Socialism and Social Dividend

Abstract

Socialism has two possible roles to play in the future. The first is a critical role, whereby socialist ideas are deployed as a means of subjecting existing capitalist society to a regulatory, analytical critique. In this future, the job of socialists would be a theoretical one of constructing abstract, ‘counter-utopias’ to the less-than-perfect social environment within which we live. The second is a pragmatic role whereby socialists continue to try to realize their ideas in practice, to mould the world according to the requirements of the socialist ideal. This role may imply compromising with existing patterns of ownership and control in order to establish some form of social justice, as social democrats urge, or it may imply more of a non-conciliatory stance which rejects any compromises that divert from the socialist objective.