What do people mean when they talk about 'socialism'?

It is very difficult to say exactly what socialism is. It has a long and checkered history in the practices and imagination of 'left' activists since the early 19th century. Now, it is even clearer that there is no single, unified socialist project. But neither is there any unified capitalist system. Capitalism is still recovering from a world-historical crisis - the 2008-9 recession - that has exposed its fragility. Although it has deeply penetrated into our everyday lives and relations to the world and other people, it has still left room alternatives. The alternatives would start small, develop into a network, and expand inside and outside institutions. There is no need to change society from the inside-out, top-down, in order to show some goddamn solidarity or sympathy with oppressed people.

When we say, "another world is possible," we mean that human beings have the capacity, under the right conditions, to live differently. There are glimpses of socialism in the way people act in ordinary situations, when they don't consciously recognize, but unconsciously sympathize or support people around them. That sincerity and affectivity is common to most human interactions. I don't need to go into a full list of examples to simply argue that a lot of peoples' needs tend to thrive in situations where mutual growth and learning happens, and that without a shared culture, our experience as people would be blunted. Is blunted.

The premise is not a perfectly functioning, equal system, where everyone is happy, content, and lazy. That classist stereotype gets us nowhere in discussing socialism. The first premise has to be: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme). Our current system - advanced capitalism - hijacks human potential, reserving it for those who've adjusted their needs to its interests and desires. There is no question that those at the top are currently more skilled and hence more able to earn the rewards of doing better. But they have received advantages that others have not. These aren't simply arbitrary privileges or entitlements (though inherited wealth does matter). Due to the inherent logic of profit-driven competition, only certain individuals and business who make it to the top can succeed and develop their abilities to the fullest, while many people waste their efforts. We all complain about this because it increases the amount of work we have to do, the difficulty in finding and keeping a stable job, and the chronic stress of living precariously. The development of some leads to the underdevelopment of others, not simply to an unequal distributions. We would fight against this if we could, i.e., if we had the voice and means to. Unfortunately, there have been certain ways of officially representing personal experiences, i.e., as fixed identities, and of airing 'grievances,' i.e., in public discourse and state politics, which are limited and unappealing for most people. Having no outlet, we invest the energy of the other world we feel is possible in popular culture and things that don't really develop our capacities as people. The only real 'necessity' or moral obligation is considering human needs.

Unless we are hopelessly confused, needs will always come before wants and desires: this is my second premise. As Marx wrote in The German Ideology, there is obviously a natural basis for human history: "life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life." The unintended consequences of this process lead to changes in humans' relationship to the natural world, and to themselves. Nature changes over time. Thus, "the second point is that the satisfaction of the first need (the action of satisfying, and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired) leads to new needs; and this production of new needs is the first historical act." Emerging needs would include practical know-how, affective intelligence, knowledge-sharing, and the material transformation of the human body and psyche through activity, e.g., having your body, gestures, habitual energy, and so on shaped by doing manual labour. These are the most vital experiences which are foregrounded in peoples' life-worlds, and this is the only basis for abstract debates about justice. Beneath all the so-called competition (and much monopoly), class struggle is going on, but in the words of Warren Buffet, "it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Enough said?

"Another world is possible" means that socialism comes from the imaginations, experiences and life-worlds of ordinary people. It doesn't have to come from the minds of elite university-educated revolutionaries, or be top-down. Arguably, it is not a 'system' at all, and should not be evaluated as such. It is a project that we are building, whether we know it or not, and thought about socialism should merely generalize or extend the needs people themselves express in their everyday experiences.