What Is Socialism?

What Is Socialism?

Beyond the welfare state lies the terra incognita we call socialism. It lies there more by assumption than by reconnaissance, for no one has yet observed this socialism in reality: perhaps it will turn out to be a New Atlantis, not a New World. But we assume that socialism lies “beyond” the welfare state because what we generally mean by Western socialism is a set of institutions and cultural attitudes, of social structures and lifeways, that is qualitatively different from those we find under the prevailing state of affairs. Socialism, as most of us think about it, is not just an improved welfare state. It is another kind of society.

What kind? That is a very awkward as well as difficult question, which most socialists, especially Marxists, have been reluctant to examine. When looking at past or present, Marxists like to insist on the necessity of emphasizing the “socioeconomic formations” underlying each separate chapter of history. In so doing, they force an observer to pay special attention to the interaction of social, political, and economic dynamics characteristic of each epoch. But when socialism is mentioned, this tough-minded approach tends to be abandoned, even denigrated as “counterrevolutionary.” Socialism then becomes little more than a compass setting, an imagined landfall over the horizon, and no effort is made to discuss even the most basic characteristics that we would expect to be associated with a new chapter of human history.

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