Research project

[twc]

emily_chalmers wrote:

Is socialism inevitable?

Yes. In the sense that it is determined.No. In the sense that determined processes can be derailed by other determined processes.InevitabilityIt is determined that you — the complex adaptive system called Emily Chalmers — will mature, have kids, gain wisdom, and [barring genetic predispositions] live to a ripe old age, perhaps look back upon a life of satisfying achievement, and eventually die to make way for a newer generation in a newer world in part of your making.But it is also possible that other circumstances may intervene to subvert the inevitability of this determinism.Determinisms are only inevitable in isolation, but the world is the only "isolated" thing/process we know, to which all other thing/processes are subservient.One of the goals of socialism is to minimize the effects of disruptive determinisms upon our own, just as this has ever been the goal of human society once it gained consciousness of itself as an entity — an organism or process of which we [just like Emily Chalmers] are an integral part.A class-divided society is always prey to disruptive determinisms that arise directly from its social being. Slaves, serfs, workers and their masters are subject to determinisms that overwhelm that of their own lives.Class-divided societies deterministically subvert themselves. In the most abstract sense, society is the essential unity for us — our language, our arts, our science, our culture, our relationships are society's. They are social. They are only Emily Chalmers's because she is a part of society. But she is also a part of a divided unity. She is a riven soul, just like the rest of us, because our unity — our essential social being — is riven.Mankind is damn inventive! Our society has always solved its problems in the past, and it will solve its class divisions because they will confront society's consciousness as over-determining our lives, of preventing our society [and so you Emily Chalmers] from moving forward, from holding us all intolerably back in ways that canon law, or shariah law, or feudal law, or chattel slave law inevitably became or will become to be despised by society as so much oppressive chaining of our social determinism — of the freedom that arises from necessity.If this isn't determinism and so, in the qualified sense, inevitability, then these words have no meaning, no social substance, for me nor for anyone else.We now confront capitalist law — which is what Marx devoted his life to unravelling. He showed how capitalism works — and must always work — to reproduce the privileges that must accrue to class control, to reproduce the subservience that must accrue to class lack-of-control, to reproduce [unfortunately for both classes] the inevitable social disruptions that must accrue to a class-divided society.The qualification that intervening processes may disrupt society's deterministic development into socialism now  boils down to — what irretrievable damage to the world can the capitalist class unconsciously wreck upon the natural foundation of our social world?So, recognizing such qualification, socialism is inevitable because it is scientifically determined.Social Being determines ConsciousnessMarx studied society — our social being. He based his study on determinism — in other words, he based his study on [qualified] inevitability.For Marx, social being determines our consciousness. Not the other way round — which is our ordinary commonsense, but non-scientific, way of viewing things.For Marx, the social relations of ownership and control of the means by which society must live — the necessity of it producing, maintaining and reproducing itself — are the basis upon which our consciousness feeds, intervenes, expands.Capitalist social relations of production consist of a class owning all the necessary resources of social production [minerals, fuels, agricultural seed and sperm, ocean stocks] and all the necessary instruments of social production [factories, mines, infrastructure]. But this social ownership and control is useless and these social resources and instruments remain idle without the socially-necessary third ingredient — workers to apply society's instruments they don't socially own to society's resources they don't socially own to produce the social goods [the wealth of society] they also don't own but need to consume in order to reproduce society — for those who do socially own and control the means whereby society must live.Surely, this is social necessity writ in large bold capital letters that even the blind can detect — although it took a Marx to first recognize it.The social consciousness that necessarily [inevitably] arises from this class ownership and control of the social resources and social instruments of production that are absolutely indispensable for society to exist — a state of affairs that every five-year old comprehends by analogy with his/her own life or that of his/her own pet animal — flows as a direct consequence of class ownership and control of what Marx called the "means of production". If that ain't determinism then nothing is!The social history of the 20th century, which Marx never lived to see, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the correctness of Marx's determinism. Marx's determinism wrecked Lenin and Stalin. Marx's determinism wrecked the labour parties. Marx's determinism, through those two deluded non-class conscious movements — wrecked our social, and so our personal, lives. [By "non-class conscious", Emily, I mean not having conviction in Marx's determinism, and so not having conviction in our Party's Object. In other words, movements that failed to acknowledge, openly opposed, and so consciously worked against instead of in full consciousness of, the social inevitability you are asking about here.] With conviction based upon outcome — the only proof we have that we understand anything — the Socialist party holds that mankind will recognize the necessity, the inevitability, the determinism of the Socialist Party's Object…A system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of living by and in the interests of the whole community.Recognition of the necessity to work to attain our Object is what is meant by working class consciousness.A united non-class society, inoculated against the exigencies of disruptive social determinisms — war, famine, poverty, depravation, mental depression — follows inevitably. Our descendants will look back and see more clearly from their privileged vantage point how all these disruptive horrors arose necessarily from our social being — one in which the capitalist class owned and controlled the very means of our living — one in which the capitalist class robbed and ruled us because they'd taken away from our control the means whereby we lived — they'd stolen our lives.Compared to this robbing and ruling of the working class by the capitalist class, nothing much else matters. The inevitability of its resolution is up to Emily Chalmers as much as to each and everyone of us.In that sense, socialism is inevitable.

[Anonymous]

I just want to thank everyone for some really helpful and detailed responses. It was very kind of you all for you to take so much time over them and they will be extremely useful. E.

[twc]

emily_chalmers wrote:

Thank you so much for your response; it will be extremely helpful. I'll let you know how it went when I'm finished. I should be working on it for around another month.

On writing about socialism and determinism in another post, I recalled that I wrote about it in response to your socialist questionnaire, on the question: “Is socialism inevitable?”.I then, as now, agree that socialism is inevitable  — a response which apparently strikes most people as akin to fatalism.Emily, you did offer to let us know how your research went. I trust it went successfully, and look forward to learning of its results.

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