Socialism : Roads to Socialism
- Created by: Bigboi_Butterz
- Created on: 20-04-18 18:19
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- Roads to Socialism
- Revolutionary Socialism
- Revolution - A fundamental and irreversible change, often a brief but dramatic period of upheaval; systematic change.
- Bourgeois state - A Marxist denoting a state that is bound to the interests of the bourgeoisie, and so perpetuates a system of unequal class.
- They therefore believe that a class conscious proletariat has no alternative but to overthrow the bourgeois state through revolution.
- Marxists see reform and gradual change as pointless. Universal suffrage, elections, and so on simply conceal the reality of unequal class and misdirect the working class.
- The first successful socialist revolution revolution was when Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik to power in Russia. This was done, this was done in a coup style rather than a popular uprising.
- Augeste Blanqi said that there should be a small group of conspirators who would carry out the revolution, whereas Marx and Engels envisioned a proletariat revolution where the worlds workers would uprise against capitalism.
- Revolution is not just tactical for socialists, but also reflects the view of the state. Socialists view the state as an agent of class oppression. Marxists believe that political power reflects class interests, and that a bourgeois state will favour of capital over labour.
- Many early socialists believed that socialism could only be introduced through revolution to overthrow the existing political system. They accepted violence would be necessary as part of this.
- An advantage of revolution is that it allows a new, usually more fundamentalist, political system to be put in place independent of the old capitalist systems
- 3 reasons why fundamentalists thought revolution was needed: Suffrage and elections are a facade. Proletariat - exploited and oppressed - get rid of capitalist structure. The only way to get rid of colonial rule
- Evolutionary Socialism
- Gradualism - progress brought about by gradual, piecemeal improvements rather than dramatic upheaval; change through legal and peaceful reform
- Eurocommunism - A form of de radicalized, most influential in the 1970’s, which attempted to blend Marxism with liberal democratic principles.
- By the late nineteenth century, the urban working class has lost its revolutionary character and was being integrated into society
- Wages and living standards had started to rise, and the unions and parties, protected their interests and nurtured a sense of belonging within the industrial society.
- The Inevitability of Gradualism?
- The progressive extension of franchise would eventually lead to the establishment of universal adult suffrage, and therefore of political equality
- Political equality would in practice, work in the interests of the majority; that is, those who decide the outcome of elections. Socialists thus believe that political democracy would invest power in the hands of the working class, easily the most numerous class in an industrial society
- Socialism was thought to be the ‘home’ of the working class. As capitalism was seen as a system of exploitation oppressed workers would naturally be drawn to social parties who offered social justice and emancipation. The electoral success of socialist parties would therefore be guaranteed by the numerical strength of the working class
- Once in power, socialist parties would be able to carry out a fundamental transformation of society through a process of social reform. In this way, political democracy not only opened up the possibility of achieving socialism peacefully, it made this process inevitable
- However
- They create alienation and exploration which creates an underclass
- They don’t offer a meaningful alternative to capitalism
- The states bourgeois and bourgeois democracy has its limits : ‘the capitalist class rules, when it does not govern’
- Bourgeois ideology creates cultural hegemony (ideology in control)
- Failure to deliver on socialist policy
- Underclass - A classification of people who suffer forms of deprivation, and so are socially, politically and culturally marginalised.
- Bourgeois ideology - A Marxist term denoting ideas and theories that serve the interests of the bourgeois by disgusting the contradictions of capitalist society
- Class consciousness - A Marxist term denoting an accurate awareness of class interests and a willingness to pursue them; a class conscious class is a class for itself
- Roads to Socialism
- The principle disagreement is fundamental socialist and revisionist socialism, represented, respectively, by the communist and social democratic traditions
- Fundamental socialism - A form of socialism that seeks to abolish capitalism and replace it with a qualitatively different kind of society.
- The second issue is the ‘means’ they should use to achieve social ends, sometimes seen as the ‘roads to socialism’
- Revisionist socialism - A form of socialism that has revised its critique of capitalism and seeks to reconcile greater social justice with surviving capitalist forms.
- Revolutionary Socialism
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