Thank you, Grok, for reiterating my points. Cacophonous pie-hole - that's a fair description of both of us :)

Questions ? Here's one: how socialism, after all the attempts, disasters, false starts, failures, in a myriad of different political situations ? How is it supposed to work ? Why hasn't it worked properly already ? If not now, and after 160 years, when ?

'It hasn't worked too well yet because capitalism opposed it so effectively, so deviously, so evilly, so desperately': Well, what did you expect the bourgeoisie to do in response to losing their raison d'etre ? Wasn't that always on the cards ?

You're not the only one who has worshipped at this particular shrine, Grok, who has poured their years into looking at the angles, the hows and whens, and flitted from hope to hope, from promise to promise, from Great Teacher to Great Teacher.

All for nothing so far. And you want us to keep betting on the same dead horse ?

Joe

*Grok, who has poured their years into looking at the angles, the hows and whens, and flitted from hope to hope, from promise to promise, from Great Teacher to Great Teacher.*

IMHO Groky and other theorists commit a common mistake. The
thing with any hypothesis is that if only one of your assumed
assumptions is wrong, the whole lot lands up being flawed.

Their first mistake is that they really don't know much about
basic human nature, neither did Marx.

A bit of an update in modern neuroscience might enlighten them,
but they are far too deeply bogged down in their own beliefs,
to even consider that. History however, proves me correct.

Yes, as Marx noted, history often happens twice,

* the first time (Belgium 1830, Europe 1848, Paris 1871, Russia 1905, 1917, Hungary, Bavaria, Berlin, Hamburg, 1918-1919, Canton 1926, etc. etc. etc.),

* the second time as farce (post-2010).

If something didn't work the first two hundred times, something which required the risking of everything, why think it might work the 201st time, Grok ? But if I was a CIA agent, it's what I would be advocating, in order to draw out the naive and pure of heart to try to do the same thing all over again, and in that way gut the progressive movement.

It didn't really work 160 years ago, 100 years ago, 60 years ago - why should it do so when the 'objective' conditions for supposed success are fading away year by year, GFC notwithstanding ?

The point surely is: there has to be a better way, in vastly more complex conditions than 1847, an incredibly fragmented working class (relatively speaking) co-opted into the system, immensely more powerful productive forces and intricate work processes. Do we have another 160 years ?

Joe

" .... the first time ....... as tragedy."

Yabby said:
"Their first mistake is that they really don't know much about basic human nature, neither did Marx."

Eric Fromm, writing about the misrepresentation of Marx"s theory in his book, "Marx's Concept of Man", writes:
"I want to emphasis the irony which lies in the fact that the description given of the aim of Marx and the content of this vision of socialism, fits almost exactly the reality of present-day capitalist society.
The majority of people are motivated by a wish for greater material gain, for comfort and gadgets, and this wish is restricted only by the desire for security and the avoidance of risks. They are increasingly satisfied with a life regulated and manipulated, both in the sphere of production and consumption, by the state and big corporations and their respective bureaucracies; they have reached a degree of conformity which has wiped out individuality to a remarkable extent. They are, to use Marx's term, impotent "commodity men" serving virile machines. The very picture of mid-twentieth century capitalism is hardly distinguishable from the caricature of Marxist socialism as drawn by its opponents."

Seems Marx understood basic human nature very well.

Grok says, "....you continue to draw inaccurate analogies between dialectical relations at very different levels of complexity. So of course for instance, class society, with its economic basis is nowhere to be found -- or implied -- in your Idealist schema...."

If Marx had suggested that the dialectic tension between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would result in the emergence of the middle class, he may actually have been remembered for offering up something important!