A common point of conflict among leftists is understanding what constitutes Socialism. This article explains common errors among Leftists in analyzing what a system needs to look like to be considered Socialist. If an economy has 10% in the Private Sector, is it Capitalist? What about 51%? Does the direction matter?

The short answer, proven in the article, is that it is determined by which class is in power, what the driving force of an economy is. Does the Private Sector drive the public, or does the public sector drive the Private? This can be accomplished by including heavy industry and inftastructure in the Public Sector, making the Private Sector reliant on socialized production and thus subservient to it, and maintaining Proletarian supremacy over the Private Sector.

The presense of Private Property and even billionaires does not mean Private Property drives the direction of the economy, and as Engels elaborates in Principles of Communism, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat can only absorb Private Property in the Public sector by the degree to which markets have formed large monopolist syndicates ripe for central planning, not out of pure decree:

Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?

Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.

Now, of course this doesn’t mean Private Property is Socialist! This instead means you cannot look at individual aspects of a system, as was common of the Metaphysicians, but instead the entirety of a system with the context of the interactions of the various transformations and movements of all of the parts of the whole, as Dialectical Materialists. This is why philosophy is crucial to understanding Socialism, because you can’t simply break up a system into its component parts, and analyze each sector. I repeat, you cannot accurately judge a system by breaking it up into its component parts and analyzing them individually in their own vacuum.

Therefore, dominance and direction are required. As no system is static, it will necessarily be heading towards either full socialization or privatization, and this vector is determined by what class is in charge. Social Democracy is Capitalist, therefore, as Private Property drives the economy and the bourgeoisie are in control. The fact that Private Property can only be abolished by degree, and not pure decree, means that Socialism is necessarily a transitonal stage, and can’t be considered only a fully socialized economy.

Ultimately, the reason Marxists believe Socialized Production to come after Capitalist Production is because Capitalism prepares the grounds for Socialized Production as markets coalesce into monopolist syndicates, allowing for central planning. At different levels of development of various industries, markets or centrally planned public property might make more sense, you can’t just decree large syndicates into existence. Throughout developmental stages, markets eventually stagnate as they naturally centralize, and this happens at different paces in different industries, therefore socializing production happens at different times, yet the system is still capable of being considered Socialist as a transitional phase to Communism.

For more information on Marxism, please check out my Introductory Reading List!

And please, discuss below! What do you believe constitutes Socialism, and why? Do you agree or disagree with the article?