The Three Types of Socialism

This article is for anyone out there who finds themselves in need of a concise definition of socialism, such as if you are arguing with someone about its merits and your interlocutor tries to obfuscate about what it is. Socialism is defined as the collectivisation of the means of production. Collectivisation is the transfer of ownership or responsibility from an individual to a group. The means of production are lands, buildings, or tools used to acquire resources or create products, or as MentisWave puts it, “the stuff used to make more stuff.” If we can’t agree on those basic definitions, then we can’t agree on anything, and any further discussion is going to be a waste of time.

Now then, you will notice that nowhere in that definition is the government mentioned. There is a reason for that. You can be socialist in a “capitalist” country by voluntarily forming a worker co-op. However, the country itself isn’t socialist unless all businesses in the country are run this way. A socialist country is a nation-state in which the collectivisation of the means of production is mandated by the government. Thus, socialism in a vacuum doesn’t require government control of the economy, but for a country to be socialist, socialism is government control of the economy. Here is where the three main types of socialism come in.

But Sasha, there are waaaaay more than three types of socialism!

Did you miss the word “main”? The many varieties of socialism all fit into one of three main categories, all of which meet the definition laid out in the opening paragraph. Those are: syndicalism/pre-Marxist socialism, Marxist socialism, and third positionism/post-Marxist socialism. Now then, before I get into the differences between the three, let’s acknowledge the pachyderm in close proximity: libertarian socialism. There is no such thing. Socialism and libertarianism are fundamentally incompatible, so you can be one or the other, but not both at the same time. Socialists who reject the hallmarks of authoritarianism, e.g. restriction of speech, are not libertarian, and left-leaning libertarians who believe that a minarchist government should still have a welfare system are not socialists. Yes, there are plenty of people who call themselves “libertarian socialists,” but you can call yourself whatever you want. RazörFist phrased it best when he said “I can call my dog a goldfish, he’s still going to wake up, roll over, wag his tail and lick his balls, folks!” Once I get through the three types of socialism, you’ll be able to see for yourself which one the “libertarian socialists” actually are.

Syndicalism is the original French form of socialism, and while, as an idea, it came out of the French Revolution, it didn’t become fully codified as an economic system until the era of the short-lived Second French Republic. It is important to note that syndicalism is not a repudiation of capitalism, but monarchism, which was the very thing that liberalism was fighting against in the decades immediately prior. Despite the fact that liberals and socialists don’t get along and don’t like to admit that their systems share a philosophical origin, they are closely related, and are both revolutionary ideologies against the same old political system. I went into greater detail in my article on philosophy and political theory, and much of what I’m writing about here was already written there. Anyway, syndicalism is a system in which all commerce and industry is owned by syndicates, or trade unions, whose members are the workers. This is the exact system I alluded to in the second paragraph, in which all businesses are worker co-ops. There are only two further variants on it that I know of, one of which is anarcho-syndicalism, which is a stateless society run entirely by trade unions. The other variation on syndicalism is one which I will get to in a bit. For now, on to the version of socialism that everyone knows about.

Marxist socialism, which I would remind you was first codified in 1848 (the same year the Second French Republic was formed), is the form of socialism that is most widespread, and is German (specifically Prussian) in origin. The reason that I use the phrase “Marxist socialism” instead of simply calling it “Marxism” is because Marxism isn’t just an economic theory, it’s a totalising philosophy, and this article is strictly about economic theories, not the broader philosophy; I’ve done that in other articles, and I will do more in the future. Marx claimed that the end goal of socialism is communism, defined as the abolition of private property, not by me, but by Marx himself (read The Communist Manifesto if you don’t believe me). Though I alluded in the very first paragraph to socialism being a process, rather than an end goal, socialist philosophers themselves refer to socialism as a process, with the end goal being something else. What differentiates Marxist socialism from syndicalism is that Marx didn’t advocate for worker co-ops, and in fact lumped sole proprietors, who cannot turn their business into a co-op, in with the wealthy industrialists simply because they were property owners. Marx identified not two, but three different economic classes. The proletariat were those who worked the means of production but did not own it. The bourgeoisie were those who owned the means of production but did not work. Those who both owned and worked the means of production, such as sole proprietors and small shop owners who employed a few helpers, were the petite bourgeoisie (I have also seen it translated as “petty” bourgeoisie, either one works). That alone should be your first clue that Marxist socialism is a repudiation of voluntary worker co-ops, which syndicalists don’t typically take issue with. Marx wanted to expand the over-arching principle behind syndicalism to the level of the entire world, rather than limiting it to the scale of single businesses, trades, or nations.

There are variations on Marxism, such as Leninism, Trotskiism, and the Frankfurt School, the latter of which explicitly rejects anything Soviet in origin. Lenin and Trotsky were both revolutionaries willing to overthrow the “capitalist” (the Russian Empire was feudalist, not capitalist) establishment by force. Frankfurt Marxists, on the other hand, choose to implement socialism by stealth, hence the phrase “long march through the institutions.” They also hold that socialism could never be implemented in an agrarian society, as it is a product of industrial society. Karl Marx predicted socialist revolutions in every European country except Russia, and even at one point outright stated that it couldn’t happen there. The Frankfurt School is probably single-handedly responsible for the tired old “real socialism has never been tried” argument because no peaceful, prosperous, industrialised nation has ever implemented it, only war-torn (and usually agrarian) nations have, and it never produces the desired results. One could argue that some of those nations (e.g. Russia and West Taiwan) did industrialise after becoming socialist, but that didn’t fit Marx’s predictions either, and in fact, both nations industrialised while under a different type of socialism anyway.

The final type of socialism, though the most recent to emerge, is ironically extinct in that no regime openly implements it, and those who profess it are extremely rare outside of underground dissident movements in Russia: third positionism. It is the most misunderstood, and as direct result, the most misrepresented. It got its name because it transcended the old left-right sliding scale as a valid illustration of various political theories, not according to me, but according to the third positionists themselves. Third positionism killed the left-right sliding scale, and fourth positionism buried it. The reason for this is because third positionists hate both capitalism and communism. Communism is international, whereas a hallmark of third positionism is nationalism. The exact reasons for rejecting internationalism vary from one type of third positionist ideology to another, for example, all three forms of fascism (Italian, Spanish, and British) are syndicalist, but unlike the original French version or the anarchist version, fascist syndicalism explicitly subordinated the syndicates to the interests of the State.

State intervention in economic production arises when private initiative is lacking, or when the interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of assistance, regulation, or direct management. – Giovanni Gentile, Fascism: Doctrine and Origins

Oh, by the way, Gentile and Benito Mussolini referred to the Italian trade unions and government departments as “corporations,” which should be your first clue that his most famous quote about fascism being rightly called corporatism is actually fake. Mussolini was a socialist, and fascism is not “late-stage capitalism” by any stretch of the imagination. Initially, Mussolini was more closely aligned with the Soviets than with the other third positionists, and the Pact of Steel was largely an alliance of convenience.

The outbreak of a socialist revolution in one country will cause the others to imitate it or so to strengthen the proletariat as to prevent its national bourgeoisie from attempting any armed intervention. – Benito Mussolini

Mussolini was the only one among you with the mind and temperament to make a revolution. Why did you allow him to leave? – Vladimir Lenin, writing to the Italian Socialists

In the most infamous incarnation of third positionism, National Socialism, the reason for rejecting communism was because “Marxist socialism is not a real socialist revolution against the capitalist Jews, but is instead a fake revolution led by Jews.” One fairly well-known piece of “evidence” for this is a quote from Lenin: “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” I will dissect the arguments I have heard over the years about communism being Judaism in another article, because there are way too many of them to get into here even if they were relevant to the topic at hand. While it simply isn’t possible to talk about National Socialism without mentioning Judaism, owing to the fact that anti-Semitism is the core of the ideology, this is about economics, and the economic system of National Socialism is more closely aligned with Soviet Communism than with fascism. In contrast to fascism, which is national syndicalism, National Socialism nationalised the trade unions under the German Labour Front, or DAF, taking a cue from Lenin, who had done the exact same thing with the All-Union Central Council of Professional Unions.

Actually, I probably should go down the anti-Semitism tangent real quick, because it’s a component of all third positionist ideologies, only in different forms, and it partially relates to economics. When people hear the word “anti-Semitic,” they usually think of Hitler, but the 3M form (Marx, Mussolini, Mosley) is far more common, and even though Mussolini and Oswald Mosley both rejected Marxism, they shared the following sentiment:

The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general. – Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question

Because Mussolini and Mosley were both nationalists, they hated Judaism because they viewed it as international, but took no issue with Jews who aligned with the nation and the party. Mussolini’s own mistress was Jewish, and there were thousands of Jews in the Fascist Party, whom Mussolini refused to hand over to the Schutzstaffel. Mussolini actually saved more Jewish lives than Oskar Schindler, just putting that out there. Hitler’s anti-Semitism was purely racial, and I find it ironic that it is his variety of anti-Semitism that seems most prevalent among 21st-century internationalists, whereas dissident rightists, if they are anti-Semitic at all, subscribe to the 3M form.

The final form of third positionism is National Bolshevism, which emerged in both Germany and the Soviet Union, where it was defeated by the Nazis and absorbed into Stalin’s movement, respectively. While I can’t tell you anything about the German version that I haven’t already, the Russian version effectively was Stalinism. Unlike Lenin and Trotsky, the latter of whom founded the Fourth International while living in exile, Stalin was a nationalist, and although he didn’t explicitly reject communism (mostly because that would have been political suicide), he purged an awful lot of the communist revolutionaries who established the Soviet Union in the first place. After Stalin’s death, a lot of the nationalists were purged, and National Bolshevism only re-emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, using the same party flag as the German Nazbols back in the 1920s and 30s:

The symbolism is, as you can see, a cross between the Soviet and Nazi flags, and that is no coincidence:

After innumerable trials I decided upon a final form – a flag of red material with a white disc bearing in its centre a black hakenkreuz… the red expressed the social thought underlying the movement. White, the national thought. And the hakenkreuz signified the mission allotted to us – the struggle for the victory of the Aryan… – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The modern third positionist movement in Russia, however, is not truly represented by the National Bolshevik Party of the Russian Federation, but instead by a strange underground movement that once went by the name Iron March (I don’t know if it still does, the website of that name is now defunct) that has been trying to create a hybrid of fascism and National Socialism, which should reinforce the point that these two ideologies are not the same. The reason for this is fairly simple: just as communism was the “great enemy” of the West during the Cold War, thus attracting all the edgy cool kids, fascism is the great enemy of Russia to this day, so all the edgy cool kids find it attractive. Communism isn’t “cool” in Russia, and increasingly in western nations, it is no longer “cool” now that the establishment is pushing it.

Finally, I will touch on Chinese Communism, or as the Communist Party of China (CPC) calls it, socialism with Chinese characteristics. That means… whatever the CPC says it does, and that keeps changing. At the time that I wrote this article, it means “Xi Jinping Thought,” but by the time you read it, it could mean something else. Back in the bad old days (or maybe they were the good old days, hard to tell with a technocratic surveillance state) it was Maoism, and Mao Zedong described himself as a “super-Stalinist.” Maoism, much like Stalinism, is a nationalistic form of Marxist socialism, therefore still third positionist, but much closer to Marxism than to any of the three other forms of third positionism.

However, in between the death of Mao and the rise of Xi, Chinese Communism was something else. I will let Ian Kochinski summarise:

The real goal is to make capitalist countries dependent on market socialism… because in democracies, there is a threat that comes along with depriving your population of material comfort. So the goal in market socialism is to preserve your relation to those economic transactions long enough that you can provide a sufficient deterrent against military action against you. It also means you don’t hurt your own population, because, whether you guys like it or not, being a market economy is way the fuck more fruitful than being a command economy right now in this era.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi8G3BpKJY0

Despite this being his own hypothetical system – “market socialism,” which sounds a lot like syndicalism at first – it’s actually the most concise description of Deng Xiaoping’s particular version of glasnost, and the reason that globalists such as George Soros are now vilifying Xi Jinping is only because he is a nationalist. Not only are foreign manufacturers divesting from China because it is becoming too expensive, but the Chinese government is actively moving away from an open economy back to a closed one. On a related note, when I say that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have “stabbed the WEF in the back,” this is what I mean.

This is the point where I kinda have to hand it to the communist ideologues whenever they say “real communism has never been tried,” because they are half-correct; real communism has never been achieved because it is impossible. Whenever it is attempted, it gets stuck in Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” phase every single time, and this inherent flaw is the reason third positionism exists in the first place. Some third positionists openly acknowledge the flaws with Marxism, whereas the rest are simply Marxist in name only, and in neither case does that make them any less socialist. As a reminder, “state capitalism” is the definition of socialism according to Karl Marx. Granted, he’s using an unusual definition of “capitalism” there, but those are his own words from The Communist Manifesto. Therefore, to define socialism as “government control of the economy” or “state ownership of the means of production,” are both technically correct, not according to me, but according to Marx. Any socialist who rejects this definition (like Kochinski) is either not a Marxist or simply doesn’t have a clue what socialism is. If it’s the latter, that person probably doesn’t know what capitalism is either, and only believes that society is capitalist because they were told it is capitalist.

Anyway, there you have it. Should you ever have a need to find out what a socialist really believes in, ask them if they are a syndicalist, a Marxist, or a third positionist, and if needs be, send them this way. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of uses for this article. Na shledanou!