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I've
never thought that an "-ism" could all right or wrong. It's
each sentence that is either right or wrong. Poeple often ask me, for
example, "Can Marxism be verified?" I am compelled to reply -
which hypothesis?, which principle? - one point at a time. And so I'm
more than 95 percent a Marxist, more than 95 percent a De Leonist. I
don't believe there is a single or unified "-ism" to be
defended. When I read them, I generally agree, and occasionally disagree.
Consider the following form De Leon's 'The Burning
Question..." --
"Civilized society will know no such
ridiculous thing as geographic constituencies. It will only know
industrial constituencies. The parliament of civilization in America will
consist, not of Congressmen from geographic districts, but of
representatives of trades throughout the land, and their legislative work
will not be the complicated one which a society of conflicting interests,
such as capitalism, requires but the easy one which can be summed up in
the statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible, and the work
required - and that any average set of workingmen's representatives are
fully able to ascertain, infinitely better than our modern rhetoricians
in Congress."
There's a lot to digest there. Can it be either all
correct or all incorrect? No, not unless the author was an angel or a
devil. He was a human being, so it can be substantially correct or
substantially incorrect, but not entirely correct or entirely incorrect.
I don't agree that socialist democracy can be' ...summed up in the
statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible, and the work
required."
There are many other issues that will be on everyone's mind. Technology
has crossed the line which some people call "playing God" We
can clone a million Einsteins, but that doesn't mean that we should. I
think the future will be an age of great ethical problems, not industrial
ones.
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