Let's have a thread to discuss Decadence. (title taken from Mike)
There are two questions about decadence.
1) Is it a creditable concept?
2) Have we actually reached a point of decadence?
My answer to 1: I agree with recent ICC comments that decadence is a general concept implied by most historical/dialectical/materialist or whatever theories of communism (some/most taken from Marx). Without describing capitalism as good or bad, we can say that it develops the possibilities of both the productive system and the human society further for a period of time. There is a limit to how much it can development these possibilities. Once it is past this limit, it has reached the point of decadence.
My answer to 2: I would say that capitalist society is certainly still developing scientific possibilities and in some parts of the world raw material production is increasing substantially. At the same time, capitalist's development of human society has clearly fallen by the wayside. It is simply obvious that the terrain of struggle today is far different from the terrain of struggle during Marx's life. Notably, the uniformly reactionary quality of mass organizations needs explanation. Some theory of "late", "decadent" or "spectacular" capitalism seems crucial for this explanation.
Perhaps we should split this whole thing into 3 threads for clarity and so we can all talk about whatever we want without skipping each other's points. I'm fine with discussing decadence theory, but not in the middle of a debate on Luxemburg. We can leave this thread for a discussion of Goldner's text. A new one for the discussion of Luxemburg, and a third one for a general discussion of decadence theory.
"The fundamental mistake of philosophers is to think that the first question is: 'Is it true?' rather than 'What does it mean?' "
So I ask, what does "decadence" mean?