socialist mode of production

Economy-And-Finanzas

2022

We explain what the socialist mode of production is, its origin, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Also, the socialist countries.

In the socialist mode of production, properties, like plantations, are collective.

What is the socialist mode of production?

According to the interpretation of Marxism of the economic history of the humanity, the socialist mode of production or simply socialism is a form of social, political and economic organization. It is intermediate between the capitalism and the communism, the latter being the final stage of a utopian society without social classes and freed from relations of exploitation of man.

As postulated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the socialism it would be the stage after the capitalist model, which would occur when humanity entered a post-mercantile stage. Its production is oriented entirely to use value and not to exchange value.

However, neither of these two main theorists of historical materialism (or the Scientific socialism, as they called it) left much in writing about how socialism could be organized. For this reason, the models that have been tried in real life strictly respond to later interpretations of neoclassical and Marxist economists.

The socialist mode of production has been tried numerous times throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. As its full functionality was not completely clear, in many cases it became a popular or statist capitalism.

In other cases, they were fierce dictatorships genocidal as those experienced in the Soviet Union under the command of Stalin, in Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge or in the revolutionary China of Mao Tse Tung.

Characteristics of socialism

The main characteristic of this model is that it privileges use over consumption and cost effectiveness. Thus, the production of a socialist society is channeled by the consumption needs of its population, and not because of the eagerness to generate wealth.

For this to be possible, the need for a economy planned, that is, controlled by the Condition, which determines in which sectors it is convenient to produce more and in which less. Such planning can be interpreted as central, rigid and autocratic, or decentralized and democratic.

The typical accumulation of capitalism here becomes ineffective, and gives rise to a rational organization of production based on needs and the availability of materials. In this way, everyone's needs are met, without having to worry about the cyclical fluctuations in the market that so afflict capitalism.

For this, in addition, the private property becomes a hindrance, and the taking of means of production by the working class in an obligation. According to Marx's predictions, socialism would give way to "pure communism", through the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is a society without social classes, composed entirely of workers, without dynamics of exploitation or extraction of capital gain. Market units are nationalized and socialized. The individual is not alienated from his own work, that is, he does not consider it something alien to his person and, therefore, from which he does not deserve to receive but a salary.

Origin of the socialist mode of production

The socialist mode of production was devised by Marx and Engels.

Socialism as a historical stage of human production was devised by Marx and Engels. They baptized it as Scientific Socialism, to distinguish it from other theories regarding socialism (such as the Utopian communism) who did not apply the scientific method, as they tried.

In other words, they were not the first to speak of socialism, but they were the first to propose it as a result of a critical analysis of the economic history of the country. humanity.

Socialist property

The cooperation is a fundamental feature of socialism, as opposed to individualism central in the capitalist mode of production. In other words, collective needs are privileged over individual desires, in search of a social equality, economic and political, for which the abolition of the private property.

Thus was born the social, communal or socialist property, which belongs to the entire community that lives in it or whose work takes place in its vicinity. This would be guaranteed by the State, through a regime of nationalizations and expropriations.

Both private property and corporate property are abolished, since being a planned economy, the State must guide the means of production (peasant, industrial, scientific, etc.) towards the common welfare and not towards the cost effectiveness, betting on cooperation instead of competence.

Advantages of socialism

The socialist model has certain advantages over its competitor, the capitalist. To mention a few:

  • Greater social justice. The main objective of socialism is to combat the inequalities economic and social population, so it aspires to a higher index of social justice through the more equitable distribution of wealth, given that the monopoly The State would have everything, and not some private actor with individual interests.
  • Economy planned and stable. Given that the laws of the market do not play a major role in socialist economic dynamics, one should not fear the fluctuations inherent to unstable markets, since all forms of productive activity are planned from the public.
  • Empowerment of the State. If the socialist state, the main (if not the only) productive actor in the country, is compared with the state weakened and defenseless of certain forms of capitalism, it can be concluded that a virtue of socialism is its vigorous state, capable of intervening in the areas of life that are considered a priority and take decisions fast.
  • There are not class struggle. As there are neither rich nor poor, nor are the means of production in private hands, the class struggle would not take place within a socialist society, so there would be no basis for economic discrimination. The minimum conditions required by citizens should be guaranteed for everyone equally.

Disadvantages of socialism

The disadvantages of socialism, as an abstract system, are difficult to pin down in the imagination. Not so, however, in the historical attempts to put it into practice, which have generally ended in a catastrophic way. Based on these experiences, we can point out the following as disadvantages of socialism:

  • Bureaucratization and concentration of power.Since the State is in charge of the management of society, its presence becomes omnipresent, and may also result in a form of authoritarianism crushing, without any counterweight. Thus, their organisms must grow and multiply, as their control intentions generate more and more paperwork and more bureaucratic structures that slow down processes, since effectiveness becomes a secondary criterion.
  • waste of freedoms. Not only of an economic nature, as is obvious, but also of a civil, religious, moral, even individual, since the almighty state has the ideological control of society. This, in the long run, leads to injustice and to the benefit of a state leadership above the rest of society.
  • Lack of incentives for production. Why strive at work if the rewards will be the same for everyone? By preventing economic competition, the desire to improve and improve is also hindered. innovation, slowing down the economy and often destroying the work culture, replacing it with political ideology.
  • State exploitation of the individual. The great paradox One of the socialist regimes is that, instead of being the worker exploited by private initiatives, it is generally so by the State, lacking competitors and counterweights, owner of economic power, as well as public powers.

Socialist countries

Cuba is one of the countries that continues to be socialist.

Currently there are few countries that call themselves socialist:

  • People's Republic of China
  • Democratic People's Republic of North Korea
  • Socialist Republic of Cuba
  • Lao People's Republic
  • Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Socialism as a prevailing political project also exists in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, although under one the name of "Socialism of the XXI Century."

In the past, however, there were important socialist-oriented nations that no longer exist, such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia or the Democratic Republic of Cambodia, among others.

Other modes of production

As well as talking about the socialist mode of production, there are:

  • Asian production mode. Also called hydraulic despotism, since it consists of the control of the organization of society through a single resource needed by all: the Water. It was the case of Egypt and Babylon in ancient times, or of irrigation canals in the USSR and China. Thus, the loyal receive water to sow their fields, while the fields of the disloyal dry up.
  • Capitalist mode of production. The model of the bourgeoisie, imposed after the fall of feudalism and the aristocracy, in which the owners of the capital they control the means of production. The working class offers them his work force, but they are exploited in exchange for a salary with which to consume the goods and services they need.
  • Slave production mode. Typical of classical societies of the antiquityLike the Greek or Roman, it supported its production of agricultural goods based on a slave class, subject to a particular legal and social status, sometimes inhuman, which reduced them to being the property of a private master or the State. These slaves had no political participation, no property, nor did they receive any reward for their labors.
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