Socialism?
Photo courtesy socialistworld.net

Groundviews 

Over the past months there has been a debate in some newspapers regarding socialism and/or socialism vs. capitalism. It is a great thing to see happening, especially as the globalised economic downturn intensifies and is sure to be a long-lasting one.

In this debate, however, it is sometimes hard to see what is exactly meant by the word ‘socialism.’ For example, many people term the policies of the Bandaranaike governments as socialist – because there was a tendency to have the government run certain industries, such as transportation, steel and insurance, or to have state welfare programmes. If such is the definition, then most European countries and even the United States would qualify as socialist on some ground or another. Others seem to define socialism as being what existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries: this involved a heavy state hand in not only industrial and agricultural production, but in controlling dissent and thought via undemocratic systems. Again, on such grounds the United States, for example, would qualify by way of its systems of government subsidies to agriculture and certain industries (and economic planning during war) and systems of dealing with dissent (old and new forms of McCarthyism). In both these definitions the underlying assumption is that all potential socialist systems would be run in the same manner. These are convenient constructs, making it then easy to dismiss all attempts in total, and to dismiss socialism in general.

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