Comment by BLKNSLVR
14 hours ago
Are you using Socialism and Communism interchangeably?
Communism goes further than Socialism (or Socialism doesn't go as far as Communism), Communism is more extreme, cold and hard and not at all blurry-edged, according to my understanding anyway.
All instances of -isms eventually fall to the unrelenting winds of human nature. Not necessarily due to the ideals within the -ism itself.
Well, Communism was seen by countries we call "Communist" (GDR, Soviet Union, Red China in Mao era, and the like), as something potentially possible in some distant future, it was their endgame (some claim, only notionally so, with no actual plan of getting there, but it doesn't matter really). What they had in reality, they called "Socialism".
Socialism is the "form of industrialised society where private ownership of means of production is outlawed". Communism is the (hypothetical) "classless, stateless society".
The above comment chain is what is wrong with us. We talk about labels more than we talk about issues.
Labels are a distraction. If you have a conversation about real things I find we agree nore than we disagree.
But disagreement is what is fomented by our oppressors, because it distracts us from fighting them.
Nevertheless, words (let's not call them labels, maybe terms) are what allows us to communicate ideas. While yes communicating about real things is the real deal, having a common understanding of words, language and concepts, is what allows everybody to have discussions. Labels are just shortcuts which may or may not be understood the same way by the participants, so such clarifications are always necessary at the beginning.
I agree. No matter how you call it, society without private ownership of means of production - without legalised ability to build capital and gain economic power by extracting value from productive assets for private gain - cannot work except by hard coercion provided by relentless, unblinking, crushing force. Just because a society like that is contrary to human nature and every bit of freedom we get, we will use to circumvent and undermine it.
And difference in terms - socialism vs communism - is just a west/east terminology difference.
Soviets called what they had "socialism" and what they (as they claimed) wanted to get, "communism".
The West called what Soviets had, "communism" and the social order in "soft" Western countries like Sweden or 1960s UK, "socialism". Which was "a society where private ownership of means of production still dominates, but is heavily taxed, and proceeds are used to fund a lot of social programs and public infrastructure, housing and other programs are centrally planned long term". Soviets never accepted that as "socialism" and kept saying that this term was only used by the West manipulatively to disarm the Western working class, and they were probably right.
Socialism has practically infinite different meanings depending on whom you ask (and in what country). There’s nothing that ideologically unifies Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bernie Sanders, and Joseph Stalin other than being somewhere left of center, but all of them would have described themselves as socialists.
Socialism is defined by social ownership of the means of production. But in those countries, the society did not really have a say in managing the means of production, everything was in the hands of the 'avantgarde party' which inevitably led to centralization of power in the hands of a small clique.
Total socialism is of course unworkable anyway, but this was no socialism.
Well, defining any social order in this manner will result in the same conclusion. Just as with democracy, the power is never in the hands of people.
Defining it negatively though - as a social order in which the private ownership of means of production is prohibited by law - socialism definitely existed.
1 reply →