The Origin Of The Terms “Socialism” and “Communism”
The Origin Of The Terms “Socialism” and “Communism”
This is one of those rare times when I post here about my academic research, but on this matter, well, I think this is of broader interest than the usual obscuranta that I usually study academically.
So, my wife, Marina, and I were asked to contribute to a “Handbook on Comparative Economics.” We were supposed to have sent in our chapter by the end of September. There will be a conference on this around Oct. 18 in Trento, Italy, neither of us will make, although we have committed to presenting there.
I am not going to describe what our paper is supposed to be about, which it will deal with, oh matters of how to do comparative economics. But while writing this paper we got distracted by certain foundational issues that we, authors or one of the most widely used comparative economics textbooks in the world, thought we knew the answers to. But we did not, and I note that my wife was one of those rare people in the old USSR who was allowed to visit the Marx-Engels archives that are still there in Moscow. No, we should have known this stuff, but we did not, and our textbook contains errors on this matter,
So indeed, the issue is as the title of this post puts it, what were the origins of these widely used terms: “socialism” and “communism”?
In our textbook, we erroneously identified the “utopian socialist,” Robert Owen, as the person who coined the term. He indeed picked it up within a year of its coinage and spread it in 1835 as part of his effort to develop trade unionism in the UK. But he got it from Pierre Leroux, who in turn wrote about it in 1834, although reportedly he was talking about it two years earlier, and there are claims it was around even earlier. But he was the first to put it in print, with a Christian and utopian overlay on it, generalized sharing. He was a follower of Saint-Simon, who was not much of a socialist, despite everybody from Marx to Hayek labeling him as such (long part of our paper). Marx much admired Leroux, although he rarely cited him in his writings. But when he first got to Paris he sought him out, and would later put him on the Executive Committee of the First International. Later in his life, Pleroux would become mayor of his hometown (sorry, not sure its name) in France, where, apparently there is a statue of him.
This brings us to the more controversial term, “communism.” The hard fact is that neither I nor Marina knew the origin of this term. In our textbook, we labeled it (accurately) as having come out of France somewhere between the late 1830s and the early1840s. We both sort of thought that maybe was Proudhon who originated it. I have not read his work in great detail, but I think he used the term. Of course, this makes things complicated, especially for someone so official as Marina was in the old days of the USSR, with her special access to the original texts of Marx and Engels. But even she thought it was Proudhon who might have originated it. But, fortunately, our joint doubt on the matter, within fact that neither of us really knew the answer, led us to be vague in our textbook, simply attributing the origin accurately, if ignorantly, to French radical movements of that period.
So, in fact, while somehow both Marx and Engels never mentioned Pleroux in print, Engels in his notes to the “official” 1888 English translation of the Communist Manifesto, actually provided a footnote on who originated the word, “communism.” It was yet another utopian socialist, Etienne Cabet, who advocated “Icarian” communities, and put forth the term in his book on this, published in 1840, although apparently, he put it out in 1839, from whence it spread. He competed with Fourier, who inspired the Transcendentalist Brook Farm in MA, and Owen, who organized New Harmony in IN, for starting utopian communities in the US, where, well, land was inexpensive, In the end, 140 such communities were founded, some of which, such as New Harmony, survived to become just regular towns in the US. Anyway, as a final irony, a utopian community inspired by the communist Icarain Cabet in California, which he had a hand in, had as one of its more prominent participants a relative of Pleroux.
This leaves us with a further old and not regularly remembered point: back in those days there was no clear distinction between these two terms, “socialism” and “communism,” with this there in the Communist Manifesto. Indeed, many think that Marx defined pure communism in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. But in fact, when there he laid out as an ultimate goal “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” as well as the famous “withering away of the state,” in fact he claimed he was describing the “higher stage of socialism,” no mention of “communism.”
Barkley Rosser
I’ve done my research– well, a Google search, really. Pierre Leroux was born in Bercy, but he became the mayor of Boussac, where his statue was erected. Details, and a picture of the statue at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Leroux.
I enjoy a little scholarship myself from time to time, though I don’t think I have ever actually committed any, so this is not in any way meant to be critical of the above essay or essayist.
But I did want to point out that in spite of my belief that a word means whatever the speaker and (or) the hearer thinks it means, this is only a useful thing to say when people start insisting it means for all hearers in all times exactly what they think it means [or what God and the Framers thought it meant].
Because, on the other hand, there is a huge and profitable industry in using words to suggest that something is not what it is, but what it can be made to appear to be to the gullible by using words that have strong emotional connotations derived from natural associations or past political manipulation.
Thus, we say “communist” to mean “traitor” or Soviet style tyranny with thought control and gulags and mass murder. And use “socialist” to mean “communist” or the “road to communism.”
Now, I know what “socialism” means to me…unfortunately not “Swedish socialism” because I know nothing about that…but the general, and vague, idea that we can build an economy taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and letting the workers run the factories. All of which I have opinions about but which sound too much like what some very bad people say about every effort of the people to cooperate to protect themselves from the predators among the “business community.” The very rich meanwhile are all in favor of cooperating to protect everyone from the predators among the poor…or the occasional super-predator who is able to organize a Power..usually a foreign state… that threatens even them. Or who can be portrayed as threatening “our” freedom so we will enact laws that hand our freedom over to them, that is to our own well organized predators.
Coberly,
Every zealot, regardless of their position, of each and every political-ism that is perpetually jockeying for its place in the great polity schism is quick to tell us that “There are no flies on me.” Of course what could be more ironic given how quick they all play at Lord of the Flies, when given any chance. A better question might be “Do communists (or socialists) eat their own young the same as liberals do?” The answer, of course, would be yes. Just as a mixed economy is a necessary thing for prosperity, then a mixed polity is a necessary thing for a republic of free and politically empowered citizens.
That said, then the particular political-ism hardly matters in the face of a constitution that provides separation of church and state and separation of constitutional powers into three branches of government while completely failing to provide separation of wealth and political power. Capitalism is adequate as an economic system within the confines of regulation that protects all the affected people, but capitalism makes a terrible political system regardless of what political system is whitewashed over the boards of directors to disguise their controlling roles.
Democratic socialism is a tough nut to crack, but also the only theoretical political system that might offer the potential to “provide separation of wealth and political power.” Social Democrats are just capitalists in drag, while all other isms are just some newfangled kind of Nazis.
My own theoretical preference is a distributed form of democratic socialism, essentially Anarcho–syndicalism.
But I am sure people would find some way to fuck that up too.
I, myself, am intrigued by Pestalozzi-Froebilism,
rooted in the premise that man is essentially active and creative rather than merely receptive.
Ron,
I must say I agree with your analysis. but I’m glad you added that “they will find some way to fuck that up too.
I don’t really know what anarcho-synicalism is [I think in this case spell-check knows more than I do. so I’ll let synicalism stand.] but if it’s any good it has no chance of becoming the way things are done. If democratic socialism means anything like the new deal, it’s probably the best we can hope for. If we don’t overreach: the problem is to control the excesses of the rich, not to destroy them. Good communists would tell me that can’t happen… “as long as there are rich people they will control the government to the harm of the people.” That said, the trick is to try to maintain some kind of unstable balance. But even the Greeks who invented “moderation in all things.” couldn’t be moderate for ten seconds at a time.
Oh yeah, we need to limit the suffering of the poor; we can’t prevent them from bringing a good deal of it upon themselves. I read a book (novel) recently by a Swedish writer. He seemed to be fairly discontented with Swedish style socialism, just as people I know in this country who are convinced they can manage their own affairs better than the government.
They are probably right about the things they know well, and wrong about the things they don’t understand at all.
Cob,
New Deal was social democracy. Democratic socialism has yet to emerge as a national state, but exists only as political parties not in control of the apparatus of the state. There is considerable poetic license taken by the wannabes. Social democracy is as good as we can get before the coming apocalypse :<) So we look to Phoenix for inspiration :<)
Those interested in the origin of words and ideas, the article in Wiki on Levelers might be interesting.
I think “leveler” was used as a word of contempt meaning something like “communist” at the time of the framing of the American Constitution…and was one of the political tendencies that the Framers were hoping to defeat.
I think this was all before the time when “capitalist” had the meaning we have today, but the opposing views of haves versus have-nots doesn’t seem to have changed all that much.
Cob,
Just wanted to add, but have been very busy, that FDR’s New Deal was such a great deal as social democracy goes because it came at a time of The Great Depression bracketed by an aristocracy terminating WWI, revolutionary socialism overtaking Czarist Russia, and a Nazi WWII brewing up out of the consequences of the peace of Versailles where US bankers made Wilson make France and England make Kaiser’s remains pay reparations passed back through allied war debt to US banks. So, FDR was running ahead of trailing seas, albeit more likened to a gale. Had there not been a New Deal, then quite possibly Keynes’s euthanasia of the rentier might have been taken more literally.
Coberly,
The Levelers, led by Gerald Winstanley, were over a century before the American Revolution and based in Britain, basically the most left wing group at the time of the English Civil War. They were indeed proto-socialist, supporting redistribution and common ownership of land, and have long been recognized as that, with Marx and Engels citing them favorably.
Dobbs
re Pestlozzi
I would have said that about myself at one time. Before I tried teaching college students, not math majors, a little math. To be fair to them I had previous experience trying to teach high school students and early jr high students. I found the early jr high students….even those considered slow learners… still creative and easily teachable if you talked to them one or few at a time, straight up, not top-down. The high school students were already dead to my subject anyway. I think literature teachers, and their own peers, had much better luck with them.
But my experience of the population in general since then is not altogether encouraging. lots of creativity and insight in unexpected places, and lots of dead minds in highly educated brains.
I think more creative people than i am..that is, more creative with people, could do very well… if they got the kids young enough, and could save them from the fascist instinct that makes mass public education a misery for most.