Sorry for my delayed response, I was waiting until I could get to a computer to better think and format my response.
I think a material movement opposing it will appear again - successful or not - because that has always happened in history.
Sure, but sometimes that movement is fascism. Or religious revivalism. It’s not always socialism/communism. Nazi Germany famously arose out of the economic devastation from WW1 and the treaty of Versailles. The devastation of the American South during and after the Civil War led to a doubling down of racism and partisanship, without the softening propriety and statesmanship of the former leading slaveholder class.
I think dialectics is an interesting descriptive method, but as a predictive tool it’s no better than a random guess. The idea of what is “opposite” to any given social structure, or whether such an opposite must appear, is so open to interpretation that it’s useless for drawing conclusions. I agree that historically, desperate situations cause a movement to arise most of the time, but what form that movement will take is very difficult to predict.
And we also have to keep in mind that sometimes those movements are crushed and things keep on getting bad because the violent control of the State cannot be overcome. And sometimes movements are successful but are hijacked in their moment of triumph (Arab Spring in Egypt for example, with secular democratic forces being hijacked by Muslim Brotherhood forces).
All of this to say that I think belief in the inevitability of a socialist structure taking over after the inevitable collapse of the current capitalist one is more hope than reason. If you want a more equitable society, your best bet is to work towards its creation rather than wait for it to appear.
Sorry for my delayed response, I was waiting until I could get to a computer to better think and format my response.
Sure, but sometimes that movement is fascism. Or religious revivalism. It’s not always socialism/communism. Nazi Germany famously arose out of the economic devastation from WW1 and the treaty of Versailles. The devastation of the American South during and after the Civil War led to a doubling down of racism and partisanship, without the softening propriety and statesmanship of the former leading slaveholder class.
I think dialectics is an interesting descriptive method, but as a predictive tool it’s no better than a random guess. The idea of what is “opposite” to any given social structure, or whether such an opposite must appear, is so open to interpretation that it’s useless for drawing conclusions. I agree that historically, desperate situations cause a movement to arise most of the time, but what form that movement will take is very difficult to predict.
And we also have to keep in mind that sometimes those movements are crushed and things keep on getting bad because the violent control of the State cannot be overcome. And sometimes movements are successful but are hijacked in their moment of triumph (Arab Spring in Egypt for example, with secular democratic forces being hijacked by Muslim Brotherhood forces).
All of this to say that I think belief in the inevitability of a socialist structure taking over after the inevitable collapse of the current capitalist one is more hope than reason. If you want a more equitable society, your best bet is to work towards its creation rather than wait for it to appear.