SOCIALISM

All the wealth belongs to all the people

What does socialism mean? Simply that the people determine, and continually redetermine, the allocation of productive resources through centralized, democratic decisions.

Those who create income (working, for example, within an independent collective) keep it and divvy it up among themselves, but NO ONE OWNS THE WEALTH they use to produce it with. If my farm collective makes out like bandits this year while yours struggles, I will make more money than you this year -- but at the end of the year, the majority of people will probably recognize the situation and reallocate some of my collective's land to yours. The same groups do not keep getting richer at everyone else's expense. While in principle the allocation of resources is decided centrally, the people in practice will probably decide to provisionally decentralize most of the smaller decisions, subject to later reclamation by the center to prevent escalating local disparities of wealth.

In other words, socialism, by definition, requires democracy -- a far more sweeping democracy than any ever attempted. Production within the state, on the other hand, is NEITHER NECESSARY NOR SUFFICIENT for socialism. While Leninist states have been unfairly treated by Cold War and post-Cold-War propaganda, it has to be said that none of these repressive regimes even remotely resembled socialism. Yet far from being utopian, socialism is a highly flexible system, capable of many configurations -- based on the sovreign power of THE PEOPLE to order their own economy, their own government, and their own lives.

Oh, and one other thing: socialism shouldn't be seen as a contemporaneous rival to capitalism. By the time the revolution happens, the capitalists themselves will be trying to replace capitalism with something worse.

PEOPLE'S..WEALTH

  1. All productive resources belong to all the people, inalienably.

  2. Since in any society the true possessors of wealth are those who determine its use, the people's ownership can be exercised only through the allocation and free reallocation of wealth by a central, democratically elected governnment.*

  3. What is produced belongs specifically to the freely organized collective of its producers. Produced productive resources must be bought therefrom by the people at a fair price.

  4. But for the people to buy what belongs to us from our capitalist exploiters changes only the form of our exploitation. We must therefore seize in one swoop what is ours by right.

  5. This revolution without precedent is for all. Those who oppose it have no less of a claim to its fruits.


*It is for the people to determine precisely what should be considered to be productive resources; but they may be broadly defined as land, natural resources, infrastructure, and anything with which other economically valuable things are made through a work process on a larger scale than a household. A factory, office building, or supermarket, yes; a car, computer, or blender, no. However, this is just MY definition. It will be up to THE PEOPLE, after the revolution, to define and redefine such parameters.


"Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man"


"From each according to his abilities,
To each according to his needs."


Marxist-Lennonism...there's just nothing like it.


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