin to develop its own ideals