After Lenin, Stalin ignored all that and stated: state capitalism is now somehow socialism – we have arrived – end of subject. He knew that the state capitalism Russia had achieved still needed to be transitioned to socialism. Lenin never said he had achieved socialism, but knew it was the goal. Lenin said the Russian Revolution had achieved “state capitalism” – the employers had been changed but the employer/employee structure of capitalism had been retained. I would add that the democratization of community groups would also help to strengthen the institutionalization of democracy within our everyday lives. Within the idea of democratizing the workplace, that institutionalization is able to occur and take the hierarchical power from the autocracy. The evolution of socialism is primarily discussed from the perspective that none of these previous economic structures succeeded at institutionalizing democracy into those structures, leaving in place a centralized hierarchy of leaders which eventually evolve into various forms of autocracy.

The problems of each are illustrated within. Early socialism effectively kept the binary of employer/employee but changed the ownership of production from private to government owned. When the peasantry grew anxious for something new, the outgrowth was capitalism. We see why the binary economic structures of the past have produced an angst among the populations of the world for something better.

This book Understanding Socialism reveals an encapsulated history of Socialism in an easy to understand short book (129 pages).

Richard d wolff understanding socialism