Young people are turning to socialism, and Democratic Party politicians are adopting the term. But what is socialism?
My own summary answer is that socialism is the socio-economic system that favors people and the environment as a whole over other factors and and political theory that prioritizes human rights.
This is in contrast to capitalism, which favors capital over other factors and accords highest priority to property rights.
Doug Greene presents his view of a Marxist-Leninist approach to socialism and capitalism, which seems to me to be past its expiration date. At the very least, it needs repackaging. But without altering the content, the repackaging would still leave the contents stale.
Marx, Engels, Lenin and others of their day had some ideas that still apply but they need to be adapted and integrated with new knowledge and emergent conditions.
But it is useful to review the fundamental principles.
However, where I think that most explorations of these ideas goes off track is due to focusing on objectives and means rather than the kernel of the design problem, which is necessary to elaborate a satisfactory design solutions.
Basically, the priorities being used now are wrong and lead to social dysfunction, political unrest, and economic inequality that fuels the oligarchic power that is at the bottom of the class struggle between ownership and work.
These priorities are now socially and culturally embedded and institutionally established. Changing these priorities requires a system overhaul. In the West this means the transformation of bourgeois liberalism that resulted from the transition from feudalism to capitalism into a more integrated liberalism that integrates people, the environment and technology.
Under feudalism, an oligarchy owned the means of production in the form of land during the agricultural age. Under capitalism, a similar oligarchy that owns industrial and financial capital in addition to land controls the means of production and reaps the greatest reward based on ownership rather than work. This also enable the negative externality of environmental degradation to be socialized while the gains are capitalized.
Under socialism, there would be no oligarchy controlling the means of production, workers and the environment would be favored by rights established in law, and there would be no incentive to socialize environmental degradation.
