Dumb question: what's a Socialist?

[rogerashton]

30. Authorities

Let me cite two writers who might be said to have authority (of very different kinds!) on the subject. Engels wrote, "But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, ..., that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic." (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Ch. III, note 4.) But, to cite another great socialist, the Fabian and Nobel Laureate economist Sir Arthur Lewis, (Principles of Economic Planning) government management of the economy is not an objective of socialism but rather the means to the objective of socialism. The objective, as Lewis says and Engels would surely agree, is a classless society -- the liberation of the working class from its colony-like dependence on the rich.

Rand Paul said, a few years back, that opposition to the rich is irrational. After all, he said, we all are either working for them or selling something to them. Right, that's exactly what socialists oppose. But it also is biased and deceptive. For the most part, working people produce goods for the use of other working people, not for the rich. But we produce them under conditions of "alienated labor," which means that the goods we produce are the property of the rich employers -- who then sell them back to the working class at a profit. The meaning of "production for use" is that the capitalist middlemen should be cut out of the exchange.