We keep hearing about socialism and how it is the answer to all of our current social ills, which leads to the question, what is socialism? Let’s start with Britannica.com which states that socialism is a “social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources.” Socialism assumes correctly that individuals do not live or work in isolation but instead, live and work in cooperation with one another, which means, according to socialism, that everything everyone produces is in some sense a social product and owned by everyone. While this seems like an honorable idea on the surface, underneath there are multiple issues.

Socialism is in open opposition to capitalism, which advocates private ownership of the means of production and allows individual choice through a free market approach to the distribution of goods and services. Many socialists complain that capitalism leads to unfair and domineering concentrations of wealth and power controlled by a few powerful and wealthy people who use their wealth and power to control society. While this may be a valid issue with capitalism, it is also equally as valid of an issue with socialism.  

Socialists claim that the choices the wealthy make, in turn, detrimentally affect and limit the options of the non-wealthy. Socialists contend that true freedom and true equality require social control of societal resources because both form the basis for prosperity for all of society, but does prosperity even have a place in socialism? I would contend that in a socialist society true prosperity could not exist, but I digress. 

Both Marx and Engels, in their proclamation in Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) assert that “the condition for the free development of each is the free development of all,” which, again, sounds honorable, but in retrospect actually is not. Why not? Well, instead of allowing a free market to exercise control over societal resources through hard work, creativity and risks and rewards, socialism advocates exercising that same control through political parties which is in essence preference, which happens to be one of the reasons socialists advocate for socialism. Remember, according to socialists, the wealthy exercise preference due to their power and wealth, which we are told is detrimental to all of us. My question would be what is the difference between preference exercised by a political party and preference exercised by a free market? Does capitalism or socialism produce a fairer and more equitable economy?  

Inside socialism itself, there is general disagreement on two issues: property and control. The extent and kind of property that society should own and control in collective ways is rigorously debated even today inside social circles. Sir Thomas More, years ago, expressed a sentiment in his writings that almost everything should be public property while other socialists advocate and accept the private ownership of farms, shops and small businesses. The second and more difficult issue is the exercise of control over property and other societal resources. There are two camps regarding control, centralists and decentralists. The centralists envision exercising public control of property through a central authority, such as a state, under the governance of a single political party, as is the case in Russia, China and North Koreas. Decentralists envision the central authority of control occurring at the local or lowest level, by the people most directly affected by such decisions. This seems like the lesser of two evils, but finding a decentralist version of socialism is a difficult task. The closest semblance to this would be democratic socialism where production and wealth are collectively owned but the country has a democratic system of government. Examples of this would be Italy, Germany, France and Brazil.

As I close part 1 of this series, I encourage you to compare and contrast capitalism and socialism as both are put into practice in countries around the world. Ask yourself this question: where would I tend to find the things I value and enjoy the most, in capitalism or socialism? Until next time …