Socialism The Way I Read It

The word "Socialism" might sound dull, no doubt, with all of the emphasis put in our modern times on individualism, and for some Arabs, as a special case, it is likely to invoke some memories of oppression, let alone the "negative" connotations attached to it (e.g. Atheism). For many of its young proponents it's a mere way of expressing a revolutionary lifestyle; hormonal teens who found their arrogance and contempt for the conventional embodied in a t-shirt with the infamous depiction of Chevara, posing defyingly (not like I hate those kiddos, on the contrary).

But Socialism is not to be reduced to revolutions, not even the books of Marx, or Marx himself, and no, it is not the opposite of capitalism; simply put, it is the belief in an egalitarian society, complemented with actions geared toward building this society. It is the top of a mountain, and you are left to pick the route; Social democracy, Communism, Marxism... etc, it is up to you, but just do not mistake the route for the destination.

Christianity, based on this definition, can be regarded as an early form of socialism in the sense that it sought eliminating one of the detrimental social gradients in the Jewish societies of the time, caused by unrestrained polygamy, or the restriction on access to sex imposed on men of lower socioeconomic status, whichever you like (sorry ladies for making you feel like commodities but I am talking in the context of that time). Mother nature favors the 50% males, 50% females in most of the sexual reproduction strategies. This means that pre-Jesus times, in the Jewish societies, many men died without ever touching a single woman.

Jesus did not, definitely, come out of the blue. He surely was the culmination of brewing upheavals in the Jewish societies which were not historically registered, as they were eclipsed by the added holiness on the story, but, anyways, the whole point to mentioning this, is to show you that socialism is not against private ownership in "person", or not into bloody revolutions, but more against what makes people feel inferior to each others, and that socialism, in many occasions, prevented revolutions by means of peaceful reforms; you can not call yourself a socialist if you do not believe in the humanity of humans.

I also have another purpose for using Christianity as an example here; to strip the concept of socialism from what became, in the minds of people, inseparable to it: Economy. Marx writings are considered by many, mistakingly, to be the holy texts of socialism, but they are not, they are merely the textbooks of Marxism. The way Marx puts his ideas into written words is so charming that you have to put extra mental efforts not to fall in the critical fallacies he fail in, the fragility of his definition and expectations of the Proletariat in particular, and to resist this urge he invokes in us to reduce the whole of the social theory into a major Economic dimension, and a secondary dimension that sums all of the other aspects of a society.

In the 60's, other movements of socialism, in what some socialists refer to as enrichment and fragmentation, forced their official existence amongst the mainstream socialist parties and movements of the time; the emergence of Feminist, LGBT, and Green movements amongst others came to shatter and supersede the dull image that the more conservative parties gave to Socialism. It was time to celebrate the difference, appreciate the local, and add colors.

What caught my attention lately, is the growing evidence on the adversity of what is called social inequalities, or as I understand it, respect inequalities. It seems that human beings evolved psychological mechanisms to assess their social environment and act accordingly; the lower on the social ladder a human being is, the more he is likely to prefer short term goals over the long term ones, i.e. depleting his biological resources faster and dying younger. It comes as no surprise to me that men are more prone to this than women (remember Jesus story at the beginning). And we actually can not blame capitalism on this, more than the innocent Disney movies based on those fairy tales that teach young girls not to settle for less than an idle prince, and a young boy to try or, literally, as the studies on social inequalities showed, die trying.

This means that capitalism is not to be blamed directly, even though I have my takes on it as an economic system, especially inheritance and what relates to it, but we are to blame the social inequalities that use their economic kins as criteria for defining who is the most respected, and who is not. Sweden, for instance, is a country with the highest concentration of capital in the western world, yet it is the most egalitarian (e.g. everybody is respected and granted the same quality of life and entitlements regardless of their social stature).

At the end of the day, you do not really have to be Feminist, or leaning Green to be called socialist; all it takes to be one of those is feeling disgusted by the sight of politicians who speak in the name of a supernatural authority, while in effect aiming at maintaining archaic hierarchies and superficial distinctions to protect the exclusive "rights" of those on top of an unjust pecking order.