- 01 Sep 2017 11:30
#14839309
Just thinking that this might be an interesting thread considering it doesn't require too much background knowledge to engage with and perhaps gives an insight into the many things that inspire one adopt such an outlook. I suppose it'll also give the humanist side of things, in that theoretical language can give a kind of cold scientific character to things. Something I learnt in reading fiction, where the writings of James Baldwin expressed more in his Sonny's Blues about racism in American, than any amount of acts ever expressed for me. Not that one necessarily have to be poetic and fanciful in their explanation.
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/ssr_ch05_content.php
How I Became a Socialist - Jack London
How I Became a Socialist - Helen Keller
How I Became a Socialist - William Morris
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/ssr_ch05_content.php
Becoming a socialist is obviously a process that varies with each person, but judging from my own frequent but highly informal inquiries there are certain experiences and insights that have a disproportionate influence in triggering or speeding up this transformation. Among these experiences are the following: undergoing a particularly brutal example of capitalist exploitation (or seeing it happen to one's parents or other loved one); becoming involved in radical political activity, even of a minor sort, and being treated as a socialist by others (it is surprising how many comrades told me that they only knew they were socialists or were becoming socialists when people who disagreed with them said as much); living socialist relationships and finding them humanly more satisfying; having socialist friends and coming to take their assumptions for granted; knowing a socialist whose wisdom or kindness or courage one admires. Among the intellectual events that constitute major breakthroughs in the process of becoming a socialist there are the realizations that one has been consistently lied to; that the personal oppression from which one suffers is shared by others and is socially determined; that the path on which society is traveling leads to economic and social disaster; that the problems of capitalism are inter-related and cannot be solved individually; that classes exist and the class struggle is real; and that the socialist ideal represents a morally superior way of life. This last shows that even though ethics has no place in Marxism (see Lecture 4), people may come to Marxism by an ethical route.
How I Became a Socialist - Jack London
How I Became a Socialist - Helen Keller
How I Became a Socialist - William Morris
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
-For Ethical Politics