Bertrand Russell's socialism is different?

[u/2bitmoment]

I read In Praise of Idleness and he talks quite a bit about how certain talk of left-wing people / communists can be maybe not very constructive? I wonder to what extent his brand of socialism, which he suggests would bring a sort of benefit to the greatest number, could work. Or whether the powerful owners of capital, even if not threatened with death, but just with sizeable dispossession, would also resort to drastic violent measures in response to his brand of socialism.

[u/Ok-Flower3215]

I don’t think “Russell’s socialism” is actually socialism. Is something similar, but there is an important diference in the total rejection from Russell to any kind of despotism, while socialism can justify -at least in theory- despotism.

[u/2bitmoment → u/Ok-Flower3215]

He does say he is against a lot of mainstream socialist ideas. I think he discusses some basic marxist thoughts and how he disagrees with them. I'm not sure which those are though? I read those bits a bit far back, like two months ago maybe 🙏🏽

But "is actually socialism" seems like semantics, arguing about definitions. Is social democracy socialism? He did seem to argue for something like central planning, organizing society scientifially instead of through capitalist markets. Giving power not to "not working owners of capital" but most of the power to the rest of society.

But I wanted to say I'm glad to see a discussion too! Hope to read more Bertrand Russell and have more points for discussion here 🙏🏽

PS: "I do not believe that there is any dialectical necessity in historical change [...]Marx believed that the next stage in human development must be in some sense a progress ; I see no reason for this belief."

PPS: "I cannot accept Marx’s theory of value, nor yet, in his form, the theory of surplus value. The theory that the exchange value of a commodhyis proportional to the labour involved in its production, which Marx took over from Ricardo, is shown to be false by Ricardo’s theory of rent, and has long been abandoned by all non-Marxian economists."

[u/Ok-Flower3215 → u/2bitmoment]

I would like to take the discussion about “is actually socialism” away from semantics, but that would take us to a theoretical debate that I don’t think I’m completely prepared to. You can find a great explination of that in Isaiah Berlin’s “Four Essays on Liberty”. So, for “social democracy” it comes to the same dilema of Russell’s ideas, wich are maybe inspired in some socialist ideas, but -according to Berlin- are not socialism in the exctrict theoretical sense, because of the despotism problem that I mentioned.

[u/EPWilk]

His Sceptical Essays (1928) sheds some light on this topic. He talks about how he's critical of "Bolshevism" and doesn't really support socialism in the conventional sense. He mentions a lot how he's an "international socialist", which seems to mean that he supports a kind of socialism in theory, where it's part of a larger system where all national governments are abolished.