What is your understanding of socialism and/or communism?

brianthebard

I see people spouting all sort of nonsense about what socialism is on these boards. So I thought people should have a thread to explain what they believe socialism is, or what is wrong with the way others interpret it. For instance, people in the conservatives thread seem to think that state controlled economy is a key tenet of socialism/communism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In communism the ultimate goal is the dissolution of the state, Marx clearly stated this. Anything which involves the state taking total control of an aspect of society, especially the economy, is not socialism. What do people think?

Akrasia

Socialism is the cooperative pooling of resources from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

It is not necessarily a state beurocracy or a vanguard party of the people, but that has been the dominant version of 'socialism' in the 20th century.

Socialism requires major reform to the way we view private property and who controls essential resources like land labour and capital.

My preferred version of socialism would be networks of community controlled cooperatives that administer resources locally based on long term strategic planning for a sustainable society and not just driven by short term market demands.

Ostrom

brianthebard wrote: »

I see people spouting all sort of nonsense about what socialism is on these boards. So I thought people should have a thread to explain what they believe socialism is, or what is wrong with the way others interpret it. For instance, people in the conservatives thread seem to think that state controlled economy is a key tenet of socialism/communism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In communism the ultimate goal is the dissolution of the state, Marx clearly stated this. Anything which involves the state taking total control of an aspect of society, especially the economy, is not socialism. What do people think?

They are correct, but they dont place it in context. State control of resources was key for many forms of communism, as it was understood and interpreted by those who practiced it. It is difficult to overcome that kind of distortion without reading.

I dont think rooting a definition of 'communism' in Marx's works is even possible considering he never outlined what it might look like anywhere near as extensively as he analysed capitalism. Capital should be read as a method of presentation, and aside from the exhaustive empirical evidence within it, it remains exactly that. Abstraction to analysis to understanding of internal laws and tendencies. Socialism was a stage in transition which he clearly outlines as a possible outcome of crisis tendencies within capitalism (again, a distinction between Marxist pragmatism and utopianism - utopian Marxists had a clear idea of what this would look like because they theorised from an abstract concept, wheras Marx himself worked from evidence)

You wont get any benchmark specification of communism from any of Marx's works because he had no idea what it would look like, the point of capital was to give a sense of process and presentation to the surface forms of capitalism and to derive concepts, laws and tendencies unique to it. There are as many definitions of the following stages as there are forms of Marxism.

I agree with your point on careless conservatives, just not on your interpretation

brianthebard

I disagree, he clearly calls for a decentralised country, so there are at the very least indications of how government should be run. The eventual falling away of the state is a core theme, but harder to initiate, if at all possible.

Ostrom

brianthebard wrote: »

I disagree, he clearly calls for a decentralised country, so there are at the very least indications of how government should be run. The eventual falling away of the state is a core theme, but harder to initiate, if at all possible.

Absolutely, but I do think both sides are just as guilty of trying to pin down something solid. I would be alright with it if people like those you mentioned gave it some context, were specific on historical instances of state socialism or whatever, rather than pinning it on Marx's writings.

bus77

The only person I've known who described themselves as socialist was a girl I used to work with. She wasn't mad into it, she hadn't read Marx or anything, but she knew what she liked.

One day she was telling me what it was like, or at least her view of what it was like in her own country in the past.
She got a bit misty eyed and said the people lived mostly in the forest and would come out to work together in the fields.
I laughed, and said if the people were living in the forest they probably hunted and didn't see each other for long stenches of time.

That, in some small way probably sums up our differences. She really did just love the idea of everyone working together.

brianthebard

That's not even close to socialism, thats a fantasy of someone's. Imo you can't be a socialist until you've read capital (which excludes me).

_Whimsical_

bus77 wrote: »

The only person I've known who described themselves as socialist was a girl I used to work with.

Don't forget everyones favourite self decared socialist Mr Bertie Ahern.

Kama

My preferred version of socialism would be networks of community controlled cooperatives that administer resources locally

Curious what other people think, but I've always been a fan of the Diggers or True Levellers as proto-socialists, a non-Marxist genealogy.

Admittedly, we mainly know them from Winstanleys writings, but always liked 'em. Egalitarian anti-authoritarian agrarian communities, with shared property, and a developed view of class analysis.

Ofc they got smacked down pretty hard, which almost *proves* they were socialist, hehe...That and they have great songs:

They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feeds the rich
While poor men starve

We work, we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory

More Here

Clarehobo

What is the definition of the political leanings of a head of state that doesn't receive payments under the table, in brown paper bags, in assistance to buy property, etc... and also doesn't lie in front of a tribunal that the people are paying for?

On another note, I'm a bit utopian when it comes to socialism. I like the whole idea of everyone being equal. I like the idea of people looking out for each other.

It's like in Cuba where they do run the majority of the coffee and sugar plantations as state enterprises as well as controlling everything as far the tourist industry. They use the money for the good of the people. They provide first class health care in a third world country.(HSE take note) They educate their children for free.(While our kids fight for places in overcrowded schools & they dumb down exams every year because of falling grades)
Sure the kids have to work on the coffee bean plantations for a few summers when they are teenagers to help contribute to their society, but look at everything they have that we haven't.

But the reason everything is so controlled by the state in Cuba is if they loosen the reigns too fast, the US are just waiting to turn it into another holiday destination where the locals are poor as anything & the tourists can indulge themselves in prostitution or whatever they like.

In an ideal world, socialism would flourish. But this world is far from ideal & the socialists & lefties need to keep looking over their shoulders because the big bad wolf that is the US keeps trying to trip them up.

BTW, we might be heading for yet another cold war. Check out what Chavez & the Russians are up to. Isn't it amazing how when the magical word recession comes up, an arms race is sparked between the US & someone;)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1151209320080912?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Akrasia

efla wrote: »

I dont think rooting a definition of 'communism' in Marx's works is even possible considering he never outlined what it might look like anywhere near as extensively as he analysed capitalism.

Thats probably why most communists (state communists) refer to themselves in relation to Lennin or Trotsky rather than marx himself. Democratic centralism is a major theme of both of those flavours of socialism and their vision of a vanguard peoples party is central to their ideology (and its also their most fundamental flaw and imo the biggest reason why socialism has been so destructive in the 20th century)

Marx said he wanted the state to wither away, but when you marry a vanguard with centralism you get a leviathan that will exercise most of its energy desperately trying to protect its own position of control.

Libertarian socialists are the only true socialists in my opinion, true democracy, true vision of equality and far less of a risk that it would lapse into totalitarianism.

SkepticOne

Everyone seems to have their own concept of what these terms mean. During the Soviet era, "socialism" was what they called the system they had operating at the time and "communism" was supposedly what the system was going to transform into. The Soviet Union was an attempt to implement the Marxist idea of communism.

Akrasia

Kama wrote: »

Curious what other people think, but I've always been a fan of the Diggers or True Levellers as proto-socialists, a non-Marxist genealogy.

Admittedly, we mainly know them from Winstanleys writings, but always liked 'em. Egalitarian anti-authoritarian agrarian communities, with shared property, and a developed view of class analysis.

Ofc they got smacked down pretty hard, which almost *proves* they were socialist, hehe...That and they have great songs:

More Here

yeah they're a very interesting part of history.

It's amazing to think what would have happened if there had been a more successful opposition movement to the land enclosure acts that were sweeping britain at that time. The amount of energy that the aristocracy devoted to smashing these small bands of radicals demonstates how fearful they were that the idea might catch on and become popular (much like the enormous violence nations like the U.S. inflicted on small island communities as part of the 'cold war' in order to smash the threat of a good example should successful examples of socialism arise to inspire the poor people of the world)

SkepticOne

Akrasia wrote: »

Libertarian socialists are the only true socialists in my opinion, true democracy, true vision of equality and far less of a risk that it would lapse into totalitarianism.

Also less of a risk of getting started in the first place and less of a risk of it lasting any length of time.

brianthebard

SkepticOne wrote: »

Everyone seems to have their own concept of what these terms mean. During the Soviet era, "socialism" was what they called the system they had operating at the time and "communism" was supposedly what the system was going to transform into. The Soviet Union was an attempt to implement the Marxist idea of communism.

I saw an interview with a Chinese official a while ago where he said they were still progressing towards socialism, and from there communism.

Ostrom

brianthebard wrote: »

That's not even close to socialism, thats a fantasy of someone's. Imo you can't be a socialist until you've read capital (which excludes me).

Marx had some interesting things to say about Ireland in that respect towards the end of his life with regard to Ireland. Socialism features more as a stage in transition rather than a state of being in Capital, communism was the social form of the productive processes after transition (the empirical state of which was never concretely established), which was present and commented on by Marx in the West of Ireland throughout the 19th century.

The idea of that particular case study was that a change in mode of production didnt necesserily require the stage of socialism to be realised. To answer your question, that is my understanding of it, and how I treat it. Socialism as a process of dissolution/transition, communism as a mode of production with distinct laws and tendencies.

Belfast

brianthebard wrote: »

I see people spouting all sort of nonsense about what socialism is on these boards. So I thought people should have a thread to explain what they believe socialism is, or what is wrong with the way others interpret it. For instance, people in the conservatives thread seem to think that state controlled economy is a key tenet of socialism/communism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In communism the ultimate goal is the dissolution of the state, Marx clearly stated this. Anything which involves the state taking total control of an aspect of society, especially the economy, is not socialism. What do people think?

Just some quick thought on the subject.
It is many years since I read Karl Marks works.

Socialism and Communism are political principles.

How they are to be implemented in the real world is the problem.

State controlled economy is a in Socialism and Communism has been seen to fail to deliver and adequate standard of living for most people.

Both Socialism and Communism are like all political principles are means delivering a desired out come.

Both Socialism and Communism are seek to build utopian societies.(
Worker paradise)

Kim Philby said after Communism collapsed in Russia, that society had not reached sufficient moral development to enable a Communism to succeed.
He state that Communism is an interim solution on the path to Socialism

The question is are they a practical way of achieve their end goals or can any other political principles achieve these goals or are all attempts to achieve these utopian societies doom to failure.

The masses are always tired of be exploited, but does this mean they want socialist society or to become rich and exploit others themselves.

"The working class can kiss my arse I got the foreman's job at last"

if they fail to achieve goals they should be consigned to the dust bin of history.

Socialism
The ideal of socialism is "Each according to his needs and each according his ability"

How to achieve these goals in practice is the problem.

1. Do you have to use force to make people share or to stop them going back to a free market economy or should it be voluntary communities like the Amish?

2. How do you motivate people to work for the common good?
Most people what to provide for themselves and their family, but are not as interested in providing for the common good.

3.if the state is dissolved how do you stop power hungry people from creating new one ?

4. In the absence of the state who makes sure that society continues to be socialist?

Communism is biased on class warfare.

Karl Marx's said that in any society a ruling class will arise and exploit the masses, over time this leads to revolution by the masses.
In time the new ruling class come to exploit the masses lead to another revolution and this repeals it self endlessly.

The idea of Communism was to break this cycle.

The proletariat representing the exploited masses control society, thus the Dictatorship of the proletariat.

Trotsky this was what Communism was about.

He said under Stalin that what they got was the dictatorship of the Bureaucracy and the state.

Again the same problem arises as to how you motivate people to serve the common good.

The Dictatorship of the proletariat would imply to me a bottom up from of government rather than top down.

I assume this would be achieve by local worker councils or (soviets).
The call during the Russian revolution for all power to the Soviets meant power to the local worker councils not to the state.

A Primal Nut

Clarehobo wrote: »

In an ideal world, socialism would flourish. But this world is far from ideal & the socialists & lefties need to keep looking over their shoulders because the big bad wolf that is the US keeps trying to trip them up.

I don't agree with this and I always find it odd that socialist & lefties always blamed the US for their troubles. For example Korea after it was split. Capitalist countries such as South Korea done ok in spite of a threat from Russia, China and Eastern Europe, while Communist countries such as North Korea apparently couldn't survive because of the US and Western Europe. The world was split between capitalist and socialist. The socialist side suffered whereas the capitalist side was much better off. The socialists always blamed the capitalist side for their woes, whereas the capitalist side got on fine in spite of threats from the socialists.

The ideal world that you mention not only assumes that everywhere is socialist, but also that everyone is the same: intelligents, work ethic, political belief, morals, etc. If this was the case, like in ants and bees, then socialism might work. But humans are all different and are hence are much better suited to capitalism, prefarably with socialist restrictions such as in Ireland.

Kama

Kiki and Bubu are the only true Marxists!

Also very good on the New Economy


On a less serious note, I'm less interested in theoretical conceptions of strict Marxist teleological progression and more interested in actually-existing socialisms. Much of the success of the current market-capitalist syetm came from integrating much of the original Marxist demands, things like old age pensions, workers rights, and the sundry package of social goods which became part of the programs of most advanced capitalist states, which tends to be unreflected in a harsh capitalist/communist dichotomy. Grey is all theory, but green the tree of life, to quote Goethe.

Belfast

Marxists Internet Archive
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/index.htm

Common Dreams(Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community)
http://www.commondreams.org/

World Socialist Web Site
http://wsws.org/

brianthebard

A Primal Nut wrote: »

I don't agree with this and I always find it odd that socialist & lefties always blamed the US for their troubles. For example Korea after it was split. Capitalist countries such as South Korea done ok in spite of a threat from Russia, China and Eastern Europe, while Communist countries such as North Korea apparently couldn't survive because of the US and Western Europe. The world was split between capitalist and socialist. The socialist side suffered whereas the capitalist side was much better off. The socialists always blamed the capitalist side for their woes, whereas the capitalist side got on fine in spite of threats from the socialists.

Do you know what an Embargo is?

The ideal world that you mention not only assumes that everywhere is socialist, but also that everyone is the same: intelligents, work ethic, political belief, morals, etc. If this was the case, like in ants and bees, then socialism might work. But humans are all different and are hence are much better suited to capitalism, prefarably with socialist restrictions such as in Ireland.

This is the sort of bull people assume to be true about socialism. Where are you getting this crap? There will still be a need for businesses in a socialist economy, because people will still want clothes, food, etc, and it will have to be produced. The point of socialism is that the means of production are put in the hands of the workers not the managers.

SkepticOne

brianthebard wrote: »

The point of socialism is that the means of production are put in the hands of the workers not the managers.

We kind of have two views of socialism on this thread. The view that the means of production should be in the hands of the workers I would call the Marxist view of socialism. On the other hand you have Kama's idea that you have social programs within a a broadly capitalist society e.g. Sweden.

brianthebard

Yeah but sweden isn't socialist, at best they follow a social democrat line of government, and while its had very good results its more a via media than anything else. Detractors would probably just say its a large welfare state with high taxation.

SkepticOne

brianthebard wrote: »

Yeah but sweden isn't socialist, at best they follow a social democrat line of government, and while its had very good results its more a via media than anything else. Detractors would probably just say its a large welfare state with high taxation.

So socialism must involve removing the means of production from private ownership according to your view. Merely taxing private enterprise and redistributing is not socialism.

ChocolateSauce

Socialism is a very arbitrary term. In the US, it is synonomous with communism. In France it is the norm, but communism is not.

My understanding of socialism is that it supports poor people at the expense of society. Generally, it is anti-business and hostile to the wealthy. If someone calls themself a socialist, alarm bells go ringing in my head. I think of people who want a 70% tax on the rich, a €15 minimum wage and don't respect corperation's right to exist.

Ironically, I consider myself a socialist who is also a capitalist. I guess economically I'm extreme centre.

Kama

I guess economically I'm extreme centre.

Depends where you're sitting, Chocolate. I'm somewhat similar in inclination, very roughly market-socialist. I regard markets as neutral, but am not a fan of 'The Market' as ideology, aka neoliberal/elite capital concentration. The irony is free trade theory requires lots of sellers and buyers, yet the system is characterised by large oligopolies and extreme centralization of capital.

The welfare state in its different variants was a compromise formation of capitalism and socialism; by raising it I was trying to A: discuss things which exist rather than theoretical ideals B: think of socialism as a direction that policy can move, more of a continuum than a place, more of an adjective than a noun.

I wouldn't be so brave as to say a country isn't socialist; the US seems very socialist at the moment, they are socialising risk and losses! As the old saying goes, I'd like some of that for people who aren't obscenely wealthy. But down to brass tacks; rather than macro phrases about public ownership, examples...

is a credit union socialist? is shared land ownership socialist? indeed, is state ownership socialist? Forgive me, I *really* like concrete examples, I ate too much theory once and got sick!

(Oh, and btw I don't support corporations 'right to exist', bizarre phrase to use imo)

brianthebard

I would say a credit union is a co-operative, same for shared land. Co-ops are a system to the best of my knowledge occured before Socialism, and from which socialism probably grew. They share some common traits. State ownership-well it depends on what you believe the role of the state should be, but I think the word generally used is "statist".

ChocolateSauce

brianthebard wrote: »

I would say a credit union is a co-operative, same for shared land. Co-ops are a system to the best of my knowledge occured before Socialism, and from which socialism probably grew. They share some common traits. State ownership-well it depends on what you believe the role of the state should be, but I think the word generally used is "statist".

Yeah, co-ops are wholly voluntary, and if you don't contribute you don't benefit. Taking money from the rich and giving to the poor isn't intrinsically voluntary.

Specific examples? Well the free market is in the process of proving for a second time that it isn't fit to rule itself, and that we need socially agreed limits and curbs to it. Business, including big business, it beneficial to society. It is business and not government that have made the majority of the technological advances of the last 250 years. I absolutely think they should and must exist, but they must operate according to rules, and these rules must be imposed on them as it is not in their nature to do what is best for society, even if we benefit from them indirectly.

DadaKopf

The welfare state in its different variants was a compromise formation of capitalism and socialism; by raising it I was trying to A: discuss things which exist rather than theoretical ideals B: think of socialism as a direction that policy can move, more of a continuum than a place, more of an adjective than a noun.

The point about Marx's Capital, as the classical explication of Marxism, is that its analysis took place in actual existing social practices. The whole point of Marx's 'dialectical' method was to start from what existed and build connections between them into a theory; at the same time, Marx was aware that theory would change what existed, and this would therefor change theory, ad infinitum. It's important to say, then, that Marxism has changed hugely since those first theoretical contributions by Marx and Engels.

Take the 'dialectic', one of the key concepts in Marxism. At the beginning of his life, Marx saw this as a necessary mechanism of history that inexorably led towards communism - it was a closed dialectic, moving towards one conclusion. By the 1950, Theodor Adorno had sufficiently deconstructed the dialectic (in Marxist terms) to reveal that there is no such determinism in it, as Marx had suggested. At the same time, it emerges on reading Capital that Marx wasn't so deterministic afterall.

Now, there's another thing about Marxism - it is a particular tradition in analysing political economy. It describes capitalism as a social relation, but recognises that capitalism is a tendency rather than something specific; capitalism is a social relation but the theory required to explain it in any age has to be reinvented every few years (see my first paragraph there). But it has uncovered one thing: accumulation crisis. During periods of economic growth, due to the profit motive, some will begin to make supernormal profit which they pile into a new form of investment; as more and more people cop on to this, it creates a bubble that gradually leads toward its collapse. This tendency is built on the exploitation of workers - basically, the idea that to survive we must rent our bodies for money.

This 'credit crunch' is the latest version of this.

Akrasia

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

don't respect corperation's right to exist.

Damn right, corporations don't have rights, especially not to exist. They ought to be here by the good grace of the people they are supposed to serve. The worst move capitalism made was giving corporations 'rights' which have grown to superceed the rights of actual human beings.

oscarBravo

Akrasia wrote: »

Damn right, corporations don't have rights, especially not to exist.

A corporation is a legal entity, and as such has intrinsic rights, such as the right to own property (same as a person).

I know the word "corporation" is generally used to describe the Microsofts and GEs of this world, but my company is also a corporation, and it owns stuff. If it didn't have a right to own that stuff, then anyone who wanted could just wander off with it - not exactly the basis of a sound business model.

The worst move capitalism made was giving corporations 'rights' which have grown to superceed the rights of actual human beings.

I actually don't disagree with this. I believe it was the fruit of a particularly partisan (I hesitate to say "corrupt") US Supreme Court in the early 20th century, which ruled that corporations are legally "people". The same court refused to recognise several monopolies as such, but used anti-trust law to break strikes.