We can use socialism and communism interchangeably.
Engels wrote:
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat [the working masses, the 99% of the world]
Some people say, based on paraphrasing of larger works by Marx and Engels:
Communism is a stateless, moneyless, classless society
But for you and me, we can just say this:
Let’s define “productive forces as”: all factories, construction projects, natural resource extraction and processing, financial systems, large-scale farming and food processing, and all other major productive activities that create the goods and services that people in society use.
“Socialism” is the administration of society to move all of those productive forces under the sustainable democratic control of the largest portion of the population and eventually the entirety of the population.
What that means is the end of the legal concept of ownership of, for example, a factory, and the dictatorial control that owners have over that factory. In the olden days, you might have one person who owned the whole company. That person could decide literally anything and any employee who disagreed was fired. They could choose to paint the floors sky blue, or swap all company cars with motorcycles, or manufacture safety pins instead of bobby pins. They were in control. Nowadays, most of these things are owned by shareholders and the minority of the population controls 100% of productive forces and whatever THEY decide is now the law within those companies. So, they can choose to exploit a loophole in the law and dump toxic waste wherever, or they can ban employees from using equipment to detect radiation or other poisonous or hazardous conditions. They can lock people in rooms and propagandize them. Etc.
Essentially what we have is a dictatorship of the opulent minority the spans the entirety of “productive forces” in society.
Socialism removes the legal basis by which this dictatorship works - it removes/changes the laws around ownership so that shareholders do not own companies and cannot unilaterally decide what to do with those companies. It instead moves those productive forces under some democratic form of control. You could imagine many different models for this, and there have been many different models in history, but which model is used is not important for what you and I are discussing. We may disagree that the USSR’s system was sufficiently democratic for you to call it democratic, but there was grassroots democratic decision making that systematically rose up through representation and decisions that ultimately made the decisions for productive forces. We can disagree that China’s model is sufficiently democratic given the allowance of private enterprise and common stock, but we can see the grassroots democratic aspects of decision making that makes it all the way to the center of power and extends outward into every office.
But we also need to understand socialism not as a “state of being” by a “movement of action”. As I said, Socialism is the administration (active verb) of society to move all productive forces under the sustainable democratic control of eventually the entirety of the population.
Taxes don’t do that. Taxes are primarily about redistribution of money flows, not even redistribution of wealth, but of where liquidity exist in an economy. Taxing workers doesn’t redistribute their wealth, it redistributes the present availability of liquid cash. Taxing profits doesn’t redistribute wealth, it redistributes the present availability of liquid cash. Redistribution of wealth requires at minimum the seizure of wealth - say upon death ALL of your wealth is taken by the state and you can’t hide it. But that’s just redistribution of the wealth of a single person and the people controlling the state decide where it goes. If, for example, the wealth 0.001% of the country controls the state, then when they take wealth from one rich person and distribute it to other rich people, there’s no wealth redistribution happening at the class level. That is to say, even under taxation regimes and even under death tax regimes, if the wealth stays primarily concentrated in the upper minority, there is no wealth redistribution happening.
Socialism has no problem seizing wealth from areas where it has concentrated or been hoarded if it turns out that the majority of society is suffering because of it. Taxes under socialism are used to smooth out CASH distribution systems, but wealth seizure - seizure of lands, factories, and hoards - aren’t taxes, they are uses of force under the mandate of the masses to do what is best for society.
The doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the working masses - liberation from the demands of the ultraminority on their time, their health, their eviction for failure to comply, their mass layoffs, their unsafe working conditions, their child labor, their indoctrination, their ability to evade justice, their wage theft, their psychosocial abuse, etc. Freedom for 99% of the world from the 1% who would oppress them so they can have fancy balls, hunt endangered animals, build palaces, and wage wars.
That’s what socialism is. And what it requires is the elimination of the legal basis for the ultraminority to have dictatorial control over the “productive forces” that all of society relies on. Because when they have that control, they can and do hold society hostage.
High taxes is not socialism
see, this is the problem - I’ve avoided thinking about politics forever, and now I’m not sure about the main concepts 😂
I’ve always equated high taxes with socialism - so long as those taxes go towards services and redistribution of wealth.
OK - so what *is *socialism? (the main tenets)
We can use socialism and communism interchangeably.
Engels wrote:
Some people say, based on paraphrasing of larger works by Marx and Engels:
But for you and me, we can just say this:
Let’s define “productive forces as”: all factories, construction projects, natural resource extraction and processing, financial systems, large-scale farming and food processing, and all other major productive activities that create the goods and services that people in society use.
“Socialism” is the administration of society to move all of those productive forces under the sustainable democratic control of the largest portion of the population and eventually the entirety of the population.
What that means is the end of the legal concept of ownership of, for example, a factory, and the dictatorial control that owners have over that factory. In the olden days, you might have one person who owned the whole company. That person could decide literally anything and any employee who disagreed was fired. They could choose to paint the floors sky blue, or swap all company cars with motorcycles, or manufacture safety pins instead of bobby pins. They were in control. Nowadays, most of these things are owned by shareholders and the minority of the population controls 100% of productive forces and whatever THEY decide is now the law within those companies. So, they can choose to exploit a loophole in the law and dump toxic waste wherever, or they can ban employees from using equipment to detect radiation or other poisonous or hazardous conditions. They can lock people in rooms and propagandize them. Etc.
Essentially what we have is a dictatorship of the opulent minority the spans the entirety of “productive forces” in society.
Socialism removes the legal basis by which this dictatorship works - it removes/changes the laws around ownership so that shareholders do not own companies and cannot unilaterally decide what to do with those companies. It instead moves those productive forces under some democratic form of control. You could imagine many different models for this, and there have been many different models in history, but which model is used is not important for what you and I are discussing. We may disagree that the USSR’s system was sufficiently democratic for you to call it democratic, but there was grassroots democratic decision making that systematically rose up through representation and decisions that ultimately made the decisions for productive forces. We can disagree that China’s model is sufficiently democratic given the allowance of private enterprise and common stock, but we can see the grassroots democratic aspects of decision making that makes it all the way to the center of power and extends outward into every office.
But we also need to understand socialism not as a “state of being” by a “movement of action”. As I said, Socialism is the administration (active verb) of society to move all productive forces under the sustainable democratic control of eventually the entirety of the population.
Taxes don’t do that. Taxes are primarily about redistribution of money flows, not even redistribution of wealth, but of where liquidity exist in an economy. Taxing workers doesn’t redistribute their wealth, it redistributes the present availability of liquid cash. Taxing profits doesn’t redistribute wealth, it redistributes the present availability of liquid cash. Redistribution of wealth requires at minimum the seizure of wealth - say upon death ALL of your wealth is taken by the state and you can’t hide it. But that’s just redistribution of the wealth of a single person and the people controlling the state decide where it goes. If, for example, the wealth 0.001% of the country controls the state, then when they take wealth from one rich person and distribute it to other rich people, there’s no wealth redistribution happening at the class level. That is to say, even under taxation regimes and even under death tax regimes, if the wealth stays primarily concentrated in the upper minority, there is no wealth redistribution happening.
Socialism has no problem seizing wealth from areas where it has concentrated or been hoarded if it turns out that the majority of society is suffering because of it. Taxes under socialism are used to smooth out CASH distribution systems, but wealth seizure - seizure of lands, factories, and hoards - aren’t taxes, they are uses of force under the mandate of the masses to do what is best for society.
The doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the working masses - liberation from the demands of the ultraminority on their time, their health, their eviction for failure to comply, their mass layoffs, their unsafe working conditions, their child labor, their indoctrination, their ability to evade justice, their wage theft, their psychosocial abuse, etc. Freedom for 99% of the world from the 1% who would oppress them so they can have fancy balls, hunt endangered animals, build palaces, and wage wars.
That’s what socialism is. And what it requires is the elimination of the legal basis for the ultraminority to have dictatorial control over the “productive forces” that all of society relies on. Because when they have that control, they can and do hold society hostage.