Political Ideologies

Answer : Socialism in its essence is a state of society in which all people work cooperatively as equals for the common good of all. In recent times people who hold this principle have been describing this principle as democratic socialism, to distinguish the principle from authoritarian and undemocratic states which have wrongly described themselves as socialist in character. Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought. It is distinguished from later socialist thought by being based on idealism instead of materialism. Although it is technically possible for any set of ideas or any person living at any time in history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label “utopian” by later socialists to convey negative attitudes to dismiss their ideas as fanciful or unrealistic. Utopian socialists were important in the formation of modern movements for intentional community, cooperatives, and meritocracy. The utopian socialist thinkers did not use the term utopian to refer to their ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to all socialist ideas that were simply a vision and distant goal for society as utopian. Utopian socialists were likened to scientists who drew up elaborate designs and concepts for creating what socialists considered a more equal society. One key difference between “utopian socialists” and other socialists (including most anarchists) is that utopian socialists generally don’t feel class struggle or political revolutions are necessary to implement their ideas. They feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among like-minded people within the existing society. This term is used to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communalist, meritocratic or other notions of “perfect” societies without actually concerning themselves with the manner in which these societies could be created or sustained. Democratic socialists support the principles of democratic collective ownership of the basic means of production and the principle of democratic management. Therefore, democratic socialists support not only public ownership, but cooperative ownership of economic functions. Because Socialists value the principle of equality, persons truly socialist in spirit value democracy as a vital political principle. Democratic socialists support the idea of democratic public control of those activities which are described as “the commanding heights” of the economy, but do not support the idea of state ownership of every human enterprise and were therefore not Utopian. Democratic socialism describes a society in which people work together to increase the benefit of all. Because Socialists value the principle of equality, persons truly socialist in spirit value democracy as a vital political principle. In a democracy, each person has the right to be heard and to be given due consideration. The government is chosen by a vote of the people. This is the basis for the label democratic socialist.

No person should exploit any other person. This principle of opposition to exploitation is especially important in labor relations.

Natural resources should not be exploited or wasted.

Changes in society and its governments should be made by free and open elections. Thus, democratic socialism ought to be achieved through the ballot box.

There democratic socialism is always better than Utopian socialism.

Answer : The terms “socialism” and liberalism” are used a lot nowadays, and many people often mistake one for the other. In order to differentiate between these two terms, one must keep in mind the clear-cut differences by defining the prevailing ideology of each term. The tenets of socialism assert that the state should wield total economic power by manipulating prices of goods and wages of workers. Socialism says that only by granting the state total economic and political power can economic progress and equality among citizens be attained. Classical liberalism says that the state should only take over an institution to ensure that citizens can freely benefit from that particular institution’s services. Classical liberalism does not require the thorough enforcing of law and order to reach economic progress and equality. Modern liberalism says that the state should interfere not only in economic or political affairs, but also in social affairs, such as day-to-day activities of its citizens. In effect, modern liberalism ceases to be associated with classical liberalism, and instead becomes similar to socialism.

Liberalism has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and its own aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to rise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly. These are the great distinctions which can be drawn. Thus above discussion clearly shows that socialism can better contribute in strengthening the state.

Answer : Socialism is the collective ownership by all the people of the factories, mills, mines, railroads, land and all other instruments of production. Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means direct control and management of the industries and social services by the workers through a democratic government based on their nationwide economic organization. Under socialism, all authority will originate from the workers, integrally united in Socialist Industrial Unions. In each workplace, the rank and file will elect whatever committees or representatives are needed to facilitate production. Within each shop or office division of a plant, the rank and file will participate directly in formulating and implementing all plans necessary for efficient operations.

Besides electing all necessary shop officers, the workers will also elect representatives to a local and national council of their industry or service—and to a central congress representing all the industries and services. This all-industrial congress will plan and coordinate production in all areas of the economy. All persons elected to any post in the socialist government, from the lowest to the highest level, will be directly accountable to the rank and file. They will be subject to removal at any time that a majority of those who elected them decide it is necessary. Such a system would make possible the fullest democracy and freedom. It would be a society based on the most primary freedom—economic freedom. For individuals, socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers cease to be commodities bought and sold on the labor market, and forced to work as appendages to tools owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials within a free community of free individuals. It means a classless society that guarantees full democratic rights for all workers. Socialism does not mean government or state ownership. It does not mean a closed party-run system without democratic rights. Those things are the very opposite of socialism.

”Socialism,” as the American Socialist Daniel De Leon defined it, “is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at end. Socialism will be a society in which the things we need to live, work and control our own lives—the industries, services and natural resources—are collectively owned by all the people, and in which the democratic organization of the people within the industries and services is the government. Socialism means that government of the people, for the people and by the people will become a reality for the first time. Socialism has never existed. It did not exist in the old U.S.S.R., and it does not exist in China. Socialism will be a society in which the things we need to live, work and control our own lives—the industries, services and natural resources—are collectively owned by all the people, and in which the democratic organization of the people within the industries and services is the government. To win the struggle for socialist freedom requires enormous efforts of organizational and educational work. It requires building a political party of socialism to contest the power of the capitalist class on the political field, and to educate the majority of workers about the need for socialism. It requires building Socialist Industrial Union organizations to unite all workers in a class conscious industrial force, and to prepare them to take, hold and operate the tools of production.

Socialism is not a discrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and program; its branches advocate a degree of social interventionism and economic rationalization, sometimes opposing each other. Another dividing feature of the socialist movement is the split on how a socialist economy should be established between the reformists and the revolutionaries. Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies combined with tax-funded welfare programs; Libertarian socialism (which includes Socialist Anarchism and Libertarian Marxism) rejects state control and ownership of the economy altogether and advocates direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers’ councils and workplace democracy.

Doctrinally, Marxist and non-Marxist social theorists agree that Socialism developed in reaction to modern industrial capitalism, but disagree on the nature of their relationship. Émile Durkheim posits that socialism is rooted in the desire to bring the State closer to the realm of individual activity, in countering the anomie of a Capitalist society. In socialism, Max Weber saw acceleration of the rationalization started in Capitalism. As critic of Socialism, he warned that placing the economy entirely in the State’s bureaucratic control would result in an iron cage of future bondage. In the middle of the twentieth century, Socialist intellectuals retained much influence in European philosophy; Eros and Civilization, by Herbert Marcuse, explicitly attempts merging Marxism with Freudianism; and the social science of Structuralism much influenced the socialist New Left in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Answer : Marxism and socialism are part of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Despite the deep suspicion toward socialism and especially Marxism in this country, Marxism was very much the product of mainstream Western intellectual tradition, combining classical German philosophy with optimism toward the benefits of science and technology brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The radical aspects of Marxism, e.g. his championing of class struggles and violent revolutions, were Marx’s interpretation of history and his prediction of what was to come based on the often violent confrontations between workers and management.

Finally, precisely because Marxism provided so much threat to European countries, their governments eventually conceded to workers’ demands at least partially to avoid further violent confrontations and the prospect of losing out to the socialists/Marxists. Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society. Modern socialism originated in the late nineteenth-century working class political movement.

The nature of socialism has changed throughout the decades since its inception. Historically, social democratic parties advocated socialism in the strict sense, achieved by class struggle. In the early 20th century, however, a number of socialist and labor parties rejected revolution and other traditional forms of Marxism and went on to take more moderate positions, which came to form modern social democracy. These positions often include support for a democratic welfare state which incorporates elements of both socialism and capitalism, sometimes termed the mixed economy. This differs from traditional socialism, which aims to end the predominance of capitalism altogether.

Social democrats aim to reform capitalism democratically through state regulation and the creation of programs that work to counteract or remove the social injustice and inefficiencies they see as inherent in capitalism. Socialism is not a discrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and program; its branches advocate a degree of social interventionism and economic rationalization, sometimes opposing each other. Another dividing feature of the socialist movement is the split on how a socialist economy should be established between the reformists and the revolutionaries. Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy.

Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies combined with tax-funded welfare programs; Libertarian socialism (which includes Socialist Anarchism and Libertarian Marxism) rejects state control and ownership of the economy altogether and advocates direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers’ councils and workplace democracy.

Answer : What is the crucial distinction between Liberalism or Radicalism and Socialism? This is a question very often asked. That they are actually often opposed is not to be denied. But the general opinion seems to be that Liberalism, if its principles are thoroughly carried out, is not in any necessary conflict with Socialism. We propose to examine this position with special reference to the economic basis respectively of Liberalism and Socialism. The Liberal party has always claimed to be the party of progress, to be the exponent of the progressive lines of social and political development at a given epoch, and, as such, to be opposed to the party of reaction. This may be termed the negative side, of Liberal theory, and so long as it maintains this attitude as the party in the vanguard of progress, it must necessarily become identical with Socialism – i.e., from the standpoint of Socialists. But here comes the crux.

If Liberalism becomes identified with Socialism, it surrenders bodily all that has hitherto formed the positive side of its theory, and, indeed, what has hitherto given it the reason of its being. It has up till now placed the freedom of the individual as the professed aim of all its measures, and as its basal principle. But does not Socialism also aim at the freedom of the individual? We shall be asked – assuredly. What, then, did and do Liberals (for the most part) understand by this freedom of the individual or individual liberty, and why have they always made it such a strong point in their political faith? The answer is, they meant by individual liberty, first and foremost, the liberty of private property as such, to be uncontrolled in its operations by aught else than the will of the individual possessing it. What was cared for was not so much the liberty of the individual as the liberty of private property.

The liberty of the individual as such was secondary. It was as the possessor and controller of property that it was specially desired to assure his liberty. Indeed, in the extreme form of “Liberal” theory and practice, as embodied in modern legislation, the individual appears merely as the adjunct of property. Property is the substance the personality of its owner is the accident. And why was and is this? Because, we answer, the Liberal party represented the struggle of the middle-classes with expiring feudalism and absolute monarchy. It had to fight against the privileges of nobles and corporations, against institutions which hampered or prevented the free acquisition of wealth by individual effort, and the free application of that wealth when acquired. Its watchword was, therefore, individual liberty. The middle ages contained in its polity ideas of privilege and of corporate ownership which, after that polity had become effete, only hindered progress. Liberalism combated these effete mediaeval institutions on the line in which progress was moving – that of the freedom of the individual and his property. Thus far Liberalism was a progressive force. Robust political economy requires that the system deal adequately with both motivation and information issues.

Under ideal conditions of complete benevolence and omniscience, any political economic organization is workable; but, in a world of gods, the notion of economy, and with it the science of economics, disappears. What political economists in the real world should concern them with is how stable various modes of social organization available to us are under real-world incentive and information conditions. Both Hayek and the classical economists showed liberalisms resilience and ability to pass the test of the hard case. The argumentative strategy was to assume that only self-interested agents populated both the market setting and political positions of authority. They then explain how, on the one hand, liberal institutions of property, contract, and consent within the economic realm enlist self-interest to generate social cooperation, and, on the other hand, how liberal institutions of constitutional constraint and checks and balances discipline knavery such that even though political man is not transformed, he is unable to pursue his knavish ways with impunity.

Liberalism in other words, was an institutional arrangement that both enlisted and constrained our self-interest. Thus, under real-world conditions (and possibly conditions even worse), liberalism can work. Mises and Hayek, on the other hand, showed that even when better than real-world conditions are assumed under liberalism, the system collapses. That is, it fails the test of even the easy case. Socialist political economy is proven fragile to deviations from the ideal. How then, can socialism be expected to robustly deal with real-world or worse-than-real-world conditions in the way that liberalism can? Clearly, it cannot. Taken together, the arguments from the classical and the Austrians demonstrate that while liberalism is robust under both worst-case motivation and information conditions, socialism is fragile under both best-case motivation andinformation conditions.

Answer : Starting with capitalism, capitalism dates back on average 200 to 300 years (it developed in Europe, and Europe then spread it throughout the world). This is tied in with a number of key markers, firstly a political revolution, normally this results in the abolition of a monarchy, and the rest of the aristocracy. Britain is an exception here, Britain had its capitalist revolution early, and as such capitalism was weak and could not totally break the monarchy. The bourgeoisie (French for middle class), then made up of merchants, business men etc, steadily growing in power became the ruling class in society, the classic example would be the French revolution. We also see the development of the modern nation state, with a centralized government, usually a parliament full of representatives of the bourgeoisie, this leads to a single set of laws, currency, measurements and market, which ended the often regional mess that dogged feudal society. We also see the simplification of the class system, the old feudal classes like the peasantry, who were bound to the land owned by their Lord, and so on disappears. As this happens people wander into towns and cities often to “seek their fortune”, however as we know they’d typically end up spinning wool or cotton for 14 hours a day just to get enough to eat. We see the beginnings of the ruling class of capitalists, who own the tools, factories, materials etc. and the people who have to work for the capitalists in order to live.

By 1850 or so, the capitalist mode of production was the dominant one; the last traces of serfdom were being wiped out. In the last 50 or so years the number of capitalists had been dramatically reduced, put out of business due to the competition from the new technologies to increase production, and profitability. This led many to question the system, production had increased say 4 times thanks to the technology of the industrial revolution, yet workers weren’t being paid 4 times as much. This put forward the question of where profits come from, by the 1820s many socialists were coming to the conclusion that profits were the unpaid wages that the workers didn’t get paid, the capitalists were pocketing the difference. It took Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels to come up with a detailed description of what is going on in capitalist society.

Socialism and communism is essentially the same thing, the goals of both are the establishment of a communist society (although not all socialists accept communism will follow). Various communist sects have existed throughout history, going back maybe a couple of thousand years, their goal to create a better world. It wasn’t until Karl Marx did they actually have their feet on the ground. Karl Marx said that now it is actually achievable, thanks to the direction capitalism was developing in. It was creating a class of people worldwide, who could lead a revolution and end the class war that has raged for thousands of years by making the means of production, the economic power base of every ruling class, public property, where not a minority control them but everybody democratically.

A socialist society or the lower phase of communist society is one which has the workers as the new ruling class, and one where the means of production are under their control, as a whole, not through a tiny minority. A socialist society would look similar to a capitalist one, there would be a state, there would be money, and people would go to work and get paid. However the place they went to work would be owned collectively by the society, and as such also controlled by the society. As we see in Venezuela today some factories have been taken over by the workers, in some cases they meet each morning to manage the operations of the factory for that day, in some cases they elect a management to do this for them. There are many ways the people can control the economy democratically. There will also be a few other key differences to the workplace; technology will no longer be feared. In capitalist society if a robot can help a worker do a job, in many cases the capitalist will sack the worker to increase profits.

In a socialist society, the profit motive does not exist. Assume a robot costs £100 and can double the production of a single worker, who is paid say £1000 a month. We can either halve the cost of the commodity (plus the £100 investment for the robot, materials etc) as it costs the same amount of time to make twice as many commodities. Or we halve the amount of time the worker spends at work, the same amount of goods get produced so he still gets the £1000 a month, minus the £100 for the robot. Lastly we can double the wages of the worker to £2000 a month (minus £100 for the robot and extra materials used). Socialism would bring about a technological revolution like none ever seen before in human history. Everybody will want technological progress because everybody will benefit from it, everybody will have an incentive to improve production. Communism, or the higher phase of communist society is a society in which the state has dissolved, money has dissolved the concept of “work” has changed beyond recognition and countries and nations are confined to the history books as the classes dissolve due to everybody both working and collectively owning the means of production.

Everybody in the society will share the same relationship to the means of production, no one group will own and no one group will work for the other group. The state, which we saw develop with the first class societies will no longer need to exist to defend the ruling class from those beneath. It will wither away just like it slowly evolved into existence. Thanks to production being so high, people’s needs will be fulfilled, money will be a non-issue, thanks to technology work won’t be seen as a necessary evil, but as something we just do. Obviously to get this developed may take some time, many generations perhaps to touch on Marxism, Leninism, social-democracy, anarchism, Stalinism etc.

Marxism has a couple of main components, dialectical materialism, historical materialism and the labour theory of value. Essentially nowadays most socialists are Marxists, either by descent or by influence; very few areas of socialism were left untouched by Marxist thinking. Leninism has a few components, the theory of imperialism which explains how the most developed countries exploit the 3rd world by owning their means of production. And also a method for bringing about the revolution, typically how the Bolsheviks did it in 1917, after the more mainstream left-wing leaders had been paid off by the capitalists, a democratic centralist party made up of committed revolutionaries would strike the final blow against capitalism. Leninism is a valid continuation of Marxism.

Social-democracy (up until that time socialists were in parties usually called Social Democratic, or Socialist Democratic Labour), has the nickname the social-bourgeois split from the socialist movement in 1914 following the outbreak of the First World War. They supported the nationalistic bloodshed; genuine socialists urged the troops not to fight, but to turn their guns on their leaders who had sent them off to war. Social-democracy is something that has led the workers up the hill, only for their leaders to be brought out and lead the workers back down again. Anarchists share the goal of socialists, in that they want a communist society. They differ on how to achieve it. Anarchists believe communism can be brought about over-night simply by smashing the state. They don’t think the workers should make use of the things we have won, like the right to vote etc like Marxists and other socialists do.

Stalinism, often mistakenly called socialism or communism refers to the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and beyond, and also other countries influenced by Moscow after that date, China until the 90s or so, Korea, Eastern and Central Europe, and to a lesser extend Cuba. Stalinism (and Maoism) has a few key points, its strongly nationalistic, in contrast to the internationalism of Marxism, it almost always features a personality cult, a great man to look up to, and it is always a dictatorship of a small minority, typically it also features a nationalized economy which this minority rule over.

Answer : Marxism as proposed by Karl Marx advances the following ideas. All the emphasized phrases are Marxist jargon.

• The most important features of a society are its economic classes and their relations to each other in the modes of production of each historical epoch.
• A class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production.
• Under capitalism, the capitalists own the means of production; the proletariat owns only their capacity to work. Landlords rule the land, and the peasants are less significant than workers and are trapped in the idiocy of rural life. The proletariat definitely includes those who produce objects in factories with their hands, but Marxists dither about whether it includes people who work with their minds but are employees and live by their salaries.
• History is the history of class struggles among the classes in society. New progressive classes arise that are related to new forms of production and struggle with the old. New forms of society arise appropriate to the new forms of production when the new classes win power. This doctrine is called historical materialism.
• The stateis the means whereby the ruling class forcibly maintains its rule over the other classes.
• The successive stages of history include primitive communism characterized by equalitarian hunting and gathering, barbarism characterized by rule by chiefs, slave society with a slave class and agriculture, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism.
• Most struggles in history are class struggles, even though the participants profess other goals. For example, Protestantism reflects the rising capitalist class.
• New classes usually win power by revolution. Revolutions are violent, because the dying ruling class doesn’t give up power without a desperate struggle.
• The capitalist class wins power over the feudal class by a bourgeois democratic revolution. A bourgeois democratic revolution is a good thing in its day, because it gets rid of feudal personal relations and replaces them by a cash nexus.
• Capitalism creates the proletariatwho has nothing to sell but their labor by bankrupting the artisan classes and the petty bourgeoisie and driving them into the proletariat.
• The proletariat wins power by a proletarian revolution. According to Marx and Lenin, this revolution must be violent, because the bourgeoisie won’t give up power by electoral means.
• Under capitalism the progressive class is the proletariat which is destined to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, which will eventually evolve into communism.
• Historical materialism is the Marxist methodology for interpreting history. The idea is to interpret all relations between groups of people as class relations and to interpret all conflicts as reflections of class struggles. A specific sequence of historical stages is part of the doctrine. It is (primitive communism, barbarism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism socialism, and communism). Each stage of history has its own ruling class which uses the state to maintain its rule. Under feudalism the ruling class is the nobility, under capitalism it is the capitalists, and under socialism it is the proletariat. Primitive communism and communism are classless. In some countries oriental despotism happens as a stage distinct from feudalism.
• The main feature of socialism is public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
• Under capitalism, workers “tend” to be paid the bare amount required for them to support their families and reproduce. This is because of competition for jobs from the reserve army of labor, i.e. the unemployed.
• The capitalist sells the product of the workers’ labor at a price proportional to its value, which is the socially necessary labour required to produce it.
• The difference between what the products sells for and what the workers are paid is surplus value and is appropriated by the capitalist.
• Because the workers can’t buy the full product of their labor and the capitalists don’t consume all the surplus value, there tend to be recessions.
• The steady increase in labor saving machinery creates unemployment and drives down wages. This emphasizes the tendency for there to be economic recessions.
• The tendency to pay the workers bare survival wages leads to the increasing immoderation of the proletariat.
• The other classes, e.g. artisans and petty bourgeoisie, e.g. small shopkeepers, go broke and are driven into the proletariat. Even the smaller capitalists go broke.
• Then a socialist revolution occurs. Originally this was supposed to occur first in the most advanced capitalist countries, e.g. Germany, Britain and the United States. It wasn’t supposed to occur first in a backward country like Russia, where a bourgeois-democratic revolution should have happened first.
• In the first stages of socialism the state is a dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the proletariat rules the other classes by force.
• The socialist slogan is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”
• The communist slogan is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
• Communism, which evolves peacefully from socialism, is a classless society under which the state will wither away.

In view of the concerns expressed by Marxism, the concept of Sarvoday too is deeply concerned with the poor and underprivileged people. It also talks about classless society. But still there are marked differences between the Marxism and Sarvodaya. Marx is totally opposed to the capitalism and bourgeoisie class. Marxism does not show its concern for rich section of the society. But Sarvoday advocates for the spiritual upliftment of the rich people also. Marxism wants a stateless society through revolution but Sarvoday wants a classless society with peaceful means. For Marx religion is nothing but opium and is not good for the mankind. But for Sarvodaya religion is very much a part of the life of human beings.

The basis of Marxist philosophy is materialism whereas spiritualism is core of the concept of Sarvodaya. Such concepts clearly represent pillars for a new social order. A theory closely linked to the concept of Sarvodaya, also developed by Gandhi, is that of Trusteeship. Its fundamental objective is to create nonviolent and non-exploitative property relationships. Gandhi believed that the concepts of possession and private property were sources of violence, and in contradiction with the Divine reality that all wealth belongs to all people. However, he recognized that the concept of ownership would not wither easily, nor would the wealthy be easily persuaded to share their wealth.

Answer : Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument. Thus philosophy is a kind of love and affection for knowledge. Thus acquired knowledge is expressed by one way or the other. The sum total of this very expression is called culture. As we know thoughts are supposed to be followed by actions.

Hence what we think and the way we think and perceive is reflected by actions. Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another. Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that is passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been called “the way of life for an entire society. As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art.

That is why cultural anthropologists most commonly use the term “culture” to refer to the universal human capacity and activities to classify, codify and communicate their experiences materially and symbolically. Scholars have long viewed this capacity as a defining feature of humans.

Answer : Socrates believed the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. His actions lived up to this: in the end, Socrates accepted his death sentence when most thought he would simply leave Athens, as he felt he could not run away from or go against the will of his community; his reputation for valor on the battlefield was without reproach. The idea that humans possessed certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates’ teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that “virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the ideal life was spent in search of the Good.

Truth lies beneath the shadows of existence, and it is the job of the philosopher to show the rest how little they really know.There is little doubt that doing philosophy is one of the most challenging yet rewarding activities in which we can engage. This is because the questions we are concerned with in philosophy - the questions about the ultimate causes, meaning, and purpose of human existence and the world - are not only deeply interesting and challenging but also, in a sense; stand in urgent need of responses. The responses should be matters of deep concern to us all because they radically inform our understanding of just who we are and of precisely how we fit into the world that we inhabit.

Apart from Socrates various philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mill, Wittgenstein, etc. have also attempted to answer the questions:

What do we know?

• How do we know what we know?
• What are the defining features, the substantive conditions, and the limits of knowledge and its justification?
• What is the nature and structure of reality?
• Are we simply very complex parts of the physical world?
• Or is there something very special about us?
• Are our actions subject to the physical laws of nature or do we have some special sort of freedom? Are there non-physical entities, e.g., God?

We cannot answer these questions by making observations or doing experiments differs in each case. For example, if we doubt our senses, what are we going to check them against? We have developed all sorts of instruments capable of making more precise and more sensitive measurements than our senses, but we rely on our senses to read these instruments. In any case, if we doubt whether our senses give sufficient evidence that objects really exist, then we must doubt the existence of the instruments themselves. When we ask whether all events have causes, we can produce examples of events that do have a cause (although philosophers have questioned even this) but we cannot observe that every event has a cause. And if it

is the case that every event has a cause, what experiments could be conducted to show this to be compatible with free will? Our actions may appear to be free, but if this feeling of freedom were an illusion, how would we ever find out? What may be worrying those new to philosophy is how we are going to make a start at producing answers. First, and this is why philosophy has been described as conceptual analysis, we can try to clarify what we mean by the terms used. When we say that one event causes another, do we mean that the cause has some sort of power over the effect? What about ‘an act of free will’? Is this an act that is not affected by the events that precede it? One of the first things we discover in philosophy is the way in which questions that at first sight look quite separate have a bearing on each other. For example, think how we might explore what is meant by ‘cause’. Perhaps we will begin by considering what looks like a straightforward example, such as the sequence of events when one billiard ball collides with another.

What do we actually observe in such cases? Do we literally see one event causing the next or do we see nothing more than a succession of events? This takes us back to the question with which we started: what can the senses tell us about the world? As well as seeing billiard balls, do we also see causes? If we do not literally see a cause, how do we know about it? Do we infer it? If it is a matter of inference, is such an inference justified? Consider the question about thoughts and bodies. The scientific theories of Newton encouraged a picture of the universe as a system of particles in constant motion, in which the idea that every event has a cause was a natural one. But where do minds fit into such a universe? Are minds also part of the pattern of cause and effect? Do mental events have causes and effects? And, if so, are these causes and effects restricted to other mental events or can they extend to physical events? If mental interactions cannot be the same as physical interactions, what sort of interactions are they? It may be less obvious that questions about moral judgments or political duties relate to questions about causation or the reliability of our senses, but there are connections. If every action is caused, and if this is incompatible with free will, where does this leave moral judgments? If we treat human actions as events, like any other sort of event, do they become inappropriate objects of moral judgment?

Further, making a moral judgment is itself an event, caused by preceding events; does this mean that a moral judgment is simply another fact? Even if moral judgments are evaluations, the ability to make correct evaluations depends upon knowing some facts. But how do we find out the facts? Is our knowledge based on what we see, hear, touch, etc.? If so, then anything which casts doubt on the ability of our senses to give us knowledge of the world is liable to throw doubt on our ability to make moral, and political, judgments. The last two of our original set of questions also give rise to further questions. If moral judgments are not simply the expression of personal opinion, then what are they and what are they based upon? How do we discover what is good or what our duty is? Do we discover these things through some sort of moral sense (analogous to the way in which we find out about objects in the world by using our senses of sight, hearing, etc.), through a process of reasoning, or in some other way? Asking a philosophical question invariably leads to other philosophical questions. To add to the difficulties, there is no solid foundation on which to start building answers.

Philosophy commonly questions beliefs that we usually take for granted. Philosophy may even try to question the process of reasoning itself. It is hard to begin to answer a question when nothing can be taken for granted. If philosophical questions can be answered only by reasoning, can philosophy be pursued independently of a study of the world? Historically, this has not been the case – many of the philosophers of the past were not engaged purely, or even in some cases primarily, in philosophy. Scientific discoveries trigger philosophical speculation, while theoretical confusion in science creates the demand for philosophical analyses. Socrates often said his wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance. Socrates believed wrongdoing was a consequence of ignorance and those who did wrong knew no better. The one thing Socrates consistently claimed to have knowledge of was “the art of love” which he connected with the concept of “the love of wisdom”, i.e., philosophy. He never actually claimed to be wise, only to understand the path a lover of wisdom must take in pursuing it. It is debatable whether Socrates believed humans (as opposed to gods like Apollo) could actually become wise. On the one hand, he drew a clear line between human ignorance and ideal knowledge.

Answer : The philosophical and social aspects of communism can not easily be delineated in the concept of communism. It is a socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless society based on common ownership of the means of production and property in general. According to Marxism, communism is the final stage in human society which has evolved into a classless, stateless society referred to by Karl Marx as “pure communism”. Leninists have attempted to produce communist societies by setting up political parties, which in some cases have become governments. These attempts have never produced the “pure” communist society envisioned by Marx, and have led to totalitarian states.

Communism is usually considered to be a branch of socialism, a broad group of social and political ideologies, which draws on the various political and intellectual movements with origins in the work of theorists of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems believed to be inherent with capitalist economies and the legacy of imperialism and nationalism. Communism states that the only way to solve these problems is for the working class, or proletariat, to replace the wealthy bourgeoisie, which is currently the ruling class, in order to establish a peaceful, free society, without classes, or government. The dominant forms of communism, such as Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism are based on Marxism, but non-Marxist versions of communism (such as Christian communism and anarchist communism) also exist.

Although people popularly associate communism with the writings of Karl Marx, in fact the basic ideas behind it can be traced back much further. Among the earliest known writings on the subject is the Ancient Greek concept of a “Golden Age,” a time of bliss and harmony without private property. Plato’s ideal society was also one in which all property was held in common. It seems likely that the very earliest human tribes held much, if not all, property communally. Various religious groups have included communism, has a basic principle of their religious community.

The earliest Christians appear to have held property in common, if the descriptions in the New Testament book of Acts is at all reliable, and this tradition has continued in the Roman Catholic Church with various monastic orders. During the Middle Ages people defended their rights to work and benefit from communal property - even to the point of armed uprisings when necessary. Sir Thomas More’s seminal work Utopia included the idea of communal ownership of some property. Marx’s philosophy hinges on his view of human nature. Fundamentally, Marx assumed that it is human nature to transform nature, and he calls this process of transformation “labour” and the capacity to transform nature “labour power.” For Marx, this is simultaneously a physical and a mental act:

Marx did not believe that all people worked the same way, or that how one works is entirely personal and individual. Instead, he argued that work is a social activity and that the conditions and forms under and through which people work are socially determined and change over time. Beyond these basic points, Marx made no claims about human nature. Marx’s analysis of history focuses on the organization of labor and is based on his distinction between the means / forces of production, literally those things such as land, natural resources, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods, and the relations of production in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these compose the mode of production, and Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of distinct modes of production. For example, Marx observed that European societies had progressed from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode of production. Marx believed that under capitalism, the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production (for example, we develop a new technology, such as the Internet, and only later do we develop laws to regulate that technology). For Marx this mismatch between (economic) base and (social) superstructure is a major source of social disruption and conflict.

Marx understood the “social relations of production” to comprise not only relations among individuals, but between or among groups of people, or classes. As a scientist and materialist, Marx did not understand classes as purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources. For Marx, different classes have divergent interests, which is another source of social disruption and conflict. Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labor power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception.

Under capitalism, social relationships of production, such as among workers or between workers and capitalists, are mediated through commodities, including labour that are bought and sold on the market. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one’s own labor — one’s capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one’s own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishism, in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behavior merely adapt. This disguises the fact that the exchange and circulation of commodities really are the product and reflection of social relationships among people. Marx called this reversal “commodity fetishism” (at the time Marx wrote, historians of religion used the word fetish to describe something made by people).Commodity fetishism is an example of what Engels called false consciousness, which is closely related to the understanding of ideology. By ideology they meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which are presented as universal and eternal. Marx and Engels’ point was not only that such beliefs are at best half-truths; they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production includes not only the production of food or manufactured goods; it includes the production of ideas as well (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests).

Thus, while such ideas may be false, they also reveal in coded form some truth about political relations. For example, although the belief that the things people produce are actually more productive than the people who produce them is literally absurd, it does reflect (according to Marx and Engels) that people under capitalism are alienated from their own labor-power.

Moreover, he provides an analysis of the ideological functions of religion: to reveal “an inverted consciousness of the world.” He continues: “It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms, once [religion,] the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked”. For Marx, this unholy self-estrangement, the “loss of man,” is complete for the sphere of the proletariat. His final conclusion is that for Germany, general human emancipation is only possible as a suspension of private property by the proletariat. Marx argued that this alienation of human work (and resulting commodity fetishism) is precisely the defining feature of capitalism. Prior to capitalism, markets existed in Europe where producers and merchants bought and sold commodities.

According to Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe when labor itself became a commodity—when peasants became free to sell their own labor-power, and needed to do so because they no longer possessed their own land. People sell their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for whatever work they do in a given period of time (in other words, they are not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work). In return for selling their labor power they receive money, which allows them to survive. Those who must sell their labor power are “proletarians”. The person who buys the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is a “capitalist” or “bourgeois”. The proletarians inevitably outnumber the capitalists.

Marx distinguished industrial capitalists from merchant capitalists. Merchants buy goods in one market and sell them in another. Since the laws of supply and demand operate within given markets, there is often a difference between the price of a commodity in one market and another. Merchants, then, practice arbitrage, and hope to capture the difference between these two markets. According to Marx, capitalists, on the other hand, take advantage of the difference between the labor market and the market for whatever commodity is produced by the capitalist. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry input unit-costs are lower than output unit-prices. Marx called the difference “surplus value” and argued that this surplus value had its source in surplus labour, the difference between what it costs to keep workers alive and what they can produce.

The capitalism is capable of tremendous growth because the capitalist can, and has an incentive to; reinvest profits in new technologies and capital equipment. Marx considered the capitalist class to be the most revolutionary in history, because it constantly improved the means of production. But Marx argued that capitalism was prone to periodic crises. Marx believed that this cycle of growth, collapse, and growth would be punctuated by increasingly severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term consequence of this process was necessarily the enrichment and empowerment of the capitalist class and the impoverishment of the proletariat. He believed that were the proletariat to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to periodic crises. In general, Marx thought that peaceful negotiation of this problem was impracticable, and that a massive well-organized violent revolution would be required, because the ruling class would not give up power without struggle.

He theorized that to establish the socialist system, a dictatorship of the proletariat - a period where the needs of the working-class, not of capital, will be the common deciding factor - must be created on a temporary basis. As he said, between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. While he allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures (e.g. Britain, the US and the Netherlands), he suggested that in other countries with strong centralized state-oriented traditions, like France and Germany, the “lever of our revolution must be force.