What is Socialism?

[BansheeOne]

Somewhat inspired by the old "What is fascism" thread and prompted by the ongoing confusion about the term, particularly its use in "National Socialism". Which is somewhat understandable since the Marxist variety is the only one of any practical significance remaining today, to the point of monopolizing its understanding. But of course the term predates Marxism, having first been used in the Latin form of socialistae or Italian socialisti as a criticism of proponents of Natural Law like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau by 18th century Catholic theologists rejecting Enlightenment. Followers of Pufendorf's principle of solidarity were called Sozialisten in Germany from 1793. Socialismo seems to have first appeared in 1803 in Giacomo Giuliani's critique of Rosseau, agreeing with the latter's idea of a social contract in society, but interpreting the concept as God's will. The English socialist dates from 1824, the French socialisme from 1832 when groups began to self-designate with that term.

In retrospect, basic ideas of solidarity in society, and more specifically common ownership, can of course be found throughout history, frequently in a religious context like Early Christianity, but with suggestions going back as far as Plato and Aristotele, or the "socialized monarchy" of the Mauryan Empire in 3rd century BC India. Communist East Germany found itself bits and pieces of national historic ideological predecessors including 16th century reformator and Peasant War leader Thomas Müntzer. The first movement unequivocally assigned the term in hindsight is 18th century Early Socialism, particularly in pre-revolutionary France where artisans and petite burgeoise began to feel the effects of early capitalism while hoping to overcome the medieval system of estates. There was already a range of concepts from absolutist dictatorship to anarchism later found in "official" socialism when it emerged as one of the big three ideologies besides Conservativism and Liberalism in the 19th century.

By 1847, Friedrich Engels still held that "Socialism" denoted a burgeois movement. Which is why he and Marx preferred "Communism" as a name for their own concept of the workers' class struggle, even though socialism remains a stage on the way to communism in Marxist theory. Of course by the early 20th century Marxism had widely split between the original revolutionary approach and Social Democracy which went for democratic reform, with the political parties supporting the latter frequently calling themselves socialist. Plus the streak of communist anarchism, which rejected state socialism in favor of voluntary self-organization in councils etc., and various minor spinoffs. Also, Religious (particularly Christian, but also Jewish) Socialism remained a strong competitor to the Marxist concepts. As late as 1947, the first national platform of the German CDU called for a Christian Socialism as a third way between capitalism and Marxism.

Finally, a clearly right-wing brand of national socialism emerged from in the late 19th century, particularly in Germany, with some rather unlikely proponents; before protestant pastor Friedrich Naumann became an icon of German Liberalism in the Weimar Republic, he founded the National-social Association in 1896 which advocated for German imperialism to the outside, and again a Christian-based "third way" socialism domestically. During and immediately after WW I, industrialist and later fellow Liberal Walther Rathenau, then heading the War Ressources Department, proposed a model of state socialism which found wide agreement within the German supremacist Völkische Bewegung and inspired Otto Strasser, who later headed the socialist wing of the NSDAP until it got sidelined in the late 20s. The immediate post-war era saw a slew of right-wingers disappointed by the failure of imperial Germany like Ernst Jünger who suggested an anti-communist, anti-liberal and nationalist German "socialism of ethics rather than economic theory", rejecting class struggle, internationalism, and social ownership of the means of production.

There was also the "Czech National-Social Party" founded in 1898 which pursued a romantic Czech nationalism and pan-Slavism. The first party to actually use the term "Nationaler Sozialismus" was the German Workers Party of the Austrian Sudetenland in 1904, which used it to describe their aim of overcoming Austrian-Hungarian monarchy for a Greater Germany with autonomous regions. In 1918, they renamed themselves German National Socialist Workers Party (DNSAP), likely the inspiration for Hitler to do the same with the German DAP in 1920. As it has been noted sometimes, at that point "socialism" was a bit of a catch-all term for overcoming monarchism on both the Left and Right; in the 20s, German sociologist Werner Sombart collected no less than 260 definitions of it. Like Marxism with left-wing socialism, the NSDAP came to monopolize the meaning of "National Socialism" on the Right, even though most of the term's conceptual fathers rejected (and/or were rejected by) the Nazis; this even though by the time they rose to power, there was little left in their ideology to explain what socialism meant to them after the purge of the Strasserists.

Discuss further.

[Ssnake]

53 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

Discuss further.

Mandatory health insurance inevitably leads to communist Gulags.

[BansheeOne]

😁

[lucklucky]

It is a necessary condition to have Gulags.

[BansheeOne]

To cover the cost of keeping inmates healthy? 🤔

[lucklucky]

Quote

this even though by the time they rose to power, there was little left in their ideology to explain what socialism meant to them after the purge of the Strasserists.

So you ask what it is but are already saying Nazis were not it by 30's?! So what was the price controls, social rights, holidays supported by the government,  strong industrial directives. 

[lucklucky]

2 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

To cover the cost of keeping inmates healthy? 🤔

No, the power that impose mandatory health insurance is a step necessary for the power to impose the Gulag.

[BansheeOne]

5 minutes ago, lucklucky said:

So you ask what it is but are already saying Nazis were not it by 30's?! So what was the price controls, social rights, holidays supported by the government,  strong industrial directives. 

Expand.

[lucklucky]

The creation of Volkswagen   

Quote

Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party

 

[Angrybk]

Most euro countries are basically capitalist with a much stronger “safety net” compared to the US. I’m not especially Interested in socialism per se because it doesn’t mean anything anymore, in the US it’s just used to mean “bad liberal things.” The company I work for is like 30 percent European and they bitch about the same stuff we do, economically. 

[Tim the Tank Nut]

the rub is that US politics warps the spectrum for discussion.  The fact is that the US has nearly the same socialism that Europe does but just badly implemented.

Most businesses get some sort of Federal tax break somewhere along the line.  Health care is socialized for all intents and purposes by the low income participants.

Deciding what socialism is requires some sort of baseline.  Where does a person lay that marker down? Old man Bismarck may have known more than people give him credit for.

As an example let's take the downtrodden of Victorian England.  Was their lot strictly do to a lack of social safety net or was it related more to the times in which they lived?  Did a Highlander peasant have it better or worse a hundred years before?

From my point of view the problem with socialism is that it lets a huge percentage coast on the efforts of a much smaller percentage.

[rmgill]

2 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

To cover the cost of keeping inmates healthy? 🤔

*Laughs in RBMK*

I'm sure all the slave laborers who died in the gulag archipelago were happy for their health care. 

Edited February 2 by rmgill

[rmgill]

2 hours ago, lucklucky said:

The creation of Volkswagen   

 

Keeps the trains running on time. Keeps the factories clean too! 

[Stuart Galbraith]

12 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

the rub is that US politics warps the spectrum for discussion.  The fact is that the US has nearly the same socialism that Europe does but just badly implemented.

Most businesses get some sort of Federal tax break somewhere along the line.  Health care is socialized for all intents and purposes by the low income participants.

Deciding what socialism is requires some sort of baseline.  Where does a person lay that marker down? Old man Bismarck may have known more than people give him credit for.

As an example let's take the downtrodden of Victorian England.  Was their lot strictly do to a lack of social safety net or was it related more to the times in which they lived?  Did a Highlander peasant have it better or worse a hundred years before?

From my point of view the problem with socialism is that it lets a huge percentage coast on the efforts of a much smaller percentage.

I'm given to understand that, at least in the 1850s, it was possible to have a reasonably well off existence. As long as you didn't have children.

And you had to have children because in old age, all that was left for you was the workhouse. There were alternatives of course. I remember hearing of a bargee, a relatively well paid occupation, who fell ill and could no longer work. In desperation, he and his wife found jobs as purefinders. Basically the roamed the street looking for dogs shit, which could be used as part of the tanning process...

Suddenly a social security system looks a good idea.

Edited February 3 by Stuart Galbraith

[rmgill]

Sure, so long as you don't build it so that all comers can ask to have social security whether they can work or not. 

A safety net is a safety net. It's great to prevent falls. But the moment you allow people to treat it like a hammock, because they WILL, then it makes it harder to use as a safety net until you make it larger, and larger and larger. Then you have no-one to actually support it. 

Edited February 2 by rmgill

[sunday]

A thread on what is antisemitism would be more useful from a practical point of view, I think.

[lucklucky]

Some ways to measure Socialism:

1) It can be argued that the most socialist things is : War?

2) Does it being enforced by State violence ( Law is legal violence)  or not distinguish Socialism from Free market?  

3) Voluntary Socialism can be Free Market and Socialism at same time? If so when one freely get insurance for anything but not enforced by the state is that Socialism?

3) Does it need to be a Government to exist Socialism? Like above connected to enforcement, state violence.

4) Is Socialism, scalar or binary or both? There are characteristics that if they exist make it Socialism and there degrees of intensity that when pass a certain threshold it will make socialism too?  Is 10% of income tax rate Socialism? 20% 40%? 

Edited February 2 by lucklucky

[urbanoid]

Socialism is when the state does things. The more things the state does, the socialister it is.

[Ivanhoe]

What this thread needs is a true Scotsman.

 

[rmgill]

[BansheeOne]

12 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

Deciding what socialism is requires some sort of baseline.  Where does a person lay that marker down? Old man Bismarck may have known more than people give him credit for.

Ah, someone cuts to the poodle's core. Can socialism only exist as a comprehensive ideology, or can you take bits of what some people would call socialism and use it as part of a policy that would be called anti-socialist by others? Bismarck's welfare system intended to dry up the soil for the Social Democrats being the often-cited case in point.

Even if it's a comprehensive ideology, there are clearly different and competing, even hostile kinds. See again Marxism and Christian Socialism, one holding that religion is opium for the masses, the other that Jesus was a socialist - though both could be called left-wing, and indeed there were connecting points and overlaps.

As for the Nazis, the party's chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg in his official commentary on the NSDAP's 25-point platform defines socialism merely as a "sense of community" (among true Germans only, obviously). National Socialism holds that capitalism and Marxism are two pincers of the same Jewish attack and subscribes to "race struggle, not class struggle". Eliminate the Jews, and all discord in society goes away. 

It's no accident that in German it's not Nationaler Sozialismus rather than the compound Nationalsozialismus - after the Strasserists with their ideas of a Nazi-Communist Querfront largely quit the party, their newspapers announcing "the Socialists are leaving the NSDAP" in 1930, there is no difference between both terms. For the Nazis in power, socialism is anti-Semitism.

So we're still looking for that baseline. Again, the term originates as a criticism of 18th century philosophers postulating that man has natural rights and there should be a social contract in society; Marxism, Religious Socialism and National Socialism interpret this foundation in very different way though. For a pointed question, is this socialism then?

Quote

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

[Stuart Galbraith]

11 hours ago, rmgill said:

Sure, so long as you don't build it so that all comers can ask to have social security whether they can work or not. 

A safety net is a safety net. It's great to prevent falls. But the moment you allow people to treat it like a hammock, because they WILL, then it makes it harder to use as a safety net until you make it larger, and larger and larger. Then you have no-one to actually support it. 

But there is a further complication, one that we have seen coming since the 1980's. Technology removes jobs. There was much complaint about US companies offshoring during the Trump Campaign, but it was rather more complicated than that. It turns out that there wasnt many companies that went abroad, it was factories using new technology that reduced the required manpower by an order of magnitude. We have seen the same trend here in the UK, giant textile mills that must have employed a thousand people once upon a time, can now operate with just 3.

So here is the problem. Either we reconcile that as technology moves on, and there is less need for a large workforce, or reconcile keeping them on a stipend because there IS no work they are in any way skilled for that they can find. Or we reconcile spending a similar amount on jailing and law and order to keep this underkilled underclass working. Or alternatively we can throw money at retraining them for skills where they CAN find jobs. The problem with that is we are living in the second industrial revolution, and its moving fast. You can train people up fitting satellite dishes, and 20 years later you really need someone to fit high speed broad band. Even the first indusrial revolution didnt move THAT fast.

Im not sure what the solution is, but its clear that the covid lockdown drove a lot of business online, and its just speeding this trend up. There needs to be some new ideas about social security and training people up with the skills for the future. Perhaps even anticipating the skills they will need, if thats in any way possible.

Edited February 3 by Stuart Galbraith

[Ssnake]

57 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The socialists' creed might be, in my limited understanding,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are the equal distribution of equity, and where possible, life, and liberty.

[Stuart Galbraith]

There are certainly forms of Socialism that believe in equal distribution of equity. But not all of them. You would be hard pressed to detect any such attitude in Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.

Yes, there are lunatic fringes, undoubtedly. But so does the political right, and very little is made of some of their crackpot theories (look at you Liz Truss).

[Rick]

Depends who you ask. From just this Grate Site the answer to the question depends if you live in Europe or the U.S.