Dehai News

Separating Real From Fake Socialism

How do you define socialism, especially when it comes to having a
“socialist”, Bernie Sanders, one of the most popular candidates to be
the next president of the USA? Or the next Prime Minister of Spain a
“Socialist”?

To start with, real socialism means that the government, representing
all the people, owns all the land. Land cannot be bought or sold, only
used.

When you build a house, plant an orchard or a field of wheat, you are
creating value with your labor and the roof over your head or the
fruit of the fields belongs to you. But not the land itself.

How can you own something you did not create? You built your house so
you can sell it but not the land it sits on. Without a house on it the
land itself cannot be sold.

Ownership of land is something foreign to socialism and any society
that allows for this is not socialist, period. All the land belongs to
all the people not to any individual.

There are many other questions in defining what is and isn’t real
socialism including just how much of the means of production the
government must own before the people lose control of their society.
How equal the society, “democratic” in the true meaning of the word,
is.  How great is the difference between the social strata, the well
of and not so well off?
Another sign post of socialism, a question that gives a sort of false
impression of Bernie Sanders, is free universal education and health
care.

National service? Yes, a must, all young adults in a socialist country
must begin their life's journey after finishing their schooling, which
was paid for by the people, by serving the people. By doing their
national service be it they are teachers, doctors, mechanics or
soldiers.

Contributing directly towards society’s betterment, for the common
good, is everyone’s first duty in a socialist country. To put it
simply you don't put yourself and your family first, you put your
community, collective unity and protection first.

I have lived in Eritrea, a socialist country (though we aren’t
officially one), for 13 years. I see every day the good and not so
good of a society struggling to build a new socialist way of life.

As the President says, we want a rich Eritrea without rich Eritreans.
That is the culmination of socialism and what some would say begins
the transformation into the next phase of human development, what Karl
Marx calls “communism”, where the “common” people work together for
the “common” good. Socialism could be said to be “from each according
to their ability, to each according to their work” evolving into “from
each according to their ability, to each according to their need” in
the last great leap of human progress.

Eritreans fighting for their independence during the 30 war
experienced this, maybe for the first time in history. Everyone shared
equally, you did your job, be it manning a trench or logistics in the
rear for what you needed to survive, your daily bread (boj-boj). Your
survival needs, food, water, shelter, medical and education, were
supplied by the peoples movement for national liberation and money
played no role in this earliest form of modern “communism”. The planet
will need just such effort and sacrifice in the future.

Real socialism is going to be required for the survival of the human
species as the looming climate catastrophe will bring world wide
apocalyptic droughts and famines unseen in human history. Food
security will be the first priority and only socialism and uniting the
efforts of all the people will allow this to be a reality.

Here in Eritrea the socialist leadership of the country has focussed
on food security as essential to national security and instituted a
massive water conservation and irrigation policy since independence.
Without year round rivers anywhere in our country damming water run
off for year round use is essential, without this we will not survive
as a society for scientists predict droughts, 5 or even 10 year
droughts, plaguing the planet in years to come. These droughts are
caused by man made climate change with the western industrialized
country’s mainly to blame for the damage already done to the
environment.

When a country’s main industry is agriculture, as here in Eritrea, and
the rains fail repeatedly, the whole society is crippled. Yet those
climate criminals in the West causing this disaster blame us and the
leaders we support here in Eritrea for our poverty fueled by the
crisis they caused, drought.

Recently with the outbreak of peace here in the Horn of Africa our
neighbors have sent their leaders here to Eritrea to see our massive
dams and irrigation projects and just what can and must be done to
prepare for the coming drought driven climatic apocalypse and the mass
world wide starvation that will accompany it.

When it comes to water conservation and food security the strides made
by Eritrea show the way for the rest of Africa. Socialism in action
not empty rhetoric, preparing to meet the peoples needs in the coming
years of drought and famine.

A genuine socialist society is at the vanguard in this regard in East
Africa with Eritrea increasingly being recognized as a role model in
many fields be it the outbreak of peace to food security and self
sufficiency. The goal is to transform the Horn of Hunger and War into
the Horn of Peace and Plenty. Or at least enough to get by. You know,
“Enough is Plenty” as the saying goes?

A rich Eritrea without rich Eritreans, I may not see it in my lifetime
but its where we are headed no matter the climate disasters and
western instigated roadblocks thrown in our way. It’s called real
socialism and has been paid for in the blood and hard work of the
Eritrean people, not the fake kind of socialism Bernie Sanders or the
Spanish PM to be claim as their own.

Thomas C. Mountain is an historian and educator living and reporting
from Eritrea since 2006. See thomascmountain on Facebook,
thomascmountain on Twitter or best reach him at thomascmountain at g
mail dot com