Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. Enjoy some musics. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread.
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Very interesting point about wondering what an equivalent could be, and I’ve been thinking the same as I read it. I’ve also wondered about my own writing and why everything I write about focuses on the pitfalls of capitalism instead of an attractive depiction of a socialist society. A shining beacon might be more useful than a reminder of the dark.
I’m studying Utopianism right now, so my thought is that we shouldn’t waste too much time dreaming about the minutia of a future society, but we definitely need to remind ourselves and others what we’re fighting for. This can be in the imagined future, but also in showing what AES has already achieved.
I don’t think it would necessarily be utopian, but a scientific examination into what one could foresee the transition into socialism looks like, and why it would be so attractive for someone who may not know anything other than their life under capitalism (or could provide revolutionary optimism for a downtrodden comrade). I’ll leave a quote from a red sails article by Roderic Day that might elucidate this idea better than I can:
“I genuinely think that if one can truly imagine in fiction a viable transition from our current state of affairs into a better one, that plays a huge role in mustering the conviction to assert that it can be achieved in reality. Conversely, if we cannot even imagine what a transition might look like in our wildest dreams, any “real” organization is doomed.”
After all, Chernyshevsky envisioned something that was likely absurd in his time, with a woman starting her own sewing cooperative, yet inspired revolutionaries for years to come with his foresight and vision.
I totally agree, in Half Earth Socialism they propose a sort of Scientific Utopianism. Their problem is they didn’t cover enough ground to truly call their proposal holistic. Also, they foolishly try to replace ML rather than using it in a anti-dogmatic way.
Interesting, I’ll have to check that out!