What is socialism?

Two kinds of definitions, the narrow and the broad

Yesterday I was reminded of a video report on a social housing complex in Austria as I was re-reading Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts where he discusses how capitalism has degraded our conception of what it means to have a home. It’s a great passage from a great text that utilizes such concepts that are seem contemporary like precariousness, the importance of a healthy climate and clean air, and the parasitical nature of landlordism that characterizes the housing market.

If you read that passage, Marx’s definition of what a capitalist housing system consists of is clear. It is defined by lack of rights for the tenant, the ownership by a capitalist landlord who can arbitrarily remove the tenant whenever they lack, the exorbitant rents, the terrible quality living conditions. That’s how Marx defines the wretched nature of housing as it had developed under the capitalism of the first half of the 19th century, before the appearance of mass socialist working class movements and parties that sought to address it with socialist alternatives.

And as I noted later in the thread, that is exactly what happened in Austria. If you read the excellent book referenced there by Helmut Gruber on Red Vienna, you will see that it was a mass working class socialist movement inspired by Marx who created those public, social housing estates for the working class. And it was the mirror opposite of the conditions of housing Marx had described almost a century before. It was not owned by a capitalist landlord but by the socialist dominated city council, and paid for by a heavily progressive tax system expropriating wealth from the bourgeoisie ruling class (something Marx had called for in the Communist Manifesto, for those unaware), it was of a high quality with care given to the environmental health conditions of its tenants, and it had secure tenants’ rights with low rents. One of the housing complexes was named after Marx, in honor of the movement that had inspired them to address the horrific conditions Marx had so brilliantly diagnosed in his writings.

But then I get a few 12 year olds with Mao Red Books and Stalin avis (not all of them, to be clear: most are sensible people, it’s just the purist 12 year olds with 10 followers who want to get a quick twitter dunk in for their e-friends so they can get some likes) replying with this feigned indignation, saying “that’s not socialism. OMG how can you say that’s socialism, LOL Austria isn’t socialist LOL LOL I am the only real socialist on earth LOL.”

When I come across this type of puerile idiotic poster, I just block and move on because it’s clear what they’re doing. But the underlying point is I think worth addressing here, namely the question of how you define socialism. There are two ways one can go about this, the narrow and the broad. Both of course have blurry boundaries, there will be disagreement on what to include and exclude in either one of them, but generally these set two distinctive kind of standards for what we perceive as socialism.

In the narrow definition, which those 12 year old twitter trolls try to feign a belief in but they have of course zero actual understanding of, socialism is defined in accordance with a particular tendency: Maoism, Trotskyism, Marxism-Leninism, Orthodox Marxism, Left-Communism, Anarchism, Social Democrats, and the dozens of varieties each of those include. So if you happen to wear the label of a Cliffite Trotskyist, the Soviet Union is a state capitalist society, and not socialist. If you’re a Trotskyist of the Grantite variety, then it’s a degenerated workers’ state with socialist elements in the economy as defined by central planning. If you’re a Marxist-Leninist of one kind, the SU was socialist during Stalin, but became revisionist and lost its status as such under Kruschev. In another definition, it remained socialist throughout the Kruschev and later period. And so it goes for Maoists, Dengists, Anarchists, Left-Communists. The lesser the real world impact of each of these movements has been over the past century or two, the more narrow their conception of socialism typically is. For Left-Communists, there has pretty much never been any socialism realized anywhere, except maybe in the very early periods of the Soviets and councils in the 1917-1919 years.

I think these narrow definitions of socialism maybe once served some utility, when there were actually mass socialist movements around and taking a position on it made some difference as to what one was aligned with and opposed to with some real world political implications. But now it’s just a game of larping online, exchanging one set of ideological labels for another every couple months, maybe a year, then saying that actually your current set of labels is the REAL socialism, and then rinse and repeat over and over again. It’s a fun game when you’re 12, but it stops being cute by your late teens. If you’re still doing that well into your twenties and thirties, that’s incredibly depressing and I hope you find some real hobbies soon.

The broad definitions are to me the only ones that have any merit in the present. Under the broad definition of socialism, any mass working class movement that defined itself as such and sought to implement policies that benefit the working class objectively, materially, is included under the definition. That includes Social Democrats in the Labour Party and various Western European countries that implemented such policies inspired by their socialist self-identification, people like Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan, the Austrian mass working class socialist movement and its achievements, but also the achievements of the mass working class socialist movements in the Soviet Union, in China, in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Nicaragua, in Burkina Faso, Granada. And it includes the mass socialist movements which were unable to take power, like the French and various other Western European Communist Parties, but whose existence and the immense pressure they exerted played a crucial role in these policies being implemented (together with the existence of the socialist Soviet Union which also played a key role in this).

Here the criterion for what is included under socialism isn’t some abstract vague conception that adheres to this or that narrow sect ideology and its esoteric requirements. “It’s only real socialism when the workers have taken over the means of production!” So in other words socialism has never existed, and all these mass working class self-identified socialist movements were just deluded fools, and all their material accomplishments that have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and given them healthcare and secure housing and high quality living conditions, that’s all just meaningless. Only me sitting in my suburban upper middle class basement as mommy prepares chicken nuggets and my 12 online friends of 12 year old really understand what real socialism is.

One of the additional benefits of such a broad definition of socialism, which takes seriously the accomplishments and sacrifices of these mass working class socialist movements is that it adheres to the conception of socialism that has been the norm throughout the history of the socialist movement, beginning with Marx himself. Marx did not oppose the kind of reforms that the socialists in Red Vienna enacted. He did not see them as antithetical to some niche “real socialism”. Instead of larping online, read some of his actual writings. Like this one where he vehemently denounces such idealist pseudo-radical nonsense, and says that any reforms that better the lives of working people is obviously something every serious socialist must work to realize. This is from 1873, after the experience of the Paris Commune when Marx famously noted that it is not sufficient to merely lay hold of the bourgeoisie state apparatus and wield it for our own purposes, but to smash it. Yes, of course that is true when the working class socialist movement has reached the point that it can do so, but that does not mean devolving into some puerile pseudo-radical utopianism, which he and Engels and the serious socialist movements of the day and its leaders like Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg never did.

Here’s another piece by Marx denouncing this utopian tendency, and advocating for a list of minimum demands, of basis reforms that the mass working class socialist movement had to advocate for and try to implement, so as to materially better the lives of the working class. That’s what socialism is and always has been concerned with, not esoteric meaningless internal squabbles of the ‘real definition of socialism’. Here’s a more detailed overview of Marx and Engels’ views on the reform versus revolution question, which they never posited as an absolute either/or, but rather had a contextual understanding of, dictated by the material conditions and political situation at any specific moment in time. That is exactly the kind of political understanding and acuity that the best of the working class socialist movements produced, including Lenin and his response to the puerile pseudo-radicals. Again, instead of larping online which can be great fun, maybe to some basic reading on the actual history of the movement you claim to be so purist about.

As I said, some disagreements obviously can still remain within this broad definition. For example, I believe it’s reasonable to exclude the Western Social Democratic parties from the definition after the neoliberal turn of the 1980s. So Blair’s Labour, which did accomplish some things for bettering the lives of the working class while also doing a lot to actively harm it, does not meet the minimum conditions to be included in that definition for that reason. It’s also the case that Blair’s movement abandoned its self-description as socialist, and proudly embraced capitalist neoliberal ideology (one of its main ideologues is Anthony Giddens, a neoliberal par excellence). And of course it also did not have a mass working class base of active support, which is more than just voting for them, it means active participation as part of a social movement. That’s not what any of these neoliberal Social Democratic Parties have. So as it does not meet any of the criteria to be included, I wouldn’t include them.

However, even there one should avoid pseudo-radicalism. If these parties advocate for and enact a policy that is objectively good for the working class and materially improves their lives, then obviously that’s a good thing, and it would meet the definition of being a socialist policy, one that self-described socialists who don’t just want to larp online should embrace and advocate for and try to get implemented. Things like Medicare For All, expansion of union rights, just recently in Pennsylvania the program to give free lunch to kids in school. Oh I’m sorry, does this not meet your definition of “workers owning the means of production is the only real socialism?” Go read the list of basic reforms Marx advocated for again here and here, which includes exactly these kinds of policies that materially better the lives of working people through state action brought about by pressure from below, from the working class. These policies aren’t enacted out of the benevolence of the bourgeoisie, as the puerile pseudo-radicals Marx replies to in that piece desperately tried to frame it as so as make any hope for such reforms appear absurd. No, they are solely the product of mass working class pressure, the only thing in history that has ever bettered the lives of working people across the globe, and remains the only thing that can ever do so. Notice the word “mass” there, so not your group of 12 twitter and discord friends sharing epic based memes from whatever your niche ideological denomination for the week is. Trotsky, Mao, Marx, Bordiga, back to Trotsky, maybe do some Hoxha now, Malatesta is cool, back to Marx—wow I’m having so much fun with this changing of labels with my online buddies—MOM! ARE THE NUGGEST READY YET?!

Addendum, I just wrote a comment clarifying the point I made in the piece about purism which I think is worthwhile to add to the main text as well:

What I tried to make clear is that purism is always relative. You can be and often are accused of purism if you don't support Democrats and Labour as "the lesser evil", or if you don't wholeheartedly and uncritically support members of the squad even when they have terrible votes like on the railway strike and funding Iron Dome, or being critical of Corbyn and the leadership when they were constantly bowing to the hysterical witch-hunts against him instead of confronting it head-on.

I've been accused of purism over all those, but the difference is that they are wielding that accusation from a qualitatively different political vantage point, not emanating from what I outlined as the broad definition of socialism, but from some other much broader conception of "progressive liberal-leftism", which is amorphous and intentionally so. They would and actually did include people like Blair in that category, as they did with Obama and now do with Biden.

That's fine if that's your politics and you're happy to embrace all sorts of "evils" or harms to working class conditions at home and abroad that are on par with if not worse than what the conservative faction of the ruling class engages in, but that's not socialism under any definition, and never has been.

As I note in the piece, the boundaries of a broad definition of socialism are blurry, one can have discussions on what to include or exclude from it that are reasonable, that involve the basic principles I outlined of it having to be based in a mass working class movement that identifies as socialist. But there are boundaries, and they have been strictly enforced throughout the history of the socialist movement, as Marx and Engels did against those who sought to water down the definition and nature of the socialist movement, as Lenin did as well against Bernstein when he wanted to do the same, and then later on during WW1 when the split between Social Democrats and Communists happened over supporting the war effort rather than denouncing it as an imperialist mass slaughter that had to be opposed by every socialist.

But notice how in each of these cases there were real material stakes involved, these were mass movements clarifying the boundaries of their minimum programmes, what it meant to be to advocate for socialism. It wasn't 12 suburbanite 12 year olds larping as some niche ideological denomination that has no mass basis at all and has been extinct as a political and social force for at least half a century if not longer in the case of some of them.