Socialism
liberation.us.to

Part of This Series of Posts:

When defining something it is important that the definition includes all instances of the use of the word (that have real material basis) at hand. It is also necessary to note that characteristics of a word do not equal a definition as if a word was to meet a checklist criteria to be defined as something then nothing would be definable. In the case of socialism we would get the ‘not real socialism’ meme from leftcoms and other ultra-leftists, and in the case of capitalism we would get the ‘not real capitalism’ in the case of some libertarians towards all capitalism currently existing or in a more general sense towards earlier instances of capitalism such as mercantile capitalism that were not as developed as the capitalism of the industrial era today. The point is that everything is in motion and developing and to reduce everything down to a dogmatic definition, a string of words that is universal, is an incorrect line of thinking and one which gives precedence to established institutions. As Marx and Engels said:

“The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity” - Karl Marx

“The thing to be done at any definite given moment of the future, the thing immediately to be done, depends of course entirely on the given historical conditions in which one has to act. But this question is in the clouds and therefore is really the statement of a phantom problem to which the answer can be - the criticism of the question itself” - Karl Marx

“[V]ery anticipation of yet to be proven results seem disrupting to me, and the reader who wants to follow me at all must resolve to ascend from the particular to the general” - Karl Marx

“[Hegel] develops his thinking not out of the object, rather he develops the object in accordance with ready-made thinking put together in the abstract sphere of logic” - Karl Marx

“But had any eighteenth-century Frenchman in the faintest idea, a priori, of the way in which the demands of the French bourgeoisie would be acomplished? The doctrinaire and necessarily fantastic anticipations of the programme of action for a revolution of the future only divert us from the struggle of the present” - Karl Marx

“[Communists] develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to. I am therefore not in favour of our hoisting a dogmatic banner. Quite the reverse. We must try to help the dogmatists clarify their ideas” - Karl Marx

“To try to give a definition of property as of an independent relation, a category apart, an abstract and eternal idea, can be nothing but an illusion of metaphysics or jurisprudence” - Karl Marx

“Mr. Bray does not see that this egalitarian reflection, this corrective ideal that he would like to apply to the world, is itself nothing but the reflection of the actual world, and therefore it is totally impossible to reconstitute society on a basis which is nothing but an embellished shadow of it. In proportion as the shadow becomes embodied again, we perceive that this body, far from being the dreamt transfiguration, is the actual body of existing society” - Karl Marx

“Mr. Proudhon does not directly assert that bourgeois life is an eternal truth for him. He says it indirectly, in that he divinises the categories which express the bourgeois relations under the form of thought” - Karl Marx

“The principles are not the starting-point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them, it is not nature and the realm of man which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history” - Friedrich Engels

“Our ideologist may turn and twist as he likes, but the historical reality which he cast out at the door comes in again at the window, and while he thinks he is framing a doctrine of morals and law for all times and for all worlds, he is in fact only fashioning an image of the conservative or revolutionary tendencies of his day. An image which is distorted because it has been torn from its real basis and, like a reflection in a concave mirror, is standing on its head” - Friedrich Engels

“[We should not expect to find] fixed, cut-to-measure, once and for all applicable definitions in Marx’s works. It is self-evident that where things and their interrelations are conceived, not as fixed, but as changing, their mental images, the ideas, are likewise subject to change and transformation and they are not encapsulated in rigid definitions, but are developed in their historical or logical process of formation” - Friedrich Engels

“Our definition of life is naturally very inadequate… All definitions are of little value. In order to gain an exhaustive knowledge of what life is, we should have to go through all the forms in which it appears, from the lowest to the highest; To science definitions are worthless because (they are) always inadequate. The only real definition is the development of the thing itself, but this is no longer a definition” - Friedrich Engels

To define socialism we first have to define capitalism. Capitalism is defined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as a system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated to make profits for those who own them. Marx described capitalism as “the anarchy of production”. Engels explained:

“For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital” - Friedrich Engels

Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, said that:

“[Capitalism is a system of] profits in command” - Mao Zedong

Simply put capitalism is a system where profits are in command, society produces for the sake of profits. Hence from the negation of the negation: Socialism is a rational system where social ends are the primary motivator/determinant of society.

This is the end of the definition anglo box -1 -2 -3.

My way of looking at it is that capitalism being when profits are in command fits every instance of capitalism and socialism being when social ends are dominant fits every instance of socialism to have existed in material reality.

Now I know that some people will point out that Stalin described a socialist society:

“Yes, you are right, we have not yet built Communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society. You are probably aware of the difference between socialist society and Communist society. In socialist society certain inequalities in property still exist. But in socialist society there is no longer unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities. In socialist society everyone is obliged to work, although he does not, in return for his labour receive according to his requirements, but according to the quantity and quality of the work he has performed. That is why wages, and, moreover, unequal, differentiated wages, still exist. Only when we have succeeded in creating a system under which, in return for their labour, people will receive from society, not according to the quantity and quality of the labour they perform, but according to their requirements, will it be possible to say that we have built Communist society" - J.V. Stalin

However, here he is giving a description, and it is not the only description he gave of socialism. The point is that you are not supposed to take the characteristics he describes and see this as the essence of socialism, or ahistorical criteria that define socialism. A description of characteristics is not itself a definition. To summarise the descriptors of socialism he provides, it is each according to his needs to each according to his work, abolition of unemployment, exploitation/the extraction of surplus value/wage labour and oppression of nationalities. These are of course characteristics of a socialist society. However they are not the definition of socialism itself. The definition I have outlined of socialism is a "system where social ends are the primary motivator/determinant of society” is hence correct.

  • enigmaOP
    1•2 years ago

    The idea that socialism was not inevitable is revisionism. Capital transformed into an alien, occult object of socialist planning, sustained by institutions and U.S. military violence, not economics. MMT is the Hitlerite theory of economics, made by theorists of the American Empire which is trying to save its economy through the raw power of state violence (war). Mao discovered there is still class antagonism under socialism. Socialism is not the fulfillment of your ideological, moral and psychological aspirations. It is a mode of production. The question is why does there remain a class antagonism? That was Mao’s question:

    “In China, although in the main socialist transformation has been completed with respect to the system of ownership, and although the large-scale and turbulent class struggles of the masses characteristic of the previous revolutionary periods have in the main come to an end, there are still remnants of the overthrown landlord and comprador classes, there is still a bourgeoisie, and the remolding of the petty-bourgeoisie has only just started. The class struggle is by no means over. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the different political forces, and the class struggle in the ideological held between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will continue to be long and tortuous and at times will even become very acute. The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is still not really settled” - Mao Zedong

    ‘Socialism’ is not heaven on earth, it is a mode of production, production for social ends. I can see dogmatic responses to this which hold onto dogma of Marxism specific to another era:

    “…Volume One of Marx’s Capital gives a detailed description of the condition of the British working class for about 1865, i.e. the time when Britain’s industrial prosperity had reached its peak. I would therefore have had to repeat what Marx says. It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical standpoint of this book - philosophical, economical, political, - does not exactly coincide with my standpoint of today” - Friedrich Engels

    Which Mao further elaborates on with his opposition to dogmatism and book worship:

    “The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done” - Mao Zedong

    Marx, Engels and Lenin all spent significant time debating fellow ‘socialists’ because of an adherence to dogmatism:

    “Marx and myself have fought harder all one’s life long against the alleged socialists than against anyone else (for we only regarded the bourgeoisie as a class and hardly ever involved ourselves in conflicts with individual bourgeois)” - Friedrich Engels

    “But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism” - V.I. Lenin

    Now I know that is controversial, but to put it simply, the capitalism from Marx’s day is long dead due to its innate contradictions. We now live in a socialistic centrally planned economy for the elites. We call ourselves Communists because we want a Communist party that can implement a planned economy for society. Yes, I know socialism is synonymous with the state explicitly calling itself socialist, establishing common ownership of the means of production by directly attaching them to some political power (or co-operative) that directly controls them, etc. This view of ‘socialism’ does not recognise socialism as an actual mode of production. It only conceives socialism as a political, not economic force. Stalin explicitly rejected this notion in Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.:

    “Some comrades deny the objective character of laws of science, and of laws of political economy particularly, under socialism. They deny that the laws of political economy reflect law-governed processes which operate independently of the will of man. They believe that in view of the specific role assigned to the Soviet state by history, the Soviet state and its leaders can abolish existing laws of political economy and can ‘form,’ ‘create,’ new laws; These comrades are profoundly mistaken. It is evident that they confuse laws of science, which reflect objective processes in nature or society, processes which take place independently of the will of man, with the laws which are issued by governments, which are made by the will of man, and which have only juridical validity. But they must not be confused; It is said that some of the economic laws operating in our country under socialism, including the law of value, have been ‘transformed,’ or even ‘radically transformed,’ on the basis of planned economy. That is likewise untrue. Laws cannot be ‘transformed,’ still less ‘radically’ transformed. If they can be transformed, then they can be abolished and replaced by other laws. The thesis that laws can be ‘transformed’ is a relic of the incorrect formula that laws can be ‘abolished’ or ‘formed.’ Although the formula that economic laws can be transformed has already been current in our country for a long time, it must be abandoned for the sake of accuracy. The sphere of action of this or that economic law may be restricted, its destructive action - that is, of course, if it is liable to be destructive - may be averted, but it cannot be ‘transformed’ or ‘abolished’” - J.V. Stalin

    Do not think of socialism as an ideal but an objective mode of production. I am saying that the capitalism of the 19th and 20th century gradually evolved through the course of history. The cycle of capitalist crisis eventually led to an increasing socialisation of production. We can observe this not only in 1929 but in 1947, 1972, 2004, and 2008 and even today as we speak. So the contradictions of capitalism led to the transformation of itself. It is only that the political and ideological superstructure has not replicated this fundamental change in the relations of production:

    “Man, who moved from the simple and coarse Communism of primitive times, returns to a complex and scientific Communism; capitalist civilisation elaborates the elements, having removed the personal character from private property; Capitalist civilisation, which begins to put together the economic form of Communism, also brings into the social and political field, the institutions and customs of it. Universal suffrage, which the savages-men and women-used to choose their sachems and their military leaders, after having been suppressed, was put back in force by the bourgeoisie, who limited it to one sex, but boast of it as the sole source of public powers. It presupposes, at least in appearance that equality and freedom of citizens, which really existed in the bosom of primitive Communism. The dwellings of the Communist tribes were common; common also were the meals, and the education of the children. Communal school children are educated in common at the expense of the municipality; they are likewise fed together, at common expense, in socialist municipalities. The civilised, on the other hand, are poisoned and robbed in common in the inns and quartered together in the six - or seven-story houses, of the big cities. So far, universal suffrage has been a deception; if the houses are nothing but rooms where people get sad and fever-generating centers, if the other institutions having a Communist form are backwards, i.e., directed against those who are forced to endure them, he is that these institutions were introduced into bourgeois society only to give profit to the capitalists; however, in spite of their imperfections and all the drawbacks they draw with them, they weaken and erase the individualistic feelings of the civilised, and adapt them to the customs and mores of Communism” - Paul Lafargue

    All that socialism boils down to is the sublation of production for profits sake to transform into production for social ends. That has already happened. The Socialism of the United States is a kind of Socialism for the rich. We as Communists want a socialism for the people. Socialism won the cold war. What remains now is a socialist civil war between the West and China.