I feel like I need to explain Socialism because people either don't
know what it is and demonize it or use it where it doesn't
apply.
I'm going to do this just once so pay attention.
Socialism represents the ideology of those who were left behind
during the rise of Liberalism. It is the ideology of the labor
class. Socialism has a problem with not only liberal(Capitalism for
more clarity) ideas, but the effects that liberalism brought. To
put a definition on it, it is a system in which private enterprise
is abolished and replaced by some form of common ownership of
factories, farms, and other productive enterprises. All socialists,
whether you are an Utopian, Marxist, Fabian, European Revisionist,
Leninist, or Maoist, believe in the eradication of private property
and capitalism is an exploitative and unstable system. Do you see
Obama doing any of that? Hell, I recall during a debate him saying
that he does not believe government is the answer and ardently
believes that capitalism is the most productive economic system
that ever has been done. But lets get back to socialism and why it
is what it is.
During the years that Liberalism(Capitalism if you are confused)
and industrialization became predominant, many found a flaw in
Liberalism. The likes of Thomas More and Charles Fourier saw mass
inequality and instability within the system so in order to fix
this, they thought that they could engineer social society to be
better without capitalism and private property. They were the
Utopian Socialist. The tenets of an Utopian Socialist were:
1. Do not like private property. Believed that it leads to nothing,
but exploitation.
2. Emphasized community and solidarity, but to differentiate from
Classical Conservatives, who also believed in community, but
thought man were inherently unequal, Socialists believed in
equality for all.
3. The Nature of man is that we have a social quality in us, and we
have solidarity among us. This contrasts the tenets of Classical
Conservatism which believes that man was rational, and to be
rational is to be acquisitive. Unlike Classical conservatism,
Utopian Socialist believe that there is no hierarchy that people
confer their sovereignty to for protection from themselves.
4. Utopians wanted to administrate this view through education and
disabuse the masses of the ideas of capitalism and liberalism that
has been taught. Why they wanted to do this is because Liberalism
was and still is the prevailing ideology at the time. People under
a system of capitalism are going to be taught that if you work hard
enough and find your niche, you too can become Bill Gates(I will to
explain this later under Marxism).
4. As I already stated, they believed that they could socially
engineer a society to contrast a society under liberalism just to
provide an example of how much better Socialism is.
5. They thought Representative Democracy as the advocacy of the
elites and were fervent believers of direct Democracy
After the Utopians tried and were laughed out of Europe, a Jewish
man known as Marx came along and sought to scientifically prove
that Liberalism would fall and Socialism would take it's place
eventually. He viewed Utopians as normative, as it ought to be,
instead of empirical, as they are. Marx only had 5 different ideas
of Marxism.
The first idea was based on Georg Wilson Freidrich Hegel's
Dialectical Flow of History(FUCK YOU! I'm not going explain what he
is to you. Look him up and read that shit). Hegel and Marx believed
that history has an identifiable direction, and a identifiable
purpose. In other words, the direction of history was progressial.
How is progress achieved is what your bitch ass is asking, right?
Well, through conflict. All progress is made through conflicts in
terms of contradictions that arise in all things, and ideas. Think
about the human state of ideas, will you? There has always been a
predominant set of ideas that would always produce it's opposite.
You can take any idea and make it a thesis, thus creating it's
opposite,it's antithesis. The two will produce a synthesis thus
will represent progress. Let's take religion for example. Man used
to believe in many Gods which was predominant in most cultures.
This was the thesis. Then, they were paganistic views which serves
as the antithesis. Through that, monotheism formed through the
synthesis of ideas. Here is some visual aid for guidance.
https://www2.bc.edu/~heineman/charts/marxdial_2.jpg
The second idea was more of a differentiation from Hegel. Hegel
thought that this progress is done by God in order unveil God's
plan or some shit because he(God) acted through the minds of men.
Marx, being an atheist thought this was bullshit(Religion is the
opiate of the masses, anyone?) and was exponentially more
materialistic. Marx believed that the material possessions that we
have generate ideas not ideas produce better ideas. Marx believed
that in any time period, one can divide the economic base of
society and economic superstructure. Now you are probably wondering
what exactly are they. No worries, asshole. Ubernegro will instill
your punk ass with knowledge because this is really good practice
for my exam and I am really nice. There are components of the
economic base of society: Means of production and the relations of
production. The means of production is essentially the
technological know-how of society at the time period. It is how
society did things. The relations of production is the social
relation in the production process. Marx believed that if he knew
who controlled the means of production in any era and who dominated
the relations of production, he could tell you who prevailed in the
conflict and what the system was at the time. The superstructure of
society is essentially anything that justifies the way the society
is structure. It could be religion, ideology, government, art,
literature, and etc. From this Marx concluded that the driving
point of history has been the struggle of social classes. In any
given historical era, there will be a conflict between the economic
classes, mainly the ones who control the means of production and
dominate the relations of production versus the ones who don't
control the means of production and are at the lesser end of the
relation of production. Again, here is some visual aid.
http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/base-superstructure.png
Through the combination of the two previous ideas, Marx developed
his third: Dialectical Materialism He stated that he uncovered the
laws of historical development. He claimed that there were 4 stages
of historical development. To continue the theme of
thesis/antithesis/synthesis, each dialectic era had them. First
stage was primitive communism which was nomads/tribes/empire.
Second stage was slavery which had empire/barbarism/landed
aristocrats. The third was Feudalism which was comprised of landed
aristocrats/bourgeoisie(merchants)/bourgeois democracy. The fourth,
and what Marx says is the final, is bour.
democracy/proletariat/communism. What you should notice here is
that the antithesis always prevails and as each stage develops,
there is more exploitation. "More exploitative? Isn't that a loaded
statement, Ubernegro?" Hold your horses, asshole. I'll explain that
too. Marx pointed out why capitalism is unique compared to the
other stages of economic development.
1. If one thinks about the economic mode of production, capitalism
is constantly revolutionizing production. It always has to keep
come up with something new. For example, look at your iphone or
whatever. Next year, there will be a newer one and then a newer one
in the year after next.
2. Capitalism is the only economic stage the envelopes the
world.
3. There are only two classes: Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat.
Before you go, "there is a middle class and a lower class and an
upper middle class," No the fuck there isn't, bitch(As you can see,
I am becoming more and more irritated the longer I write this).
There are people who own the means of production aka the filthy
fucking rich versus people who don't own it aka the 99% aka
probably everyone you know.
4. The ability of making it to the bourgeoisie is negligible and
limited in possibility. Extremely limited. Damn near impossible.
Unless you have a certain skill or asset that no one else possesses
and is desirable, SOL.
5. It is the only stage of economic development that in which it
falls, there is no more majority. When Capitalism collapses, and
trust me, it will collapse, there is no more 1%. What else is there
after the means of production is shared by everyone?
The fourth idea that Marx postulates is the need for Revolution.
The current owners of the means of production isn't just going to
bend over, hand the 99% lube, and get fucked in the ass willingly.
The prevailing ideology justifies the current system of ordering
things. Remember when that Occupy movement started? Did you hear
the media say anything positive about them? Didn't think so. Owners
of the means of production will use all means at their disposal to
maintain current order. Whether it is government, media, art,
literature, they will fucking do it. But why violent revolution?
Marx could not find a single instance of large scale peace in any
transition. War breeds change. There is no progress without
conflict, says Marx.
Marx's fifth and final idea was essentially an outline why
capitalism will fall. He sums it up as Capitalism having cancer as
in it is eating away at itself. Yes, he agreed that capitalism is
the most productive system of ordering economic affairs to date,
but it is highly unstable. He, again, provided an outline why
capitalism has the seeds of it's own demise.
1. The imbalance between production and consumption Under
capitalism, the proletariat does not reap the surplus value of
their production. In layman's terms, a capitalist will extract most
of the money earned from the product made by the worker and the
worker would only receive a small amount of it despite being the
ones producing the item. A capitalist's goal is to pay the worker
high enough to keep them around, but low enough to make sure they
have the most to gain.
2. Grave-digger thesis This is the idea that capital will
eventually fall into the hands of the few. The ideal capitalist is
to expand and in order to expand, they must compete with and take
out other rivals. As capitalist continue to gain, those former
entrepreneurs are becoming part of the proletariat because they can
only contribute their labor. In summary, the 1% is getting smaller
while the proletariat is getting larger.
3. Falling rates of profit This the economic phenomenon where as
capital accumulates and becomes more abundant, the rate of return
declines thereby decreasing the incentive to invest. II don't feel
like explaining this right now.
My main point is that Socialism as Marx defines it has never been
achieved. What about Soviet Russia, Cuba, or China? Well they were
in the feudalistic era and thus skipped capitalism to reach what
they call Socialism and thus missed a shit ton of production that
capitalism would bring. Socialism is supposed to be the goal for
countries that are highly developed and have capitalism.
