'He' -- yes, definitely.... (Clearing throat for a deep, raspy, phlegmy, manly effect....) (grin)
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This may be the case. I also think social conservatism will always exist in some form or another since there's no set "end" stage for social liberalism. Yes, the current prejudices and hatreds will wither away over time but, as many have pointed out in this thread, Liberalism and Conservatism are, out of context, relative terms that depend on their place and time. At any rate, both of those would probably become dirty words so their socialist evolution would likely be espoused under different terms, maybe the names of their contemporary proponents.
Yo if that's the case then what's the point.
Alternatively, "Liberals" in this case would also possibly want to jump the gun and skip a necessary transition stage. It all depends on the specific conditions to know which position at any point is right.
Last edited by Evil Stalinist Overlord; 5th June 2014 at 16:49. Reason: Grammar.
“Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.”
― Vladimir Illich Lenin, leader of the proletariat.
'He' -- yes, definitely.... (Clearing throat for a deep, raspy, phlegmy, manly effect....) (grin)
I really think the only reason we even *associate* revolution with the possibility of an authoritarian state is because the Russian Revolution didn't pan out the way it could have -- as things turned out a heavy-handed state was *necessary*, arguably, just for basic sovereignty and internal cohesion, the same as any other country on the map in this bourgeois world.
I mean to say that I doubt *anyone* would be arguing for a 'strong state' if actual conditions allowed for it to be abolished at once -- that's the whole *point* of a revolution, and the only authoritarianism necessary would be to repulse the bourgeois counter-revolutionary opposition.
So really it's about privilege vs. revolution, and not 'shades of gray' among revolutionaries regarding "how fast" or "how slow" bourgeois rule should be overthrown.
What are you talking about? Have you ever read State and Revolution? The "authoritarian" Lenin discussed the need to abolish the state.
The revolutionary totalitarian Amadeo Bordiga furiously denied that the workers movement should make legal demands.
It is a cornerstone of so-called "authoritarian socialists" that the current state needs to be abolished and replaced with the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat - that spares no means; be they "authoritarian" or "libertarian." This is not the result of a blind worship of violence nor insurrection, but of rather the result of time and time again the need to protect the Revolution from those who would oppose it - first, by destroying the bourgeois state, in order for socialists to gain "authoritarian" control of the superstructure and then, the establishment of Proletarian Dictatorship - which is only necessary insofar as state power needs to be used against all that which would prevent communism from being established, and when this isn't necessary, it withers away. The state is the representative of the proletarian class, the whole of that class, which will fight to establish the communist mode of production. When such a mode of production is firmly generalized the state withers away in that respect to being a state, and it know only has the task of a mere government of people, which will assault the birthpangs of capitalism and any previous society not already abolished by Capitalism, and when Communism has established its total, complete, real domination, and when this is complete, the government over man is withered into the mere administration of things.
After somberly realizing that the state is in the interests of the capitalist class and that it is a tool of violence and class domination (suppression of class struggle), the so-called authoritarian socialists demonstrate themselves to being, yet again, the most anti-reformist tendency of all.
"We must flee from Time, we must create a life that is feminine and human - it is these imperative objectives that must guide us in this world heavy with catastrophes."
Jacques Camatte, Echos from the Past
"For example, to say that the relation between industrial capital and the class of the wage workers is expressed in precisely the same way in Belgium and Thailand, and that the praxis of their respective struggles should be established without taking into account in either of the two cases the factors of race or nationality, does not mean you are an extremist, but it means in effect that you have understood nothing of Marxism."
Amadeo Bordiga, Factors of Race and Nation in the Marxist Analysis
Only by completely misunderstanding the question.
It's more like the 'lbertarian socialists' are flat-earthers, while the 'authoritarian socialists' recognise that the earth is spherical.
The point is not 'seeking to reform the state so as to transition in a longer more protracted manner'. It's the recognition that the state will exist as long as classes exist, and classes will exist as long as property exists, and as long as the world is divided into hostile camps (ie, as long as the world revolution/world civil war is going on) then property, classes and the state cannot be done away with. Unlike the 'libertarian socialists' who want to solve the problems of property, class and the state by wishing.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
I certainly think it's incorrect to say ideology will disappear once we reach communism, because ideology has to be understood as a kind of consciousness based in the prominence of ideas over matter. That will still exist in communism, it will simply take different forms. The struggle between old and new ideas will continue in classless society, as Mao pointed out.
However, liberalism will become as minor and outlandish as feudal revivalists are today - the preserve of a few strange nostalgists with blogs. As for conservatism in the proper Burkean sense, it's largely being relegated to that rather minor and defunct corner already - all the modern "conservatives" are actually just classical liberals really.
“Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between “individualism” and socialism. But can we deny the contrast between classes, between the propertied class, the capitalist class, and the toiling class, the proletarian class?” - Josef Stalin, Marxism Versus Liberalism: An Interview With H.G. Wells, 1934
"Those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’." - Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1969
I think you would just have generational conflicts in the political sphere. The elderly and middle-aged would have more conservative social mores versus the younger people, perhaps on issues without clear consensus among leftists like whether or not artificial intelligence constitutes conscious life, or if pornography is inherently exploitative, and so on and so forth.
That's pretty much what I was thinking would happen, you'd get these petty conflicts about the most absurd semantical things. Makes me think in a way people would still discuss the Vanguard and DotP when there would no longer exist the need for such a thing.
"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge." ~Mikhail Bakunin
