Emancipation in Marxism is grafted onto the idea of a revolution. One does not appear without an other. Why?! What necessitates a violent revolution for emancipation, making one impossible without another.
The proposition is that first revolution, then a complete social change. Perhaps we may turn this on its head and say that some social change is necessary for a revolution. Nothing strange here. Things however turn very strange when an attempt is made to show that both theses can be summersaulted if we perceive a constant social change. Should this show be successful we may stand at the point of irrelevance for the revolution.
The idea is fairly simple. As the social changes we are experiencing a continuous emancipation. At a certain point we are released from any need to provide mortal sacrifices to the cause. Such "smoothification" of the road to a new society may be possible.
An example of an opposite is the social erosion of freedoms – a very real and historical process of social change implies a negative as well as a positive direction for social change. The world history is not necessarily getting better without an opposite tendency. We may equally call this “left” and “right.” A clear problem arises and it is that if we take the anti-totalitarian aspect – both can be negative as in needing sacrifices. Second problem presents a chaotic shift of state - a to-and-fro between the positive and negative. A third problem is that we remain living in an appearance that we have a positive social change when in fact the show ends sooner or later with the point – it has been negative all along.
One can easily be an optimist and see the world progressing on a positive curve for our constant social change is fuelled by technological and scientific progress, including the law of accelerating returns.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Sublimated revolutions post touches on the same topic.
Post a Comment