Sylvia Pankhurst outlines how socialism and communism will only come from a total break with capitalism.
The words Socialism and Communism have the same meaning. They indicate a condition of society in which the wealth of the community: the land and the means of production, distribution and transport are held in common, production being for use and not for profit.
Socialism being an ideal towards which we are working, it is natural that there should be some differences of opinion in that future society. Since we are living under Capitalism it is natural that many people's ideas of Socialism should be coloured by their experiences of life under the present system. We must not be surprised that some who recognise the present system is bad should yet lack the imagination to realise the possibility of abolishing all the institutions of Capitalist society. Nevertheless there can be no real advantage in setting up a half-way-house to socialism. A combination of Socialism and Capitalism would produce all sorts of injustice, difficulty and waste. Those who happen to suffer under the anomalies would continually struggle for a return to the old system.
Full and complete Socialism entails the total abolition of money, buying and selling, and the wages system.
It means the community must set itself the task of providing rather more than the people can use of all the things that the people need and desire, and of supplying these when and as the people require them.
Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, making advertisements and all the various developments of commerce which, in fact, employ more than two-thirds of the people today.
Given the money system, the wage system is inevitable. If things needed and desired are obtainable only by payment those who do the work must be paid in order that they may obtain the means of life. The wages system entails such institutions as the old-age pension, sick and unemployment insurance and widow's pensions, or the Poor Law, and probably plus the Poor Law. These involve large numbers of people drawn from productive work to do purely administrative work. Thus useless toil is manufactured, and the burden of non-producers maintained by the productive workers is increased.
Moreover social conditions are preserved which are quite out of harmony with Communist fraternity. The wage system makes the worker's life precarious. The payment of wages entails the power to dismiss the worker by an official or officials.
So long as the money system remains, each productive enterprise must be run on a paying basis. Therefore it will tend to aim at employing as few workers as possible, in order to spend less on wages. It will also tend to dismiss the less efficient worker who, becoming unemployed, becomes less efficient. Thus an unemployable class tends to grow up.
The existence of a wage system almost inevitably leads to unequal wages; overtime, bonuses, higher pay for work requiring special qualifications. Class distinctions are purely differences of education, material comfort and environment.
Buying and selling by the Government opens the door to official corruption. To check that, high salaried positions are created in order that those occupying them have too much to lose to make pilfering and jobbery worth while.
Originally published in One Big Union Bulletin, 2 August 1923. Taken from the SPGB website.
Comments
This short text seems to…
This short text seems to have first appeared in the Dreadnought, with a few minor alterations, under the title "What Is Socialism?" on 14 July 1923 (Vol. 10 No 17).
Read this one before…
Read this one before. Stumbled over the first sentence.
The first, socialism, is a description of truly human relations, of social living. The second, communism, is a description of communal property relations. Admittedly, these two things occur together. It would be immaterial if the word Communism had not been corrupted to mean that the means of production, distribution and transport are held in common by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Socialism corrupted to mean anti-socialism.
As far as Marx and Engels…
As far as Marx and Engels were concerned, the terms were more or less interchangeable. It was mostly Lenin who popularized the idea that socialism and communism were distinct stages of society, particularly in his work State and Revolution. Pankhurst is correct in this regard. Marx and Engels preferred the one term over the other at various points, such as when they used the word "communist" for the Communist Manifesto in order to distance themselves from the various types of utopian socialism, but they regarded the terms as essentially synonymous. There's also little point in debating the "one true single meaning" of political terms; there are none. It's more productive to talk about specific people/groups and their ideas.
Anarchy, socialism and…
Anarchy, socialism and communism express three different things, hence why there are three different words.
Anarchy expresses the absence of rule and rulers. It expresses the negation of a negative.
Socialism, the word, derives from socio, meaning friends, and expresses the human, i.e. social, relations between our species.
From communis, communism means things held in common. As a corruption, Communism means things held in common by the state.
None of these are political terms, except under corrupted forms. All three are anti-political—politics being Man's fall from grace, division from himself.
The only word that expresses all three in one is uhuru.
There's also little point in…
I have to disagree. I think we can assert a definition of these terms but they have to be based on how they are currently employed across the Left. Take the term ‘socialism’ for example. It unites a lot of disparate tendencies under that label, primarily because most people mean by it a generic conception of a society in which wealth is held in common. Communism is more specific; production and distribution according to need. I think it would be hard to find individuals or groups that don’t use these terms in this way.
I have to disagree. I think…
That's sort of my point; you have to look at what people mean with words and not just assume that there is some "one true eternal meaning" of political terms.