Socialism, Marxian
Socialism, Marxian
Early in their work, Marx and Engels called themselves communists (e.g., the “Communist Manifesto”). Later they found it more accurate, in view of the terminology of the day, to refer to themselves as socialists. During the war of 1914- ’18, when socialists split into two camps, one supporting and the other opposing participation in the war, Lenin proposed for the latter group, which became the Third International, a return to the name communist, so far as a party designation was concerned, which proposal was adopted. Those who remained connected with the Second International retained the name socialist as a party designation. This split not only involved the problem of the war, but crystallized other fundamental divergences. For example, among “socialists”, there was a widespread belief in gradualism — the doctrine that the socialist society could be attained by piecemeal reform within the capitalist svstem and that no sudden change or contest of force need be anticipated. These beliefs were rejected by the “communists”.
By way of connoting different types of society, many contemporary Marxists, especially in the U.S.S.R., building upon Marx’s analysis of the two phases of “communist society” (“Gotha Program”) designate the first or lower phase by the term socialism, the second or higher by the term communism (q.v.). The general features of socialist society (identified by Soviet thinkers with the present phase of development of the U.S.S.R.) are conceived as follows
Economic collective ownership of the means of production, such as factories, industrial equipment, the land, and of the basic apparatus of distribution and exchange, including the banking system; the consequent abolition of classes, private profit, exploitation, surplus value, (q.v.) private hiring and firing and involuntary unemployment; an integrated economy based on long time planning in terms of needs and use. It is held that only under these economic conditions is it possible to apply the formula, “from each according to ability, to each according to work performed”, the first part of which implies continuous employment, and the second part, the absence of private profit.
Politicala state based upon the dictatorship of the proletariat (q.v.)
Cultural the extension of all educational and cultural facilities through state planning; the emancipation of women through unrestricted economic opportunities, the abolition of race discrimination through state enforcement, a struggle against all cultural and social institutions which oppose the socialist society and attempt to obstruct its realization.
Marx and Engels held that socialism becomes the inevitable outgrowth of capitalism because the evolution of the latter type of society generates problems which can only be solved by a transition to socialism. These problems are traced primarily to the fact that the economic relations under capitalism, such as individual ownership of productive technics, private hiring and firing in the light of profits and production for a money market, all of which originally released powerful new productive potentialities, come to operate, in the course of time, to prevent full utilization of productive technics, and to cause periodic crises, unemployment, economic insecurity and consequent suffering for masses of people. Marx and Engels regarded their doctrine of the transformation of capitalist into socialist society as based upon a scientific examination of the laws of development of capitalism and a realistic appreciation of the role of the proletariat. (q.v.) Unlike the Utopian socialism (q.v.) of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen (q.v.) and others, their socialism asserted the necessity of mass political organization of the working classes for the purpose of gaining political power in order to effect the transition from capitalism, and also foresaw the probability of a contest of force in which, they held, the working class majority would ultimately be victorious. The view taken is that Marx was the first to explain scientifically the nature of capitalist exploitation as based upon surplus value and to predict its necessary consequences. “These two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalist production by means of surplus value we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science . . .” (EngelsAnti-Dhring, pp. 33-34.) See Historical materialism. — J.M.S.