What is Socialism?: Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters

This entry is the fourth instalment of my blog ( and eventual podcast) Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters. While I have not recorded the audio file yet, this entry was written to be aired in podcast format and as such will (at times) read more like the transcript of a podcast than a traditional blog. So without further ado, here’s the fourth episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.

(Chapter Headings: Introduction)

Hello, my name is Matitya and welcome to Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.

Today’s Topic, “What is Socialism?”

(Chapter Headings: Previously on Matitya’s Musings)

In a previous episode of Matitya’s Musings, I discussed the question of if Socialism breaks the Ten Commandments (specifically the eighth commandment “Thou shalt steal.” )To keep that from morphing into a semantic discussion, I defined Socialism as “government ownership” and maintained consistency with that definition throughout. That having been said, I’m aware that defining Socialism is more complicated than that and would therefore like to address it here.

(Chapter Headings: Dictionary definitions)

Let’s start with the Dictionary definitions. Dictionary.com defines Socialism as

1. a theory or system of social organisation that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralised government.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. In Marxist theory, the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterised by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Every single one of these definitions is consistent with how I defined Socialism. Government ownership of the means of production. The third definition emphasises that it’s supposed to be a temporary measure established between the proletarian revolution and the establishment of Communism but, on a historical level, that is exactly what Communist countries described themselves as being. It’s why Russia was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and not the Union of Soviet Communist Republics. So per Dictionary.com, my definition of Socialism was the correct one.

In the meantime, Merriam-Webster defines Socialism as

1. any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2. a system of society or group living in which there is no private property/a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3. a stage of society in Marxist theory that is transitional between capitalism and communism and is distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

So the second Merriam-Webster definition is essentially the same as how I defined it but the first Merriam-Webster definition is broader in scope and includes not only State Socialism, which is government ownership of the means of production, but also includes Libertarian Socialism which likewise supports collective ownership of the means of production but does not advocate for using the mechanism of the State. (Though I did acknowledge the existence of Libertarian Socialism in the earlier Matitya’s Musing and said I wasn’t talking about it.) And like with Dictionary.com, the third definition more or less describes the type of regime that was ‘temporarily’ established in Communist countries and which we in the West tend to call Communism.

So, per Merriam-Webster, there are three possible meanings of the word Socialism.

1) State Socialism

2) Libertarian Socialism

3) Communism

When I use the word Socialism without any qualifiers, I use it to mean State Socialism. And Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster both allow for this definition (Dictionary.com essentially agrees that this is the correct definition of non-Marxian Socialism.)

Wiktionary defines Socialism as

1) Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2) A system of social and economic equality in which there is no private property.

3) A system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.

4) The intermediate phase of social development between capitalism and communism in Marxist theory in which the state has control of the means of production.

5) Any of a group of later political philosophies such [as] democratic socialism and social democracy which do not envisage the need for full state ownership of the means of production nor transition to full communism, and which are typically based on principles of community decision making, social equality and the avoidance of economic and social exclusion, with economic policy giving first preference to community goals over individual ones.

6) Any left-wing ideology, government regulations, or policies promoting a welfare state, nationalisation et cetera

The earlier definitions that Wiktionary gives accord closely with those of Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster wherein Socialism is one of three things.

1) Government ownership (aka State Socialism)

2) Collective ownership without government involvement (aka Libertarian Socialism)

3) Marxist-Leninism (aka Communism)

Thus far I do not believe any of what these definitions say contradicts how I defined Socialism. That said, Wiktionary’s later definitions broaden the term Socialism to include a general preference for left-leaning economic policy which is not what I was talking about when I said that Socialism was forbidden by the Ten Commandments. It nonetheless seems to be case that most of these Dictionary definitions agree with how I defined Socialism at least in relation to their main definitions.

(Chapter Headings: Socialist definitions of Socialism)

The question remains, regardless of what Dictionaries say, how do Socialists define Socialism?

The Marxist economist Richard Wolff in a speech he gave in 2015, claimed that Socialism is the reorganization of enterprises such that the community as a whole would be making business decisions rather than them being made by company shareholders. Professor Wolff suggested that it was necessary to use the government as a means to realise the goal of having businesses be worker-owned (or at least worker run.) So it seems that per Wolff

1) Socialism is when Workers own the means of production and

2) Socialism can only be implemented through the mechanism of government controls

Wolff does not point out that it would logically follow therefrom that Socialism is (functionally) government ownership of the means of production. Instead, he insists that government ownership of the means of production is not Socialism but “State Capitalism”. Wollf posits that Stalin was unwilling to acknowledge that 15 years since the Russian Revolution he had still failed to replace State Capitalism with Communism so Stalin “did what politicians do. He substituted the wish for the reality. [He said], ‘We’ve made [it]. We’re here. Socialism is when the government does stuff. The more stuff it does and if it does a lot of real good stuff, it’s Communism.” Wolff complains that France and other Western countries like the United States took Stalin’s claims at face value.

Wolff is being hyperbolic here but he is wrong about Stalin’s claims. Stalin, like his predecessor Vladimir Lenin, argued that the Soviet Union existed as a transitional process from the proletarian revolution to the classless state-less utopia that Karl Marx wanted. Stalin argued that a strong central government needed to exist to supress the domestic opponents of Socialism because he believed doing so was necessary to establish “Socialism in one country”. Stalin posited that Socialism in one country would be a prelude to true Communism being put in place. Stalin did not attempt to redefine Socialism as “when the government does stuff”. So let’s take that definition off the table.

As to Wolff’s own definition of Socialism. It’s a distinction without a difference. He says that Socialism is not about the government but about workers ownership but in the same breath he posits that workers ownership is to be realised through government nationalisation. Technically, they aren’t the same thing but effectively they are. So even looking at Wolff’s, the Socialism definition I’ve been using seems to be essentially correct.

The Leftist website Rational Wiki describes Socialism as “ a fairly broad set of related socio-economic systems based on social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to individuals personally owning them. There really isn’t a strict definition, but at their core “Socialism” is any system where the working classes own the businesses.”

So, its own definition is talking about abolishing individual ownership in favour of collective ownership. Though the article acknowledges the existence of Libertarian Socialism as well as State Socialism. But once again, this is consistent with my having defined Socialism as government ownership given I explicitly said I was not talking about Libertarian Socialism.

The American Socialist politician Bernie Sanders has defined “democratic Socialism” as “building on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans.” Personally, I don’t find this works very well as a definition because

1) There are Socialists in democratic countries outside of the US where realising Socialistic policy would not be building upon Roosevelt’s policies because he wasn’t president of the world

2) There were Socialists in the US even before Roosevelt put his interventionist policies known as the New Deal into place (Kingfish was one of them and he criticised Roosevelt’s New Deal for not going far enough)

3) It’s not clear why building upon the New Deal would qualify as Socialism and the New Deal itself would not

4) It’s not clear what would or would not qualify as building upon the New Deal and

5) Even the concept of economic rights is nebulous.

Because of that, I would still favour the same definition of Socialism that I have been using.

(Chapter Headings: Anti-Socialist definitions of Socialism.)

The question remains, how do opponents of Socialism tend to define it? The libertarian commentator Lawrence Reed, while arguing against Socialism has said that it was necessary to have a “reliable definition”. Reed writes “A century ago, it was widely regarded as government ownership of the means of production.” That is what I have been using the word Socialism to mean. But Reed does not stop there. He writes “Yet the definition has changed over time. When the critiques of economists such as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman demolished any intellectual case for the original form of socialism, and reality proved them to be devastatingly right, socialists shifted to another version: central planning of the economy.” With this second definition, I would be much less likely to posit that Socialism is theft. Don’t get me wrong, there is a case against central planning.

The Austrian neoliberal economist Ludwig von Mises argued that attempting to replace unplanned market economy with planned economies or command economies led to what he called the economic calculation problem. Which is that it’s extraordinarily difficult for central planners to determine how much money something should cost. Per Mises, someone selling goods will charge enough money to purchase what they need to buy the resources necessary to produce whatever it is they make but will not charge so much money that customers will cease to buy from them. And this determines the prices at which goods are bought and sold. But, says Mises, when central planners impose fixed prices, producers of goods won’t be well-equipped to adapt to changes in the market supply of and demand for resources. Mises and the British neoliberal economist Friedrich August Hayek used this argument to justify opposing planned economies and favouring market economies instead. I’m a layman but it seems to me that Mises and Hayek had a good argument here. That said, I wouldn’t equate central planning with theft. Unlike the forcible seizure of land by the government, I don’t have a Biblical basis upon which to argue that planned economies are a form of theft. I know the libertarians would disagree with me on this but it seems to me the problem with planned economies is a practical consideration rather than a moral one.

According to Reed’s second definition, I wouldn’t consider Socialism theft but I would consider it a bad idea.

Reed writes “With the reputation of central planners in the dumpster worldwide, socialists have largely moved on to a different emphasis: the welfare state. The socialism of Bernie Sanders and his young ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that of the benevolent, egalitarian nanny state where rich Peter is robbed to pay poor Paul. It’s characterized by lots of “free stuff” from the government — which of course isn’t free at all. It’s quite expensive both in terms of the bureaucratic brokerage fees and the [demoralising] dependency it produces among its beneficiaries.”

So, Reed’s third definition of Socialism is support of the “Welfare State”. What is the Welfare State? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s “a system whereby the government undertakes to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, especially those in financial or social need, by means of grants, pensions, and other benefits. The foundations for the modern welfare state in the US were laid by the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.” So social programs like unemployment insurance, government health care, retirement pensions, public schooling, mental health services funded on the government’s dime et cetera would be the welfare state. If we define Socialism as the welfare state then I do not have a fundamental problem with it at all.

After all, it is written in the Torah in the Book of Leviticus Chapter 19 Verse 10 “And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger” and in the Book of Numbers Chapter 18 Verse 21 “And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.” With the tenth of one’s land paid as tithe to the Levites being mandated by the laws that G-d gave Moses rather than being optional. And it’s written in the Book of Leviticus Chapter 25 Verse 10 “ And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family” and part of the way the Jubilee year was observed was through the forgiveness of most debts so as to avoid becoming an oppressor to the poor.

And it’s worth noting, these acts of charity are not seen as voluntary. They are mandated by the law of G-d. There’s a reason why the Hebrew word for charity “tzedakah” is a word which literally translates as “justice” (or in some contexts righteousness). And, to put it plainly, in the Hebrew Scriptures, morality is legislated. In fact, according to the Talmud, there were case of people being compelled by Jewish courts to obey the Biblical Law requiring that they give a certain portion of what they had to the less fortunate though doing so was rare due to it seldom being necessary.

Reed describes the Welfare State as “where rich Peter is robbed to pay poor Paul.” Reed’s explanation for that is that the so-called “free stuff” provided by the State are not actually free but are taxpayer funded. He does not explicitly use the phrase but he seems to be channeling the idea espoused by many libertarians that taxation is a form of theft. That is not an argument that has any Biblical basis.

It is written in the Torah in the Book of Exodus Chapter 30 verse 12 “When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto G-d when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.” Everyone from the age of twenty and over had to give half a shekel “The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less”. Moses, at G-d’s behest, spent the money on funding the construction of G-d’s Holy Sanctuary called the Tabernacle and used the census to prepare himself and the Israelites for military conflict. This is not portrayed as a form of theft. And it’s not a one-off phenomenon either. About 400 years since the time of Moses, the Tabernacle was destroyed by the Philistines at Shiloh. Because of this, King David taxed the Israelites to fund the eventual construction of a permanent sanctuary in Jerusalem known as the Holy Temple. David’s son Solomon raised his father’s taxes while building the Temple to fund the project. After Solomon’s death, his son Rehoboam refused to repeal said taxes and thus sparked the Northern Tribes of Israel to secede and establish their own kingdom. While Rehoboam is portrayed as in the wrong here (and himself regrets his behaviour), Solomon is not viewed this way.

That said, the Talmud says in its commentary on the First Book of Kings Chapter 7 Verse 51, that Solomon refused to use the money his father had collected to fund the construction of the Temple because he believed David should have spent it on resolving a famine that afflicted Israel at the time and the Talmud does not portray Solomon as wrong about this. But even that is not a repudiation of taxes, it’s an admonition that taxes should be properly spent. Moses, David and Solomon all taxed the Israelites and they did so without G-d frowning upon them for it. They were not thieves.

If you define Socialism as simply support of the Welfare State then the only way you can justify considering Socialism a form of theft is if you equate taxation with theft. That equivalency is not recognised by the Hebrew Scriptures. I know Lawrence Reed is not Jewish but Christianity still recognises quite a lot of the Jewish tradition as the Old Testament. So it is unlikely that Christian teaching redefines taxation as theft.

I am aware that Jesus criticised tax collectors, but Jesus also criticised the rich. And, as Reed himself would surely point out, Jesus criticising the rich is not necessarily an indictment of capitalism. Reed is right about that and ,by the same token, Jesus criticising the tax collectors need not be an indictment of taxation.

(Chapter Heading: Problems with Sanders)

That having been established, I suspect that the “socialism of Bernie Sanders and his young ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” goes far beyond mere support of the American welfare state. In 1988, Sanders visited the Soviet Union and praised it for moving “forward into some of the early visions of their revolution, what their revolution was about in 1917.” If I were being generous to Sanders then I would say that he might be referring to the February Revolution which overthrew the Czar and replaced him with a parliamentary democracy under the leadership of the democratic Socialist politician Alexander Kerensky rather than the October Revolution with which Lenin overthrew Kerensky and established a Communist dictatorship. But given the Soviet Union descended from Lenin’s revolution rather than Kerensky’s, I think it’s significantly more likely that Sanders was praising Leninism rather than Kerensky-ism. In 1985, Sanders defended Nicaraguan Communist leader Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista regime on the grounds that they had more popular support than Ronald Reagan had. Though to be fair to Sanders, he was arguing more that the US should not support the Contras in their efforts to overthrow the Sandinistas rather than that the Sandinistas were good. That said, when a man named Edward Pike wrote an open letter to Sanders asking him to denounce the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua for their suppression of civil liberties, Sanders responded by insinuating that Americans were in no position to judge the situation in Nicaragua given Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of civil liberties during the Civil War, the censorship of pro-Nazi newspapers during the Second World War and the “unconstitutional” internment of Japanese Americans during the same war. Sanders followed up by saying “the overriding issue is whether or not the United States has a unilateral right to go to war and destroy a government that President Reagan and members of Congress dislike”. That notwithstanding, Pike’s letter did not say a word about military intervention in Nicaragua, only that Sanders should recant his praise for Daniel Ortega and should cease to designate Puerto Cabezas as Burlington’s sister city due to Ortega’s human rights abuses. That’s a question which exists independently of American military intervention in Nicaragua. And if it were possible for 21st Century Americans to oppose the Iraq War while acknowledging that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy then it should have been just as possible for Sanders to denounce the Sandinista regime while opposing American intervention in Nicaragua. In 2011, Sanders’s website republished a piece complaining that “These days, the American dream is more apt to be [realised] in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who’s the banana republic now?” Though to be fair, that was meant as a critique of America, not a praise of Venezuela. Even so, Sanders repeatedly praised Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro for his health care and education programs and Sanders has infamously struggled to condemn Castro’s authoritarianism without equivocation. If you’re an apologist for Communist regimes but insist that your brand of Socialism is simply support of the Welfare State, then I’ll take your claim with enough grains of salt to fill the entire Dead Sea.

(Chapter Heading: Problems with AOC)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not any better. She is a member of an organization called the Democratic Socialists of America. In 2021, the DSA openly sided themselves with the Communist government of Cuba in response to protests and tweeted “Viva Fidel” in reference to Fidel Castro. And since 2016, the DSA have openly supported the Nicolas Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela. If you’re in an organisation that praises Castro and Maduro then I’m not going to believe you when you say that the Socialism you support is simply the Welfare State.

(Chapter Heading: The Welfare State is not Socialism)

Because of this, I disagree with Reed’s contention that American Socialist politicians have redefined Socialism as simply support for the Welfare State even though Reed’s first two definitions of Socialism are good definitions.

(Chapter Headings: Anti-Socialist Definitions of Socialism Revisited)

Reed is but one of many opponents of Socialism and as such his definitions may not be representative of anti-Socialist definitions. So how do other opponents of Socialism define it. The pro-Trump website Conservapedia says that Socialism “refers to a set of related left-wing socio-economic systems based on control by a bureaucratic elite of the means of production (as opposed to individuals personally owning property).” This is entirely consistent with my original definition of Socialism.

Likewise, in 2018, the pro-Trump commentator Steven Crowder live-streamed an online video titled “Socialism is Evil: Change my Mind” wherein he invited people to sit down with him and convince him that he was wrong to denounce Socialism as morally reprehensible. Amidst the very first discussion, Crowder was challenged to define Socialism. He defined it as “government ownership of the means of production” and maintained this definition throughout the ensuing debates. So Crowder’s definition aligns well with my own. That said, in a 2021 video titled “Common Sense Gun Control is Nonsense: Change my Mind” , Crowder and an interlocutor named George had a discussion about Libertarian Socialism with George defining it as workers making decisions on behalf of the businesses by which they were employed instead of them being made by shareholders. Crowder offered as a rebuttal that Socialism can only ever be implemented “by force” and argued that supporting that was inconsistent with libertarian principles. So it seems Crowder believes that Libertarian Socialism cannot remain Socialism without ceasing to be libertarian, which is an entirely legitimate argument to make. Apparently, he regards workers owning the means of production as something that can only be libertarian in theory but that in practise can only manifest as State Socialism.

The Anti-Socialist definitions accord well with my own.

(Chapter Headings: Final Thoughts)

The Dictionary definitions of Socialism are consistent with how I have been defining Socialism. The Socialist definitions of Socialism also broadly align with how I have defined Socialism with the sole exception of Sanders’s definition of Socialism as support of building upon the New Deal which I do not consider an adequate definition. While the Anti-Socialist definitions, by and large, said the exact same things that I said about how to define Socialism. The one exception being Lawrence Reed who, to his credit, was more nuanced and addressed the different things that Socialism could be used to mean. And while I plainly disagree with his third definition of Socialism, his first two definitions have a lot of merit to them. And the first of the definitions is essentially the same as how I have been defining Socialism. In conclusion, I stand by how I defined Socialism in The Bible vs Socialism: Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters

My name is Matitya and this has been an episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.