In U.S., "socialism" is, to put it mildly, a dirty dirty label. Few want it attached. Even leftists dislike the name. Funny enough, I am pretty sure that quite few people actually understand what that term actually means, and what those movements strive (or strove, on this side of the Atlantic and equator) toward. It's kinda like "gay." Or, frankly, "freedom" and "liberty." Now, the concept may be good or bad. The debaters must judge this for themselves. However, it is utmost important to truly understand what the terms and its bearers want, rather than arguing and condemning on stereotypical basis.
Let's start with the popular American understanding of the term. Generally speaking, "socialism" is believed to push for government and against competition. The haters would then tack on a bunch of additional attributes. For example, "socialism" is accused of tyranny (in the basis of its supposed advocate for government), thief (because of its supposed demand for taxes and wealth redistribution), and discouragement of hard-work (because of its support for welfare). As such, "socialism" is created by tyrants, sustained by ignorance, and beneficial to the lazy, the stupid, and the useless. Terrible concept, no?
Funny enough, if you actually read Marx and look over socialist history (up until, I guess, Soviet Union), socialism did not seem to like government. Marx wrote of government's withering away. Early socialists and anarchists (surprised!) allied with one another. Competition, on the other hand, did not receive that much attention. After all, when you think about it, economic competition (at least in terms of competing firms) is a relatively new concept. A hundred years back, there are just not that many corporations! In other words, real "socialism" bares little resemblance of popular American opinions. In fact, let us remind ourselves that Karl Marx and Adam Smith are classified as the same school of economic thoughts.
This should raise a big question: if socialism is not about government; if it does not suppress competition; then what is it about?
It's about alienation of labor. By the way, it's a bit sad that the term alienation has fallen somewhat from use. Beside "unalienable rights," we just don't seem to use the term that much anymore. Such a waste of a beautiful word. Either, I digress.
Socialism is about labor's alienation from its fruits, as well as from life, society, and humanity in general.
Let's start with the first: socialism is concerned that the laborers don't get all of the compensation that they deserve. (to put it in context, this is the exact reverse of popular American notion of socialism). Imagine a company. It sells its products for a pot of money, which is then used in 4 ways: raw ingredients, capital investment, wage, and profit. Now, you can see that the first 3 uses of the revenue is fair: without any of these, the company can't make its products. But, how about profit? Why should the stock owners, who did not sweat and labor on the company and its work, enjoy a share of its precious revenue?
Let us be remind that socialism was born from a time of rampage profit share. Of the 4 uses of revenue, a significant and growing chunk of money went to the stock owners. Meanwhile, the employees earned crumbs, worked in rundown, dangerous environment, and mother Earth was raped barren. Think back to 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries: back then, children had to work 60, 80 hours a week, yet their families could not earn enough for food, clothing, and shelter. Such was the cradle of socialism.
Worse yet, increasing specialization distanced the laborers from the meaning and the joy of their works. You have heard this type of expression over and over: "I love working as a teacher because I help kids grow," or "I want to be a doctor to cure people." However, when your job consists solely of, says, rolling the chalk piece, can you really see how your products (the chalk pieces) make somebody's life better? This type of alienation renders life lifeless. It turns humans into robots. Robots to increase some profit of some people.
Lastly, socialism accuses the relentless pursuit of profit magnifies the above alienation. In modern terms, when an investment banker look at a stock, the stories of how such firm makes the world a better place, the stories of its employees sweating over each and every details, the struggles for betterment of its future, its technologies, its customers, its suppliers, and its people, all of that are ignored. The banker only cares about, well, how well this stock will pay in a year. Worse yet, because of the way stock market works, steady stream of profit (says, $1Million a year forever) is not enough. The stock market wants increases. If a stock pays $1M today, its employees have better pay $2M next year. In this relentless race for more, all life and humanities are sucked out, replaced by heartlessness, cruelty, (in our times) outsource.
Socialism does not care about government. Early socialists' experience with government generally involved the governmental attempts on their arrest, tortures, and executions. Socialism does not care about competition. By the way, just as a reminder, neither does capitalist. The whole "competition" picture is a Reaganian fantasy for the mob. Capitalists have always been about building monopolies. Monopoly is much better for business than competition.
For socialism, government and competition, and even property right, are beneath its vision. It fights for fair compensation to the hard working, for enrichment of all people, for humanization of its species.
Now, there are many roads to Rome. To accomplish their goals (fair compensation and enrichment to the workers), socialists turned to various means. Back in the day (up until early 20th century), when inequality was massive and the workers were quite, well, far from enriched, the means was anarchism. Back then, socialists organized unions, called for and supported strikes, as well as threw rocks at national guards. Nowadays, the people are well educated (historically speaking at least), so socialist prefer more gentle methods, such as minimum wages, safety regulations, welfare systems, etc. The most important thing to remember, though, is this: socialism itself is above government and market and whatnots. All of these are simply means to ends. If they are usable, employ them; if they fight back, throw rocks at them (or build a picket line). They are merely means.
Socialism fight for fair compensation and enrichment of the people. That's all.
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