> Max More wrote:
> I'll check out the link, thanks. I probably do have a too-kind view of the
> Fabians for two reasons--I never really studied them much, unlike the
> Marxists, and they never directly achieved power unlike the Marxists. The
> latter was partly due the British culture but also because they were
> gradualists rather than revolutionaries. In the long run, though, they did
> have an enduring socialist effects on British politics through the Labour
> Party. That only started to crack around 1979 when Margaret Thatcher
became
> Prime Minister. (The Iron Lady.) If the Fabians had been in control,
things
> might have been just as ugly as we saw with the various manifestations of
> applied Marxism.
Max, I would agree and disagree in that since the Fabians were all that you
have
said they were and for those reasons total domination of the English
political scene by them would not been as extreme. For all of the talk of
internationalism
Maxism is analogous to the Eastern Orthodox church, its character and
temperment
expressed itself through its national character.
However, I think what is lacking in some of the other posts is insufficent
historical
perspective regarding the underlying drives toward socialization in the
first part of the 20th
century. Capitalism as a force, though powerful, was still crude and brutal.
Bill Gates
for all the allusions drawn between him and the robber barrons does not have
guards
at Microsoft armed with machine guns as did Henry Ford at his assembly
plants.
People were looking for a way out of their problems of the lack of control
over their
lives, unemployment, low wages, poor working conditions, and some justice.
Socialism,
communism, and fascism, technocracy, and other movement all had strong
followings
that at the time seemed very convincing reasons. Just like our renew love
affair with
captialism does to us now. In hindsight, even if collectivization
contributed as much
misery to the world as did capitalism at least in the case of the New Deal
in the United
States by unionizing the country it was saved from a more extreme swing
(probably to
the right) and in the processes infused it with more of a sense of ethics
and responsibility.
This could go on for some time. I don't want "Roberts" to get a reputation
of being too
wordy, but suffice it to say given the material and information base and
collective
experience people were doing what they thought was the right thing. We and
they
(if they lived) came to realized they made gross mistakes. Yet, just look at
your own
life experience and blow it up to a global scale and you can see how it can
happen.
It is only because of this experience we have what we have and can say what
we say.
Robert Wasley
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:35 MDT