Becoming distorted

George Jung: “Most letters written by ... MAGA Trump lovers call liberals communists and socialists. The funny thing is there is a major difference between them. Under communism, property and economic resources are owned and controlled by the state rather than individual citizens. Under socialism, decisions are made by the people, for the people ... all citizens share equally in economic resources as allocated by a democratically elected government.”

In reality, socialism and communism are closely related. Socialism is the historical process from capitalism toward communism. And although there are and have been states that call themselves communist, it’s a misnomer for communism will be a stateless, classless society, the end goal of the Marxist and anarchist projects.

Communism will be the transition from socialism toward communism — a bridge, if you will. And understanding socialism as a bridge rather than a destination is crucial.

Socialism is a historical process, not a list of things one checks off (i.e., shared economic resources) to say, “Now we have socialism.” Capitalism and socialism are historically embedded processes unfolding dialectically and not as a static state of affairs.

So, yes, “[T]he information [reactionaries] receive from Fox News is primarily of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view” (Jung). But so, too, is much of the information offered about socialism by seemingly innocuous sources, such as dictionaries, misleading. Dictionaries are class phenomena, as “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas...” (Marx).

Therefore, it’s essential to understand what socialists mean by socialism and communism instead of what non-socialists mean. Confusion concerning the two leads to more confusion that proliferates on the liberal Left. And that’s how the meaning of socialism and communism has become distorted.

Guy Marsh

Lancaster