The essence of socialism

Socialism will solve the antagonism between civil society and the state. The political state as defender of sectional interests of the ruling class will disappear. The essence of socialism is to eradicate the existing production relations which are based on commodity exchange, the use of money, and trade. The hoax of a market mechanism will be abolished once and for good. Dialectical Marxism And Scientific Socialism aims at creating a stateless and equal society through self-realisation by the workers and toilers to free themselves from the yoke of capital.

The teachings of dialectical Marxism do not envisage that violent military insurrections are the first stage in the creation of Socialism. Socialism will not start from above. Neither can it be imposed but will be the outcome of the existing antagonisms within capitalist society.

Inflation, unemployment and labour unrest are social vices predominant in every capitalist nation. Under capitalism the inherent antagonisms between capital and labour is truly exemplified in the perpetual existence of crises. Exploitation depicts a state of complete alienation: the negation of the workers from the fruits of their labour. Under capitalism the social institutions of producing and distributing goods are wholly owned by the wealthy capitalist class.

Under socialism these social institutions are vested in the whole population and are utilised for the purpose of meeting the needs of every individual member of society. The socialist premises of Karl Marx's dialectical materialism can only be realised when political and economic relations existing under capitalism have been abolished by the communal ownership of economic institutions.

After the working class have taken over the management and ownership of every form of economic and entrepreneur activity from the capitalist and ruling class and have dispensed with ownership and dissolved the bureaucratic methods of civil society, the vacuum of economies of scalewhich had been preserved under scarcity conditions by the capitalist producers will be instantaneously filled. There will occur a general improvement in people's living standards under socialism because goods will no longer be restricted by prices but shall be produced for targeted consumers relative to the demand or needs.

The establishment of a "communist" state in Russia by the Bolsheviks supposedly on the principles of Marxist dialectics brought Marxism into disrepute. Leninism posed a great threat to Marxism during the epoch of imperialism especially among those philosophical circles in which dialectical materialism was held in esteem.

The social and economic conditions under which the Russian revolution took place were not conducive to the realisation of a socialist revolution. That is to say that the historical conditions for socialism were non-existent in Russia at the time. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" as was then conceived by Lenin and the Bolsheviks was a far cry from what was propounded by Marx. Whereas to Karl Manes own interpretation the "dictatorship of the proletariat" entailed universal working class activity, to Lenin and the Bolsheviks it meant a totalitarian regime under a dictator. Lenin emphasised it very strongly that a state run on military precision was what Russia needed most.

We Socialists have long been advocating that what was established in Russia by Lenin was not socialism. We have postulated our assumptions on the fact that historical conditions which give rise to socialism did not obtain in Russia at the time. Russia was not ripe for socialism,

KEPHAS MULENGA (Zambia).