h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As someone who learnt their socialism both in a 'socialist' country in the 60's and in the UK I have to say that you seem to have completely ignored a major part of Marx's theory. He took an evolutionary view of history and considered that feudalsim was an advance on the hunter-gatherer society, that capitalism was an advance on feudalism, that socialism was an advance from capitalism and that communism was the final advance. This is a crucial factor in understanding what has been happening in Eastern Europe etc. We have never had socialism yet. Most of the countries which have had a revolution were precisely because they were feudal societies. The systems that were put in place were in fact 'state capitalism' and it is not to be thought strange by socialists that the people overturned them in favour of conventional capitalism, lets face it I'd rather be exploited by an individual or company rather than the state itself, seems more homely in a way.
Marx predicted that socialism would only emerge after world wide disillousionment with capitalism. As far as I can see there are still many countries in the world which are basically still feudal and so thirst after true capitalism, the most important being China because of it's sheer size. Once we have untrammelled capitalism we will move on into socialism as the nature of the beast is clear. There has been no socialist system of government anywhere in the world yet. Know your Marx!!

Are we here to realize Marx' ideas? Is this our purpose? Marx can be a source of inspiration, but our goal must be to make a good world, not to make it like the book, because the book says so.

I absolutely agree with you, but my point is there is no point in claiming that the failure of the 'state capitalist' systems is a failure of socialism, because socialisms real time is yet to come. I am far from a doctrinaire marxist, but as far as I'm concerned the man had a great vision both in analysing the past as well as predicting the future. Of course what he could not predict was the massive effect his own work would have on the course of social development. Even so much of his predictions are coming true, the globalisation of capital, the peaks and troughs of the money system becoming ever more extreme. Many of the posts in this forum seem to be about the 'failure' of socialism and the 'success' of capitalism, I was trying to educate people who seem to have acquired a 'secondhand' understanding of socialism based on ill-informed media comment (or cynical propaganda depending on your paranoia)

Androyd's message almost hit the nail on the head until he/she mentioned socialist forms of government, which to me sounds like a contradiction in terms. Real socialism is an alternative to capitalism, a different form of society, and not a patched-up or state-dominated version of capitalism. Check out the principles of the Socialist Party (of Great Britain) at www.worldsocialism.org.

OK point taken.