Some general thoughts on Socialism and Marxism

Europe and the western world are continuing to be plagued by banking difficulties and debt. This is added to by a growing possibility of another winter of discontent by the British trade union movement. With this backdrop, it seems high time to give some thoughts on left wing politics. So where better to start  then by musing about the fundamental concepts of left wing politics: Communism, Socialism and Marxism. In fact it may be easier to boil down these three concepts into one which encapsulates them all: Socialism. The reason is that the term Socialism, and by extension the concept of the Socialist, have become increasingly confused and generalised since the time of Karl Marx. There has been the USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Nazi party, which is an abbreviation for the National Socialist Worker's Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in Deutsch)  and various 'democratic Socialist'  parties.  Each of these entities have used the term 'Socialist' in some form or another, but with widely differing concepts of what it is to be a Socialist.

Consequently, it is possible to say that Socialism, Marxism and Communism are all but interchangeable as conceptual ideas. At their fundamental cores, they all believe that it is possible to artificially create a society of people who are all equal in wealth and means. They believe that free trade is oppressive and creates a system of proletariat and bourgeois. They believe the bourgeois (wealthy business owners) and petite Bourgeoisie (small business owners) are deliberately attempting to force down the wages of the proletariat (the working classes). Socialists and Marxists, to varying degrees, believe that free enterprise can be tamed or even destroyed and with it class difference. Revolution is encouraged by some Marxists in order to create a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' followed by a disintegration of the state. The withering away of the state has never, however, been witnessed in reality, with perhaps the exception of Somalia, although this country does, at least in an official capacity, have a government - even if it does only control Mogadishu, the capital.

However, it seems that this whole argument goes against the fundamentals of nature. The world operates according to the law of 'survival of the fittest', more commonly known as Darwin's theory of natural selection. Regardless of how much we try to persuade ourselves that we do not, we are always looking after our own vested interests and those of our family before those of anyone else. It is innate and built into the way we are and act.

The other founding assertion by Marxists is that a system of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' should be the founding economic principal of a state, and that the concept should spread to all countries. This concept is based on the idea that 'capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society'. This last idea coincidently seems to be a reason often sited by those in favour of a strong trade union presence within an economy. However, it seems this interpretation is flawed: after all, what is the point of a business without customers having the ability to purchase the goods that are produced? Far from being in the interest of companies to reduce wages and maximise profits, it is in their interest to keep wages buoyant if, perhaps, for no other reason than that it causes a multiplier effect and means they can sell more products.

Hardline Marxist and Socialist economics suggests the abolision of the state and money and public ownership of the factors of production should be the desired political economic aims. Marxist economists are, therefore, effectively only proposing an elaborate form of subsistence bartering: one sheep for two cows etc: this is the only conceivable way of abolishing a market economy. Money is a store of labour, as pointed out by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations. However, by exchanging manufacteured goods instead of receiving a wage you bypass an employers ability to make a profit from their endeavour. Therefore the reality is that there has never been a truly Marxist government. So far, every country that has attempted to create a Communist system of government, with perhaps the exception of North Korea,  has been found wanting and had to resort to at least some kind of Capitalist model in order to appropriate goods in a market economy. Almost 200 years after Karl Marx's birth in 1818, the high hopes of many of the pioneers of the Socialist and Marxist ideology seem to fallen short of their aspirations. Many have come to the realisation that a politcal economy model that rejects market intervention completely has not been found. There will always be discussions about the best politcal economic model: whilst every system, Capitalism, Socialism and Marxism, has its merits, for the time being at least it would seem that Capitalism is the least bad option.