What is Socialism Really? — Or What Should it Be

Do you have issues with far right extremists (who legitimately loath the middle of the road conservative neoliberal right wing and who also loath the authoritarian capitalist) and do you also have issues with far left extremists (who loath the centrist neoliberals and milquetoast liberals as much as the far right extremists do)?

If you agree that neoliberal centrism is a false "centre" and that far right & left extremism is just too fantastical (too ideological, not practical) then you might also like to read Bill Mitchell here:

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=45514

Mitchell writes about how the neoliberal "left" have forsaken the working class and become (in all the important ways, other than superficial) indistinguishable from the reactionary conservatives they purport to combat. When your politics have two main combatants who lick each other's wounds and each refuse to truly champion the ordinary working folks their PR campaigns claim to champion, then you have a broken sham democracy.

If so, you probably have at least thought about socialism and pondered how a central command control economy can be avoided and yet socialist principles still adopted. If we subtract from the far right wing extremism the pathologies of racism and Christian fanaticism and the equally pathological fundamentalist beliefs in ultra free market ideology (which can never work in the real world just as a centralized command economy can never really work — if for no other reason just the simple fact too many people will not accept these extremes) then I think a reasonable person can see that the far left extremists and far right extremists converge to several (perhaps a majority) of shared principles.

This is not a rigorous thesis, but the rough idea is that extreme leftist thought veers towards anarcho-syndicalism (all authority in a society has to be legitimated by the demos) which is non-trivially quite similar to extreme libertarian anarcho-capitalism beloved by the far right. Both are fantasy notions, but taken to extreme limits they do converge to several commonalities. Ultra-libertarianism becomes self-contradicting when highly unequal power structures naturally emerge, which in a realistic word would be fought against, and typically will lead to some kind of social agreement to establish something like a democratic government (for stability and escape from a hellish anarcho-capitalist landscape, if for no other reason). In fact, that is really the 10,000 year long sweep of human history. Ultra-libertarianism has existed! It existed some 4000 years ago, in tribal society within the tribe there was a sense of collective ownership, but between tribes it was all anarcho-capitalism, and so history proves ultra-libertarianism evolves into something approaching democracy. Tribes tend to eventually find it more "competitive" to cooperate and agglomerate, sharing key resources like warriors.

Likewise anarcho-syndicalism in a primitive society can persist, but in a modern society it can never satisfy all consumer demands and is unstable against the formation of power-centres, and so will inevitably evolve into some form of agreement to form governments (or something like governments, surely not like our current neoliberal infested PR driven corruption filled rat-holes of governments — where only a few decent, principled, high morally minded representatives can be found).

I think that in the overlap of non-prejudiced far right extremism and non-authoritarian far left extremism we can find a place where a sane and just socialism can exist. But this is not the usual meaning of the word "socialism". There is more individual freedom and greater social justice in non-authoritarian grass-roots cooperation. The more human cooperation is forced by law, the less truly "socialist" it becomes, it starts to defeat the good ideals shared by both the well-principled left-wing and right-wing extremists. Likewise, for the conservative right-wingers, my message is that the more you allow unfettered competition by law (deliberate deregulation) the worse society becomes. You cannot have free competition, it is just far too destabilizing.

Extreme socialism of the ultra-marxist variety is equally appalling and impossible. We do not, for example, need to prohibit private ownership. To do so is authoritarian, and would make a sane and anarcho-syndicalist legitimated socialism self-contradicting. Equally, we do not need to completely abnegate our responsibilities to others who we share the planet with by adopting extreme libertarian negative freedoms and the insane destabilizing ultra-competitive ideology. On the contrary, taking a queue from nature one would definitely not adopt ultra-competition, but would use a blend of cooperation and competition, at least in any social system seeking to draw lessons from nature. Instead of unfettered competition we should probably be thinking of marrying justice and freedom and not compromising the one for the other. All other things considered this probably means granting people freedom of limited private ownership, but also adopting justice and democracy in our shared workplaces. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs," is a fine credo, and any society that can say they have achieved this sort of condition could, in my opinion, lay claim to having a basis for prosperity and justice for all.

Of course, no country claiming to be democratic today has ever been truly democratic. What is true though, is that many nations have been creeping slowly towards democracy, and some could be said to be getting close. While others seem to be back-tracking back to feudalism (we would say neo-feudalism, since the modern form of feudalism is rule by neoliberal elites, not so much by land-owners, although over time this distinction is also getting blurred!) This back-tracking is not bad though, it is not retrogression, it is instead a kind of epicycle that I think one can see will reverse again back in the direction of greater democracy, justice and freedom. I have no proof of this, but if people do not force governments back onto the path of democracy and justice then the planet itself will probably force us there, perhaps through the painful path of authoritarian Green-extremism? Let's hope we do not descend into right-wing Green-fascism. But whatever the path, the other side of this torture will surely be an emergent greater democracy, greater justice, greater freedom.