The Impossibility of Socialism. Part 2. The new Individualism

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Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of social and class contradictions in modern society. The author shows that, despite growing economic inequality in developed countries, the prospect for uniting all the exploited and oppressed in fight for a socialist society, equality and justice is becoming increasingly vague. There are many grounds for asserting the impossibility of socialism (in the foreseeable future) and the inevitability of a new antagonistic stage in the development of society. The second part substantiates the last two theses of the article: 1) the richer the cultural diversity of society, the more prerequisites for intergroup value conflicts; 2) new post-capitalist social relations do not contribute to solidarity and creative dialogue of everyone with everyone in the format of “knowledge communism”, but to the deepening of individualism. It is concluded that in the era of the “impossibility of socialism” any political struggle conducted under leftist slogans is inevitably waged in favor of some social groups to the detriment of the interests of other social groups.

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About the authors

Dmitry A. Davydov

Institute of Philosophy and Law of UB RAS

Author for correspondence.
Email: davydovdmitriy90@gmail.com

Cand. Sci. (Polit.), Senior Research Fellow

Russian Federation, Yekaterinburg

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