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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is socialism?
Message-ID: <339@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Feb-85 22:10:05 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.339
Posted: Mon Feb 18 22:10:05 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Feb-85 07:05:47 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 26

<mike writes:
>By the criterion I currently use ("Do they call
>themselves either socialist or communist?"), all states now calling
>themselves socialist are socialist. So was Germany under the National
>Socialists. This seems to upset socialists, so I asked for a better
>definition.

There is no one true definition of socialism.  The term has been
applied to a great variety of real and hypothetical social
arrangements, unified only by a vague set of "family resemblances"
and by the desire of Bismarck and Hitler to adopt an
attractive-sounding label for their policies.  Marx, Mitterand,
Chernenko, Deng, and Nyrere would not be able to agree on a
definition.  I do not mind if you call Nazi Germany and the USSR
socialist societies, SO LONG AS you do not imply that democratic
socialists advocate the principles espoused by the leaders of those
societies.  A while back I posted a Marxian conception or
"definition" of socialism.  To Marx, the term "socialism" simply
meant a negation of capitalism, the product of the laws of
development of capitalism, which would eventually develop into
communism.  In other words, to a Marxist, "socialism" is defined by
its dynamics:  a socialist society is one which is on its way from
capitalism to communism.  Opinions differ as to whether Soviet-type
societies are on this road (I think not).  

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes