I'm taking a sociology class, and we just started talking about Marx. My professor asked us for examples of socialism, and quite a few people mentioned welfare.
I pushed back on this, saying that a redistribution of wealth isn't the same as "redistribution" (shared ownership) of productive means. My professor replied that socialism is a commitment to equality, which welfare provides.
Now, I wasn't sure exactly what to say next without denouncing capitalism. I'm also aware that my response could have been better. How would you respond to this?
EDIT: I'm not trying to convince my professor. I'm trying to present arguments that get my classmates thinking in hopes of radicalizing a few of them. One of the TA's actually pm'd me later saying that they agreed with me.
I would have said that there can be no economic equality as long as one class controls the means of production.
socialism is a commitment to equality
what a load of shit. I don't have an eloquent reply I'm just thinking about beating your professor with a pipe
socialism is when the locations of all our hogs are more or less equal
We need both kinds of people on the left, people that read books and theory and shit and ones that beat libs with pipes
Your professor has a correct definition of socialism (a commitment to equality) but no historical understanding. Marxism is specifically "scientific socialism" as distinct from other kinds though, and is the only socialism which has demonstrably been successful in creating socioeconomic equality. Without the common ownership of wealth you will eventually fall into inequality. In the case of welfare in the first world for instance, this looks like continuous cuts and over-bureaucratization until the program is no longer functional and can be scrapped without opposition.
Take the opportunity to point out Marx was a communist, not just a socialist, and what that is in relation to socialism and scientific socialism. Tell people that half the manifesto is Marx talking about other socialists his party is in opposition to.
ML states are not the only economic and political systems that have resulted in low levels of wealth inequality. There are a number of countries that have comparable GINI coefficients than the USSR had today.
The big distinction is that the inequality within the USSR was mostly from place to place rather than within the same cities, something that social democracy has failed to achieve that resulted in many of the more positive social outcomes we saw in the USSR. Moscow was much wealthier than some random small city in usbekistan for example.
Especially since Marx spends like half of capital ripping them or praising them.
That's funny because we just finished learning about Comte and Spencer, along with their ideas of sociology as a science.
I'll admit that I haven't really read any concrete theory beyond short pamphlets and leftist news, but I will definitely keep that in mind.
You can do a lot with a little theory. As long as you understand the main arguments of the foundational texts (Capital, Imperialism, etc) and have absorbed enough names and theories from the internet you can usually hold your own. I've been pushing nonstop in two of my classes this term like this.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s generally worth trying to have these kinds of arguments with most professors since they’re typically in a position of power.
If you can tell they’re having the discussion in good faith, then maybe, but I feel like the majority of the time they’re just going to talk down to you and give you their “capitalism good” perspective and nothing will change that
I generally think it’s much more productive to have these discussions with classmates / coworkers. I’ve radicalized a lot of my peers by just complaining about certain things that we all struggle with (healthcare, etc)
Do the people who do the producing (aka workers) control the means of production or not? That is literally the deciding factor in whether you have socialism or not. Everything else is obfuscation and lib shit.
Control and own. It is also theoretically possible that the workers could democratically control production, but the surplus value would still be reaped by a someone else.
Straight from Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
“... a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism”
Tell your professor to watch that chinese marx anime. that'll show him
please tell me there's a fan sub of this or something. i can't seem to find it anywhere just articles about it.
Socialism is the lowest stage of communism in my view, so it's when a state goes about trying to resolve the contradictions keeping it from achieving communism. That would be meaningless to people not committed to a Marxist view though. I say this because socialism isn't even really control of means of production by the workers, that's a common misconception.
Socialism is shared decision-making power then. It's still a far stretch from "socialism is equality"
yeah for sure, that is pure liberalism and academic dishonesty/ ignorance on the part of your professor. It astounds me that even "Marxists" professors think Marx was an "economic determinists" and dismiss his historical materialist methods on those grounds, but if you read Marx at all that is an absurd take. Academia just doesn't produce good discourse around Marx at all, it's pretty sad.
"Equality is a necessary, but not sufficient, tenet of socialist systems." is an appropriate response to this in an academic setting.
Socialisms goal is communism. If you look at Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, food and shelter are the first steps, so you could say that providing those things is socialism. But that fight was in the past, and socialism for us will have to be focused on those next steps.
Lenin talked directly about this "commitment to equality" bullshit the professor is trying:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm
Lenin has a way with words, the way he just effortlessly finds 50 ways to call someone a moron is fantastic.
