Editing Socialism (section)

== "We already live in socialism" ==
See main page: [[''We already live in socialism'']]

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx used '''bourgeois socialism''' to refer to certain reformists of his time who sought to remedy the ills of capitalism within capitalism. However, certain remarks about the efficacy of joint-stock companies and banks in Engels ''Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,'' and in the third Volume of Marx's ''Capital,'' may be coupled with [[Lenin]]'s ''Imperialism, the Highest Stage'' to historically analyze the bourgeois economic developments during the 20th century.  Although neither Marx nor Engels use the term in this sense, one could use the term '''bourgeois socialism''' to describe the way in which - especially in the wake of the Great Depression - bourgeois states began to manage their economies through central banks, public work programs, and other means. 

In 2021, [[Haz Al-Din]] put forth the theory that [[''We already live in socialism''|we already live in socialism]], stating that we have already transitioned into an incipient socialist mode of production, but that this is not reflected by society's institutions, which are characterized by the continued rule of the now dynastic and semi-hereditary capitalist class who accumulate derivative profits from a more or less centrally planned economy.

===The Need for the Transition to Socialism===
Marx noted that the growing accumulation of capital naturally supposes its growing concentration and power. The contradiction between the general social power into which capital has developed and the private power of the capitalists over these social conditions of production develops more intensely and blatantly. At the same time, this development also contains its solution - that the the conditions of production are now raised into general, communal, ''social'' conditions in accordance with its social power. This transformation is brought about ''by the development of the productive forces under capitalist production'' and is the manner and form in which this development is accomplished. The natural development of capitalism, of its internal contradictions, forms the basis for socialism.<ref>Capital Volume III (Penguin Edition), p. 373.</ref> 

This is illustrated, briefly, by two 'cardinal facts' of capitalist production outlined by Marx in Volume III:

(1) The concentration of the means of production into few hands, which means that they are transformed on the contrary to the social powers of production.

(2) The organization of labor itself as social labor through cooperation, the division of labor, and fusing of labor with the natural sciences.

Marx then notes that on both accounts (1) and (2), the capitalist mode of production ''abolishes'' private property and private labor, ''even if in antithetical forms''.<ref>Capital Volume III (Penguin), p. 375.</ref>

Marxism understands the capitalist development of the productive forces of social labor as its ''historic mission'' and ''justification''. For that very reason, it unwittingly creates the material conditions for a higher form of production. Capitalist production is not an absolute, but only a ''historical'' mode of production, corresponding to a ''specific'' and ''limited'' epoch. Marx's scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production shows that it is a mode of production of a ''particular'' kind and a specific ''historical determinacy''; of its ''historically transitory character''. <ref>Capital, Volume III (Penguin), pp. 365-8, 1018.</ref>  

=== The Formation of Joint-Stock Companies ===
Marx & Engels saw in the emergence of joint-stock companies the following:

(1) Tremendous expansion in the scale of production at enterprises which would be other impossible for individual capitalists (read ''development of productive forces''). 

(2) At the same time, capital, which is inherently based on a social mode of production and presupposes a social concentration of means of production and labor-power, now receives the ''form'' ''of'' ''social capital'' (this is what a joint-stock company is, i.e. a public company) in contrast to private capital, and its enterprises appear as ''social enterprises'' ''as opposed to private ones.'' This is the ''abolition of capital as private property within the confines (context) of the capitalist mode of production itself''. 

Marx calls this precisely the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-abolishing contradiction, which presents itself as a mere point of transition to a ''new form of production''.<ref>Capital Volume III (Penguin), p. 569.</ref>