If you're new to this blog, you might not have realized that I tend to refer to my political opponents or non-AnCap people as "Socialists", "Leftists", "Statists" or other adequate names. It is, however, a feature that makes people unconfortable to say the least; perhaps 'upset' and 'frustrated' are better ways to coin it. From time to time, I'm also told off by some "proper marxists" that I'm misusing the term, that the ones I'm calling socialists really are not - thus, I must be mistaking in my view of socialism.
There are many aspects of Marx's writing, many ideas prevalent in Engels' work and tons of more throughout history since their time. I could focus on Marxism, the Method, relations of Power, or Alienation to define Marxism. But I'll stick with a common theme for now.
If asked to define Socialism in a few words, what you'll most likely get is something like below:
"[...] based on the collective ownership of the means of production".Not everything, not the essence, but neither an unreasonable description of Socialism.
Now, Socialists and Marxists have since the time of Marx always struggled with definitions, clear-cut lines. They were constantly fighting between themselves over who's actually part of the Proletariat, who's a capitalist and who isn't. The 19th century French Socialists, refusing women to enter the workforce is a great example. Independent artists, painters and so on, seemed to upset the entire dichotomy of "Workers vs Capitalists", as they were neither exploited workers nor exploiting capitalists.
The Marxist story always falls apart once you start disaggregating their claims and ask for clear-cut definitions.
Let's return to the means of production. What is a "mean of production"?
Superficially, a marxist might tell you that any machine, raw material, labour etc that capitalists use in their exploitation of labour, i.e their production constitute 'mean of production'. The problem arises when you realize that anything can be used in production; if I'm running a Taxi Company, my cars become means of production; If I'm having a restaurant forks, plate and glasses become means of production; if I'm selling newly-picked strawberries to commuters, the table where I have the strawberries become a mean of production.
So here's the scale that confuses Socialists, Social Democrats, Social Liberals, modern-day Liberal, Conservatives and the rest of the lot:
They all argue for some collective ownership of the means of production.
Socialists say: 100% (sometimes, though, they allow people to have personal belongings)
Social Democrats say: mje, maybe 50% taxation + heavy regulations of labour relations
Social Liberals say: Perhaps 30%, enough to help the poor and sustain a Welfare State
Liberals say: Whenever market failures arise (pollution, insurance, central banks, the poor)
Conservatives: Military, police, courts, immigration and all things related to moral virtue!
My point here:
Collective ownership of the means of production is not cathegorically different in one ideology compared to the others; it is quantitatively different. It's only a question of HOW MUCH collective ownership they'd want.
From that point of view, anyone but a proper AnCap is rightfully deemed a socialist. They all want collective ownership of the means of production - albeit to a different degree, but nevertheless collective ownership of the means of production.
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Tomorrow, I'm off to Vienna for a few days, so LibertarianUni will be silent for a bit. Will post some favourite posts and videos on the blog. Enjoy!
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