A small watering can pours onto a potted seedling beside an empty boot-shaped planter under a pale sky.

Original artwork, not a still

The Root is Man  ·  1946

Dwight MacDonald

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.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

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.

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