Socialism Is Not a Historical or a Social-Science Term at All, but Ultimately a Messianic, indeed a Quasi-Magical Term, a Secular Religion

Thus it becomes clear that “socialism,” strictly speaking, does not mean anything. First, it is meaningless, intrinsically, because its economic programs do not, and cannot, realize its moral ideal in a manner that compels recognition as true socialism. Second, it is meaningless, historically, because it has been claimed by so many mutually incompatible social formations that it loses all concrete focus. So when people profess socialism we never know just what they mean, or what they can be expected to do if they come to power. This imprecision certainly smoothed the Bolsheviks’ way to total power—and eased periodic Popular Front collaboration with them.

Thus socialism is not a historical or a social-science term at all, but ultimately a messianic, indeed a quasi-magical term; in fact, it has often been claimed that the more ardent forms of socialism have something of a secular religion about them. Masses of humanity could once surge through Red Square chanting “forward to the victory of socialism!” but it is quite inconceivable that shareholders should march down Wall Street mouthing such rousing slogans about capitalism. And it is an exercise in futility when champions of the free market answer Marx with “Non-Communist” or “Capitalist” Manifestos, as if faith could be vanquished by growth statistics. But such is the potency of the socialist idea that most men—its foes no less than its friends—perennially mistake it for a social science category or a putative stage of history, to the enduring confusion of what we are talking about whenever we utter “socialism.”

--Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (New York: The Free Press, 1996), e-book.