Socialism is becoming more popular in America. According to an April 9, 2009 poll by Rasmussen Reports, only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The same poll found that younger Americans are most favorably inclined with 33% of adults under 30 preferring socialism. Americans today are changing their minds about socialism and capitalism, but without a clear understanding of what socialism is.

At a moment in history when the transition from industrial to electronic production is forcing global economic and social reorganization, understanding the difference between capitalism, socialism and communism helps us envision a future society that meets the needs of all and a strategy to achieve it.

After decades in which socialism has been painted as evil, lawless, and totalitarian to forestall criticism of capitalism as an economic system, people’s minds have been opened by the turmoil of the economic crisis and the government’s bailout of the banks, not the people.

The ruling class has discredited alternative economic systems – socialism and communism – as unpatriotic or impossible by equating socialism and communism with dictatorship while treating capitalism and democracy as one and the same. In fact, both democracy and dictatorship are forms of political systems. Capitalism, socialism and communism are economic systems.

Socialism an economic system

Economic systems are the set of relations between people and classes in social production, essentially who owns the means of production and how the product is distributed.

Under the economic system of capitalism, the capitalist class owns the means of production (factories, transport, etc.) as private property – in contrast to public property (like schools and fire stations), or personal property (like homes and cars). The basic law of capitalism – competition in the production of commodities to maximize profits – results in poverty, war, colonial exploitation, monopolies, and crisis.

Capitalists hire workers to produce commodities, which are socially produced, but privately owned by the capitalists, and then sold for profit. The state provides an infrastructure to assist the capitalist class in maximizing profit and towards this end provides some basic necessities (such as schools, unemployment insurance, and social security) to maintain a workforce and ward off starvation, social chaos, and revolution.

Under the economic system of socialism, the means of production are not in the private hands of the capitalists, but are socially owned by the state or by cooperatives. Production is planned by the state with the goal of satisfying the constantly rising requirements of society through expanding production.

Under socialism, the product is distributed to those who work either directly in the form of payment for work or socially through public goods and services and the development of public industry. Money and exchange based on the value of commodities – which is the essence of capitalist production – continue to operate in some spheres and influence economic planning.

Under the economic system of communism, the means of production are publicly owned and capable of producing abundance sufficient to meet the needs of all of society. The use of money disappears because commodities are no longer produced for a market, but for distribution on the basis of need.

Socialism a stage

At every stage in the history of society, the development of the means of production make possible certain kinds of economic systems. The basic implements of animal husbandry and seasonal planting of crops made possible the economic system of slavery. The steam engine, factories, and ocean-going ships opened up the era of industrial production, which made possible the economic systems of socialism and capitalism.

The socialist movement was born in the period of transition from agriculture to industry as serfs and peasants were driven off the land to seek survival as wage-slaves in the miserable conditions of the earliest factories. In many countries political parties of the working class organized and led this new class in a political battle for power to control the state and their own destiny.

The Bolshevik Party of Russia was the clearest example of this struggle for socialism. It succeeded in leading the Russian proletariat to victory against the Tsar and the new capitalist class to win state power for the working people of Russia in 1917. This political victory enabled the Russian working class to establish socialism. After taking power they faced the challenge of wrenching a backward, agrarian economy out of semi-feudalism and building a domestic industry in the aftermath of WWI and the destruction of WWII. Socialism in the Soviet Union – and other socialist countries – was understood to be the first stage toward communism.

In the era of industrial production, the vision of a world without exploitation, hunger and war galvanized the working class movement for communism, but industrial production was unable to create the material conditions required for a communist economic system. The idea of communism preceded the possibility.

Today, in this era of electronic production, the reverse is true. Now, the material conditions for communism exist, but the ideas are lagging behind.

Communism possible today

The introduction of electronics into production has created the conditions for this abundance and thus Soviet style socialism of the 20th Century is no longer necessary or possible. In the 21st century, the global capitalist system has reached a stage where goods can be produced with little or no labor. The global capitalist system is no longer growing and expanding and is in a deep crisis as a result. The transition from industrial capitalism to electronic production is forcing global economic and social reorganization.

A level of production has been achieved through electronics that makes communism possible. This is the turning point at which we stand today.

Humanity today faces the choice: will we do away with private property and build a future for all or will a system of private property be preserved at the expense of human beings and the planet? Electronics is reducing a class that was once an essential element of industrial production to redundancy. Attempts to do no more than blunt the worst effects of capitalism may be well-meaning, but they divert energy from the tasks ahead.

More and more Americans are joining the ranks of those dispossessed by capitalism world-wide. A class that has nothing to gain from private ownership of the means of production has to take the reins of power and construct an economic system that can sustain a better world. The struggle today is not the struggle of the last century to expand industrial production. Nor is it the social-democratic struggle to increase the crumbs that fall from the table of the world’s billionaires. Though people may have different ideas about and different ways of describing it, at this moment in history, the essence of every struggle for a better life is objectively the struggle for communism. Communism is not just an idea, but the practical resolution to immediate problems. Nationalization of health care is a matter of survival for millions. The people of Detroit must take over the water corporations or go without water in their homes. Either we control the corporations or they control us.

In the U.S., the working class is skilled and educated. It has one of the highest levels of production in the world. It has two centuries of experience in the world’s first democratic republic. It is the inheritor of the American Revolution, a civil war that ended slavery, and broad movements for labor and civil rights. With the political power to transition private to public property, American creativity, efficiency and “can-do” spirit will make short work of the transition to an economic system in which the abundance we produce is held in common and benefits all.

July.2009.Vol19.Ed4
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