Attempting a distinction without a difference, socialists now claim one without historical antecedent. Historically, socialism and communism were indistinguishable names for those who desired the state to own the means of production. Where such ownership was attributed—to society or to a commune—was secondary to where it was not: individuals. It still is.
The rapid ascension of socialism within America’s Left presents conundrums. How do the Left rationalize the ascendancy of a radical ideology in their midst? More important, how do they convince themselves, and their countrymen, that what is truly radical is somehow not?
The leftist legerdemain we see so ardently pursued is an attempt to shift their growing radicalism from socialism to communism: “That group over there’s the radical one, not us.” It is a nice try; the only problem is that it has no original basis in socialist theory or practice.
Fittingly, the two terms appeared almost simultaneously and both from utopian sources. According to economic historian Murray Rothbard, “socialist” was first used in print in 1827 by the socialist utopian Robert Owen, who created and promoted communities based on his vision of “unity and cooperation.” As Rothbard points out, Owen also “toyed with the word ‘communionst,’” (sic) but the term “communist” would not appear in print until twelve years later in a utopian novel by Etienne Cabet.
As the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises writes in his seminal 1951 work Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis: “The term ‘Communism’ signifies just the same as ‘Socialism’. As he explains: “In the terminology of Marx and Engels the words communism and socialism are synonymous. They are alternately applied without any distinction between them. The same was true for the practice of all Marxian groups and sects until 1917. The political parties of Marxism which considered the Communist Manifesto as the unalterable gospel of their doctrine called themselves socialist parties.” (italics in original)
The first attempt at differentiation between these came from Lenin in 1917, seventy years after Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Lenin adopted “communism” during an internecine socialist fight with those who wanted to pursue socialism through parliamentary procedures rather than revolution. For Lenin, these “traitors” were “treacherous hirelings of the capitalist exploiters” who had irredeemably tarnished the socialist name.
So, Lenin imposed a new one, but neither he nor his opponents differed over the end. Even so, when he erected his state on the spilled blood of Russia, it was named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—a name it retained until its collapse decades later. As Mises observes: Lenin “did not want to alter the traditional terminology which considered the terms as synonymous.”
How does this history of a distinction without a difference apply to today? Today’s American socialists desperately need a distinction.
It is understandable that current democratic socialists want to distract America from the extremism of their end—and increasingly their supporters’ methods—by conjuring a distinction from the means of achieving their radicalism. Yet their radicalism remains what it always has: As Mises states, “It is the aim of Socialism to transfer the means of production from private ownership to the ownership of organized society, to the State.”
What is revolutionary about socialism and communism is not a revolution: many states have arisen from violent overthrows of existing governments. Their source of real revolution is their economic system.
For Marx and later Marxists, the driving force of history and social change is the economic system. For them, and today’s socialists and communists, a society’s economic system determines everything else: like a superstructure atop a foundation.
Overthrowing the economic system is therefore what truly constitutes revolution. It is also why the state’s control of the means of production is the fundamental principle that those claiming to be democratic socialists adhere to, as evidenced by the DSA’s latest agenda. It is also the fundamental principle which those labeling themselves simply “socialists” embrace—likewise those calling themselves “communists.”
Socialism’s fullest radicalism is therefore its end, not its means. And what its end means is that the state, not the individual, will be society’s ultimate property holder. The means of production will not be employed by those who produced and earned these. The result of those societies, regardless of what they termed themselves, pursuing this socialism has been the pauperization of its citizens, not their emancipation.
America’s new socialists recognize their need to make radical socialism appear reasonable. To divorce it from its past of human repression and economic failure. So, they move to offload the collective ownership of property, the means of production, to communism and thereby “absolve” socialism.
Yet the truth—original, historical, and contemporary—still stands. The separation of human beings from their labor is ultimately a separation of them from themselves. Because once the state owns the means of production, it owns what is most meaningful. And this includes owning those doing the producing.
