Could someone help me understand whether I am Socialist or Communist?

[Yehdua]

I have had some trouble determining whether I am a Socialist or a Communist. Could someone help?

I do not support private ownership of the means of production. I support a system in which the means of production is owned by the state or collectively.

I do not wish to have money in this system. All things should be produced based on need with wants as secondary. There is no need to have money.

There still exists personal property, such as your home, etc.

The state still exists. I do not believe in the abolishing. The government should run things under a form of technocracy where each individual branch is led by the most qualified within its branch (The best doctors run healthcare, professors the education system, etc).

If there are any questions, ask them, and I shall answer. If I am either Socialist or Communist, could you clarify to the best of your ability what variant I am? Thank you.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

Sounds like you're a pretty down-the-line Marxist-Leninist (aka "Stalinist") communist, which means you're also a socialist. M-Ls at least mostly believe in the eventual abolition of the state, so you're an honest communist pessimist at that. The track record of M-L states has much in common with your view, even more than the set of ideas itself.

[tuwix]

It depends on what he considers as state. Some people consider social services as state only and don't consider police and army as it. From the Marxist and Anarchist perspective is exactly conversely.

But someone knowing that is believing still that state and lack of private property can be maintained at once is just utopian socialist.

[Blake's Baby]

...
There still exists personal property, such as your home, etc.

The state still exists. I do not believe in the abolishing. The government should run things under a form of technocracy where each individual branch is led by the most qualified within its branch (The best doctors run healthcare, professors the education system, etc)...

Can you trade this 'personal property'? Can I swap my house (which is nicer than yours) for your house plus repeated sexual favours, for instance? Because that's not socialism (there are those of us who consider 'communism' and 'socialism' to be the same thing, because we're not Leninists). If you think that's OK then I don't see how you can consider yourself a socialist.

The state only exists if classes exist. Classes only exist if property exists. If you want a state then you must want classes and property (at least in so far as to have to have apples you must have the roots and branches of apples trees), so you're neither a socialist nor a communist (if they're different, which most of think they aren't).

If the stated goal of 'socialism' is a classless communal society but its methodology is not the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, then it is nothing because it can't work (it's like saying you're an airline pilot but you fly by wishing - in which case you're not an airline pilot at all).

Socialist society is predicated on the freeing of individual human beings allowing us all to take part in the 'administration of things' - we are all going to be 'the government'. A revolution to instate a new technocracy? No thanks. I don't like class societies, that's why I'm a socialist.

So; if you want a technocratic/bureaucratic form of state controlled private property, then what you're actually advocating is the most horrible forms of capitalist domination, and about as far removed from socialism as its possible to be.

[Lord Hargreaves]

You seem like a pretty textbook communist.



The state still exists. I do not believe in the abolishing. The government should run things under a form of technocracy where each individual branch is led by the most qualified within its branch (The best doctors run healthcare, professors the education system, etc).


However, what you've said above needs clarifying: what do you mean by "the state still exists"?

And as others have noticed, you managed to write up all your basic political beliefs about society without mentioning democracy at all. Did you just forget to say this because you take a belief in such things for granted, or are you really a technocrat with a belief in rule by meritocratic elites?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I have had some trouble determining whether I am a Socialist or a Communist. Could someone help?

I do not support private ownership of the means of production. I support a system in which the means of production is owned by the state or collectively.

I do not wish to have money in this system. All things should be produced based on need with wants as secondary. There is no need to have money.

There still exists personal property, such as your home, etc.

The state still exists. I do not believe in the abolishing. The government should run things under a form of technocracy where each individual branch is led by the most qualified within its branch (The best doctors run healthcare, professors the education system, etc).

If there are any questions, ask them, and I shall answer. If I am either Socialist or Communist, could you clarify to the best of your ability what variant I am? Thank you.

Your views seem to fall somewhere between communism and the old State-Socialism or Kathedersozialismus ("University chair socialism") tendencies. They don't seem to be consistently Marxist, either - in Marxist thought, the state is the result of class antagonism and an organ of class rule. When the division of society into classes is abolished, the state will wither away - but there will still be public power, of sorts, but that public power will be identical to the armed citizens.

As for technocracy, I agree with Lord Hargreaves - everyone wants competent people to manage the various administrative departments, but the technocratic movement wants to destroy democracy and install rule by "experts". That is both contrary to the dictatorship of the proletariat as a class, and to efficient public administration - since planners and managers need democratic input and oversight.

[Etular]

As said, the answer is probably closest to Socialism - as in, the non-Communistic, "older" definition of Socialism.

People are probably going to gripe at me about this, and call me a Trotsky/Leninist so-and-so for making a distinction between Socialism and Communism, but I would say this is a Socialist in the same way I would describe Democratic Socialism as Socialist - the sort of Socialist that doesn't aim for Communism (except, in this circumstance, it wouldn't be "democratic" as much as "technocratic").

The conflict mainly arises on the basis that the "Socialist state" is also known and described as the state preceding Communism; thus, there are two definitions, and some people like to get a bit picky about it.

[Yehdua]

For socialism and communist, I view them as economic tendencies. I do not necessarily support the political aspects of them. I do however support the general belief that classes should not exist.

[Yehdua]

For socialism and communism, I seem them as economic tendencies. I do not necessarily support the political or social aspects of them. I do, however, support the belief that classes should not exist.

[slum]

For socialism and communism, I seem them as economic tendencies. I do not necessarily support the political or social aspects of them. I do, however, support the belief that classes should not exist.

The idea behind the abolition of classes in communism is that the state, which emerges during class struggle to ensure the rule of one class over another, also no longer exists.

I don't think you can entirely separate economic methods of production from the social and political conditions they result in.

[Blake's Baby]

The idea behind the abolition of classes in communism is that the state, which emerges during class struggle to ensure the rule of one class over another, also no longer exists.

I don't think you can entirely separate economic methods of production from the social and political conditions they result in.

Precisely this. In the last resort, political forms are shaped by the economic basis of society. If property has been collectivised worldwide, then classes have been abolished and the roots of the state have already been cut away, causing the state to 'wither away' in Engels' phrase.

You can no more sustain a state in a classless society than you can abolish it in a class society. The foundations - or lack of them - of the state structure are ultimately economic foundations.

[ind_com]

I do, however, support the belief that classes should not exist.
In your earlier post, you said that you want the state to exist. A state cannot exist in a classless society. By state, did you mean government?

[Yehdua]

I need clarification. In communism, is the government and state the same or different?

[Blake's Baby]

There is no state, and we are all 'the government', so there is no seperate 'government' either.

As Engels says in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - "...the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things..."

Without classes there is no state, without the state there is no need of government, and when all of society is involved in collective decision-making even the idea of a seperate group of decision-makers will become obsolete.

[ind_com]

I need clarification. In communism, is the government and state the same or different?

According to Marxism, state and government are not the same. A government in communism can be a mass-government, as Blake's Baby points out and equates it to no government. A state on the other hand is a machinery for class oppression. For example in capitalism the state exists mainly to put down movements by the working class. In socialism, a state exists to fight foreign capitalist invasions and to foil internal takeover plans by capitalists. But in communism there will be no classes. So by definition, communism is stateless.

[Lord Hargreaves]

If in Marxism, the state is by definition an organ for the suppression of one class (in favor of another), then by definition in a classless society there is no state. But that amounts to semantics only, and it doesn't tell us anything. It is the purest example of circular reasoning.

We then move on to talk about "government", as ind_com does above, but that is just the same debate again under another name.

It is a shame that so many Marxists are stuck with the utter dogma that the state is only about class, being purely an organ of class rule. This is the most crude reductionism, and is - to put it bluntly - empirically false.

The state's role in ensuring class domination is fundamental to its existence, of course, but it does other things too: it has the monopoly of the violence (Weber's definition etc.), it has many purely instrumental economic and legal functions, technocratic functions, and has many crucial institutional powers that ensure society (as it is) functions. It ensures economic domination, or shall we say conformity, over certain lower sections of society, in ways which do not necessarily benefit the bourgeoisie (as a separate class with specific sectional interests)

Unless we address ourselves to what will take the state's place after the revolution - where will the democratic centers of power lie, what will the mechanisms of economic organisation and resource distribution be, etc. - we will simply end up talking nonsense. It is a fault within the tradition to assume that all this will somehow sort itself out after the state "withers away"

[Yehdua]

So, it is possible in communism to have no state but to have government? I simply do not wish for anarchy - that is what I mean by not wanting to abolish the state or to be stateless.

[Blake's Baby]

Depends what you mean by 'government'. If you mean a seperate government, then no there is no seperate government in communist society. If you mean 'will we all take part in administration and decision-making?' then yes.

You 'don't want anarchy' - do you mean 'Anarchism'? Because the end goal of Marxism is the same as the end goal of Anarchism - the destruction of capitalism and the creation of communism - a classless, stateless, moneyless society.

[LOLseph Stalin]

So, it is possible in communism to have no state but to have government? I simply do not wish for anarchy - that is what I mean by not wanting to abolish the state or to be stateless.

Communism is, by definition, stateless. Also, the state stems from class struggle so by abolishing classes the purposes of having a state would become redundant. It really mainly exists to enforce the rule of one class over another, the bourgeoisie in current society and the proletariat in socialist society. So to want a classless society that still maintains a state is quite contradictory. I'd say you're just a socialist based on that.