By ‘socialism’ I mean a classless society in which the State has disappeared, production is cooperative, and no man has political or economic power over another. The touchstone would be the extent to which each individual could develop his own talents and personality.

The speaker defines socialism as a society without classes or a state, where production is shared and nobody holds political or economic power over anyone else. Its measure of success, the speaker says, is whether every person can fully develop their own abilities and character, making individual flourishing the test.

Context reviewed 29 September 2026