This weekly column deals with words and concepts and their changing and nuanced meanings. Indeed, many more interpretations and value additions are possible on the words and concepts that will figure in this series. The Brighter Kashmir invites further discussions on these words and concepts from readers. (Editor, Brighter Kashmir)

We use words that embody profound concepts often without comprehending their nuances. So words remain simply words without producing the intended impact. If this is the state of inter-personal conversation, which becomes empty and ritualistic, what can one say about conversations that are of national importance and implications? A cluttered understanding of the operative meaning of a word contributes to tension and conflict at interpersonal, institutional and public domains. Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, had said, “If you want peace in the kingdom, be clear about your definitions”. Hence, for the sake of clear communication that leads to desired action towards fulfilment of our objectives, knowing the word is critically important.
In Indian literary traditions, a word has three meanings. Among others, Kaviraj Vishwanath Goswami has explained them in Sahitya Darpan. They are: shabdarth (literal meaning), bhavarth (figurative and contextual meaning), guddharth (deeper and philosophical meaning). Usually, the last one is imbibed by an individual who knows the earlier two meanings of the word.
Interestingly, I have encountered the confusion and gross misuse of words/concepts in all sectors – government, business, development, and academia, and so on. The development sector is the biggest victim of such confusions as it operates on a greater number of concepts than the other sectors. There is a litany of development jargons – need-based assessment, participatory development, livelihood generation, gender equity, sustainability, social mobilisation, inclusion, ownership, and so on. In politics, we see concepts like democracy, secularism, socialism, pluralism, equality, social justice, federalism, devolution, decentralisation, deprivation, discrimination and displacement, and so on.
Likewise in business, we come across words like growth, inflation, stagflation, recession, debt, fiscal deficit, private borrowing, globalisation, crony capitalism, demand, supply, demographic dividend, interest rate, price fluctuation, bitcoin, direct and indirect tax, GST, demonitisation and so on. When it is political economy, the confusion is even greater. People come across these words in everyday life in newspapers, political manifestos, budget etc. But, usually, they let the challenge of the word pass and consequently, cannot engage in economic policies or activities.
Let me share one interesting and instructive anecdote that prompted me to come up with this column. A European development agency had invited their partner NGOs in India working on gender projects to a training-workshop run by a noted gender expert of our country. There were about 21 heads of NGOs attending it in a farmhouse in Delhi. I was one of them. The resource person (gender expert) asked all of us to write in a piece of paper, in a few words, the meaning of gender as we knew it. To everyone’s surprise, only one and a half answers were correct. The correct answer was given by a young lady who had attended a previous training programme conducted by the same gender expert. The half-correct answer was mine!

Today’s Concept is Socialism
Socialism is a concept which is grossly misunderstood, loosely used and often confused with similar ideologies like communism, Liberalism, Marxism and Fabianism and so on. I was escorted once by one of my fellow-villagers into the Railway station to take a train to my college. During our informal conversation on the way, he asked me if I was a Communist. He knew of my unconventional views about certain things. I answered, “I am not, I am a socialist”. He was confused as he did not know of any socialist. The neighbouring state of my home state Odisha, West Bengal was then ruled by Communists. According to him, anyone who is studying in a college or a university should be a Communist, standing up for a radical change in the society. A popular confusion I am referring to.
About being loosely used, in Indian politics, barring a few regional ones, all political parties swear by socialism. Even Bharatiya Janata Party, perceived to be a right-wing party, adopted Gandhian socialism as their credo in 1982 party conference. The looseness of its use is confounded as the concept has been enshrined in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution which implies that every political actor or party is supposed to be socialist. A multi-party delegation from Sweden which was being hosted by us in Hyderabad, to their surprise, found out that socialism was written into our Constitution. One of the delegates from the Moderatana (the Moderate Party of Sweden), asked me if it was true that socialism is part of the Indian Constitution. Interestingly, the concept was incorporated in an amendment in 1976, and nowhere in the Constitution, socialism is explained or made operational in terms of articles except some unconnected provisions in the Directive Principles. So the confusion persists. The British philosopher and teacher Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (CEM Joad) had rightly commented, “Socialism is like a hat that has lost its shape because everybody wears it".
Socialism, however, is a distinct political ideology with history and postulates of its own. It is distinguishable from Communism, Marxism, Capitalism, Liberalism and Maoism. It is known as Social Democracy mainly in Europe and Democratic Socialism or socialism in other parts of the world. All three are interchangeable except that critics place social democracy on the left of Capitalism and Democratic Socialism on the right of Communism. Be that as it may, Socialism historically precedes Communism as it is traced to the experiment of workers’ cooperative conducted by Robert Owen in 1799, as he converted his cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland into a cooperative run by the workers. Owen could show that good working conditions (as opposed to exploitative traits of Capitalism) and high productivity were not contradictory, but go hand in hand. He shortened working time, provided affordable accommodation, introduced pension and sickness insurance. As a result, the company’s productivity considerably improved because of the workers’ stronger motivation. Many authors and observers would attribute the origin of Socialism to Robert Owen’s Cooperative Movement.
To understand Socialism, methodologically, it will be easier to take the line of the critics who suggest that Socialism is nothing but revisionism as it modified the cardinal principle of Communism, that is, “the public ownership of means of production, distribution and exchange”. In Communism, there is no concept of private property, all economic exchanges or transactions have to be done by the people (public). This public was conceived to be the proletariat who are the vanguards of revolution against Capitalism and hold power in the interim (dictatorship of proletariat) till the politics is run by Communes while the ‘state withers away’. Unfortunately, as predicted by Karl Marx, the public was subsumed by the Communist Party which became the state. So Communism became one-party political dictatorship like in the former Soviet Union and other Communist countries and one-party dictatorship plus State Capitalism as that of China.
Socialists/social democrats fundamentally differed from Communists on the ownership of the economy. They emphasised the ends of socialism not the means (ownership). For the sake of efficiency, innovation, exigency etc. the ownership could be contextual and time-specific whereas the ends are universal, eternal and inviolable. Therefore, Socialists made room for existence of private enterprises along with the state sector. Under globalisation, private sector became controversially predominant. The state, somewhat, retreated and repositioned itself. Recently, in view of the gross mismanagement by the private companies and traumatic experience in Covid which necessitated state interventions, there is a resurgence of the role of the state. At any rate, the roles of private sector, state, civil society, professionals, cooperatives and trade unions etc. will be changing as per the context and time. So it is better to stick to the ends of socialism to understand the concept in its multiple dimensions.
As of now, there are seven ends or principles which are universally recognised by socialists. They are: freedom, equality, justice, identity, pluralism, dignity and solidarity. Socialism began with three which were plucked out of the three watchwords of the French Revolution. They were: liberty (freedom), equality and fraternity. The third principle fraternity was renamed as solidarity in order to be gender-neutral. Fraternity means brotherhood. Social democracy is also called progressivism; it is a progressive ideology, as society (social) and politics (democracy) keep evolving as per the context of time and place, whereas the principles are timeless, universal and inalienable. These principles inform and generate specific policies in any country. These principles will be elaborated in subsequent issues in this column.
However, admittedly, key elements of social democratic ideology have been met with criticism from the right-wing and from business. To mention three key elements – the ideal of equality, the necessity of balancing capital interest against both the interests of other groups and the public interests, and third, the understanding that the individual is dependent upon his or her social environment.
The ideal of equality has been viewed as a threat to growth, a threat to the individuals’ free choices. A classic right-wing argument opposing the social security system, which is a part of the efforts to achieve equality, is that it makes people passive and impairs their own initiative. Restrictions to the scope of capital by means of legislation, taxation or trade unions have been seen as threat to the principle of free enterprise and debilitating the efficiency of business and consequently, of the entire economy.
The emphasis on the importance of social structures and, in turn, the major collective have been criticised as limiting individual freedom and obstructing economic development. The break-through of market liberalism can be seen as a victory for this criticism. Economic inequality has increased in recent decades. Capital and profit interests have grown, the influence of trade unions has partly been inhibited and the redistribution through tax and welfare policies has seen a decline.
So what do the result show – has the criticism proved to be justified? Has the economy grown stronger and individual’s freedoms improved? Not really. For several years now, many economists notably those from OECD (Organisation for Economic Development) and IMF (International Monetary Fund) have been questioning the old thesis that (major) economic divides or inequality are a driving force behind the growth. They believe that this thesis is often true during transformations from agriculture to industrial economies, but in the current and increasingly knowledge-based world of production, social and economic divides obstruct growth as they impair the development of human capital.
However, social democracy needs to reform in order to be relevant and acceptable in the current situation. Social democrats have to embark on three tasks – taking back democracy, recognising growth and being conscious of environment, finding funds for welfare and thereby reducing inequality and stress.
To sum up, the ideal of social democracy or socialism is used in many different ways in the theoretical debate. There is no single or binding definition. This essay would not solve this problem but it can serve as an entry point to the debate as it gives the basic parameters of the concept.

Email:--------------------dr.dkgiri@gmail.com