Socialism not Communism
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People are inherently greedy, it’s why our society is run by capitalists and the greediest get to the top.
In that case, explain why the working class still supports a social system that systematically exploits them by extracting surplus value from them and thus operates directly against their interests. That hardly makes the working class sound “greedy”, does it? Since the working class constitutes the vast majority, you would think that makes them more representative of what human beings actually are than the tiny capitalist class that you call the greediest of the lot.
While you are at it, please also explain why, for 95% plus of our time on this planet, our species lived in food-sharing, egalitarian, nomadic hunter-gatherer bands. Again, what is “greedy” about such food-sharing behaviour?
If anything is likely to be INHERENT as a behavioural pattern, it is this Palaeolithic outlook (which would flatly refute your claim that human beings are “inherently greedy”). See Marshall Sahlins’s work, “Stone Age Economics: The Original Affluent Society”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
Pointing this out does not mean I think our “human nature” aligns with a Palaeolithic lifestyle or outlook. On the contrary, the only useful thing one can say about “human nature” is that, apart from being social animals, we are also highly adaptable and can live in a wide variety of social systems. This is because these different social systems involve LEARNT behaviour, not INHERITED behaviour.
This is what makes your whole argument so silly and so ahistorical and shallow. Greed is human behaviour, but it is LEARNT behaviour. We are not “inherently” greedy. We are taught to behave greedily, and this crucially depends on the kind of society we live in.
In capitalism, “greed” is baked into the system because, apart from anything else, status acquisition is linked to material consumption and status competition is a zero-sum game. Hence “greed”.
Your problem, Grandpa, is that you don’t realise the great extent to which you have actually been indoctrinated into a capitalist mindset. Your whole mindset and values reek of a pro-capitalist outlook and ideology, but you don’t see it.
You may pretend to be an “objective” observer commenting on what you believe to be objective facts. But you are not. You have been conditioned to think the way you do, but you can also be conditioned out of it by being a little more flexible in your thinking. There is hope for you yet. LOL
That is why the capitalist class created a pseudoscience known as social Darwinism. It has been proven thousands of times that the so-called greedy and selfish nature of humans is totally wrong. It has been used to justify the capitalists’ need to exploit humans and produce profits, and to justify wars and killing. That theory has been debunked thousands of times. That is a very old bourgeois lie; human society evolved based on mutual cooperation
Human behaviours are socially learned, and the bourgeois ideology (distortion of reality, or false consciene ) has produced a large influence in the minds of humans
There’s a lot there robbo, but briefly …
Because we live in a society with a capitalist economy. Other economic systems have been tried and failed; communism, planned economies, mixed economies. That doesn’t mean capitalism is perfect, but it’s the best of the bunch. It’s existed for 400 to 500 years and the others have come and gone. Now you explain to me why no one is voting for your idea of a cashless, stateless, everything free society?Of course our culture reflects our behaviour and yes, I favour regulated capitalism over anything you’re suggesting which will never happen. You do know that, don’t you?
Let’s talk reality.
If you’re working and your salary was suddenly tripled, would you still want an equality based society where everyone shares what you now have? Ditto if you won the lottery? There are some who are altruistic by nature, but they’re few and far between.
There are small communities that practice your form of anarchism/communism where a bunch of people who all have nothing get together and agree to share the nothing they’ve got with others who also have nothing. Among them won’t be anyone who has anything and is willing to share it with others.
As I live in a capitalist society I’d prefer to be a millionaire. My job is to convince a million people to send me a pound each. That’s not going to happen and is just wishful thinking. But Grandpa you’ll say, ‘in our society you won’t need money.’ I won’t? Does that mean I get my cottage in the countryside and a Rolls Royce? And they all lived happily ever after?
But hold on a minute, who said ‘No you can’t, because you don’t need it.’ Woah, who are you to tell me what I need or don’t need?
‘We’re the People’s Committee who decide what you get and only we have a cottage and a Rolls Royce as we have unanimously decided we need it and you don’t.’ Isn’t that how it always ends?He uses Lenin and the democratic socialist separation of socialism and Communism, but the history of both terms proves something different.
In the 1840s, as Engels explained, they used the word “communist” because at that time the word “socialism” was used to refer to the followers of Robert Owen in England and Charles Fourier in France. Indeed, the Owenites actually invented the word (the first recorded use of it was in the London Cooperative Magazine of November 1827) and called themselves Socialists. Marx and Engels didn’t want to be associated with the advocacy by these groups of going to America or into the countryside to establish small-scale communities based on common ownership as the answer to capitalism, as what they advocated was political action by the working class to establish common ownership on a society-wide level. So they called themselves Communists and wrote the Communist Manifesto (rather than the Socialist Manifesto).
By the 1880s, however, these groups no longer existed and the word “socialism” was no longer associated with setting up small-scale communities, and the emerging working-class movement for a society of common ownership and democratic control was able to call itself “socialist”. So, when William Morris. Eleanor Marx and others broke away from the Social Democratic Federation with Engels’s approval in 1884; they called their new organisation the Socialist League. And Engels himself called one of his best (perhaps his best) writings Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (rather than Communism, Utopian and Scientific).
In short, what in the 1840s Marx and Engels had called communism Engels in the 1880s called Socialism.
In the 20th century, its usage changed again. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 19,17 Lenin called his party “communist” to distinguish it from the “socialist” parties of western and central Europe, which had been founded in Engels’s day but which by then had become openly and hopelessly reformist. But he also made “socialism” a period of transition, when there would be full state ownership with everyone becoming a state employee, between capitalism and communism (by which he meant what Marx and Engels had called indifferently “socialism” or “communism” and what we call “socialism”, i..,. a society of common ownership without money, wages, the state, etc.). But this was state capitalism, not real socialism.
In 1936 Stalin proclaimed that Russia had become a “socialist country” and when the Russian army overran Eastern Europe after the war it set up puppet regimes in the various countries there which, together with Russia. Stalin and his supporters called “the socialist countries”. You seem to have fallen for this myth when you talk about the “communist parties” which used to govern “the socialist countries”. But this — that Russia, etc were socialist — is the Big Lie of the 20th century. They were never socialist: they were always state capitalist.
There is also a new movement called renovated communists; some call them the domesticated communists.
This is a well-written description of what scientific socialism really is, and Engels used the expression of scientific socialism
That is the bourgeois concept of nations, national interests, and the concept of peoples; there is no homogeneity of interests in any nation, and some capitalists have their own differences.
Some people used the concept that we bombarded Vietnam, but they were not bombarding Vietnam; it was a capitalist war, initiated by capitalists, using an army financed by them and by their agency, the capitalist state; therefore, the concept is wrong.
The workers do not own any state or any nation; therefore, the workers do not have any national interests.
Our president is another term used, but workers do not have leaders; they have governors, and they do not need leaders; leaders need the working class to place themselves in power. The leaders represent their own particular capitalist class, which will defend their interests, but they do not represent the interests of the working class.
We are paying for their salaries as state officials, but the state is not financed by the working class; it is financed by the capitalist class with their own surplus value, and the state officials are representatives of the ruling class, and they are employees of an agency of the capitalist state.
We are paying for their wars, another wrong conception, because wars are financed by the capitalist class; it is their war, it is not the war of the working class; they use nationalism to gain the support of the working class
Most leaders are not elected by a majority of supporters; they are elected by a percentage compared with their opponents, and many workers do not vote for any of them.Our economic system, capitalism, is an economic system that was created to serve the interests of minority groups of humans; therefore, it is not the system of the vast majority.
The expression WE belong to them. The only thing that we own in this society is our labour force, which must be sold as a commodity in order to be able to survive. We do not own factories, corporations, mines, seas, oceans, rivers, real estate, armies, states, police, presidents, senators, judges; even more, we do not own the cemeteries, which are real estate properties.
The bourgeoisie has distorted our minds; that is the reason why ideology is known as distortion of reality or false consciousness.
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2025/no-1451-july-2025/who-are-the-people/. Capitalists and workers are not WE, and the people is a false conception. Capitalists are not our allies; therefore, their world is their world, and our world is our world.
As Malcom X said: The slave of the house of the master said: Master, are we sick? And the slave of the plantation wanted the master to die when he was sick. Today, there are many wage slaves, or modern slaves, defending their own masters.
Grandpa “Thatcher was speaking on behalf of the majority who voted for the Conservatives.”
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Our society is not divided between conservatives and Liberals; it is divided between workers and capitalists. Those terms eliminate the concept of class struggles; moreover, in the communist manifesto, Marx and Engels indicated that with the development of capitalism, conservative values would be eliminated by capitalism itself. The term conservative is totally reactionary and backward
That society is divided between workers and capitalists is Marxism simplified. Take away the capitalists and we all live happily ever after. Prove it? A man who wrote the Communist Manifesto in a bygone ear nearly two hundred years ago said so and it’s here in a SPGB link. So we take away capitalism in various countries during the 20th century and what happens? It doesn’t work and they all ended up in dictatorships.
Removing capitalism as an economic solution only works if it’s successful, if it doesn’t it’s not communism?
Where are the workers of today cheering to give communism another go as they were in the 1970s? They’ve been replaced by the minorities; the Islamists, gays, trans, Greens … None of who have a communist agenda and don’t give a toss about capitalism, or communism. It’s why you’re a tiny isolated minority still shouting in the wind for a decades old idea of a workers take over, but it’s all theory and wishful thinking.
Don’t you find it a little odd that you’re supporting an idea that is never going to happen? Wishing it would is completely different. A bit like me wanting the government to triple my pension, but that’s never going to happen either. Nice idea though.
Why not try thinking for yourselves instead of relying on others to do it for you? Rather than cheering for something that is never going to happen, why not be grateful for what you have got and fight to keep capitalism out of it.
A welfare state that your Grandparents would have cut off their right hand for. Why not cheer for the Chinese model that includes but curbs the excesses of capitalism and above all, works. Maybe wonder why if Marxism is such a good idea, no one is voting for it. Or why the Communist Party disbanded in 1991 and splintered into tiny in-fighting groups of Marxist-Leninists versus Trotskyists, each of whom will tell you they’re right and all the others are wrong.
And there follows another link to theory, wishful thinking and what someone else tells you.
There’s a lot there robbo, but briefly …
Because we live in a society with a capitalist economy. Other economic systems have been tried and failed; communism, planned economies, mixed economies. That doesn’t mean capitalism is perfect, but it’s the best of the bunchWell, there you go – you’ve just gone and shot yourself in the foot as far as your claim to be an ‘Old Skool’ socialist is concerned. Not only are your mindset and values, pro-capitalist; you have just now admitted your preference for capitalism as a socioeconomic system.
Not that we recognise those “other economic systems have been tried and failed; communism, planned economies, mixed economies”. All of these other economic systems are variants of capitalism since they are all characterised by generalised wage labour and commodity production.
We in the SPGB advocate for communism aka socialism in its classical Marxian (non-Leninist) sense. It amuses me when pro-capitalist advocates claim that what we are advocating for cannot be realised -cannot exist – because “communism has been tried and failed”. If it has been “tried” then clearly it must have existed. Either you acknowledge communism can exist or you agree that what existed in these places was NOT communism. Its one or the other.
Let’s talk reality.
If you’re working and your salary was suddenly tripled, would you still want an equality based society where everyone shares what you now have? Ditto if you won the lottery? There are some who are altruistic by nature, but they’re few and far between.
Once again, this is a classic example of your complete lack of sociological imagination which leads you to uncritically project onto a future post-capitalist what you experience in a capitalist society. You are also, incidentally, once again repeating the same mistake I pointed out to your earlier – namely the false notion that socialism depends on people being 100% altruistic.
No society is driven by purely egoistic or purely altruistic motives. Every conceivable human society entails a mixture of both – even capitalism depends on altruism to some extent.
It is not simply altruistic values that cause me to want socialism. Its also in my self-interest as a worker to want socialism.
I note that you have completely evaded my question relating to your claim that people are “inherently greedy”. If this is the case, why then do workers like yourself continue to support a socioeconomic system – capitalism – that exploits you and extracts an economic surplus from you. This system operates against your own interests and yet you claim people are inherently greedy. These two claims cannot be reconciled.
Of course, if my salary were to be tripled tomorrow I wouldn’t object to that though since we are talking about “reality” here – meaning capitalist reality – that is not a particularly realistic scenario, is it?
But, in any case, so what? How does this in any way negate my advocacy of a post-capitalist society? There is no wage labour in a post-capitalist society so your question is totally superfluous or meaningless.
It is in the self-interest or class interests of workers to establish a socialist society and, by extension,it is also in their interests to keep such a society in good working order. Who would want to revert back to a society based on class exploitation?
But Grandpa you’ll say, ‘in our society you won’t need money.’ I won’t? Does that mean I get my cottage in the countryside and a Rolls Royce? And they all lived happily ever after? But hold on a minute, who said ‘No you can’t, because you don’t need it.’ Woah, who are you to tell me what I need or don’t need?‘We’re the People’s Committee who decide what you get and only we have a cottage and a Rolls Royce as we have unanimously decided we need it and you don’t.’ Isn’t that how it always ends?
Again, this shows your misunderstanding of what a socialist society is about and what it entails.
I gave you a simple example of how such a society would function. Take a free public drinking water fountain. Nobody is stopping you drinking as much water as you need but by the same token there is no point in you taking more water than you need (greed), is there? There is more than enough water to go round for everyone to help themselves to what they need without money entering the picture at any point.
Socialists maintain that this would be true of needs in general in a socialist society. We have long had the technological capacity to provide enough. Even in capitalism today, enough food is produced to feed 10 billion people (though 40% of it is wasted). There are millions upon millions of empty housing units (60 million in China alone!) to solve the housing problem virtually overnight.
In addition, most work today in a capitalist money economy is socially useless and will disappear in a socialist society. A small example would be the entire financial sector. All that currently wasted labour and resources will redirected towards socially useful production. We can both substantially increase useful output while at the same time, cut the average working week significantly as well as reduce the adverse environmental impact of our productive activities.
This is only possible if you make the shift from production for market sale to production solely for use. In other words, only in a socialist society will we be able to properly and efficiently harness the productive potential that already exists to meet human needs.
Finally, you introduce another argument. What if everybody desires a “Rolls Royce”, say?
Well, in the first place, I wouldn’t call this a “need”. It is more accurately described as a want. Needs and wants are not the same thing. A need grows in intensity the longer it is left unmet. The opposite is true of a want.
That you should want a Rolls Royce is a reflection of the kind of society we live in in which status is linked to material consumption. Having a Rolls Royce is indicative of high status in this society and this is why you want such a thing.
Needless to say, status based on material consumption would be completely meaningless in a free access society. The only way you could earn the respect of your fellows is through what you contributed to such a society, not what you took out of it.
That said, while it is true that a socialist society could produce enough to meet everyone´s basic needs, it is also true that it is unlikely that it could produce all that we might want. Providing everyone with a Rolls Royce for example will be out of the question.
So goods pertaining to basic needs for food, housing, education etc would be provided on a free access basis while other goods – particularly those on the luxury end of the spectrum – could well be subject to some form of rationing.
Socialists have never denied this but I make this point to simply illustrate that that we are talking about two distinct classes of goods in a socialist society: free access goods and rationed goods.
Obviously the allocation of resources would be biased in favour of the former since these relate to our much more important basic needs.Your characterisation of this as involving some “People’s Committee” who decide what you get is of course a typical caricature that one might expect if you are thinking of some kind of authoritarian state capitalist regime. I don’t see it like that at all.
Quite apart from the fact that in a free access society the only one who decides what you get in the case of most goods is you yourself – not some committee – I think this completely distorts or obscures the democratic character of a post capitalist society.
To the extent that some goods may need to be rationed in a socialist society, you need to have some basic metric upon which to base your rationing system. I have developed the idea of a “compensation model” of rationing based on the assessed quality of housing stock in a community.
I wont expand on it in detail here – this post is already too long – but if you are interested, the scheme is discussed in more detail here
I would only add that this scheme is eminently practicable because it is something that is already used by local authorities today for the purpose of levying council taxes. Obviously, we would not be talking about taxes in a post-money socialist society but some of the administrative procedures this entails could certainly be adapted and used in a socialist society.
Fantastic post, Robin. But Grandpa is obviously stuck in a groove he’ll never get out of. So is it worth persisting? Hard to know exactly what his purpose was in initiating this discussion. In his very first post he said ‘I don’t know whether I’ll fit in here’ and then, in the same message, accused us of harbouring ‘some utopian communist fantasy where 8 billion people live in a wageless society, share everything and live happily ever after’. How likely are you to ‘fit in’ with something you immediately mock? That’s why, at a certain point, I suggested he might be a troll. But perhaps he just wanted a bit of fun. And maybe he’s had that by now.
That society is divided between workers and capitalists is Marxism, simplified. Take away the capitalists, and we all live happily ever after. Prove it? A man who wrote the Communist Manifesto in a bygone era nearly two hundred years ago said so, and it’s here in an SPGB link. So we took away capitalism in various countries during the 20th century, and what happened? It doesn’t work,rk and they all ended up in dictatorships.
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Warren Buffett, who is a capitalist, has said that there is a class struggle and that his class is winning that war; therefore, he has more class consciousness than you, and he recognises that there are two social classes. The concept of class struggle was also mentioned by the capitalists during their struggles with the feudalists and the aristocracy, and Marx transformed it.
Most pro-capitalists who are also exploited tend to hide their own exploitation and the class struggle.
Can you give an example where capitalism has been eliminated? Can you mention a place where the law of value of exchange has been eliminated? It looks like you have not heard about the concept of communism in one country, which can not be established.d
Many conceptions expressed in the Communist Manifesto are still valid in our time, even though it contains certain reformist clauses applicable to its time, which were also corrected later on by Marx and Engels in several of their works. The Communist Manifesto is not the only work written by Marx; they wrote 132 volumes of political and economic works and anthropological works. You are being simplistic now because taking away the capitalist is not the case; it is removing the system of profits, and some capitalists are going to be forced to accept the new society, and they will no longer be capitalists either. You are just shooting like a sniper.
In the soviet union, they eliminated the private capitalists, but the ruling class evolved within the state apparatus; the economic exploitation continued, and wage slavery continued too, and the system of profits continued
But Grandpa is obviously stuck in a groove he’ll never get out of. So is it worth persisting?
I hope so, Howard. At least it provides an opportunity to deal with the kind of knee-jerk opposition to the concept of a socialist society that is unfortunately very widespread…
Fantastic post, Robin. But Grandpa is obviously stuck in a groove he’ll never get out of. So is it worth persisting? Hard to know exactly what his purpose was in initiating this discussion. In his very first post he said ‘I don’t know whether I’ll fit in here’ and then, in the same message, accused us of harbouring ‘some utopian communist fantasy where 8 billion people live in a wageless society, share everything and live happily ever after’. How likely are you to ‘fit in’ with something you immediately mock? That’s why, at a certain point, I suggested he might be a troll. But perhaps he just wanted a bit of fun. And maybe he’s had that by now.
That was the point of my asking will I fit in here. Is dissent among the eight billion frowned on? You know, the world in complete agreement thing, all holding hands …? Socialism, communism, anarchism … I’m sure if I put you all into one room you’d spend forever arguing amongst yourselves. You know it’s never going to happen so why act surprised?
You can persuade me by saying I get my house in the countryside and a Rolls Royce though. 🙂
But Grandpa is obviously stuck in a groove he’ll never get out of. So is it worth persisting?
I hope so, Howard. At least it provides an opportunity to deal with the kind of knee-jerk opposition to the concept of a socialist society that is unfortunately very widespread…
When you’ve persuaded me you only have a few million more to convince. Come on you love it. Gets all that pent up anger out and gives you a chance to get a bit of Marxist theory out.
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