What is Socialism?

Socialism/communism, properly understood, it means the same in the classical Marxian, pre-Leninist sense, will be an advanced , post-capitalist society, run by us all, locally, regionally, globally, in cooperative, administration over resources and not a government over people.

It will be a market -free, money -free, production for use (not for sale), free access (not rationed access) commonly owned,(not private, corporate or state owned) revolutionary permanent break with the present capitalist one.

It has never existed anywhere.

It is not a ‘reformist’ nor a ‘statist’ version of capitalism which retains wage slavery in any form.

It will be the mature, politically conscious task of the immense majority to make it happen and not the minority vanguardist led actions of pseudo-revolutionaries. The organising tenet will be, 

"From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”

Only a commonly owned production for use society of true social equals to the means of production and distribution can ever do this.

If there are wages and salaries, it is not socialism/communism.
State ownership is not socialism/communism.
Social programs are not socialism/communism.
Socialism/communism means democracy at all levels of society, including the workplace.
Socialism/communism means a wageless, moneyless society.
Socialism/communism means voluntary labour.
Socialism/communism means free access to the goods produced by society.

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" The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois."

(1879 Marx and Engels )