Whether a Society is Capitalist or Socialist Depends Not on Slogans, but on Relations of Production

Huixiangdou, Jan 1, 2026

The path a society truly walks is never determined by slogans, nor by flags, names, or political language, but by one core thing: the logic according to which relations of production actually operate.

This is a standard of judgment more real than any propaganda, more honest than any packaging. Whether a society is truly socialist or capitalist can be determined by examining three key facts: who controls the means of production, who appropriates surplus value, and whose interests actually drive the entire social operation.

Understand this, and you can cut through all the fog. You'll understand why, in some countries that loudly proclaim certain slogans, the condition of workers bears no resemblance to the world described in those slogans. You'll understand why capitalist logic can expand continuously within an ostensibly "socialist" shell, until the structure becomes completely inverted.

Relations of production are the one place that never lies.

The true dividing line lies not in what "-ism" a society claims to be, but in the actual status of workers. Under capitalism, workers are always "costs"—numbers to be minimized, variables to be sacrificed for profit expansion. The essence of socialism, by contrast, is to make those who create all value the true masters of society.

If, in a society, those who control resources, capital, and policy discourse still dictate economic direction, while workers can only trade "selling their time" for sustenance, then the essential nature of that society has already been exposed. Capitalism doesn't necessarily appear in a business suit—it can wear the cloak of public ownership. Exploitation doesn't necessarily look as crude as nineteenth-century factories—it can persist in more concealed, more refined forms through performance systems, platform algorithms, outsourcing contracts, and wage suppression.

The mistake many people make is confusing "state ownership" with "people's ownership." Yet the state does not naturally equal the people. If the state apparatus becomes detached from workers and from popular oversight, it can form a self-perpetuating bureaucratic structure. This structure can be highly modernized and rationalized, but it doesn't mean workers have truly become masters of the means of production. Such ownership can be public in form while following capitalist logic in substance, evolving into bureaucratic capitalism.

The key to judgment lies not in form, but in relations of production: the relationship between labor and power, between labor and distribution, between labor and the purpose of production.

In a truly socialist society, productive activity is organized to meet the needs of the majority. The driving force of capitalism, by contrast, is always the continuous expansion of profit.

As long as a society's development increasingly centers on return on capital, market competitiveness, and profit metrics, while workers' bargaining power continuously declines and public resources are increasingly commodified, then even if it calls itself socialist, it is traveling along a capitalist track.

The power of capitalist logic is strong—once you make concessions at critical junctures, it will step by step devour the entire social structure, turning public domains that once belonged to workers into soil for capital accumulation.

Many countries throughout history have undergone such transformations. They began with a socialist institutional framework, but as market logic gradually entered the public sphere, capital forces grew stronger, workers' status slowly declined, and the social power structure gradually shifted. Eventually, though the outward appearance remained socialist, the interior had become capitalist. What changed were the relations of production, not the propaganda; what transformed was the structure of interests, not the banner. The moment relations of production change, the nature of society has already changed, regardless of what's written on the flag.

Therefore, the key to judging a society's path never lies in "what it says," but in "how it actually operates." To see whether a society is socialist, you don't need grand theory—just go into the streets and look at workers' conditions. See whether they have dignity, whether they're truly masters, whether they can decide where the value they create flows. Go to the factories, the platforms, the communities, the bottom of supply chains, and you can judge whose logic it actually follows.

The flag's color can remain unchanged, slogans can keep their content, documents can retain their wording, and society can be packaged to look very modern. But as long as workers are still treated as "costs," as long as capital remains the center of social operation, as long as surplus value is still seized by the few, the essential reality is as clear as stone.

As long as capitalist logic dominates a society, it is not socialist. Only when workers truly control the means of production, control distribution rights, and control social direction does socialism truly exist.

Relations of production do not deceive. They are more straightforward than any rhetoric, more real than any slogan.

This is the only reliable method for judging the nature of society, and the fundamental position of Marxism.