by Victor Preuninger

Created on: December 22, 2009   Last Updated: January 05, 2010

Explaining Socialism

Socialism -  theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole (Dictionary.com).

Socialism is probably the most misunderstood theory of social organization one can find out there.  This is particularly true in the United States, where I suspect 90% or better of the population would lump socialism, communism, Marxism, and Leninism into one basket and assume they’re all the same thing.  This seems to be the view of people from political leaders to the guy next door, a fact which has denied America the opportunity for reasoned discussion of the options available for organizing our own society.

Socialism has never really been thought through to the point where it  could be developed as a coherent social or political system.  Rather, it seems to have developed as catch all phrase for political attempts at social engineering which fall somewhere in between Marxism and Capitalism.  As a result, the term “socialism” has been applied to a considerable variety of governments, economies, and theories, from Britain and Sweden to Cuba and Venezuela to President Obama!  Surely, all of these are not the same.  Even those definitions which we have, such as the one above, are, I think, sorely lacking.

Socialism must, to my view, proceed from the premise that the burdens and benefits of living in a given society should be fairly distributed. In other words, while Henry Ford made a great deal of money through his own innovations, hard work, etc., the fact that he launched his endeavors here in America (as opposed to India for instance), means he  is also responsible for a greater share of the cost of maintaining and sustaining America. Socialism does NOT seek to confiscate Mr. Ford’s wealth, but rather recognizes that, in so far as he has profited more from American infrastructure, labor and markets, than a worker on his assembly line, he is also responsible for a greater share of the burdens of citizenship. 

A second premise of socialism is that society has an obligation to sustain its poorest and weakest members.  While this premise is not intellectually sustainable from an evolutionary standpoint, it has its roots in the Judeo-Christian heritage of Western Europe and America.

From these two premises, a fairly wide variety of socialist

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