What is Socialism?
There are multiple ideas of what socialism is. Capitalism is complex so trying to find solutions to it is complex. Scientific Socialism tries to use science to clarify how Capitalism works then uses science to develop alternatives that are better for the majority of people.
Marx and Engels were some of the first scientific socialists. They used scientific methods to create specific and clear scientific language that describes how Capitalism works and what inner mechanisms of Capitalism lead it to exploiting people.
Marx planned to write a number of books to cover the key mechanics of how Capitalism worked in his time, but he only finished the first 3 books before he died out of the 7 or so he planned to describe all the mechanisms.
Other scientific socialists followed Marx and use scientific methods to try and describe the other mechanics of Capitalism and then as they grew to understand how Capitalism works and changes and responds to different circumstances they started to develop different alternatives.
So what is Socialism?
Before we answer this we must identify the structure of previous systems of organising society.
Scientific socialists identified that throughout much of history there has been a minority that had power and prosperity and a majority that did not. This inequality is caused by relationship roles and responsibilities between those on top and those on the bottom.
Different society types are determined by the relationships between roles.
Slavery = Master and Slave.
Feudalism = Lord and Serf
Capitalism = Corporations Owner and Worker
These relationships roles are not the only roles in a type of society, but they are the most important.
Ie. Feudalism also had the role of musician and soldier. The soldier was necessary to maintain the relationship roles by stopping serf rebellion. But the musician had no effect on the survival and productivity of the society and hence was a luxury not a determinant role in the social system.
So what is Socialism?
There are two major types of social organisation that are called Socialism.
Social Democracy and Scientific (Marxist) Socialism.
Social Democracy
Social Democracy tries to make the capitalist relationship between corporation owner and worker less painful.
It does this by taxing everyone and using some of that tax money to provide for things like healthcare and education for the whole society. In this manner the rich are decide to share some wealth for the good of the whole society, so that those who can’t afford school or health care have it provided for them, the corporations owners do this as a way to stop workers from demanding to share ownership of the corporations. Under Capitalist Social Democracy the relationship roles that made the poor unable to afford education and healthcare will continue to be maintained, the lower class will be made department on the government to tax and provide for them.
Hence it can be identified that Social Democracy is a way that they ruling class maintain the souce of thier power by sharing a little wealth.
The other major alternative is Scientific (Marxist) Socialism.
Scientific (Marxist) Socialism
Scientific (Marxist) Socialism aims to make it so the workers own the corporations for themselves. This removes the unequal economic power relationship so that the root cause of the inequality is removed.
The workers then use democratic votes to determine how much of the value earned by corporations of the nation should be used to provide for service such as education and healthcare and how much should be shared between the workers for personal consumption to meet needs and desires.
So Marxist Socialism is an attempt to move to a society in which one class does not have power and prosperity by having another class do the majority of the work necessary for society to survive and develop. It is a move towards a society in which democracy is not a vote for a corporate owned political representative once every four years towards a society in which the workers have democratic control of the corporations and hence the economy and also have democratic control of politics.
Marxist Socialism is hence a higher form of democracy than Capitalism or Capitalist Social Democracy.
How does global trade effect Capitalism and Socialism?
As we have already identified, inside a capitalist society there is the unequal relationship between the worker and the corporation owner. Outside the capitalist society there is also a relationship of unequal trade between nations.
Imperialism is the word used to describe this unequal power relation between capitalist nations.
Corporations need raw materials, cheap workers and consumers with enough money to buy it’s products. Imperialism uses bribery, threats of isolation or violence to coerce other nations to unequal trades of these resources.
How does a Capitalist Imperialist nation get unequal trade of resources from another nation?
The easiest way is to bribe the ruling class in the target colonial nation. Then the ruling class of the colony will sell its raw materials for cheap, it will make laws to let corporations exploit workers.
This gives control over cheap labor and raw materials. The other problem for corporations is competitor corporations from the colony.
The Capitalist Imperialist nation will force a colony nation to open its markets to free access for the Imperialist nation's corporations.
The Imperialist corporations then undercut local corporation prices until all local corporations go broke. Then the Imperialist corporations now control the local market pump up prices.
In this manner the Imperialist corporations get super profits from underpriced raw materials, under paying workers and destroying competition then overcharging consumers.
Under Marxist Socialism, the raw materials or the value received from trading them go to benefit the whole society. The workers don’t get wages, they share the value received from the corporation selling it’s products. The products are sold for the value that it cost for the labor to build them.
This means that in Marxist Socialism profit is not extracted by the underpayment for resources from a colony. Profit is not extracted by the under payment of workers. Profit is not extracted by the over charging of consumers. By establishing relationships of equal exchange the root causes of mass inequality can be removed.
Change the exploitative power relationships or just make the exploitation a bit less painful?
The key methods of change proposed by Scientific (Marxist) Socialism is the replacement of relationship of unequal exchange and profit extraction with relationship transactions that are equal. This is a move designed to get to the root cause of problems.
Capitalism with Social Democracy maintains relationships of unequal transactions both inside and outside the society (nation). It maintains these unequal power relations by sacrificing a small amount of corporation owner profit for some basic provision of survival and developmental needs of its local citizens while also maintaining its relationships of exploiting the resources, workers and markets of the imperial periphery colony nations.
Conclusion
It is only by taking a scientific approach to address the root causes of economic exploitation that humanity can survive and develop to higher levels of our potential.
