Chapter III of the Communist Manifesto

[ComradeViktor]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has come across a situation in which you're confused by Comrade Marx's terminology.

In this chapter, his point was that the Communist-style Socialism, which had the popular voice in the First International, was the only purely proletarian ideology. Basically saying that other forms of "Socialism" have a bias of sort that would eventually either lead to turning astray from socialism to another cause, or it would create some fanatic and impractical version thereof. If he was around today, I bet we would add Fascist Socialism and Leninist/Maoist variants of Communism to this list he makes.

But my confusion is whether or not, in his world, that any form of anti-Capitalism, even ironically Bourgeois, was "Socialism".

He coin-terms quite a few ideologies, that have nothing to do with social-ownership, "Socialism".

Examples being:

"Petty-Bourgeois Socialism"- which was more an agrarian mercantile ideology that wanted to move back to pre-industrialism where society served the interests of gentry, farmers, and skilled-laborers.

and

"Feudal Socialism" -which is as reactionary as you could possibly get. Today we call it "Carlism" and is considered a cognate with Fascism. Basically an ideology that supports a return to the pre-Rebirth(Renaissance) feudal/manor system, where property was distributed as fiefdoms to the ranks of a hereditary nobility and political power is centralized to that of a divine-right monarch, a court of nobles, and a state church (or usually the international Roman Catholic Church).

Like I said these are clearly anything but socialism. Did Marx simply generalize all anti-Capitalist to a spectrum of Socialism? Or is there any other meaning? :confused:

[Five Year Plan]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has come across a situation in which you're confused by Comrade Marx's terminology.

In this chapter, his point was that the Communist-style Socialism, which had the popular voice in the First International, was the only purely proletarian ideology. Basically saying that other forms of "Socialism" have a bias of sort that would eventually either lead to turning astray from socialism to another cause, or it would create some fanatic and impractical version thereof. If he was around today, I bet we would add Fascist Socialism and Leninist/Maoist variants of Communism to this list he makes.

But my confusion is whether or not, in his world, that any form of anti-Capitalism, even ironically Bourgeois, was "Socialism".

He coin-terms quite a few ideologies, that have nothing to do with social-ownership, "Socialism".

Examples being:

"Petty-Bourgeois Socialism"- which was more an agrarian mercantile ideology that wanted to move back to pre-industrialism where society served the interests of gentry, farmers, and skilled-laborers.

and

"Feudal Socialism" -which is as reactionary as you could possibly get. Today we call it "Carlism" and is considered a cognate with Fascism. Basically an ideology that supports a return to the pre-Rebirth(Renaissance) feudal/manor system, where property was distributed as fiefdoms to the ranks of a hereditary nobility and political power is centralized to that of a divine-right monarch, a court of nobles, and a state church (or usually the international Roman Catholic Church).

Like I said these are clearly anything but socialism. Did Marx simply generalize all anti-Capitalist to a spectrum of Socialism? Or is there any other meaning? :confused:

Yes, Marx does use "socialism" in that section to refer very broadly to anti-capitalist ideologies. As you note, his point is that only one of them is rooted in a scientific understanding of the role of the proletariat in capitalist society. The others arose from a worldview of (and to serve the interests of) other classes besides the proletariat.

[#FF0000]

"Socialism" as a term existed long before Marx, and was used to describe a broad spectrum of ideas and utopian models for social reform. IIRC, Marx and Engels were kind of critical of the word, hence why we have "communism" -- even though they used "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Chapter III described how ineffective socialist ideas were when merged with other class movements. It described in the negative form what later on became "the merger of socialism and the worker movement."