Socialism

2.2.2   Socialism

Karl Marx witnessed enormous exploitation of workers by the owners of the means of production. He fought for justice by defining capitalism and its contradictions[1]. His principles for building communism were a visionary work of a genius. But he also made mistakes. Karl Marx is an authority in social sciences, and without pointing to his mistakes, it would be hard to build a better society.

Karl Marx correctly defined the exploitation of workers by analyzing the surplus value of work. However, Marx did not specify what salary workers objectively need to earn, not to be exploited, because it is impossible to determine by any observation or calculation. Only workers’ satisfaction with salaries may present the elimination of exploitation, and it can be achieved by a fair market where jobs and workers are equally demanded. However, Karl Marx believed that economic equality is the only justifiable system, which implies that all jobs should be equally valued, making the salaries uniform until, according to him, workers would be able to consume goods as much as they want.

Marx thought that the market economy caused workers’ exploitation, so he proposed eliminating the market and replacing it with a production organized by workers. In The Communist Manifesto, he introduced the slogan, “proletarians of the world unite” to take control over production and organize the production through the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” However, Karl Marx did not define how this economy was supposed to work. He believed that workers would plan and organize the production to satisfy their needs.

Production organized by workers required social ownership of the means of production. According to Marx, social ownership of the means of production would eliminate the deficiencies of capitalism. He was right about it, even though the methods to achieve such a goal were not yet successful. Karl Marx named the first phase of production under social ownership of the means of production “the lower stage of communism.” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin established the principle of production in the lower stage of communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work,“[2] which later Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin named socialism. Socialism was supposed to release workers from capitalist exploitation and create a just society.

Considering that capitalists would never let workers decide about their capital, Karl Marx proposed in The Communist Manifesto a revolutionary takeover of private properties as the solution to build a good society[3]. He justified revolution and the confiscation of private property because capitalists had made their capital on exploiting workers, which is generally accurate to a great extent. Nevertheless, if some people invest years constructing machines to replace many workers, should they not earn more than other workers? Marxian socialists have not found it acceptable, advocating for the equality of people. However, wage inequality should be a philosophical problem, and a good solution should be found democratically.

Karl Marx did not define the term revolution, so some Marxian philosophers questioned his violent intentions even in the Communist Manifesto[4]. Still, they have never explained how the socialist revolution can be performed peacefully. This book defines a peaceful socialist revolution for the first time. Marxian revolutionaries have been building socialism only by using force. Although violent revolutions may replace a particular social injustice, they have always been replaced with a new kind. To ensure the lasting effect of revolutions, the revolutionary leadership must be autocratic and oppress people. The power of oppression prevents equal human rights, blocking chances for building a better society. Therefore, calling for revolutions should be the last option to reach social justice and only when extreme oppression of workers occurs.

By appropriating the means of production from capitalists, socialism has practically denied the value of past work, which opened a new problem. In capitalism, the owners of capital pay responsibility for the production with their capital, the accumulated value of their past work. Capital made capitalists very responsible in the production processes. By denying the significance of past work, socialism has not had a successful method for paying workers’ responsibility in production processes. Furthermore, Marx knew that removing the market economy removes productivity indicators, so he called upon worker conscience to replace it. Marx tried to impose responsible production by calling on the conscience of workers.

Karl Marx believed that a highly developed human conscience would be capable of providing a responsible society, and he was right about this. He also thought people would build a conscience in their interests. However, no significant improvement in conscience has ever been realized, nor has society learned how to achieve it. Nothing conscious may come from the need for authorities to control people. The power of authorities increases their narcissism, which intensifies the oppression of people producing troubles for society rather than advantages. The authoritative oppression of people generates fear, which cannot develop people’s conscience, and a better community can hardly be built. Release from fear of authorities usually creates irresponsible narcissism in people, causing problems for society. Criminals would always find an excuse for whatever crime they commit. Therefore, calling for the conscience of non-conscious people is illusory. Only the freedom of responsible people may form peoples’ conscience, and according to the principles of this book, only equal human rights can provide it.

Marx’s assumption that an economy controlled by the proletariat would successfully follow people’s needs was doomed right from the beginning because no economy could satisfy the needs of greedy people. Greedy people are inevitable in societies without equal human rights because every inferiority is a nest for superiority needs. Moreover, even in the case of ideal democracy, people can hardly agree on anything. Workers have never had efficient control of production through their “dictatorship.” The most developed self-management production was established in socialist Yugoslavia, where production decisions were based on workers’ approval in the worker councils. In practice, such decision-making was time-consuming, and if production failed, the decisions made by workers relieved managers of their responsibilities. “It deteriorated production efficiency and led to economic disaster[5].” There is no better production choice but to select the best workers, including managers, for every work post, letting them freely produce the best they can while making them highly responsible to society for whatever they do. This book presents such an economy.

Marx’s idea of a democratically planned economy was noble and correct, but he did not have any evidence based on a previous model that it could work nor an idea of how it could work. Unfortunately, Marxists still do not have it. Socialism has had a big problem determining how to establish a social policy to satisfy people’s needs. By abandoning the market economy, socialism has lost efficient measures for selecting productive workers and managers to achieve a prosperous production. As a result, the revolutionary authorities had to control production to make such an economy produce anything at all. Thus, the socialist revolutions replaced experienced entrepreneurs with inexperienced revolutionaries who could not provide a more successful production organization than capitalism.

By abandoning the market economy, the socialist authorities had no other choice but to plan society’s basic production. For example, they planned how many tons of wheat they needed to feed people. They were relatively successful in planning the needs of the state. They were capable of developing science. However, people’s individual needs were barely considered because socialist leaders could not even gather them. The authorities have also had difficulties managing more complex production processes from one center. As a result, people were not hungry, but their material needs were less satisfied than in capitalism. As a result, socialist production was less satisfactory than capitalist production.

In an attempt to create a just distribution of incomes, Karl Marx replaced the market value of work with the labour theory of value he accepted from Adam Smith and David Ricardo and adapted to his philosophy. According to this theory, “the cost of a commodity can be objectively measured by the average number of labour hours required to produce that commodity.” Marx’s definition of the labour theory of value implies that workers’ labour values are equal. Thus, according to him, the total number of workers’ labour hours in producing commodities equally forms the commodities’ objective cost. This was the starting point of Marx’s philosophy of equality among people, which is supposed to eliminate workers’ exploitation.

However, such a cost of commodities cannot objectively represent the labour value because Marx’s definition does not differentiate between productive and non-productive work, responsible and irresponsible work, and challenging and easy work. Karl Marx probably assumed that equality of workers would involve their optimal effort in producing commodities, but it did not happen.

Socialism did work hard to bring economic justice to society. It eliminated unemployment by providing the necessary right to work to all. Everyone got a job even though their work was not demanded enough in their communities. Socialists balanced salaries regardless of work positions, productivity, efforts, and responsibilities, which built a more harmonious society than capitalism could establish. However, a balanced wage gap in socialism was not motivating for work. The humanist ideology of socialism had protected work positions that, to some extent, contributed to the irresponsibility of workers. The socialist authorities have not had another choice but to increase bureaucracy and decrease workers’ incentives, including that of managers. Thus the socialist economy obstructed its possibility of development.

Another challenge for a centrally planned economy is that production has little to do with the market’s demand and supply. Store shelves in socialist Eastern Europe were sometimes, if not often, empty. However, commodities were available on the black market, proving the need for the market economy. The result of the socialist economy was poor.

Finally, socialism did not destroy classes as Marx desired. Political leaders were high-class citizens. They did not need salaries much because they were privileged and got most of what they needed for free. People did not fight to earn more money but tried to get as close as possible to the political elite because it gave them privileged power in society. This brought corruption with all its negative phenomena, which damaged socialism.

The USSR and China accepted the centrally planned economy. As a result, their economies had lower productivity than capitalist economies. The USSR collapsed due to peoples’ dissatisfaction coming from the inefficiency of the centrally planned economy. China has learned from its mistakes, abandoned the Marxist planned economy in 1978, and accepted the regulated market economy. From that moment, it has become the fastest-growing economy globally, threatening to take the number one place. This should prove the shortcomings of the Marxian economy.

Socialism was indeed created as a noble attempt to form human society, but it did not work. Karl Marx did not have enough data to build socialism and communism, so he wrote almost nothing about them. His followers have created socialism by oppressing people, which could not bring favourable results. No science can fix problems originating from a lack of human rights. As a result, socialism was ineffective.

The main question of the Marxist economy is why Marx did not insist on shorter work hours to increase the workers’ salaries and reduce or eliminate the exploitation of workers? Marx most likely gave up on it because he observed how hard it was to make any agreement between employers and workers. However, reducing or eliminating the exploitation through shorter work hours should have been thoroughly presented to people no matter how hard it was to implement it. Today, struggling for shorter work hours is incomparably simpler and more rational than igniting violent revolutions and completely changing the socio-economic system.

Karl Marx suggested that alienation in production processes should be eliminated through workers’ cooperation and control of production processes, and he was correct in it. Still, no method to achieve such a goal has been successfully created. The political Left has tried to confront capitalism by developing cooperatives that practice the collaboration of workers in decision-making processes. Realizing this idea is problematic because workers have different needs, so reaching agreements about production matters is challenging. Successful cooperatives are rather an exception than a type of production that might replace capitalism. Only a more productive economy can replace capitalism. This study intends to define it.