World History: Socialism

Socialism is a system in which, in contrast to capitalism, there is common ownership of the means of production instead of private; planned production for use instead of anarchic production for profit. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the factory system, the inefficiency, waste, irrationality, and injustice of Capitalism were apparent to thinking people. Beginning about the year 1800, in both England and France, the evils of capitalism were brought before the public in pamphlets, books, and speeches.

Principles of Socialism

The socialists wished to establish a society in which

• production was for use rather than profit
• distribution was based on need rather than greed
• opportunities were offered to all members of society.

To achieve these ends, socialists saw the need for the means of production to be placed in the hands of the community rather than a specific social class. That is, they sought the socialisation of industry. In their view, the exploitation would be thus abolished and a better society created. However, how these aims would be achieved, on this basis, three main groups emerged as follows:

Utopian socialism

Moved by the misery and poverty of the working class, a British factory owner named Robert Owen improved working conditions for his employees. Near his cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland, Owen built houses, which he rented at low rates. He prohibited children under ten from working in the mills and provided free schooling.  In 1824, he travelled to the United States and founded a cooperative community in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825. He intended this community to be a utopia, or perfect living place.

Thus, utopian socialists sought to implement socialism by example – through the establishment of model socialist communities in which workers were treated with dignity and income distribution was more equal. Robert Owen was the most prominent of the 19th century utopians, but unfortunately, all his ventures collapsed as a result of internal disputes.

Revolutionary Socialism (Marxism)

Failure of the utopian socialist experiments and the lack of democracy in most parts of Europe convinced some socialists that revolution was the only viable path to power. They believed that capitalists would never permit socialism to succeed.

The writings of a German journalist Karl Marx (1818-1883) introduced the world to a radical type of socialism which is called Marxism. Marx and Friedrich Engels outlined their ideas in a 23-page pamphlet called The Communist Manifesto.

In their manifesto, Marx and Engels argued that human societies have always been divided into warring classes. In their own time, these were the middle-class “haves” or employers, called the bourgeoisie and the “have-nots” or workers, called the proletariat. While the wealthy controlled the means of producing goods, the poor performed backbreaking labor under terrible conditions. This situation resulted in conflict.

The basics of Marxism

According to Marx:

• Socialism was a historical inevitability, due to the inherent contradictions of capitalism.
• All societies passed through six historical stages viz. primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and finally communism.
• Each historical stage corresponded to a particular level of technology and a particular system of class relations. In his words, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
• The process worked as follows:
• Technology gradually increased society’s capacity to generate wealth, but the dominant social class was unwilling to adopt these new technologies.
• Gradually, a new social class would emerge, which controlled the most dynamic productive forces. This new class would grow to resent the “old order”, which it saw as hindering further progress.
• In the end, the new class would rise up and overthrow the old, establishing new institutions more to its liking.
• Once again the forces of production and the social relations of production would be in harmony, propelling the economy forward until a new contradiction emerged.

The manifesto further said that the Industrial Revolution had enriched the wealthy and impoverished the poor. They predicted that the workers would overthrow the owners: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite.”

Marx believed that the capitalist system, which produced the Industrial Revolution, would eventually destroy itself. Factories would drive small artisans out of business, leaving a small number of manufacturers to control all the wealth. Consequently, the large proletariat would revolt, seize the factories and mills from the capitalists, and produce what society needed. Workers, sharing in the profits, would bring about economic equality for all people. The workers would control the government in a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” After a period of cooperative living and education, the state or government would wither away as a classless society developed. Marx called this final phase pure communism.

Impact of Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. Its impact was such that it was able to produce some short term results and many revolutions. It was the time when widespread revolts took place in Europe; however, they were eventually put down.

But on the turn of the century, this Marxist pamphlet produced explosive results. In the 1900s, Marxism inspired revolutionaries such as Russia’s Lenin, China’s Mao Zedong, Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro etc. These revolutionary leaders adapted Marx’s beliefs and arguments to their own specific situations and needs. However, several of Marx’s and Engels’s predictions have since proved wrong.

According to Marx, communism is a form of complete socialism in which the all means of production would be owned by the people and the private property would in effect cease to exist. All goods and services would be shared equally.

Thus, Marx explained the rise of capitalism as a conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Marx believed that the industrialised nations of Europe were ripe for socialist revolution by the middle of the 19th century. But socialism itself would not be the end of the historical process, because society would still be unable to produce enough to meet all humanity’s material needs. Exploitation and inequality would only be eliminated under communism, a system in which there would be no poverty, no crime, no money and no government.

Comparison the Capitalist ideas and Marxist ideas.

Capitalist Ideas

• Government should not interfer in economy
• Progress results when individuals follow their own self interest
• Businesses follow thier own selef interest when they compete with one another
• Each producer tries to provide goods and services that are less expesive and better in comparision to their competitors
• Consumers compete to get best goods for cheapest prices
• Market Economy aims to produce best products and lowest prices

Marxist Ideas

• All great movements in the history are a result of the class struggle
• The haves take advantage of the have nots
• The class struggle was intensified because of Industrial Revolution
• The Capitalist system would eventually destroy itself.
• The state will wither away as a classless society develops

Other Forms of Socialism

Democratic socialism

In contrary to the predictions of the Karl Marx, many European powers eventually took two measures as follows:

• They legalised the unions
• They gave the voting power to the working class.

These two developments led to the creation of democratic socialist parties, based on the principles developed by the Fabian Society. It rejected the view that social change could be achieved only by revolution.

Fabian Society

The Fabian Society is a British socialist organization whose purpose is to advance the principles of socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I.

The principles of Democratic socialism were as follows:

• The democratic socialists “did not foresee the eventual obliteration of the political state but its transformation into a prime agency of amelioration for society’s masses.”
• While revolutionary socialists wanted to sublimate the individual to the needs of the state, the democratic socialists saw the state as a mechanism for increasing the independence, security and opportunities of each individual.
• In their view, “the major features of capitalist philosophy – the profit motive, the monetary incentive – could be significantly modified without converting individual workers, technicians and managers into listless, lazy units in the industrial complex.”

The main democratic socialist parties established during this period were the British Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). These parties were also influenced by Marxist ideology, particularly his analysis of the weaknesses of capitalism. However, they rejected the notion that social change could only be achieved by revolution.

One of the main events which divided the democratic and revolutionary socialists was the First World War. The democratic socialist parties supported their respective liberal and authoritarian governments during this conflict, prompting the revolutionary socialist parties (such as the Bolsheviks in Russia) to condemn them as tools of imperialism.  The democratic socialists maintained their own forum – the Socialist International. This split within the international socialist movement was never healed. In fact, as the 20th century progressed, the revolutionary socialists were further split, both ideologically and politically.

Syndicalism

Syndicalism is another form of social control based on trade union organization which is considered to be the institution of new society and the means to bring it in force.

It adopts the Marxian beliefs of abolition of private ownership as a means of development and also gives the producers a control over the economic and political affairs of the state. Syndicalism is attributed to be a predominant product of workers than any other form of socialism and is much more stressed upon.

The workers will have a greater personal interest in the conduct of the plant if they own and control the industry in which they work. This way they enjoy a greater amount of freedom than that offered by the capitalistic system.

Guild Socialism

Guild socialism intended to abolish the wage system and establish self-government in industry by the workers, through a democratic system of national guilds, working in conjunction with other democratic functional organizations in the community. The theory of guild socialism was developed and popularised by G. D. H. Cole who formed the National Guilds League in 1915.

It is closely related to syndicalism. The administration was not proposed to be as democratic as the other forms of socialism. As per Guild socialists, the industry should be administered by technical experts and not by unskilled workmen. Also, the interests of the consumer were to be taken into consideration. They stood for state ownership of industry, combined with workers’ control through delegation of authority to national guilds organized internally on democratic lines.

Anarchism

Anarchism is one of the most basic forms of socialism. The followers of anarchism were initially associated with communism; however, in the year 1869, they were barred at the fourth annual congress of the first international. A separate organization was formed under the leadership of Bakunin (1814-1876) and Kropotkin (1842-1921) who advocated the destruction of existing governments.

Leninism

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was a Marxist and his theoretical contributions to Marxist thought are known as Leninism, which coupled with Marxian economic theory have collectively come to be known as Marxism–Leninism. He made a number of significant changes to Marx’s theories as follows:

• Because he was unwilling to wait until Russia had fully industrialised, Lenin modified Marx’s view that revolution could only occur in the advanced capitalist nations. He asserted that nations in the early stages of capitalism were also ripe for socialist revolution; the industrialisation process could be completed once socialism had been achieved.

Lenin argued that the revolutions could be staged not by the working class, but by a professional band of revolutionaries. The commitment and determination of these people would make up for the lack of a large working class in Russia. The corollary of this view was that the Communist Party would have to rule Russia dictatorially until a large working class support base could be created.

Mao Tse Tung

The Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse Tung further changed Marx’s theories, arguing that even pre-capitalist nations could stage socialist revolutions, by mobilising the peasantry rather than the working class. Mao asserted that the capitalist stage of development could be by-passed altogether – opening the way for a series of revolutions in developing nations such as Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea.