Communism and Capitalism Share the Same Problems. Socialism is the Solution

To each according to their contribution v. to each according to their need

The Virgin Capitalist v. the Virgin Communist v. the Chad Socialist

I am an anti-capitalist.

But I am also against communism — though, given how often I work with communists, and the degree to which the term has become a euphemism for fascism, I would only ever call myself an anti-communist with a great deal of cautions and clarifications.

The communism that I am against is not merely some feared ghost of the USSR, dead since before my birth. By ‘communism’, I refer to both the famed “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” and to communal ownership of the means of production.

What I am instead for is socialism.

By this, I do not mean socialism as some euphemism for social democracy — a usage that has become unfortunately common, given that social democracy is merely capitalism with some padding placed on the boot.

I mean, by the word socialism, two things.

Firstly, to paraphrase dozens of thinkers ‘to each according to their contribution’ — i.e., an institutional set-up in which someone is accorded the full product of their labor.

Secondly, by “socialism” I also mean a general principle of workers controlling the means of production that they use — and the more direct and unmediated that control, the better.

The rub is that these two uses of socialism are one and the same: workers who truly control the means of production necessarily receive the full product of their own labor, to dispose of as they wish — and so the test of whether a thing truly qualifies as one usage of “socialism” is if it also qualifies as the other.