What is a good definition for socialism

[Mythbuster]

I am debating socialism v. capitalism and want a good definition for both systems.

Thanks

[UnknownPerson]

As far as I know, the definitions of socialism vary, from simple reformist and cosmetic changes of capitalism to publicly owned means of production and a planned economy.

[Raightning]

In socialism the means of production are, in one way or another, collectively owned by the whole community, while in capitalism they are owned by private individuals and/or groups. That's probably the simplest and most 'neutral' way to distinguish the two.

[Armchair War Criminal]

In socialism the means of production are, in one way or another, collectively owned by the whole community, while in capitalism they are owned by private individuals and/or groups. That's probably the simplest and most 'neutral' way to distinguish the two.There are plenty of people who have used the terms in those ways, but to be clear, that's not the meaning of the terms in Marxist discourse (which is presumably what the OP's after if he's asking it here.)

In Marxian terminology, capitalism is a system where the means of production are privately owned by a portion of the population, while the majority own their own labor-power. A system where everyone is a yoeman farmer or cooperative member or independent artisan isn't capitalism, even though it may be a market system based on commodity production and exchange. Nor is a system where people are legally compelled to work for specific masters, as under slavery or feudalism. Socialism, by contrast, is worker ownership of the means of production.

[OhYesIdid]

Socialism, by contrast, is worker ownership of the means of production.

that's pretty good. In fact, keep the "in contrast."

As for me, I've always thought of it as the ideology which seeks the creation of a stateless, classless society; as well as not the subversion of production relationships, but rather the abolition of all such relations.

[Book O'Dead]

Socialism in practice is a classless, stateless society in which the means of production are commonly owned and democratically administered by the people, in which production is carried out under a democratically designed plan to satisfy the needs and wants of society.
As opposed, of course to capitalism, in which production takes place under the tyranny of private property, the arbitrary division of labor's product, with a view to profit.

[MarxSchmarx]

In socialism the means of production are, in one way or another, collectively owned by the whole community, while in capitalism they are owned by private individuals and/or groups. That's probably the simplest and most 'neutral' way to distinguish the two.

I don't think the focus should be just on ownership, but rather on ownership and control. Collective ownership, without the benefits accruing to everyone, becomes a mere formality.

[robbo203]

I don't think the focus should be just on ownership, but rather on ownership and control. Collective ownership, without the benefits accruing to everyone, becomes a mere formality.


Actually, when you think about it, "ownership" is the same the same thing as "control" - or , at least, ultimate control. If you are in a position to exercise ultimate control over, say, a particular enterprise then, in effect, you own it - and vice versa. De facto ownership is unseparable from ultimate control.

This is the decisive argument against those who claim that in the Soviet Union, for example, there was not a capitalist class. People who make this claim - like Trotsky ,for example - use a narrow legalistic definition of ownership as based on de jure ownership of capital by private individuals. This is an idealist approach to historical analysis which seeks to explain the phenomenon of class in terms of society's superstructure i.e its legal system. In contrast , a materialist analysis focusses on the actual economic relationships on the ground and notes that a distinct and identifiable class in the Soviet Union - essentially the nomenklatura - exercised ultimate control over the economic process and the disposal of the economic surplus. These people thus constituted the state capitalist class and indeed enjoyed a lifestyle far removed from that of the ordiinary Russian worker. Their wealth and extraordinary privilege was a by product of their collective class ownership of the means of production which they were able to exercise via their complete control over the state apparatrus and, hence, economic decisionmaking.

A comparison can be made with the Catholic Church in Medieival times which had extensive landholdings throughout Europe and whose many monastries were often sites of small scale industrial activity and innovation., Individual clerics did not themselves have legal entitlement to such means of production yet clearly ultimate control was exerised by the Church hierarchy itself which in that sense sense enjoyed de facto ownership oif them.

Certainly, Church property was not owned by the congregations but, since it was clearly "owned", it had to be owned by someone. Who? The answer is by those who made all the important decisions relating to the disposal of such property. Their ability to excerise ultimate control over the means of production was tantamount to de facto ownership


This incidentally is why when we talk about common ownership of the means of production in socialism it is inseparable from the idea of democratic control. You cannot have one without the other

[syndicat]

Actually, when you think about it, "ownership" is the same the same thing as "control" - or , at least, ultimate control. If you are in a position to exercise ultimate control over, say, a particular enterprise then, in effect, you own it - and vice versa. De facto ownership is unseparable from ultimate control.



this is simply obfuscatory. ownership is a legal concept. it includes a package of rights including the right to transfer the owned entity in exchange for whatever the owner can get for it.

a key form of control is control over the production process, and thus over the workers in production.

socialism can then be defined as common ownership by everyone of the means of production; direct, collective worker management of the production process; and direct popular power over society. these parts are necessary in order to exclude the forms of class power over workers. socialism is thus a society where there is no longer a division into antagonistic classes and the bureaucratic state has been replaced by a more direct form of popular power.

[robbo203]

this is simply obfuscatory. ownership is a legal concept. it includes a package of rights including the right to transfer the owned entity in exchange for whatever the owner can get for it.

a key form of control is control over the production process, and thus over the workers in production..

That is precisely why ownership and ultimate control are inseparable, the key form of control over the production stemming from the ownership of capital exercised by the capitalist class. That is the bottom line when it comes to exercising "control over the production and thus over the workers in production"

Ownership certainly can be described in legalistic terms but it doesnt have to be. De jure ownership can be seen as a way of giving legal sanction to an existing state of affairs, bringing it into line with de facto ownership. This is why for example you might have a dispute over land in which, say, some tribe might seek to get legal redess against the efforts of the state to enclose or privatise such land on the grounds that it had always belonged to them in the first place despite this not being legally recognised.

The claim that ownership is purely a legalistic concept is idealist nonsense. According to the Soviet Constituion the means of production belonged to "the people". Did it? Of course not. Any more than the Church property in the Middle ages belonged to the congregation. However, it was certainly owned by someone or some grpup and if it was not the people or the congrations it could only logically boil down to those who exercised ultimate control over those means. Yet you would have us believe that in respect of determining ownership one has to be guided simply by the de jure situation


This confision stems from a very narrow and rigid perception of what capitalism entails - its identification of "capitalism" with individual capitalists holding legal title to capital in the form of stocks and bonds, being able to inherit property and so on. Such practices far from exhaust the range of possibilities in capitalism. Not on that, such a perspective confuses two quite different things. What needs to be explained is the social fact of the existence of a capitalist class, not the particular route by which particular individuals might themselves become members of this class. In West, individuals have traditionally been able to exercise legal entitlement to capital, unlike what was supposedly the case in the Soviet Union, and by such means have sometimes been able to become capitalists. But, even here, mere legal entitlement to capital in the form of stocks and bonds does not explain how it is that most capital comes to be concentrated in the hands of a capitalist class . There is no "law" in a jurisprudential sense of the word which says that capital should come to be concentrated in the hands of a minority. No western country gives legal recognition to the existence of a distinct capitalist class. If anything the existence of such a class is vigorously denied since it so blatantly contradicts the egalitarian pretension of all citizens "being equal under the law" - a corrollary, if I might say so, of western individualism. That capital should be concentrated in the hands of a few is actually the outcome of a de facto process that makes class monopolisation of the means of production a de facto, not a de jure, reality

[syndicat]

That is precisely why ownership and ultimate control are inseparable, the key form of control over the production stemming from the ownership of capital exercised by the capitalist class. That is the bottom line when it comes to exercising "control over the production and thus over the workers in production"



then the earliest form of capitalism wasn't capitalism, by your definition. the early form of capitalism involved the putting out system, which was based on merchant capital lending materials to artisans working independently in their cottages or workshops. workers controlled the work process in that particular form of capitalism.

ownership is a package of rights, and these rights can be separated. this is shown by the existence of capitalists whose income is derived from renting means of production (land, buildings) or loaning funds, not controlling the labor process that is put in place using those funds or rented means of production.

your approach ends up with a totally abstract, ahistorical conception.

[robbo203]

then the earliest form of capitalism wasn't capitalism, by your definition. the early form of capitalism involved the putting out system, which was based on merchant capital lending materials to artisans working independently in their cottages or workshops. workers controlled the work process in that particular form of capitalism.

ownership is a package of rights, and these rights can be separated. this is shown by the existence of capitalists whose income is derived from renting means of production (land, buildings) or loaning funds, not controlling the labor process that is put in place using those funds or rented means of production.

your approach ends up with a totally abstract, ahistorical conception.

The opposite is true. Yours is the totally abstract, ahistorical conception and an idealist one inthat regard.

Your argument that ownership is essentially a "legal concept" leaves you completely unable to explain why it is that you have a capitalist class that owns the bulk of financial assets. Show me any legal statute in any constitution anywhere in the world which says that this class is entitled to thus monopolise the means of prpduction? You can't, can you? Likewise, if ownership was an essentially legal concept this would mean that in fact when the Soviet constitution declared that the means of production belonged to "the people" this would reflect the reality of the situation -that the "people" did actually own the means of production because, according to you, reality is decisively shaped by the legal process. But the people didnt own the mean of production, did they? You have a naive understanding of the legal process if you think otherwise.

I cannot quite follow your logic when you say that by my definition then the earliest form of capitalism wasn't capitalism. I presume you mean by "my definition" that by ownership is meant ultimate or decisive control. From this you deduce that since worker artisans labouring in their cottages prior to the industrial revolution controlled the work process in this decisive or ultimate sense then this could not have been capitalism by my logic. Actually you contradict yourself becuase you are in effect saying that becuase they owned their own workshops they were able to control the work process which is in fact my point - that ownership is the same thing as ulitmate control . When those same artisans were put out of business by the early factories they lost this ultimate control becuase they were no longer in possession of means of propduction

My answer to your point, then, is that, yes, it was not quite capitalism but a state of affairs that was in process of becoming capitalism. It relates to a state of affairs that Marx called "simple commodity production". As you admit yourself, these early artisans or proto capitalists were in hock to the merchant class who acquired their funds in part from primitive accumulation abroad (these primitive accumulationists didnt bother about legal nicieties such as whether or not the "savages" they conquered had some written constitution declaring that their land belonged to them; ownership was a brute fact for them). In fact, the worker artisans you speak of were in no position to fund much of the basic infrastructure upon which the industrial revolutiuon was based such as as canals and the railways. Capitalism proper arrived with the separation of workers from the means of production in the shape of the factory system

As for your remark that there are capitalists "whose income is derived from renting means of production (land, buildings) or loaning funds, not controlling the labor process that is put in place using those funds or rented means of production." are you trying to tell me that there is no such thing as industrial capitalists and the only capitalists there are are landowners and financial capitalists? It certainly sounds like that is what you are saying.

Granted there has been a considerable blurring of the distinction between different kinds of capital it remains an indisputable fact that every single enterprise in capitalism is owned by someone or some group and that it is through their ownership of such an enterprise that these owners exert ultimate or decisive control over the work process. Who owns it is less important than the fact that it is owned by someone or some group. If they were so minded, these owners could pull the plug on the whole operation, sell it off to some asset stripper who might then promptly make the workers redundant and you cannot get a more ultimate or decisive form of control over the work process than that.



Certainly ownership entails a packgage of rights that can be separated but these rights are first and foremost de facto rights. Possession as the saying goes is nine tenths of the law and for good reason

[Jose Gracchus]

the early form of capitalism involved the putting out system, which was based on merchant capital lending materials to artisans working independently in their cottages or workshops. workers controlled the work process in that particular form of capitalism.

If you can withdraw the capacity of the workers to produce, then how are you not exercising control?

[syndicat]

If you can withdraw the capacity of the workers to produce, then how are you not exercising control?

are you suggesting there was no significant change when they set up factories, forced workers to come to those factories, and set up managers over workers?

one of Bakunin's criticisms of Marx is that there was a separate class who had effective control over the means of violence in society (police & military officer corps) and the administrative apparatus of the state. this was the bureaucratic class, not based on ownership of means of production...and also capable of being a dominating class in a non-capitalist class system.

[dude6935]

Communism is supposed to be stateless. Socialism is not.

[Jose Gracchus]

are you suggesting there was no significant change when they set up factories, forced workers to come to those factories, and set up managers over workers?

Of course not, but I think it is equally distorting to imply workers really had a genuine control over the productive process in the former situation...their situation was dependent and precarious and thusly the capitalist class was able to further aggrandize itself and take tighter and tighter control of the life and work process of proletarians in order to extract ever more surplus.


one of Bakunin's criticisms of Marx is that there was a separate class who had effective control over the means of violence in society (police & military officer corps) and the administrative apparatus of the state. this was the bureaucratic class, not based on ownership of means of production...and also capable of being a dominating class in a non-capitalist class system.

Certainly there are other classes between the workers and capitalists; but all those classes have a real capacity to dominate production and society and wield them for their own intrinsic needs and according to an internal logic within the class. I do not think there is bureaucrats qua bureaucrats; bureaucrats for bureaucrats' sake, just as there is no "pure" military regimes, but merely ones which reflect this or that position of the class struggle. For instance Chavez plays a role similar to that Marx described for Bonaparte, in that he looks to bestride the conflict between workers and capital, but ultimately this power is manifested to keep the workers down and to further capitalist production.