Everything about The Two Souls Of Socialism totally explained
The Two Souls of Socialism is a
socialist pamphlet written by
Hal Draper and published in the journal
New Politics in
1966. An earlier version of the pamphlet was published by Draper in
1960 in the socialist student magazine
Anvil. In his work Draper rejects what he calls "Socialism-from-Above" in favor of "Socialism-from-Below". According to Draper, the divide between these two souls of socialism is the "fundamental" one that underlies other divisions such as "reformist or revolutionary, peaceful or violent, democratic or authoritarian, etc."
Among Socialism-from-Above, Draper includes such varied forms of socialism as
utopian socialism,
Communist dictatorship and
Stalinism,
social democracy, and
anarchism. Confessing that Socialism-from-Below "has had few consistent exponents and not many inconsistent ones", he nevertheless identifies it with
Marx, "whose notion was from the very beginning that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself."
The pamphlet is organized primarily as a brief history of socialism and important socialist thinkers, beginning with a critical glance at "ancestors" such as
Plato,
Pythagoras and the
Gracchi before turning to
Babeuf,
Saint-Simon and utopians such as
Fourier and
Owen. Draper then lauds Marx as the first champion of Socialism-from-Below, "who finally fettered the two ideas of Socialism and Democracy together".
The next sections of the pamphlet consider in turn anarchists (specifically
Proudhon and
Bakunin),
Lassalle, the
Fabians,
Eduard Bernstein, and American socialists such as
Edward Bellamy, all of whom are criticized for being Socialists-from-Above. The final sections separate out "six strains of Socialism-from-Above" (philanthropism, elitism, plannism, communionism, permeationism, and Socialism-from-Outside) and conclude with a call to
intellectuals "to choose the road of Socialism-from-Below".
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