Re: [Marxism] Camejo to speak at CCNY

[" Ian Pace" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'"
<marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 7:15 PM
Subject: RE: [Marxism] Camejo to speak at CCNY


> The demand that Marxists or that Revolutionaries or
> Revolutionary Marxists put all their cards out on the
> table, publish in advance their full program, is not just
> wrong, it's 100% wrong-headed. Doing that would tip the
> hand of the revolutionaries and provide ammunition to
> the defenders of capitalism who, basing themselves on
> a mixture of disinformation and the actual crimes of
> Stalinism act to confuse the public.
>
If one believes (as I do) that consciousness is profoundly marked by
capitalist society itself, then it follows that an attempt to predict a
future utopian ideal is irreparably coloured by the categories and thought
limitations provided by capitalism, even amongst radical thinkers like
ourselves. Much in the manner that attempts in science fiction to predict a
future world often, with hindsight, tell one more about the times from which
the prediction was issued than about possible futures. In the Anglo-Saxon
world, where the empirical intellectual tradition runs deep, a more
visionary type of idealism, which sees the future as possibility and
sublation rather than any concrete model which is inevitably derived from
empirical reality, is treated with intense scepticism (perhaps a reason for
a general distrust of Marxist idealism). For an empiricist, the only
possible socialism is one that has already been experienced (which would be
clearly nonsensical nowadays if we read such opinions emanating from the
early nineteenth century or earlier); empiricists by definition ally
themselves to the forces of reaction.

No-one can plausibly give a comprehensive blueprint for a future socialist
society; to argue, as liberals do, that the current state of affairs is
eternally right and inevitable just because there isn't a clear model if a
future alternative is not only pig-headed and arrogant, it betrays an
extremely narrow grasp of history.

Solidarity!
Ian



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