What is socialism?

Socialism is a term that gets thrown about in politics, but I would imagine that most ordinary people have little idea what it actually means.

Let me begin by saying that it means something different to almost everyone you ask. It’s such a broad term that there is no one definition. It’s almost like saying well, I believe in God… well okay, which one? And which religion? Essentially it’s a very broad umbrella term to describe many different ways of achieving an end goal which is the reduction of inequality.

The term has become so stretched that politicians on the centre right, such as Tony Blair have described themselves as socialists, as well as those on the left like Jeremy Corbyn. They can’t both be right, can they? I would argue that no, Tony Blair was not a socialist but in fairness, it’s quite a subjective thing, there is no agreed definition, which leads to all of these confusing claims.

But what actually is it? If you take a strict, orthodox definition, it’s a society where the working class own and control the means of the production. In simple terms, ordinary people own the machines and infrastructure that make things in society, rather than rich people and the things that they make get distributed according to who needs them, not who can pay for them. In order to get there some socialists would argue for a violent revolution, or an authoritarian dictatorship of the working class, like in Russia.

The problem with this interpretation is that it’s a bit outdated and in order to get to that position you might end up crashing the economy, killing people, or just never get there in the first place.

Other interpretations have accepted that the orthodox approach isn’t very realistic or democratic and therefore more gradual reform is needed and society will slowly shift toward a system where the means of production are held in common ownership. These socialists tend to have sub group names and identities, such as ‘social Democrat’ or ‘democratic socialist’. They think we need to work within the existing system to get change. Jeremy Corbyn would fit into this camp, rather than with the anti democratic socialists.

What about me? I can’t claim my version of socialism is any more right than anyone else’s but in the short term I think we have to work within the existing system and win policy changes which improve peoples lives in the short term, like a higher minimum wage, better housing etc. For that reason, I am likely to vote Labour, despite not really agreeing with the leadership.

In the long term I’d describe my views as ‘market socialist’. I think that competitive markets, are pretty essential to economies and that states should not be in the business of running the whole economy. The big difference would be that the companies which exist today would cease to move profits to shareholders, instead they would become co-operatives. This is where companies are owned by workers and the profits they make get shared between the workers. People are not paid the same, but workers earn close to 100% of their labor value.

This system would mean that companies like Apple, Tesco, etc still exist and operate similar to how they do today. The difference is the workers would be paid an awful lot more because the profits are not going to shareholders.

In addition we would have more publicly owned companies. For instance I see a role for public ownership of water, rail, care, student accommodation. We would continue to be a prosperous, modern largely free market and free trading economy. The difference would be, our workers would be taking home £50,000 salaries instead of £17,000 salaries. There would also be an aim for some public services to be free, such as trains and busses.

The criticism of this idea is that it’s utopian. Yes it’s somewhat utopian, but so was shareholder capitalism (what we have now), before Margaret Thatcher came into power.

I think market socialism avoids the pitfalls of previous versions whereby the state tries to meet demand in the economy and runs everything, clearly that has never worked. Super high tax rates of 90% probably don’t work either, but super high taxes aren’t needed if companies are paying their wages super high, to workers.

The left in my view need to think outside of the box. High tax rates and government controlled markets aren’t the only way to get to socialism. In my view high tax rates in a capitalist economy just mean that we are capitalist but taxing people… what needs to change is ownership. We need a 21st century vision for socialism, but many socialists are stuck looking back to the 19th century. Karl Marx described an alternative to capitalism, but he could not have foreseen the global nature of capital which exists today.

Finally, I would add that this vision of market socialism is not something I expect to happen any time soon. Non of the UK parties believe in it, all I am saying is that neoliberalism re-invented the Tory party and won them elections… market socialism could do the same for the Labour Party. Of course it would have to start gradually, and is a decades long project, but look at what Thatcher got done in 10 years. She managed to change the whole economy, and also move the opposition to largely agree with her from 1997-2010.