We live in a postsocialist world. Surely, some states still call themselves ‘socialist’ and pretend to be moving towards communism – even if, taking a step back and evincing greater modesty, their stage of ‘socialism’ would correspond to its first and protracted phase. Many others across the world used to call themselves ‘socialist’. This should not, however, lead us to accept their postulation, formerly or today, no more than we should take any individuals according to their own evaluation or capitalists according to what they think of themselves (see Marx [1859] 1971). Yet, if they were not ‘socialist’, what were they?

Socialism, let alone communism, cannot be authoritarian – even if we could accept a rather quick stage of the ‘dictatorship of proletariat’ – nor should it be seen as a sort of collectivism. On the other hand, state property of the ‘means of production’ in and by itself does not make a country socialist. Democracy – which must be based on equal and free positions and mostly horizontal relations – as well as the flourishing of individuality, without detriment to collective well-being, both have to stand out in any social formation that deserves the name of socialism, with its implications for truly social, collectively shared property. This was not the case of authoritarian collectivism, even though not everything that developed therein was bad or negative (with the caveat that positivity was often wrapped in some sort of state paternalism). Nor does recognizing the infirmity of ‘real socialism’ deny the sincere beliefs of members of such societies, including in many cases those sitting at the top, foremost but not only their founding fathers. We must not, of course, forget the role of ideologies as well as that of flawed knowledge in the only partial grasp they had of their own reality, but this does not imply insincerity. In any case, socialism in the twentieth century did not set out with an authoritarian blueprint. The Bolsheviks, in particular, were, despite fierce debates about the role of centralization, largely a democratic and open party, a model they apparently projected onto the future socialist/communist society (Rabinowitch 1976, 2007).