Ideologies and states: the socialist challenge

From Marx to Lenin to Stalin to MaoTerm 1, week 9Anne Gerritsen

Room H0.18a.t.gerritsen@warwick.ac.uk

Link to previous lectures?

• Socialism and Ideology• Socialism and Liberalism• Socialism and Nationalism

What is different about socialism?

• It is the challenge of socialism• it is a global ideology

What is socialism?– An interpretation of capitalist society, developed by Karl

Marx.– Marx recognises the inherent contradiction within

capitalism, namely the difference between whether you have access to the means of production or not.

– Contradictions in capital accumulation– Conflict will lead to the self-destruction of capitalism. – Communism: theory of government that considers the

creation of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless society, structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as the most important political goal.

What is socialism?• Economy:

• All economic phenomena form the infrastructure. ‘It is not the consciousness of [people] that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.’ (Marx)

• History• All of history is the history of the conflict between the classes• Revolutions are necessary to bring about new stages and social

transformation. • Ultimate aim of socialism

• Creation of a completely classless society, where the government controls all means of production and distribution of goods.

• Absence of private property

Contrast to Liberalism

A political cartoon published in 1909 criticising the Liberal reforms as socialist, published in 1909 by the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations.

Origins of socialism• French Revolution of 1789, which

"abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property".

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains“ (Rousseau)

• German philosophy of GWF Hegel• English political economy,

particularly that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo

• 1848 publication of Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels

Marxhttp://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/pics/marx.jpg

Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895)

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924)http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/l/pics/lenin.jpg

Stalinhttp://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/s/pics/stalin1.jpg

Mao Zedonghttp://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/pics/mao1.jpg

http://youtu.be/qOP2V_np2c0

WHAT QUESTION DOES SOCIALISM ANSWER?

• Liberalism seeks to offer liberties to men and women, to the working, middle and upper classes, to people of all colours and ethnic groups, assuming that the existing relationships between all these groups allow those liberties to be actualised.

• Socialism finds that these liberties in practice cannot actually be realised. So that’s what it seeks to address, and it is willing to use the state to create the conditions under which all groups can flourish.

WHY DOES SOCIALISM MATTER FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MODERN?

• Universalist ideology• Cold War• Economic Crisis• Proposed a pathway towards modernity for

the parts of the world where modernity had until then not reached.