Uploaded June 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This video is a short explanation of what socialism is. I go into the definition, some pracitcal applications and what isn't socialism.
Subreddit: reddit.com/r/viki1999
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
E-Mail Address: viki1999mail@gmail.com
Transcript:
Hello everybody and welcome back to ideology explained, today we are talking about socialism. And much like with anarchism this is a very broad topic so I will only go over the basics. All of the ideologies I mention here eventually deserve their own videos so please don’t be angry with me for not mentioning every single one in detail.
Very basically socialism can be summed up as a system in which the means of production are owned by the community or by the workers. That meets practically all definitions I am aware of. There are two main parts to socialism, that being the economic and the political part. We’ll start with the economics.
Basically, socialism requires the workers to own the means of production. You may now be asking: “what is a means of production?”. And I would tell you: Good question. The means of production are the things you need to use, to be able to do your job. That can be a camera if you are a photographer, industrial machinery if you work in the heavy industry or a computer that can run editing software if you’re a youtuber. In most cases nowadays people don’t own their own means of production themselves and instead use the means of production of an employer.
The idea behind socialism is that those means of production dictate much about your life so you should have a say in how they are run and not just have to listen to someone else who happens to own them for now. For example I 100% control the means I used to create this video. But when I worked in the heavy industry I had no control what so ever about how the company would be run despite the fact that I very much had a stake in that because how well the boss managed the factory dictated how much I and my colleagues had to work overtime to keep the company afloat.
So under socialism everyone is supposed to have a say in how their workplace is run. That’s all socialism means. People having a say in how their means of production are managed. This can be achieved in many different ways. There are worker co-operatives which democratically decide what to do, these are most commonly supported nowadays, there are union run workplaces which is more of a syndicalist thing and the classical one which most nowadays see as antiquated is state control over the means of production.
That system is then called state socialism. The logic behind that is that the state, which ideally is democratic represents the working class and therefore the state owning the means of production equals the workers owning the means of production. Many modern socialists oppose this because it doesn’t change much in the life of the average worker. And some even go as far as to say that’s why the soviet union failed. Nowadays you’ll tend to see people support worker co-ops instead.
This, by definition, is all that socialism is. And because of that we can also learn what isn’t socialism. For example, fascism, aka national socialism, as they called it rather deceptively, it is not socialism because it does not and did not give the workers the means of production, the nazis actually privatized like crazy. I am not sure who or why started this myth that the nazis were socialists but it’s wrong in every way.
This video is a short explanation of what socialism is. I go into the definition, some pracitcal applications and what isn't socialism.
Subreddit: reddit.com/r/viki1999
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
E-Mail Address: viki1999mail@gmail.com
Transcript:
Hello everybody and welcome back to ideology explained, today we are talking about socialism. And much like with anarchism this is a very broad topic so I will only go over the basics. All of the ideologies I mention here eventually deserve their own videos so please don’t be angry with me for not mentioning every single one in detail.
Very basically socialism can be summed up as a system in which the means of production are owned by the community or by the workers. That meets practically all definitions I am aware of. There are two main parts to socialism, that being the economic and the political part. We’ll start with the economics.
Basically, socialism requires the workers to own the means of production. You may now be asking: “what is a means of production?”. And I would tell you: Good question. The means of production are the things you need to use, to be able to do your job. That can be a camera if you are a photographer, industrial machinery if you work in the heavy industry or a computer that can run editing software if you’re a youtuber. In most cases nowadays people don’t own their own means of production themselves and instead use the means of production of an employer.
The idea behind socialism is that those means of production dictate much about your life so you should have a say in how they are run and not just have to listen to someone else who happens to own them for now. For example I 100% control the means I used to create this video. But when I worked in the heavy industry I had no control what so ever about how the company would be run despite the fact that I very much had a stake in that because how well the boss managed the factory dictated how much I and my colleagues had to work overtime to keep the company afloat.
So under socialism everyone is supposed to have a say in how their workplace is run. That’s all socialism means. People having a say in how their means of production are managed. This can be achieved in many different ways. There are worker co-operatives which democratically decide what to do, these are most commonly supported nowadays, there are union run workplaces which is more of a syndicalist thing and the classical one which most nowadays see as antiquated is state control over the means of production.
That system is then called state socialism. The logic behind that is that the state, which ideally is democratic represents the working class and therefore the state owning the means of production equals the workers owning the means of production. Many modern socialists oppose this because it doesn’t change much in the life of the average worker. And some even go as far as to say that’s why the soviet union failed. Nowadays you’ll tend to see people support worker co-ops instead.
This, by definition, is all that socialism is. And because of that we can also learn what isn’t socialism. For example, fascism, aka national socialism, as they called it rather deceptively, it is not socialism because it does not and did not give the workers the means of production, the nazis actually privatized like crazy. I am not sure who or why started this myth that the nazis were socialists but it’s wrong in every way.
