What does "socialism" mean? An ML likbez.
Original: http://shapinbaum.livejournal.com/136365.html
* People who preach hard with the word "socialism" are most likely actual socialists. That is, the people for whom an equal dispensation of porridge from the pot is way more important than technological and social progress.
* These are, first of all, non-Marxist socialists - anarchists, "democratic socialists", and the rest of them folkisch. But they have, as a rule, too straightforward misgivings about the USSR and communists to have a chance of morally screwing us up with their hours-long rants on the topic of "why there was no socialism in the USSR".
* Secondly, these are the people whose ideological stock remained at the level of the Second International. They have learned some Marx, diluted by Lassalle and distorted by Kautsky (and later retold by someone else unknown), but have decisively failed at Lenin, usually not on this question alone.
* Of the latter, the majority is comprised these days of all sorts of Cliffites and Trotskyites, erm... - the ones calling themselves Trotskyists, anyway. That is, about Trotsky personally, and about a bunch of his associates certainly it can not be said that they had remained on the pre-revolutionary level. They were on the level with their opponents in the VKP(b). But by the logic of factional struggle Trotskyist organizations in the West were massively stuffed with the splinters of the Second and the 2 ½ Internationals. Trotsky was their banner and point of crystallization, but these types were reluctant to get into the details of his doctrine and satisfied themselves with the previously acquired Menshevik education. Later on, after the WWII all the sane people escaped from there while the rest stewed in their own juice for a long time.
* Any discussion "about the nature of the USSR" with the participation of these people - and there are no other discussions of this topic - is trivial and of little interest for the communists and very quickly turns into a kind of Catholic canonization process. Highly sophisticated theologians waving kilometer-long sheets of quotations from the Fathers of the Church thoughtfully discuss whether or not the subject of the dispute - the USSR, that is - is worthy of the High Title of Socialismтм, or there are some Dark Spots on its biography that prevent canonization.
* This approach is logical for the people who use - consciously or subconsciously - the outdated definitions of socialism. Really, suppose socialism for us is synonymous with social justice and the ideal society, well, or at least with the ultimate goal of the movement. Then, first of all, it is indeed a high title, which has to be earned. And secondly, any injustice, any imperfection of the social system excludes a society from the pool of contenders for the title of socialist just by definition.
* Contributing to the confusion is the absence of a culture of thinking, which is very common among people with education in humanities, or without any systematic education. In order to consistently and systematically adhere under any circumstances to a definition once it is accepted, a fair amount of discipline of mind is needed, which is achieved by systematic training. Way more commonplace is the situation when a person verbally agrees with a definition, yet bases his reasoning not on it but on his intuitive notions about the subject. In this case, we see that the intuitive notions are formed by the literature, in which the word "socialism" was used in a completely different sense than that of today.
* If we define socialism from the get-go as something fundamentally imperfect and intermediate - and now we do define it exactly like that - putting blame of imperfection and of presence of capitalist elements on the USSR as an argument for its "non-socialist-ness" is rather strange. Here we should be interested in something quite different. In addition to meeting the definition (no doubt about that), we should worry about the practical benefits of such a categorization.
* The economic and political organization of the Soviet society cannot be meaningfully explained within the context of the Marxist conception of capitalism. Of course, the Soviet society contains a vast amount of capitalist relationships in form and essence. However, they do not constitute its basis, they do not fasten together the elements of society, they do not determine its development. Although, sure, they may contribute to its collapse. In order to understand something about the Soviet society, we must first abandon the bourgeois standards with respect to it. А capitalist society does not perform and cannot perform like a Soviet society.
* Those, who through manipulation of definitions invent "the Soviet state capitalism" or "the Soviet pure capitalism" stop at this point, one way or another. They either admit that the USSR was ruled by quite different laws than a "normal capitalist" (i.e. capitalist) society, and those laws must be formulated and studied separately, or (most of them) simply ignore the issue. However, the Cliffites never distinguished themselves with ability or desire to study something real.
* The transition from a capitalist society to a Soviet one can not be attained through partial reforms. It requires a leap by scrapping of most of the public institutions. Moving in the opposite direction, from the Soviets to capitalism, as we all have seen, is inevitably accompanied by such a scrapping process too.
* That's exactly why we call the USSR a socialist country.
---
* The word "socialism" has no profound theoretical meaning in the historical materialism. It is, generally speaking, redundant. Its appearance there was caused not by the needs of the theory, but by factional party politics. Accordingly, the meaning of this word can vary widely, and in fact it has varied depending on the needs of the policy at hand.
* Initially, that is, until the middle of the 19th century, the word "socialism" and "communism" referred to competing (and therefore hostile, to some extent) revolutionary tendencies.
* The Communists were in favor of communism - the socialization of the means of production and creation on this basis of a society structured according to reason, and first of all of the rational organization of production. This is a slightly idealized representation, since the early communist writings expounded on the doctrine far less clearly, but no point to sort them all out.
* The Socialists were in favor of socialism - a society of social justice. Social justice is primarily understood as equal distribution of wealth, as well as many other nice things, for the most part related to consumption and distribution. By which means that justice would be achieved, socialists were not so much unaware of as they thought that question was of no principal importance, leaving the issue to the everyday politics and arbitrary social designing.
* The "early" (say, before the Revolution of 1848) Marx & Engels rigidly distinguished between socialism and communism, and left no doubt that they were supporters of communism, not socialism. As the logic of the class struggle forced the communists and the socialists - in the course of the day-by-day political struggle - to march alongside and strive for a common cause, and in place of revolutionary circles a mass workers' movement began to emerge, the differences began to blur somewhat, and the participants began to borrow terminology of one another.
* In 1875 at the congress in Gotha after two attempts (the first had occurred in 1868), the German communist party (the German Social Democratic Workers' Party) of the Eisenachites merged with the socialist party (the General German Workers' Association) of the Lassalleans, thus forming the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, which became for the next forty years a model for the workers' movement all over the world.
* The merger was accompanied by an extensive theoretical debate. The modern reader remembers from it, of course, Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program". Marx fulminated, but in fact the concessions made to the Lassalleans were not big, and the program of the joint party was a theoretical rout of Lassalleanism on the key points. In order to compensate the losses suffered by the Lassalleans, communism was renamed socialism. That is the goal of the movement was proclaimed to be socialism, but defined as a classless society with communalized labor, abolished private property and so on. I somewhat simplify; in fact such a tendency had existed even before, but let’s settle on this date.
* Therefore, from about that moment onwards until about the mid 1920s (I previously automatically thought 1917, but was not taking into account the inertia of the language) the words "socialism" and "communism" were used as synonyms among the Social Democrats. "Socialism" much more often, since it was in the official party documents. "The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary" states about the "Communist Manifesto": "at that time the word "communism" was used in the same general sense, as "socialism" is now".
* In those days it looked as if the concepts of communism and socialism were mutually complementary. Indeed, the capitalist reality is both unfair and unreasonable. One can say that it unfair because it is unreasonable, or that it is unreasonable because it is unfair - it will be all the same. On the other hand, the future communist/socialist society is devised as both completely fair and entirely reasonable. So communism and socialism have a common goal. Communism talks about production and socialism about distribution - which means it is possible to work in a communist manner, and divide the earnings in a socialist manner.
* If we, however, instead of a set ultimate goal take the dynamics of the step-by-step movement towards it into consideration, conflicts between socialists and communists - now sharing the same party - show up at every turn. Should the party at this time seek equality or progress? Should it focus its attention on the reform of relations of production, or on equalization of income under the present relations of production? Should it condemn or support the progressive, but undemocratic? And what about the democratic, but reactionary? Even more absurd it gets when from economy and democracy (which still can be calculated somehow) we turn to the social justice in the immaterial field, which is completely subjective. Here socialists become helpless pawns in the hands of the bourgeois propaganda and cling to the communists' legs like prison irons.
* Historically, the conflict between communists and socialists returned many times in the form of splits in Social Democratic, Socialist and Communist organizations. Sometimes the splits ended up in mergers, sometimes a group of socialists would splinter forever, and set out on a separate voyage (usually quite a short one - arriving at a bourgeois destination).
* In 1917, Lenin in his book "The State and Revolution" redefined the word "socialism" and called by that name "a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes" - as opposed to actual communism or "complete" communism. Lenin quoted Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program", although he had just predicted those two states of society but had not given specific names to them.
* The development of terminology came in handy, as in a matter of days after that the time came to begin socialist construction and the related issues arose in practice. Also, at the same time the rebranding of the Bolsheviks back into communists was underway, so the change was quite appropriate stylistically also.
* However there was a poser coming with the new definition. It did no longer contain even indirect references to social justice. On the contrary, it assumed that under socialism there would be "the birthmarks of the old society", subject to elimination along the move towards communism. This caused a most acute butthurt among the socialist SDs, which continues to this day.
* Finally, the last change - do not know whether it should be considered a change in its own right, or just a specification - occurred in the mid 1930s. The need to name a new stage of the development of society appeared. There had been the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, where political power was held by the organized proletariat, but a hefty part of the economy was controlled by bourgeoisie - not an abstract "state bourgeoisie" of the modern Cliffites, but by quite natural private capitalists, sometimes even in top hats, waistcoats and with gold watches. It turned into a society where private capital was absent, the bourgeoisie destroyed as a class, but the degree of socialization of labor, however, was still quite insufficient to talk about any serious communism, or even its imminence. The qualitative difference between them was striking. It was decided (I didn’t look for the exact moment of the beginning of such usage), that this new society was exactly what should be called socialism, and the criterion for it must be the destruction of the capitalist exploiter classes. This, strictly speaking, does not contradict the previous definition by Lenin, but only specifies it somewhat, indicating how far the new society must "get out of the old society" [to be considered socialist], namely, no further than up to the destruction of all major industrial relations of the old society.
* Examples of this usage of the term may be brought up. After the Second World War the socialist camp was formed. Its participants that had carried out the nationalization of the private capitalist property, often accompanied by collectivization, were called socialist, while those countries where private ownership of the means of production remained, albeit in a very limited form, were called people’s democracies.
* It is exactly the latter definition that is in use among the modern Marxists. Those who understand at least something in the modern Marxism, anyway. However, there is a huge number of classical texts in circulation, where the word "socialism" is used in one of the outdated meanings. An unsophisticated - or, on the contrary, a sophisticated but maliciously intent - reader can get a thoroughly distorted notion of their subject.
* By pitting against each other texts mentioning socialism, say from the 1840s, 1890s and 1940s, any result may be achieved. Because such manipulations are a logical fallacy - the same symbol identifies completely different values in them. And from a logical fallacy any conclusion may be drawn.
* People who preach hard with the word "socialism" are most likely actual socialists. That is, the people for whom an equal dispensation of porridge from the pot is way more important than technological and social progress.
* These are, first of all, non-Marxist socialists - anarchists, "democratic socialists", and the rest of them folkisch. But they have, as a rule, too straightforward misgivings about the USSR and communists to have a chance of morally screwing us up with their hours-long rants on the topic of "why there was no socialism in the USSR".
* Secondly, these are the people whose ideological stock remained at the level of the Second International. They have learned some Marx, diluted by Lassalle and distorted by Kautsky (and later retold by someone else unknown), but have decisively failed at Lenin, usually not on this question alone.
* Of the latter, the majority is comprised these days of all sorts of Cliffites and Trotskyites, erm... - the ones calling themselves Trotskyists, anyway. That is, about Trotsky personally, and about a bunch of his associates certainly it can not be said that they had remained on the pre-revolutionary level. They were on the level with their opponents in the VKP(b). But by the logic of factional struggle Trotskyist organizations in the West were massively stuffed with the splinters of the Second and the 2 ½ Internationals. Trotsky was their banner and point of crystallization, but these types were reluctant to get into the details of his doctrine and satisfied themselves with the previously acquired Menshevik education. Later on, after the WWII all the sane people escaped from there while the rest stewed in their own juice for a long time.
* Any discussion "about the nature of the USSR" with the participation of these people - and there are no other discussions of this topic - is trivial and of little interest for the communists and very quickly turns into a kind of Catholic canonization process. Highly sophisticated theologians waving kilometer-long sheets of quotations from the Fathers of the Church thoughtfully discuss whether or not the subject of the dispute - the USSR, that is - is worthy of the High Title of Socialismтм, or there are some Dark Spots on its biography that prevent canonization.
* This approach is logical for the people who use - consciously or subconsciously - the outdated definitions of socialism. Really, suppose socialism for us is synonymous with social justice and the ideal society, well, or at least with the ultimate goal of the movement. Then, first of all, it is indeed a high title, which has to be earned. And secondly, any injustice, any imperfection of the social system excludes a society from the pool of contenders for the title of socialist just by definition.
* Contributing to the confusion is the absence of a culture of thinking, which is very common among people with education in humanities, or without any systematic education. In order to consistently and systematically adhere under any circumstances to a definition once it is accepted, a fair amount of discipline of mind is needed, which is achieved by systematic training. Way more commonplace is the situation when a person verbally agrees with a definition, yet bases his reasoning not on it but on his intuitive notions about the subject. In this case, we see that the intuitive notions are formed by the literature, in which the word "socialism" was used in a completely different sense than that of today.
* If we define socialism from the get-go as something fundamentally imperfect and intermediate - and now we do define it exactly like that - putting blame of imperfection and of presence of capitalist elements on the USSR as an argument for its "non-socialist-ness" is rather strange. Here we should be interested in something quite different. In addition to meeting the definition (no doubt about that), we should worry about the practical benefits of such a categorization.
* The economic and political organization of the Soviet society cannot be meaningfully explained within the context of the Marxist conception of capitalism. Of course, the Soviet society contains a vast amount of capitalist relationships in form and essence. However, they do not constitute its basis, they do not fasten together the elements of society, they do not determine its development. Although, sure, they may contribute to its collapse. In order to understand something about the Soviet society, we must first abandon the bourgeois standards with respect to it. А capitalist society does not perform and cannot perform like a Soviet society.
* Those, who through manipulation of definitions invent "the Soviet state capitalism" or "the Soviet pure capitalism" stop at this point, one way or another. They either admit that the USSR was ruled by quite different laws than a "normal capitalist" (i.e. capitalist) society, and those laws must be formulated and studied separately, or (most of them) simply ignore the issue. However, the Cliffites never distinguished themselves with ability or desire to study something real.
* The transition from a capitalist society to a Soviet one can not be attained through partial reforms. It requires a leap by scrapping of most of the public institutions. Moving in the opposite direction, from the Soviets to capitalism, as we all have seen, is inevitably accompanied by such a scrapping process too.
* That's exactly why we call the USSR a socialist country.
* People who preach hard with the word "socialism" are most likely actual socialists. That is, the people for whom an equal dispensation of porridge from the pot is way more important than technological and social progress.
* These are, first of all, non-Marxist socialists - anarchists, "democratic socialists", and the rest of them folkisch. But they have, as a rule, too straightforward misgivings about the USSR and communists to have a chance of morally screwing us up with their hours-long rants on the topic of "why there was no socialism in the USSR".
* Secondly, these are the people whose ideological stock remained at the level of the Second International. They have learned some Marx, diluted by Lassalle and distorted by Kautsky (and later retold by someone else unknown), but have decisively failed at Lenin, usually not on this question alone.
* Of the latter, the majority is comprised these days of all sorts of Cliffites and Trotskyites, erm... - the ones calling themselves Trotskyists, anyway. That is, about Trotsky personally, and about a bunch of his associates certainly it can not be said that they had remained on the pre-revolutionary level. They were on the level with their opponents in the VKP(b). But by the logic of factional struggle Trotskyist organizations in the West were massively stuffed with the splinters of the Second and the 2 ½ Internationals. Trotsky was their banner and point of crystallization, but these types were reluctant to get into the details of his doctrine and satisfied themselves with the previously acquired Menshevik education. Later on, after the WWII all the sane people escaped from there while the rest stewed in their own juice for a long time.
* Any discussion "about the nature of the USSR" with the participation of these people - and there are no other discussions of this topic - is trivial and of little interest for the communists and very quickly turns into a kind of Catholic canonization process. Highly sophisticated theologians waving kilometer-long sheets of quotations from the Fathers of the Church thoughtfully discuss whether or not the subject of the dispute - the USSR, that is - is worthy of the High Title of Socialismтм, or there are some Dark Spots on its biography that prevent canonization.
* This approach is logical for the people who use - consciously or subconsciously - the outdated definitions of socialism. Really, suppose socialism for us is synonymous with social justice and the ideal society, well, or at least with the ultimate goal of the movement. Then, first of all, it is indeed a high title, which has to be earned. And secondly, any injustice, any imperfection of the social system excludes a society from the pool of contenders for the title of socialist just by definition.
* Contributing to the confusion is the absence of a culture of thinking, which is very common among people with education in humanities, or without any systematic education. In order to consistently and systematically adhere under any circumstances to a definition once it is accepted, a fair amount of discipline of mind is needed, which is achieved by systematic training. Way more commonplace is the situation when a person verbally agrees with a definition, yet bases his reasoning not on it but on his intuitive notions about the subject. In this case, we see that the intuitive notions are formed by the literature, in which the word "socialism" was used in a completely different sense than that of today.
* If we define socialism from the get-go as something fundamentally imperfect and intermediate - and now we do define it exactly like that - putting blame of imperfection and of presence of capitalist elements on the USSR as an argument for its "non-socialist-ness" is rather strange. Here we should be interested in something quite different. In addition to meeting the definition (no doubt about that), we should worry about the practical benefits of such a categorization.
* The economic and political organization of the Soviet society cannot be meaningfully explained within the context of the Marxist conception of capitalism. Of course, the Soviet society contains a vast amount of capitalist relationships in form and essence. However, they do not constitute its basis, they do not fasten together the elements of society, they do not determine its development. Although, sure, they may contribute to its collapse. In order to understand something about the Soviet society, we must first abandon the bourgeois standards with respect to it. А capitalist society does not perform and cannot perform like a Soviet society.
* Those, who through manipulation of definitions invent "the Soviet state capitalism" or "the Soviet pure capitalism" stop at this point, one way or another. They either admit that the USSR was ruled by quite different laws than a "normal capitalist" (i.e. capitalist) society, and those laws must be formulated and studied separately, or (most of them) simply ignore the issue. However, the Cliffites never distinguished themselves with ability or desire to study something real.
* The transition from a capitalist society to a Soviet one can not be attained through partial reforms. It requires a leap by scrapping of most of the public institutions. Moving in the opposite direction, from the Soviets to capitalism, as we all have seen, is inevitably accompanied by such a scrapping process too.
* That's exactly why we call the USSR a socialist country.
---
* The word "socialism" has no profound theoretical meaning in the historical materialism. It is, generally speaking, redundant. Its appearance there was caused not by the needs of the theory, but by factional party politics. Accordingly, the meaning of this word can vary widely, and in fact it has varied depending on the needs of the policy at hand.
* Initially, that is, until the middle of the 19th century, the word "socialism" and "communism" referred to competing (and therefore hostile, to some extent) revolutionary tendencies.
* The Communists were in favor of communism - the socialization of the means of production and creation on this basis of a society structured according to reason, and first of all of the rational organization of production. This is a slightly idealized representation, since the early communist writings expounded on the doctrine far less clearly, but no point to sort them all out.
* The Socialists were in favor of socialism - a society of social justice. Social justice is primarily understood as equal distribution of wealth, as well as many other nice things, for the most part related to consumption and distribution. By which means that justice would be achieved, socialists were not so much unaware of as they thought that question was of no principal importance, leaving the issue to the everyday politics and arbitrary social designing.
* The "early" (say, before the Revolution of 1848) Marx & Engels rigidly distinguished between socialism and communism, and left no doubt that they were supporters of communism, not socialism. As the logic of the class struggle forced the communists and the socialists - in the course of the day-by-day political struggle - to march alongside and strive for a common cause, and in place of revolutionary circles a mass workers' movement began to emerge, the differences began to blur somewhat, and the participants began to borrow terminology of one another.
* In 1875 at the congress in Gotha after two attempts (the first had occurred in 1868), the German communist party (the German Social Democratic Workers' Party) of the Eisenachites merged with the socialist party (the General German Workers' Association) of the Lassalleans, thus forming the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, which became for the next forty years a model for the workers' movement all over the world.
* The merger was accompanied by an extensive theoretical debate. The modern reader remembers from it, of course, Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program". Marx fulminated, but in fact the concessions made to the Lassalleans were not big, and the program of the joint party was a theoretical rout of Lassalleanism on the key points. In order to compensate the losses suffered by the Lassalleans, communism was renamed socialism. That is the goal of the movement was proclaimed to be socialism, but defined as a classless society with communalized labor, abolished private property and so on. I somewhat simplify; in fact such a tendency had existed even before, but let’s settle on this date.
* Therefore, from about that moment onwards until about the mid 1920s (I previously automatically thought 1917, but was not taking into account the inertia of the language) the words "socialism" and "communism" were used as synonyms among the Social Democrats. "Socialism" much more often, since it was in the official party documents. "The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary" states about the "Communist Manifesto": "at that time the word "communism" was used in the same general sense, as "socialism" is now".
* In those days it looked as if the concepts of communism and socialism were mutually complementary. Indeed, the capitalist reality is both unfair and unreasonable. One can say that it unfair because it is unreasonable, or that it is unreasonable because it is unfair - it will be all the same. On the other hand, the future communist/socialist society is devised as both completely fair and entirely reasonable. So communism and socialism have a common goal. Communism talks about production and socialism about distribution - which means it is possible to work in a communist manner, and divide the earnings in a socialist manner.
* If we, however, instead of a set ultimate goal take the dynamics of the step-by-step movement towards it into consideration, conflicts between socialists and communists - now sharing the same party - show up at every turn. Should the party at this time seek equality or progress? Should it focus its attention on the reform of relations of production, or on equalization of income under the present relations of production? Should it condemn or support the progressive, but undemocratic? And what about the democratic, but reactionary? Even more absurd it gets when from economy and democracy (which still can be calculated somehow) we turn to the social justice in the immaterial field, which is completely subjective. Here socialists become helpless pawns in the hands of the bourgeois propaganda and cling to the communists' legs like prison irons.
* Historically, the conflict between communists and socialists returned many times in the form of splits in Social Democratic, Socialist and Communist organizations. Sometimes the splits ended up in mergers, sometimes a group of socialists would splinter forever, and set out on a separate voyage (usually quite a short one - arriving at a bourgeois destination).
* In 1917, Lenin in his book "The State and Revolution" redefined the word "socialism" and called by that name "a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes" - as opposed to actual communism or "complete" communism. Lenin quoted Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program", although he had just predicted those two states of society but had not given specific names to them.
* The development of terminology came in handy, as in a matter of days after that the time came to begin socialist construction and the related issues arose in practice. Also, at the same time the rebranding of the Bolsheviks back into communists was underway, so the change was quite appropriate stylistically also.
* However there was a poser coming with the new definition. It did no longer contain even indirect references to social justice. On the contrary, it assumed that under socialism there would be "the birthmarks of the old society", subject to elimination along the move towards communism. This caused a most acute butthurt among the socialist SDs, which continues to this day.
* Finally, the last change - do not know whether it should be considered a change in its own right, or just a specification - occurred in the mid 1930s. The need to name a new stage of the development of society appeared. There had been the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, where political power was held by the organized proletariat, but a hefty part of the economy was controlled by bourgeoisie - not an abstract "state bourgeoisie" of the modern Cliffites, but by quite natural private capitalists, sometimes even in top hats, waistcoats and with gold watches. It turned into a society where private capital was absent, the bourgeoisie destroyed as a class, but the degree of socialization of labor, however, was still quite insufficient to talk about any serious communism, or even its imminence. The qualitative difference between them was striking. It was decided (I didn’t look for the exact moment of the beginning of such usage), that this new society was exactly what should be called socialism, and the criterion for it must be the destruction of the capitalist exploiter classes. This, strictly speaking, does not contradict the previous definition by Lenin, but only specifies it somewhat, indicating how far the new society must "get out of the old society" [to be considered socialist], namely, no further than up to the destruction of all major industrial relations of the old society.
* Examples of this usage of the term may be brought up. After the Second World War the socialist camp was formed. Its participants that had carried out the nationalization of the private capitalist property, often accompanied by collectivization, were called socialist, while those countries where private ownership of the means of production remained, albeit in a very limited form, were called people’s democracies.
* It is exactly the latter definition that is in use among the modern Marxists. Those who understand at least something in the modern Marxism, anyway. However, there is a huge number of classical texts in circulation, where the word "socialism" is used in one of the outdated meanings. An unsophisticated - or, on the contrary, a sophisticated but maliciously intent - reader can get a thoroughly distorted notion of their subject.
* By pitting against each other texts mentioning socialism, say from the 1840s, 1890s and 1940s, any result may be achieved. Because such manipulations are a logical fallacy - the same symbol identifies completely different values in them. And from a logical fallacy any conclusion may be drawn.
* People who preach hard with the word "socialism" are most likely actual socialists. That is, the people for whom an equal dispensation of porridge from the pot is way more important than technological and social progress.
* These are, first of all, non-Marxist socialists - anarchists, "democratic socialists", and the rest of them folkisch. But they have, as a rule, too straightforward misgivings about the USSR and communists to have a chance of morally screwing us up with their hours-long rants on the topic of "why there was no socialism in the USSR".
* Secondly, these are the people whose ideological stock remained at the level of the Second International. They have learned some Marx, diluted by Lassalle and distorted by Kautsky (and later retold by someone else unknown), but have decisively failed at Lenin, usually not on this question alone.
* Of the latter, the majority is comprised these days of all sorts of Cliffites and Trotskyites, erm... - the ones calling themselves Trotskyists, anyway. That is, about Trotsky personally, and about a bunch of his associates certainly it can not be said that they had remained on the pre-revolutionary level. They were on the level with their opponents in the VKP(b). But by the logic of factional struggle Trotskyist organizations in the West were massively stuffed with the splinters of the Second and the 2 ½ Internationals. Trotsky was their banner and point of crystallization, but these types were reluctant to get into the details of his doctrine and satisfied themselves with the previously acquired Menshevik education. Later on, after the WWII all the sane people escaped from there while the rest stewed in their own juice for a long time.
* Any discussion "about the nature of the USSR" with the participation of these people - and there are no other discussions of this topic - is trivial and of little interest for the communists and very quickly turns into a kind of Catholic canonization process. Highly sophisticated theologians waving kilometer-long sheets of quotations from the Fathers of the Church thoughtfully discuss whether or not the subject of the dispute - the USSR, that is - is worthy of the High Title of Socialismтм, or there are some Dark Spots on its biography that prevent canonization.
* This approach is logical for the people who use - consciously or subconsciously - the outdated definitions of socialism. Really, suppose socialism for us is synonymous with social justice and the ideal society, well, or at least with the ultimate goal of the movement. Then, first of all, it is indeed a high title, which has to be earned. And secondly, any injustice, any imperfection of the social system excludes a society from the pool of contenders for the title of socialist just by definition.
* Contributing to the confusion is the absence of a culture of thinking, which is very common among people with education in humanities, or without any systematic education. In order to consistently and systematically adhere under any circumstances to a definition once it is accepted, a fair amount of discipline of mind is needed, which is achieved by systematic training. Way more commonplace is the situation when a person verbally agrees with a definition, yet bases his reasoning not on it but on his intuitive notions about the subject. In this case, we see that the intuitive notions are formed by the literature, in which the word "socialism" was used in a completely different sense than that of today.
* If we define socialism from the get-go as something fundamentally imperfect and intermediate - and now we do define it exactly like that - putting blame of imperfection and of presence of capitalist elements on the USSR as an argument for its "non-socialist-ness" is rather strange. Here we should be interested in something quite different. In addition to meeting the definition (no doubt about that), we should worry about the practical benefits of such a categorization.
* The economic and political organization of the Soviet society cannot be meaningfully explained within the context of the Marxist conception of capitalism. Of course, the Soviet society contains a vast amount of capitalist relationships in form and essence. However, they do not constitute its basis, they do not fasten together the elements of society, they do not determine its development. Although, sure, they may contribute to its collapse. In order to understand something about the Soviet society, we must first abandon the bourgeois standards with respect to it. А capitalist society does not perform and cannot perform like a Soviet society.
* Those, who through manipulation of definitions invent "the Soviet state capitalism" or "the Soviet pure capitalism" stop at this point, one way or another. They either admit that the USSR was ruled by quite different laws than a "normal capitalist" (i.e. capitalist) society, and those laws must be formulated and studied separately, or (most of them) simply ignore the issue. However, the Cliffites never distinguished themselves with ability or desire to study something real.
* The transition from a capitalist society to a Soviet one can not be attained through partial reforms. It requires a leap by scrapping of most of the public institutions. Moving in the opposite direction, from the Soviets to capitalism, as we all have seen, is inevitably accompanied by such a scrapping process too.
* That's exactly why we call the USSR a socialist country.