A-Infos (en) France, SocLib: CAMILLO BERNERI: SOCIALIZATION (1897-1937) (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"To argue that private property must be abolished is to argue that it is 
possible to replace private-capital production with collective-capital 
production in a way that benefits society as a whole. ---- To date, 
socialism has produced many plans and attempts at socialization, yet the 
outlines of communist or collectivist theories have largely remained on 
paper. This is due to a lack of the thorough technical preparation 
needed to systematize implementation efforts and to engage the broader 
public in socialist solutions to the social question. The fact that so 
much time is lost in Byzantine debates-over whether socialization should 
be complete or partial, horizontal or vertical, state-run or union-led, 
immediate or gradual, applied to production or consumption, and so 
on-demonstrates that socialism is merely a tendency toward 
socialization; it lacks a precise grasp of the economic problems 
involved and of implementation plans that, while necessarily approximate 
and provisional, are nonetheless concrete.

There have been many proposals to transform the capitalist private 
ownership of factories or subsoil resources into collective ownership, 
and some have been implemented. However, regarding the issues of land 
and consumption, for instance, we find only abstract theories and 
contradictory, inadequate proposals. This proves that 'scientific' 
socialism-which once ridiculed the blueprints for a future society 
devised by the Utopians-has failed to offer better specific solutions or 
general guidelines.

Marx and Engels deserve great credit for convincing almost all 
socialists that the socialist order is not established according to a 
plan pre-conceived by a few visionary reformers, but rather emerges as 
the natural outcome of the process of economic and social evolution." By 
contrasting the natural character of historical processes with the 
fictitious nature of utopian constructs, they offered a fruitful 
critique; yet the notion that such processes must inevitably unfold in a 
socialist direction gave rise to doctrinal ambiguities and practical errors.

To assert, as Engels does, that "the socialization of the means of 
production becomes feasible not through an abstract conception of 
justice, equality, etc., opposed to class division, but rather through 
the emergence of new economic conditions" is either a banal statement of 
the obvious fact that theories do not create the conditions for their 
own realization-since those conditions are the product of historical 
rather than ideological processes-or it is a deterministic claim. In the 
first instance, we would reply that, in the course of historical 
processes, ideologies act as active forces; while they may not fully 
materialize, they contribute to creating the material conditions that 
allow the socialist tendency to advance. In the second instance, we see 
that historical materialism leads to economic determinism, which in 
turn-for certain interpreters of Marxism-culminates in sociological 
historicism. The gradualism of legal, state-oriented socialism goes hand 
in hand with an aversion-clearly evident in Kautsky-to any plan for 
economic reconstruction along socialist lines. It is obvious that social 
mechanisms are so complex that no single thinker can examine every 
aspect or foresee every possible development. Yet, even if social 
evolution-through the infinite and varied ways its forces combine or 
cancel each other out-precludes elaborate blueprints or definitive 
specifics, a practical program remains essential to socialism as a point 
of reference, just as the light of a hypothesis is essential to the 
scientist. Kautsky asserts that a socialist can formulate positive 
proposals only for present-day society, not for the society of the 
future; he is right, but this assertion is only half the truth. Visions 
of the future that allow us to imagine the forms socialist development 
might take are not necessarily bathed in a mythical azure blue; yet, to 
capture the imagination, they require space and light-elements of which 
"gradualist" pragmatism inevitably deprives them, so long as practical 
projects and piecemeal achievements fail to represent a genuine step 
forward along the long path toward the ideal.

Socialism is and will remain a religion. Only by appealing to the 
spiritual life can it find the men and means to till the soil of 
practical action-ground to which one must remain tethered to avoid 
getting lost in the clouds, yet from which one must also lift one's gaze 
toward the stars that point the way to new routes across seas unknown, 
and yet desired. To realize itself historically, socialism must align 
with the political and economic forces at play in today's society. Yet, 
to serve as a force for renewing the material world, it must forge its 
own myths.

It is worth noting that those who sought to anchor socialism in 
reality-to keep it from dreaming-failed to provide it with broad, 
straight paths leading toward clearly defined goals. Wavering between a 
catastrophic view of capital concentration and mass impoverishment 
(leading inevitably to revolutionary confrontation) and the necessity of 
a class struggle that would drain the bourgeoisie of its blood-that very 
blood destined to poison it-social democracy instead gravitated toward a 
parliamentarism that sapped revolutionary energy, a utilitarian 
cooperativism, and a timid, corporatist trade unionism.

The hybrid blend of apocalyptic revolutionism and deterministic 
gradualism found in Marx's thought was replicated within social 
democracy. The former element gave rise to a lack of interest in the 
economics of transition, while the latter fostered reformism.

Socialism must move beyond the revolutionary infantilism that perceives 
clear-cut positions where complex problems exist, as well as the 
reformism that fails to grasp the historical function of maximalist 
programs and ideal imperatives. He must convince himself of the need to 
combine, in propaganda, the fascination of myth with an awareness of 
concrete imperatives-to harmoniously reconcile ideals with more 
immediate interests."

Camillo Berneri, in *Pensiero e Volontà*, Rome, September 1, 1924.

https://www.socialisme-libertaire.fr/2025/12/camillo-berneri-la-socialisation.html
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