Socialism

 Like liberalism and conservatism,

socialism its rootsare in the eighteenth

century and even earlier.

 It grew up with industrialization and

urbanization, a process that was under

way in Britain by the 1750s and spread to

Western Europe during the early part of

the 1800s. This process created the

modern factory system and generated

new industrial and manufacturing

classes: elites, and the working classes.

 Ideas (ideology) are seen as reflecting the

underlying material conditions.

 As Engels puts it: all past history was the

history of class struggles; that the classes of

society are always the products of the

economic conditions of their time; that the

economic structure of society can alone

explain the whole juridical and political

institutions as well as of the religious,

philosophical, and other ideas of a given

historical period.

› (Marx and Engels, Socialism, Utopian and

Scientific, 1962: 134– 5)

 The main emphasis is on: social classes

 The main argument: the existing structure

of property ownership is unsatisfactory.

 Property should be redistributed, not to

individuals but rather to some form of

communal or collective ownership.

 Financial inequality and the unequal

opportunities open to people as a

consequence of their position in the

capitalist class structure are seen as

unjust and should be reformed in favour

of greater social equality.

 An optimistic view of human nature;

 A belief in some form of common

ownership;

 A commitment to equality;

 Freedom as a goal of socialism;

 Most people have a natural desire to help

others, to be part of a common project, to

be valued members of society.

 The evils of war, crime, ignorance,

unemployment, poverty and even disease

are regarded as largely the product of

capitalist economic and social

arrangements.

 A good society is possible. Such a society

will come about by greatly modifying the

existing capitalist society or replacing it with

one based on socialist values.

 Since co-operation is essential to human

well-being, and humans are naturally co-

operative, social animals, it follows that

economic co-operation is crucial.

 Socialists criticize capitalism and the

institution of private property for promoting

conflict rather than co-operation.

Moreover, the private ownership of

productive wealth is unjust since the owner

of such wealth derives personal profit from

the product of the community’s work.

 Classical (revolutionary) socialists, therefore,

argue that private ownership should be

replaced by collective ownership.

 More moderate or revisionist socialists

propose various means by which private

ownership should be subject to the

common good.

› These involve either state ownership of certain

key industries on behalf of the whole people, or

some form of worker joint ownership, or joint

ownership by means of a co-operative

community working together to earn a living

and raise children.

 Only the most extreme versions of

socialism propose that everyone should

have exactly the same amount of

material wealth.

 Socialists attribute most inequality not to

differences in inherent talent, effort or

responsibility, but to social factors, such

as access to education, wealth and

social class.

 As private property is the root cause of

social inequality, socialists say that it must

be tackled as an issue.

 Revolutionary socialists see a need to

control most private property for the public

good and social improvement.

 Revisionist socialists, on the other hand, seek

not the abolition of private property but the

application of measures, most notably by

the tax system and public spending, to

redistribute wealth in society along more

equitable lines.

 Liberals defend the freedom of the

individual to pursue his or her own interests.

 Socialists, however, believe that the deep

inequality and poverty created by

capitalism mean that society cannot be

free until the economic system is

transformed.

 This may involve the outright removal of

capitalism or its reform, including state-

provided education, health services and

benefit systems.

 History rests on economic foundations, called the

‘substructure’.

 All humans must first earn a living and that all

societies rest upon some system of wealth

production.

 Thus the ‘mode of production’ played a key role. It

is the economic system with its attendant social

and cultural ‘superstructure’.

 Art, culture, ideology, politics, family structure and

the rest all belong to the superstructure and

change with the economic sub-structure.

 Bourgeoisie: the capitalist owners of the

new means of production

 Bourgeoisie emerged as the new ruling

who were soon engaged in class war

with the proletariat (the newly created

industrial working class).

 Social class: It does not rest on

occupation, education or culture, but

relationship to the means of production

 the ownership vs non-ownership of

productive property.

 Collectively owned property

 Material and cultural abundance

 Class would disappear and with it class conflict

 The state would disappear

 End of the worst of afflictions of mankind?

 Is Marxism correct in identifying class as the most

important form of social identity and ‘class

struggle’ as the driving force of history?

 Has Marxism’s association with oppressive

communist regimes in, say, the Soviet Union been

damaging to its professed role as a liberating

movement for the working classes? Or is Marxism

inherently oppressive?

 Marx meant his theory to apply in the

most advanced capitalist countries, not

in backward Russia, where capitalism

was just beginning.

 Lenin remade Marxism to fit Russia. He

offered a theory of economic

imperialism borrowed largely from Rosa

Luxemburg.

 These thinkers had all wondered why the

proletarian revolutions Marx had foreseen

had not broken out in the advanced

industrialized lands. They concluded that

capitalism had succeeded in transforming

itself, expanding overseas into colonies to

exploit their raw materials, cheap labor,

and new markets.

 Lenin argued that that a revolution could

break out in a backward country (new

imperialist countries such as Russia) and

then spread into advanced countries. The

imperialist countries were highly dependent

on their empires; once cut off from

exploiting them, the imperialists would fall.

 Lenin developed Marx’s concept of the

dictatorship of the proletariat to mean

‘the organization of the advanced

guard of the oppressed as the ruling

class, for the purpose of crushing the

oppressors’ (Lenin 1917: 225).