Welcome to The Half-Baked Bloggers
Consortium's (HBBC) eighth post. Yeah, it has been two months since we
started! :) Meet the
members here.
This week's topic is Socialism,
chosen by Noor El Terk. Please, make sure to check the other
members' posts. You won’t be disappointed. ;)
This week’s post is going to be a
scholar post. Since I’m no expert in economics or political science, I am only
going to state some points from the sources I’ve read to gather information
about this topic. No personal opinions involved.
The Story of
Socialism: The Man, The Theory and The Utopia.
Karl Marx, trained Hegelian
philosophy, produced a theory consisting of 3 interrelated elements: a theory
of economics, a theory of social class, and theory of history.
Economic Theory Marx concentrated on
profit. Workers produce goods and services but get only paid for a fraction of the
value of what they produce. The capitalist owners skim off the rest (profit). Workers
are paid too little to buy the products they have made, resulting in repeated
overproduction which leads to depression.
Marx predicted that there will be a
depression so big the capitalist system would collapse, then socialism will
come next and we should all ‘aid in its coming’. (This was in the 19th century when liberalism
was dominant).
Marx wrote not as a scholar but as a
revolutionist. Socialists with their leading thinker Karl Marx wanted to
overthrow the capitalist system.
The Communist Manifesto, the pamphlet of Karl Marx’s idea published in 1848, was concluded with
the famous ringing words: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. They have a world to win. Workers of all countries, unite!". Proletarians
are the workers.
Socialism? "Communist" Manifesto? Hmmm..
Socialism Marx actually focused
on the malfunctions of capitalism he only specified socialism to be a just,
productive society without class distinctions. Just in the distribution of
goods and services. He only said that socialism would be much better than
capitalism; however, the workings and procedures to deliver economic justice
among people were vague.
Communism Marx then stated that at a
certain stage, when industrial production was very high, the socialist society
will turn into communism. Communism to
Marx was “a perfect society, without police, money, or even government”.
Goods will be in such plenty that people will just take what they need. There
will be no private property, so there will be no need for police. Since there
will be no class distinctions, there will be no need for governments, which are
instruments of class domination. Communism was more of a political ideology
than an economic theory. Communism was the utopia of socialism.
So, what is
socialism we’ve been hearing about all these years?
The vague procedures of serving
economic justice in the manifesto enabled socialist thinkers to put forward
their own vision of socialism. This has ranged from welfarism of social
democratic parties, to anarcho-syndicalism, to Lenin’s and Stalin’s
hypercentralized tyranny, to Mao’s self-destructive permanent
revolution, to Trotsky’s denunciation of same, to Tito’s
experimental decentralized system, to 3agaby!!! All claim to espouse
“real” socialism. Maybe this is why eventually socialist and communist systems were
splinted in history.
One last note..
Since most of us are tweeps, then you must have come across
a lot of “activists” who promote socialism and claim that they are #LeftistAndProud.
What is the relation between leftists and socialism?
“In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for an egalitarian (equal) society. They usually involve a concern for
those in society who are disadvantaged relatively to others and the assumption
that there are unjustified inequalities (which right-wing politics view as natural or sacred) that should
be reduced or abolished.
The term was then applied to a number of
revolutionary movements, especially socialism, anarchism and communism as well as more reformist movements like social democracy and social liberalism.” Wikipedia
Reference: Michael G. Roskin. Political
Science: An Introduction.
