This is Richard Wolff responding to another Ask Prof Wolf question from our Patreon community.
This one comes from Diogo de Castro and it asks about the immense number of names
that an expanding socialist movement, broadly defined, has exhibited over the last 150 years.
And he lists a bunch: socialism, communism, Marxism, Maoism, Castroism, Marxism-Leninism,
and I could go on. He wants to know both what's going on here, what does this mean,
and how perhaps does it relate to those internationals that he read about,
thinks about, in the past of all of these multiple forms of exactly what.
Well, socialism and communism were movements of the late 18th, early 19th century.
And they were responses to the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe
and you might think of them as fundamentally critical. That is, while they certainly all
celebrated the end of feudalism and the transition to capitalism was, for them, a step forward,
it was also the case that they were critical, that the step forward left much to be desired;
that while the serf was gone and the slaves were gone, the employee, the worker, the working class,
the proletariat had a lot to suffer under capitalism. And there was this general notion
that society could -- and should -- progress further. That however much capitalism was an
advance over slavery and feudalism and so on, it too left a lot to be desired. It too
needed to be advanced upon. And the socialists in general were those who yearned for, believed in,
and worked at doing better than capitalism -- having a transition of another sort beyond
capitalism, just as human beings had achieved transition beyond slavery and feudalism before.
But now we have to explain all those different terms. Basically, they come from the fact
that socialism was successful. That is, socialism as a critical approach to capitalism,
as a movement trying to figure out how and where to go next in terms of social organization,
what exactly you would have to do to make society better than capitalism -- which, by the way,
was the same struggle among critics of slavery and feudalism as they too struggled to fashion
their criticisms and to think through, to organize for, and to begin to construct a better society.
Well when people do that, and particularly when they do it in significant numbers,
which is what happened to socialism particularly after the beginnings of the 19th century,
you quickly discover that different people have different understandings.
For example, socialism arrives in Scandinavia, it interacts with Scandinavian history and culture.
When socialism arrives in Spain and Italy, it's a different history,
in a different culture, a different religion, a different story. Scandinavians and Italians
and Spanish people don't interpret socialism identically in the same way.
Often the differences are relatively minor but sometimes they become very powerful, very deep.
And even inside Scandinavia, or inside France, or inside Spain, different people in different
circumstances understand it differently. In other words, you get different interpretations. For
example, of events, like the French Revolution, or of written documents like the Communist Manifesto,
or any other aspect of the socialist movement gets understood and interpreted in different ways,
responding to the different social positions of the individuals doing the interpretation. And when
groups of people share a different interpretation from others, it's not surprising that after a
while it gets a name -- a name like Castroism because that is what emerges as a particularly
Cuban interpretation. And if you look more closely, it's the Cuban interpretation associated
with their leader Fidel Castro, which was never the only interpretation of socialism inside Cuba;
but, because he is the better known than other Cubans around the world, it settles in as a term:
Castroism. And we will have to wait until other interpretations inside Cuba become sufficiently
well known that they get a name and that we can all talk about them. And the ones that Diogo de
Castro brings forward -- Marxism-Leninism, and we could add Trotskyism or Stalinism or Maoism and
on and on and on -- they are similar stories to what I just said about Cuba. They are particular
interpretations associated with the famous people who helped develop them, but they were
always one among many others that many of which we have never heard of. Unless you're very, very
well educated about this, it's not something you learn casually, it's something you have to study.
The internationals actually were an attempt to bring different interpretations together.
The first international was started by Karl Marx on the one hand, and by
Bakunin, the Russian anarchist on the other. And anarchism and Marxism are different but
they overcame their differences, at least for a while, to together form an international
that would bring anarchism and Marxism and socialism together.
Eventually their differences separated them, split them, and that has happened often.
And so you got a proliferation of isms, but there was always the idea -- and there were subsequent
internationals -- to bring them all together. Not in order to obliterate their differences -- that's
not going to happen -- but to say, look, if we are agreeable on a certain set of things,
let's make that the basis of our coming together with respect for the differences we will continue
to have and that we can discuss and debate, etc., but we can make progress on what we agree.
Which is, for example, that capitalism is the system we can do better than that,
that we're working towards that, and the critique of capitalism is something we can work on together
and perhaps the shaping of the next stage is where our disagreements may come to the fore
and let's talk about them; let's get together to discuss and debate them because that too will
make it easier for us to achieve the transition we all want. Very important question Diogo de Castro.
You are a new member of Patreon and so we are very appreciative of your joining us and
of your sending in this question. This is Richard Wolff for Democracy At Work.