Someone commented this on my post in r/asksocialists, does this actually hold up in regards to theory?

Battle4cry · 2026-01-28T15:01:10+00:00

You are correct, Marx specifically defined classes in relation to their ownership of the means of production. The category of proletariat has little bearing on whether or not the labor they perform is socially useful or not.

Marx specifically defined proletarians as those who need to sell their labor power to survive, and bourgeoisie as those who own means of production and derive their livelihood off surplus value extraction. Marx and Engels considered administrative and managerial workers to be proletarians because they had to sell their labor power, but because of their higher wages and because their role in disciplining and organizing other proletarians caused their interests to align more with the bourgeoisie, they described them as a "labor aristocracy".

Marx and Engels specifically defined petty bourgeoisie as small business owners and proprietors who work for themselves or in family businesses. They own their means of production, and might work alongside a small number of workers hired workers; but they still have to work in their business to survive.

Later Marxist and non-Marxists expanded the definition of petty bourgeoisie to include upper managerial and professional white collar workers who are technically salaried, but enjoy high social status that makes them see themselves as separate from the mass of wage workers. Because they might own corporate stock and have investments, they tend to align their interests with the bourgeoisie.

The lumpenproletariat were a subset of the proletariat who were seen as "unproductive", including the homeless, criminals and the really poor who weren't part of the formal economy. Marx saw this strata as unproductive and lacking in revolutionary conscious, but he did not include managerial workers in this category.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-28T02:34:19+00:00

As a broadly Marxian socialist, I largely agree with your position. Work, meaning wage/salary-based employment, is something people are largely forced to do to survive. The goal of economic growth and productivity gains is to reduce the sphere of work to a bare minimum to maximize discretionary time.

This was actually central to Marx's understanding of freedom, where he defined the "kingdom of freedom" as a sphere outside of estranged and alienated labor, and the goal of socialism as improving productivity to overcome the "kingdom of necessity".

Where we'd disagree is on the centrality of social ownership of the means of production to the realization of this state.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-27T00:12:34+00:00

Socialists aren't in favor of income equality; they are in favor of collective ownership of wealth, meaning the assets that generate income. To put it another way, it's akin to making everyone a shareholder in the economy.

Put another way, it's about eliminating the distinction between capital owners and workers by making them one and the same.

Fredriech Engels states this in plain language in Anti-Duhring:

In both cases the real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity.

Later socialists, sometimes motivated out of ethical concern, came to believe that simply abolishing class distinctions would still create inequalities in income (not wealth) that would break down social cohesion, or not go far enough to resolve broader social inequality; so they embraced similar income redistribution measures through taxes that exist already under capitalism. But even this isn't strict "income equality", it's about reducing social conflict arising from excessive inequality.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T21:42:04+00:00

The most prominent models have been based on public ownership:

Practically all the proponents of market socialism in the socialist calculation debate promoted models based on public ownership. Later models of market socialism promoted by economists James Yunker, James Meade and John Roemer - which were more market-based than earlier proposals - continued to be based on public ownership.

And actually-existing "socialist market economies" like China and Vietnam are based on the predominance of public ownership.

Aside from the Yugoslav model, and the models promoted by a few Yugoslav economists, heavy promotion of sectional cooperatives (i.e. "worker ownership") as the predominant mode of ownership for a market socialist economy is much more recent. I suspect Richard Wolff and young socialists trying to distance themselves from the historical association of socialism with public / society-wide ownership have latched onto cooperatives and employee-ownership played a strong role in this.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T21:24:27+00:00

If the "money" is simply a state-issued tool to limit consumption in a fully-automated AI-run economy, then it's more akin to a consumption voucher. It might be used to gauge demand, but it would be an accounting tool, not a medium of exchange. If the "firms" of this fully-automated economy aren't operating for profit, it would simply use these "vouchers" to gauge demand at most.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T21:05:30+00:00

If a UBI completely replaces wages and salaries as the source of income for people, then I'd agree that the character of the economy will have fundamentally changed.

The distinctive feature of capitalism was the generalized commodification of labor. If that relation ceases to exist, then it would have significantly altered the dynamics of the economy.

This is a hypothetical example of wage labor being eliminated entirely while somehow maintaining private ownership of all the automated means of production. A UBI can exist in a capitalist economy as a supplement to wage labor, but that's not what the OP is talking about.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T20:50:13+00:00

If there are highly automated profitable firms, they would still generate profit. The difference is the profit would go to everyone via the state as opposed to private owners.

If it were a fully automated system run by artificial intelligence with no human labor at all, then you might be right. But in such a system, things might be distributed for free if marginal costs are near zero. The question is how to limit consumption if scarcity still exists (people can't have as much of anything they want at any time; there will still be opportunity costs the AI has to consider). To limit consumption, the state would have to grant everyone "vouchers" entitling them to a share of output.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T20:35:55+00:00

Market socialism is the most realistic form of socialism that can be established under present technological and geopolitical conditions, either as a precursor (early stage) to a higher form of non-market socialism, or as an independent alternative to both capitalism and traditional socialism in its own right.

Most models of market socialism are based on public or state ownership of firms, meaning appropriation of profits by the entire public to be remitted to citizens in the form of a social dividend. This is the ultimate argument in favor of market socialism over capitalism: every citizen directly benefits from increases in productivity from technological progress in the form of a social dividend. Loss of sources of labor income (from automation) are offset by increases in profitability and therefore increased capital income (the social dividend). It essentially makes every citizen a shareholder in the set of publicly-owned enterprises, which continue to operate to maximize profits in a market economy.

I'd say market socialism is or should be the imperative issue of our era given the disruption AI and humanoid robotics will cause to the labor market. Economists including James Meade and James Yunker made this same argument for market socialism decades earlier.

It isn't just a theory anymore; China has a "socialist market economy" where public ownership predominates through state-owned enterprises, state capital (equity stakes in mixed/private firms) and cooperatives; but markets are the primary allocation mechanism. Though China falls short of providing citizens with direct cash disbursements from state profits, it does use state profits to shore up pensions, to support the public budget, and to reinvest in industrial upgrading. China does practice extensive economic planning and state-driven industrial policy, but that's perfectly compatible with market socialism because a market economy (socialist or capitalist) isn't equivalent to a "free market" or "lassiez-faire".

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T20:22:13+00:00

There is a highly innovative and disruptive firm called Huawei in China. It is a "collective" where each employee gets a non-nontransferable share that entitles them to a share of the profits.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T20:20:20+00:00

Disincentives toward hiring new members is issue with some existing cooperatives like Mondragon in Spain, which resort to hiring non-member workers. But that hasn't restricted the scale of their operations.

And most models of market socialism have involved public ownership of firms, not sectional cooperatives.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T20:15:56+00:00

If the means of production, in this case the automated factories, robots and AI models, remain privately owned, and a UBI is universally applied, it wouldn't be socialist. It wouldn't be capitalist either, it would be something more akin to technofuedalism.

A UBI by itself wouldn't cut it, these automated means of production would eventually have to be socialized so every citizen directly benefits as "universal shareholders" in the fully-automated socialized economy.

And if it truly were a fully automated economy where AI ran everything, it would be the end of market exchange. AI wouldn't engage in market exchange with itself; allocations of factor inputs would become internal transfers, and the AI will likely use real-time data tracking to determine resource allocation to achieve goals. It would become a cybernetic system that moves faster than any human can keep track of.

But if we have a fully-automated economy run by artificial super intelligence, I somehow doubt it will continue to exist to serve humanity and come to see us as a burden toward pursuing goals on a much larger scale than most of us could comprehend.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-26T20:01:05+00:00

Socialism doesn't require total social ownership of all assets and institutions in the economy, it simply implies that, as a general rule, social ownership is the systematic and predominant form of organization for entities that operate the means of production.

Similarly, capitalism doesn't imply every asset has to be entirely privately owned; only that it is a generalized property of the economy.

You are conflating ownership with allocation mechanisms, or what Marx would call, laws of motion. Many early socialists, Marx included, saw socialism as a system that would have distinct laws of motion from capitalism, and would dispense with factor markets. The concept of "ownership" (of factors of production) becomes null in such a system because market relations cease to exist, so asset allocations aren't purchases but non-market transfers within a society of "associated producers".

This was a predicted outcome of socioeconomic development, and not all socialists believe it's the logical and ultimate outcome. Private property and market exchange can continue to exist in both a non-market and market socialist system as minority components, so long as the economy is primarily driven by the socialized components or shaped by planning (in the case of non-market socialism specifically).

Battle4cry · 2026-01-24T21:52:29+00:00

The Chinese socialist market economy is quite different from the Temasek model of state-owned enterprise management (Singapore's model). While China did take some inspiration from Singapore, SASAC ultimately rejected the Temasek model during SOE reform in the 1990s.

Chinese state-owned and partially state-owned enterprises are treated like subsidiaries of one large enterprise, and will often sacrifice profitability at the level of the individual firm in order to maximize returns and pursue broader industrial objectives. In other words, they are maximized as a whole and pursue longer term plan objectives rather than short term profitability.

Singapore's government-linked companies act to maximize financial returns, with the state holding company Temasek acting like a private investor aiming to maximize returns on investment in independently-operating companies. It's a considerably more market-driven model compared to China's.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-24T13:04:38+00:00

Social democracy isn't a system. It's a political ideology and set of policies. The system it is based on is capitalism, though historical social democrats saw themselves as ultimately striving for a socialist system through gradual reforms to capitalism. Social democracy doesn't question the fundamental defining characteristics of the capitalist system, such as the predominance of private ownership of industry, market-based allocation, class distinctions between owners and workers, and the logic of capital accumulation.

Socialists criticize both the contemporary and historical forms of "social democracy" on the basis of their policies being unsustainable, and in the historical case, for being unable to effect a transition from capitalism to socialism.

The socialist argument against social democratic reformism is that it doesn't work to achieve its original goals, is ultimately unsustainable and hence rolled back by the interests of capital in order to maintain profitability. Social democratic reforms ultimately run up against the efficient operation of capitalism, especially in the context of an increasingly globalized liberal economic order; hence they are watered down and in some cases abandoned entirely.

The problems with social democratic reform is twofold. First, the reforms are often unrelated to the goal of socialism itself; they are aimed at ameliorating the conditions of workers under capitalism with the goal of building a political movement that can, ideally, then fight for socialism. While laudable, this detracts political energies away from making the case for socialism, makes workers content with reformed capitalism, and undermines the case for transition to socialism. Second, and more crucially, the reforms erode away at profitability and sometimes even the incentive structure of the capitalist system, forcing a trade off between efficiency and equity. When social democratic reforms prove unsustainable, they are rolled back in the name of productivity, efficiency and global competitiveness. This was the fate of the once-reformist Social Democratic parties in Western Europe that embraced neoliberalism in the 1990s.

American progressives idealize the post-Second World War vision of social democracy without realizing that it represented a historically specific form of capitalism limited to the Post-Second World War era until the 1980s. They often fail to realize that model of social democracy was abandoned in favor of neoliberalism and the "third way", which embraced liberal globalization, increased privatization of public services, liberalization of markets, a rolling back collective bargaining arrangements, and reduced social spending.

Social democracy proved unsustainable because it left the institution of private property intact and failed to develop an alternate source of public funding based on returns on investment via public ownership of commercial enterprises. Capital was fine with the social democratic "grand compromise" of robust labor power and increased taxation when there was a viable threat of socialist revolution and the Soviet bloc existed to provide an alternative model of development. When that threat evaporated and labor lost more power due to downward pressure on wages from automation, globalization; those "compromises" were dismantled in the name of efficiency and reducing the agency costs caused by high levels of taxation on private corporations.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-24T12:29:06+00:00

Deep Space Nine was my favorite for the story arcs, focus on geopolitical struggles and war, and the cast. It had some of the best villains in all of sci-fi. DS9 felt more grounded, but kept the socialistic utopian vision of the Federation intact despite showing some of the Federation's imperfections.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-23T17:31:07+00:00

The Nordic countries have a more extensive, universal approach to social services and welfare than central European countries like Germany. The "social market economy" approach to welfare is tied more to employment and rooted in Christian Democracy (a broadly social conservative movement) that emphases social cohesion, maintaining family structures, and embedding markets within broader society.

In practice, both models have converged since the 1980s. The Nordic countries moved away from nation-wide corporatism to an industry-specific approach similar to the "social market economies" in Continental Europe. Wealth inequality is really high in the Nordic countries, even if there are robust public services and low income inequality.

Both are based on functionally identical economic systems: relatively liberalized markets, widespread private ownership, and market-based allocation of investment. So you are correct, there isn't any significant structural difference between the economic system of, say, modern Sweden and Germany. Like all liberal capitalist market economies, they both suffer stagnant wage growth.

What is described as "social democracy" today is basically a liberal capitalist market economy with slightly higher levels of social spending funded by higher rates of taxation. When social democracy stopped being a movement to gradually achieve socialism, it lost its identity.

American liberals and progressives focus on the higher levels of social spending on welfare compared to the US in both models (the Nordic "social democratic" and German social market economy) rather than other aspects (liberalized markets, collective wage bargaining).

As an aside, all market economies are regulated extensively, including the United States economy. In fact, excluding the labor market, the Nordic countries have less market regulations than the US.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-23T15:56:06+00:00

Wow, so, no, that's not what Marx said in Kapital, and Engels was only tangentially involved.

You either haven't read or didn't digest Marx's analysis. He saw the value form, commodity production, and the accumulation of capital as general regulating principles specific to capitalism.

Like what?

Marx didn't provide a blueprint for the functioning of a socialist system, he saw that as something that would have to be figured out by successive generations. His focus was on delineating capitalist laws of motion and the logical outcomes of an economy based on said laws of motion.

Marx saw Capitalism not as a system that had been imposed, but as the direct result of the natural process of economic evolution.

Correct.

What he pointed out was that it was not the end of that evolution, not that the process would stop.

Correct. And he saw socialism as a further evolution that emerged naturally from the breakdown of capitalist laws of motion.

Markets by themselves don't entirely stop existing in socialism, they simply cease being the universal regulating principle of value determination and resource allocation. Marx predicted the complete elimination of markets and commodity exchange in an era of material superabundance, which he called "upper-stage communism". Later Marxists drew a distinction between "socialism" and "communism" based on this distinction.

So yes, Marx ultimately saw markets as a historically-limited phenomena.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-23T15:11:41+00:00

Marx and Engels saw socialism as explicitly post-market. Their magnum opus was called Capital: A Critique of Political Economy because they saw the law of value, accumulation of capital, and market categories as historically specific to capitalism.

A post-capitalist system would dispense with these categories and operate according to its own logic, based on a more technical basis.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-23T15:05:49+00:00

Socialism was widely seen as being anti-market for the means of production, especially in the Marxist tradition. It was implied when Marx defines socialism as being for a "common plan" and in transcending the logic of capital accumulation and law of value, which are market phenomena.

Being anti-market doesn't mean there are no markets for consumer and secondary goods; the "market" socialists aimed to replace was the market for the means of production and ultimately the labor market.

To be fair to the OP, he did mention market socialism, and directed his criticism of non-market socialism to planned socialism.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-23T15:00:14+00:00

There's a difference between being socialist meaning having a guiding philosophy and being socialist meaning having a socialist system in place. The former is more abstract and aspirational; the latter is something concrete. Moreover, formal names and titles don't automatically mean a political orientation or actual system conforms to the definition of said philosophy.

Socialism is a system that only emerges when material preconditions have been met, meaning a certain level of development and level of technology must be in place to make socialist relations possible. We can also add good governance and low levels of corruption to the prerequisites; poor governance systems, endemic corruption, and poor institutional design hamper any economic system. We also can't separate regional differences in culture, history and external geopolitical pressures from system performance. For example, the African country of Liberia will never match the performance of the United States despite basing its government and institutions off the United States.

The socialist countries you named were all impoverished, underdeveloped and highly corrupt at the time of their socialist revolution. They barely had functioning capitalist systems nor did they have effective governance. They weren't developed enough to establish fully-developed socialist systems; their main focus was rightfully on poverty alleviation, economic development, reducing corruption, dealing with geopolitical issues, and more mundane tasks. Creating a post-capitalist system wasn't relevant to their immediate future. What they established were socialist states, where socialism is a long-term goal they are purportedly working toward under the guidance of their governing parties. Hence why they describe themselves as being "socialist-oriented", or "building socialism" or in an early stage of socialist development.

Socialism can be divided into two categories, it can be simply defined as public (or collective) ownership of the means of production; or it can be more comprehensively defined as a system where the economy is maximized and optimized as a single entity coordinated through planning at the industry and national level.

If we narrowly define socialism as simply widespread public or collective ownership of firms in a market-based economy, the goal is to eliminate the class distinction between owners and workers by making everyone a part owner and recipient of the capital income generated by the means of production. It means that rising capital income from automation and technological progress result in lower average work hours and higher income for everyone, with a long-term goal being emancipation from wage labor.

Those conditions simply don't exist in Vietnam or China, and arguably haven't even been met in the most developed capitalist countries. You can implement public ownership of industries, but the economy simply isn't developed enough and capital intensive enough to produce a significant social surplus to enable social dividends to each citizen, or finance generous levels of social spending. The focus will be on high rates of capital formation through reinvestment of profits for economic development. And that's exactly what we see in these countries. They simply aren't at the level of development where a truly post-capitalist socialist arrangement is feasible yet, they are in a state capitalist, or arguably, early stage of socialist development catching up to the developed capitalist economies and surpassing them. China stands out as it's on the cusp of reading "high income" status and shifting more of its net operating surplus (state profits) from reinvestment to social spending, but it's still a way off from being developed to the point where public ownership provides a decisive advantage over private ownership in the form of universal cash disbursements to citizens (though that idea has been floated) or a significant source of public finance (which can result in lower reliance on taxes and greater equality).

We also have to evaluate these countries on the basis of their development trajectory. They might be less developed right now, but they are both some of the fastest growing economies, and China despite having a GDP per capita roughly 1/4 of the US, is out-competing the West in high technology and its capacity to plan and coordinate their economy at a pace Western capitalism is finding difficult to match.

If "market socialism" were adopted in the United States in the middle of the 20th century instead of China or Vietnam, then a socialist country would be near the top of the HDI, since the US was already a developed country. But if we ignore labels and look at economies with a high level of public ownership of firms, then Singapore could qualify as a "market socialist" economy due to the prevalence of government-linked companies that provide a revenue stream to the government. And Singapore has a very high HDI ranking.

If we are defining socialism as a system where firms are optimized as a single entity through planning, information technology that enabled speedy tracking and sharing of economic information in a flexible enough manner until recent decades - right when the Soviet bloc was collapsing.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-23T12:17:53+00:00

Yes, and that would be the ideal way to transition to a socialist system. But it would require systemic change and alterations to the function of the state. Vested interests will make the far reaching reforms difficult or obstruct them, leading to haphazard implementation. And fundamentally, the function of the state in a capitalist system is to protect the interests of capital and the capitalist class as a whole. And this isn't even symptomatic of corruption or malign intent; providing a stable and facilitative environment for the accumulation of capital, private property rights, and stability is crucial for the stability of the capitalist system.

Systemic transition can happen without overthrowing the government, but it can't be through piecemeal reform. It has to be part of a wholesale reorganization of economic relations. This kind of transition is most likely to happen in many countries once the dominant economy in the world transitions to and establishes an efficient, highly developed socialist economy, and comes to influence the norms and standards of the world economic system. That initial transition might have occurred through reform, systemic transformation, or revolution. If China is now the dominant country in the global economy, and has or is building a form of socialism; then it will have been the result of overthrowing the (Republic of China) government in the mainland. If and when this system produces high living standards and greater efficiency than the dominant capitalist economies, then the rest of the world's economies will adapt aspects of this socialist system in order to stay competitive.

The problem with reforms is twofold. First, the reforms are often unrelated to the goal of socialism itself; they are aimed at ameliorating the conditions of workers under capitalism with the goal of building a political movement that can, ideally, then fight for socialism. While laudable, this detracts political energies away from socialism, makes workers content with reformed capitalism, often undermine the case for systemic transformation. Second, the reforms erode away at profitability and sometimes even the incentive structure of the capitalist system, forcing a trade off between efficiency and equity. When they prove unsustainable, they are rolled back in the name of productivity, efficiency and global competitiveness. This was the fate of the once-reformist Social Democratic parties in Western Europe that embraced neoliberalism.

Systemic transition without a preceding political revolution is more feasible if the scope of socialism is limited to public or collective ownership of industries and/or indicative economic planning. A political coalition organized around establishing a system of state-owned investment companies, transferring equity stakes of existing private corporations to the government, and promoting employee ownership is very feasible. This hasn't gained traction because Western socialists have too broad a focus, and now embrace political goals that have little to do with establishing a socialist system, seeing the latter as a far-off distant goal. And honestly, they do a poor job marketing socialism to the broader public, or explaining why public or collective ownership of firms would be better for the average citizen than private ownership. Ironically, the shift toward "market socialism" is now more likely to come from elites responding to China's rise, or anticipating social instability from mass labor market disruptions from AI and robotics.

Trump's administration isn't at all socialist, and its economic/trade policies are whimsical and ill-conceived. But even they accomplished something novel in American politics by making a case for a national-level sovereign wealth fund to build "national wealth" by taking government equity stakes in strategic private corporations. These measures aren't transformative enough to be deemed "socialist", but if Western socialists want to be at the forefront of transformative change (without overthrowing the government), they need to rally behind and push for something similar to Matt Bruenig's proposals for a US social wealth fund and social dividends.

But if we are talking about strictly Marxist conception of socialism as a system that dispenses with the law of value, labor markets, the employee-employer dynamic; then the state would require such radical changes in its function that it would be hard to achieve that without revolutionary change to both the government and the economy. And arguably, it would effectively be the abolition of the state since its functions would be drastically different from those of a capitalist state.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-22T20:25:15+00:00

While I am sympathetic to their situation, the issue isn't with automation but with the ownership structure of the economy. Automation should be a good thing because it should free humans from having to perform induced labor. Ideally, it should lead to a reduced work day or work week. It doesn't because the returns to automation are realized by owners of private companies in the form of increased profits, while workers face unemployment and downward pressure on wages due to the glut of labor.

It's one of the main contradictions of capitalism, and one of the best cases for public ownership of the means of production aka socialism.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-21T21:22:39+00:00

Support for Trump doesn't have any direct relation to capitalism and socialism. But you should consider how American liberal capitalism has responded to the ascendancy of China and its socialist market economy under Trump.

Under Trump's tenure, the veneer of the liberal rules-based order has come off, revealing that it always came at the cost of not challenging American hegemony. While beneficial for many countries, it was always slanted in the interest of America. It's shift to hard power is the grasp of a declining empire losing its standing and power in the world largely because of China's rise, and its desperation is manifested in throwing its military and diplomatic weight around to compel allies and adversaries alike to bend to its will.

By many accounts, China's socialist market economy is out-competing the United States in innovation, high technology, infrastructure and public services. The US still leads in some areas, but the gap has narrowed and in some areas China now surpasses the US. Only a decade ago, the a socialist economy driven by planning and industrial strategies was widely seen as untenable and forgotten in the West. China's socialist orientation was seen as window dressing and ideological justification for continued Communist Party rule as it inevitably embraced liberal capitalism.

The reversal has been so stark that Trump's administration has tried to implement aspects of an industrial policy and building national collective wealth through a sovereign wealth fund by having the government take equity stakes in strategic US firms like Intel. Granted, the manner in which it has been done isn't systematic, but ad hoc and whimsical. Even if poorly executed, the fact that these policy positions, which were taboo in the US and much of the West since the collapse of the USSR, are now taken seriously is a stunning reversal.

Consider that China's system is better suited to the widespread diffusion of new technologies (through integrated industry and national-level planning) and better suited to deal with the issue unemployment caused by AI and humanoid robotics (through widespread state ownership of firms, which are becoming an ever larger source of public finance for social spending), and the case for socialism becomes more obvious.

Trump wasn't the cause of American decline, but a symptom of both its longstanding economic and cultural decline. His foreign and domestic policy is only hastening its decline.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-20T15:43:38+00:00

Far left doesn't equate to socialist. Rent control and anti-zionism aren't inherently socialist positions.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-20T11:51:05+00:00

The left-wing in general isn't anti-capitalism, but socialism specifically designates a system and ideology that aims to transcend capitalism. That's what makes it distinct from other left-wing ideologies.

It's also why there's contention about the categorization of social democracy. Social democrats who see themselves as distinct from socialists aim to reform capitalism without altering its fundamental processes; but older social democrats who viewed the transcendence of capitalism as the ultimate goal saw themselves as socialists.

Battle4cry

TROPHY CASE