Some capsule political definitions

For now I want to directly lift a Twitter thread by astute leftist Margaret Killjoy:

I’m going to define some terms, because most of them have become essentially jargon. Socialism, communism, anarchism, democratic socialism, libertarian socialism, authoritarian socialism.

First of all, the meaning of these terms shifts country to country and year to year, confusing matters greatly. An anarchist in 1880s Chicago would also call themselves a socialist. “Communist” had a much broader meaning before 1917. So I’m going to be a bit broad.

Socialism is the broadest umbrella term here. Roughly, a socialist fights for a world without gross economic inequality and generally does so through seeking for workers themselves (or the state, but not private companies) own the means of production (factories, farms, etc). It has a more specific meaning for much of the 20^th century, which is to say “not a communist [in the ‘aligned with the USSR sense’] but still into socialism.” It is sort of shorthand for “democratic socialism” for a long time and in a lot of writing.

Communism also has at least two meanings. Generally, communism is the word for a stateless socialist society, in which power rests in communes.

But ever since the Russian Civil War, when Bolsheviks took power and changed their name to the communist party, the word “communist” has generally meant “aligned to the communist party,” which generally took orders from the USSR. So if you read Orwell talking shit on “communists,” he was still a socialist … a democratic socialist. He despised Stalin, and during his lifetime, “communist” was used to mean “literally takes orders from Stalin.” This was not strawmanning, but structurally true.

Democratic socialism also has multiple meanings, because the Bolsheviks among others used to identify as democratic socialists. Generally speaking, a democratic socialist believes in using the democratic power of existing republics to transition them into socialist societies. By the mid-20^th century this was very much distinguished from “communists” aka bolsheviks.

Then there are the anarchists. Anarchists generally believe in not using the existing state to develop a socialist society, but instead using revolutionary structures (such as, well, soviets … worker’s councils basically) to transform society into a stateless society. Anarchists would sometimes call themselves libertarian socialists, in order to distinguish themselves from authoritarian socialists (aka “communists” like the bolsheviks).

The word Libertarian was consciously stolen by pro-capitalist forces decades later, in the 20^th century.

Confused yet? Anarchists generally want communism. The USSR was not a communist society (by its own definitions) but instead a society that claimed to be developing towards communism. (And generally would define socialism as the in-between stage.) Democratic socialists want to reach socialism democratically, that one is pretty clear. If it’s confusing to you, that’s because it’s confusing. Everyone uses these words differently. Someone calling themselves a communist in 1950 might mean a very different thing than in 2024. The cold war and western propaganda thoroughly complicated matters.

In the end, these labels only sort-of matter. What matters to me personally is that we move towards a society in which people control their own destinies but also take care of one another. A society built on mutual aid and solidarity (more jargon words, but I believe in them).

I would focus a little differently than Killjoy does in describing socialism. Socialists are motivated by eliminating economic inequalities, but I would not locate the definition of the ideology there. Rather, I would put it this way:

Socialism boils down to public control of the means of production. The “means of production” refers to wealth which enables creating other wealth: factories, economic infrastructure, et cetera. “Public control” could mean worker-owned corporations, democratically-accountable commons, state control, or other arrangements.

Most Americans confuse socialism with a different social-economic ideology:

Social democracy means systematic public provision (by the state or otherwise) of people’s material needs — stuff like healthcare, housing, et cetera. To some degree, every industrialized society in the world today includes an element of social democracy, so it can pair with socialism, capitalism, democracy, authoritarianism, et cetera. The term is usually employed to describe a society in which those provisions are strong, including such resources as “free” healthcare and education.

Capitalism means private ownership of the means of production, where “private” means individuals — either directly, or indirectly through corporations.

Markets are a social / economic arrangement in which there is a shared sphere in which people may buy & sell a resource. There is a tendency to equate markets with capitalism, but the relationship is more complicated than that. Capitalism implies a capital market in which people may buy & sell the means of production; socialism forbids this. Capitalism also implies a labor market in which people may buy & sell their time working; socialism does not necessarily forbid this, but does at root seek to prevent anyone from needing to sell their time in a labor market in order to survive. The market for consumer goods & services (shoes, cars, massages, house painting, et cetera) is a feature of capitalism which some socialists yearn to eliminate, but socialism does not necessarily mean its elimination, only the elimination of the capital market.

Libertarianism in the US means wanting universal rights including private property without a state, where “private property” means not shoes & cars but capital, the means of production. In practice, libertarians prioritize property rights so strongly that they accept the the state as a guarantor of property as a compromise which can hopefully be overcome in time; in this they differ from anarchists who see socialist public control of the means of production as integral to (and part of the point of) the elimination of the state.

I hope to stack up several more short, clarifying definitions here over time.