From: John Leppik (John_Leppik@knowledgesystems.com)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 12:02:26 MST
Would 'classless society' not be an oxymoron?
'Classless' implies no structure.
'Society' implies structure.
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexander Sheppard" <alexandersheppard@hotmail.com>
To: <extropians@tick.javien.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 12:44 PM
Subject: What do you think about a classless society?
> I think mabye the biggest problem that I can see, with regard to the
> discussions of socialism and communism on this list, is that
everyone
> refuses to make any sort of definition of these terms. People wildly
call
> virtually any bad thing that comes to find an example of
"socialism"--Nazi
> Germany was "socialism", for example, presumably because its
proponents
> called it that, and it suited a propaganda purpose in America to
call it
> that, so as to show people how evil "socialism" was. Well, some
people have
> proposed theories of "authoritarian socialism", saying that
socialism needs
> to be imposed from above. But I find this to be impossible, since if
you
> have socialism imposed from above, those who impose it will turn
into a new
> exploiting class, as Bakunin did in fact predict, and then what you
will
> have is merely a ruling elite exploiting the new (actually mostly
old)
> working class. Now what is this? Do we call it socialism? Well, I
don't
> know--socialism was supposed to be a classless society, no? And this
is most
> certainly not a classless society--in fact it's an example of some
of the
> most class-ed out societies around. So I think first of all we
should
> recognize that, regardless of whether we call this an example of
> "authoritarian socialism" or "state capitalism", it is a society
with a lot
> of class stratification. And capitalism is also an example of a
society with
> a lot of class stratification--mabye there is not as much as in
these
> extremely class stratified societies like in the USSR, but still, a
lot. So
> what about a classless society? Any comments on this possibility?
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:16 MST