Socialism Is For The Happy Life

Both detractors and some of its supposed proponents have made the name of socialism discredited. The word “socialism” conjures up images of gulags, purges and secret police. It’s not a hard thing to claim that the Soviet bloc were some of the least free places on Earth, requiring nothing short of a wall to keep people in them. The individual was, and continues to be in such countries as North Korea, nothing, with no liberties and no free life of their own. Stalin, purportedly said “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?” It should be self-evident from reading this blog that we don’t want any part of such a system. What’s more, we do not consider it to be an example of socialism. The meaning of socialism has been twisted through the actions of a number of governments who claimed the title of “socialist”. The task now is to reclaim the real meaning of the socialism and what it is to be a socialist. Only through the free discussion of ideas can people fully educate themselves and develop their own consciousness. It is only with total political freedom can people then turn their political consciousness into radical action and self-organisation.

What is this thing they are fighting for, what is socialism? Many on the left and the right are convinced that it merely means state intervention into the economy. So everything from Sweden’s welfare system to ‘Obamacare” to Stalin’s five-year plans are suddenly given the title of “socialist”. But Marx and Engels would have mocked such ideas. Engels jokingly remarked in this regard that “of late, since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon … must be numbered among the founders of socialism.”

The state as a body ruling over society doesn’t equal socialism in any case, no matter how it describes itself. Socialism is about the democratic control of the community and the workplaces, the economy and the whole of society by the people who work it and live in it. Socialism is about the common ownership of all the material wealth of humanity so no person – whether capitalist or state bureaucrat – can use the privilege of ownership to control the lives of others. It means the end to both the rule of the tiny elite and the rule of impersonal market chaos. Socialism is about freedom for all from want. Or as Eugene Debs succinctly put it, “socialism means social ownership, cooperation, freedom and abundance for all”. Socialism is the final victory of democracy for it is the fulfillment of people’s sovereignty over their lives. An important part of the goal of socialism is the idea of planning. Human knowledge and reason are capable of consciously deciding what society needs and what to produce without having to rely on the blind forces of supply and demand of the market. Socialism means we have control over our destiny, to be able to consciously plan, to decide and to act, instead of being the victim of random chance.

Free association is the crux of the entire project. Socialism can only be the creation of the workers themselves, no one can do it for them or on their behalf. But once fought for, built and achieved, the returns for the individual is what’s important. Socialism is about maximising freedom for the individual, in the social context in which their needs are being met as a right. The working day would be shortened, as we would no longer have to support a class of capitalistic parasites on our backs, and people would have the freedom and leisure to explore their interests and abilities; to paint, to write, to experiment, to study, to be creative and to develop as human beings. Socialists want all people to enjoy in the fruits of humanity’s labour over countless generations and to be given the opportunities to freely add to those achievements as best they can. Variety and diversity of life is as much of an aim of socialism which aims to maximise the choices of lifestyle, work, ways of artistic expression for all, but all this only can be accomplished once we move beyond the confines and restraints put on us by the profit system.

We cannot say for certain what socialism will be like, or determine its every detail ahead of time. That is something for those who live in it to freely build for themselves. But we can say that people will be able to live their lives to their fullest only when they are not constricted by the worry and fear of paying the bills; students will be able to expand their intellectual horizons to their full potential when they are freed from a future of wage slavery; artists will be able to explore all their creativity when they are no longer dictated by the demands of the market. You cannot achieve true freedom for yourself and only yourself, all on you own. True freedom in the here and now under capitalism is largely an illusion, but we can gain glimpses of a free life when we struggle together and collectively resist oppression, exploitation and tyranny. Oppression, tyranny and exploitation can only breed resistance. We are all going to be free or none of us will. We live together, we work together, we fight together, we win together.