--- On Sun, 7/5/09, robbo203 <robbo203@...> wrote:


> > Alas, what we think doesn't matter.� Socialism
> will come from the needs and wants of millions of people all
> over the world.� It won't come from this "party
> program" or that "party program".� No one cares about
> the "party programs" of all the nsocialist groupuscules.
> >
>
>
> Again this is too mechanistic.�



No, it is mechanisitc or deterministic. It is historical materialism.

Our needs and wants come from our economic and social reality. They don't come
from idealistic or utopian preaching.



> How do you imagine
> that the needs and wants of millions of people translate
> into the will to establish socialism if not through the
> mediation of ideas, though "thinking" about it.�


Through millions of people thinking about what THEY want and how to get it ---
not through some self-elected priesthood TELLING them what they SHOULD want and
how to get it.

See the difference?




> AN individual conversation may not matter in the grand
> scheme of things.� But millions of individual
> conversations do add up to something.�


Apparently not, since we have had billions of individual conversations for the
past 100 years and have gotten nowhere. (shrug) If you want to keep conversing
for the next few centuries, well, good luck with that.



>Or do you
> imagine that it is something called "Fate" or "Destiny" that
> determines whether we have socialism or not
>


Nope. It is material economic conditions which determine whether we have
socialism or not.

Until those conditions are there, we won't have it. No matter how long or how
hard we preach it.





================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com