councilor.org
| Source | Carrol Cox |
| Date | 14/06/03/11:21 |
| "Equality" and "inequality" are highly ambiguous terms. As Marx pointed out,
inequality is an essential precondition for equality. If John is able to move around only in a wheelchair and in addition needs a special diet, it is the height of cruelty to create equality of income between John and the young and physically vibrant Paul. MOREOVER -- The current emphasis in left rhetoric on inequality represents (in practice) a focus on policy as opposed to politics. Discussion of Policy (in abstraction from an emphasis on politics) is the core of idealist and individualist ideology. It is peaceful and lulling to indulge in endless speculation on the policies that "we" (never a very clear term) should adopt in order to 'solve' 'our' 'problems.' What the (potentially existing) working class confronts is wholly political: it is the question of POWER. We (sic) need to return to October 1898 and the following proposition: "Then what is it in our day to-day struggles that makes us a socialist party? It can only be the relation between these three practical struggles and our final goals. It is the final goal alone which constitutes the spirit and the content of our socialist struggle, which turns it into a class struggle. And by final goal we must not mean, as Heine has said, this or that image of the future state, but the prerequisite for any future society, namely the conquest of political power." Carrol |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho