How did socialism begin and how should we look at it?

As a political movement, socialism actually began in the Industrial Revolution. There are many examples to examine to gain a better understanding of socialism but I believe one of the better examples is found in Thomas More’s Utopia. In Utopia, More strongly promotes socialism through communal ownership and does so as a way of controlling one’s own sins. While the idea of sin was prominent in More’s work, it was used more as a standard than as anything else because More’s Utopia was highly critical of organized religion. 

More posited that land and houses should be common property and everyone should work for a least two years, mostly on communal farms. He also advocated that everyone change houses every 10 years to avoid the pride of possession. In Utopia More removed money from society, allowing people the freedom to take what they needed from the common storehouse when they were in need. More envisioned everyone living simple lives meeting their own needs and working only a few hours a day leaving the rest of the time for leisure. While this sounds utopic, the reality of the time was quite the opposite.

Early attempts at copying More’s socialist society were almost all agrarian in nature, which made hard labor and long days necessary elements for successful farming which left little time for leisure. The French Revolution was another attempt at pursuing ideas of socialism. Here we find the problem of control rising to the surface. Who determined the standards of community and made the decisions for community was the larger issue during this time and continues to be hotly debated today. 

Today, socialism is still considered, by many, as a viable political and economic option. Pull up any philosophy page on a major college or university website and you will read about the positives of socialism. You will read how, as an economy, it features social rather than private ownership of the means of production. You will read how it gears production towards satisfaction rather than profit which sounds simple but the practicality of it is much more complicated. What you will not read is how socialism places the ownership of property and the control of the means of production in the hands of those in power. You will not read about a system of checks and balances or a means of accountability for those in power because it is not there. There are no restraints or means of accountability placed on those in power which is problematic whether we are referencing socialism, capitalism or any other economic or political system. The assumption of socialism as far as I can tell is that those in power are different and worthy of our trust, but as More in Utopia sardonically suggested, what about the sins of pride and greed? A quick study of history will suggest both are issues in socialism and, to be fair, they are issues in every other economic and political system as well.

What you will find in most socialist situations is plenty of pride, plenty of oppression and the accumulation of personal wealth. Yes, you will find those same things in capitalism, but where socialism has no means of accountability, the same cannot be said for capitalism. Capitalism has a system of checks and balances called a free market which is a means of accountability even if there is disagreement as to its potency. There are claims that capitalism is corrupt and easily manipulated, which are true, but those same issues are valid for socialism as well. 

Many philosophers present socialism as an economic system and an ideology, which is the correct and right way to look at socialism; it is much more than an economic system. Most will write about how socialism organizes economic activity through human planning instead of a free market which they claim positions socialism as morally and economically superior to capitalism. Most socialists argue that capitalism undermines democracy, facilitates exploitation, distributes opportunities and resources unequally and vitiates community, but the facts do not support those claims. The human planning of socialism places power in the hands of a few who make decisions for everyone else under the guise that they know what is best and act for the good of all, but what happens if they do not know what is best … what happens if they do not act for the good of all?

Economic systems are not inherently evil or good. They are only as good or as evil as those who put them into action and enforce them. The ideas of socialism are not terrible. The desire for equality and the equal distribution of goods and services is commendable, but at the heart of these ideas and the implementation of any economic system is the human heart and its nature. Looking at our world and its past, I am not convinced that the human heart will function properly if given unbridled power and wealthy. Again, are the ideas of socialism bad ideas? Not at all, but until socialism comes to grips with how to restrain power and greed it will not be the answer we seek and continue to produce more problems than it solves. 

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 …