Socialism

Part of the Politics series on

Socialism

Currents

Democratic socialism* Christian socialism* Communism Libertarian socialism* Revolutionary Socialism* Social democracy*

Influences

Marxism Anarchism Trade unionism Planned economy*

Ideas

Egalitarianism Democracy Mixed economy

Key issues

History of socialism* Socialist economics* Criticisms of socialism*

People and organizations

List of Socialists Social democratic parties Socialist International

Politics Portal

Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. In its most general sense, socialism seeks the co-prosperity and common cause of all people within a political community.

Socialism developed as a political ideology in the nineteenth century as a reaction to industrial injustice, labor exploitation, and unemployment in Europe. For Karl Marx, who helped establish and define the modern socialist movement, the problems were rooted in the economic system which relied on the private ownership of property, and kept wealth in the hands of a few while preventing others from access. Marx advocated a revolution of the working class which would lead to state or collective ownership of the means of production (property and capital). This control, according to socialists, may be either direct, exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils, or it may be indirect, exercised on behalf of the people by the state.

Currently, there is a diverse array of doctrines and movements that have been referred to as "socialist," from forms of "market socialism" which advocate achieving economic justice through taxation and redistribution through state welfare programs to the hard core communists who advocate total state control of all property and the economy. As a result, there are many conflicting factions whose only unity lies in opposition to the "capitalist ruling class."

Typically, "socialism" has been used as a political slogan by unscrupulous leaders seeking absolute power through preying on the frustration and sense of injustice of low-paid or unemployed people. Both the National Socialism in Germany under Hitler and the Soviet-style developed by Lenin and Stalin became totalitarian states that denied personal freedom to citizens. These totalitarian political systems failed to account for human nature (the tendency to accumulate power) and the lessons learned by human civilization throughout history, such as the need for checks and balances on power.

As an economic system, the command economy failed because it treated people as parts of a giant machine, rather than as individuals whose happiness comes through the free pursuit of fulfillment of personal desires. There is a lack of incentive to give whatever is asked and take whatever is given. Further, no centralized system of rational distribution of goods and services can account for individual stages of growth, or biological or intellectual differences. As such, true economic justice is not possible with a command economy. In the 1980s, both Russia and China gave up on their experiments with a command economy. Today, some socialists propose selective nationalization of key industries within the framework of mixed economies. Others advocate "market socialism" in which social control of economy rests on a framework of market economics and private property.

History of socialism

Early socialism

In the history of political thought, certain elements of what is typically thought of as socialism long predate the rise of the workers movement of the late 19th century, particularly in Plato's Republic and Thomas More's Utopia. These theories are based on an ideal that everyone will live together with the best possible peace, prosperity, and justice in one mutually supportive human community—co-prosperity and common cause. Aristotle criticized the idealism of Palto's Republic in his Politics, saying that if all things were held in common, nothing would get cared for, and that if people had no property they could not host a guest or perform charitable acts that create community and give life meaning.

Socialist ideals are similar to the concept of a family in which everyone works together for the well being of the whole and the individual, centered on love and justice. Early Christian communities aspiring to such ideals eventually won over the Roman Empire. However, once they attained power they were often accused of becoming more Roman than Christian.

The term "socialism" was first used in the context of early-19th century Western European social critics as mass society was beginning to develop with the modern bureaucratic state and the mass production of goods through industrialization. The ideas were rooted in a diverse array of doctrines and social experiments associated primarily with British and French thinkers—especially Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, and Saint-Simon. These social critics were reacting to the excesses of poverty and inequality in the period, and advocated reforms such as the egalitarian distribution of wealth and the transformation of society into small communities in which private property was to be abolished. Outlining principles for the reorganization of society along collectivist lines, Saint-Simon or Owen sought to build socialism on the foundations of planned, utopian communities. At the same time, utopian religious communities like the Amish and the Shakers developed in the United States.

Early socialists differed widely about how socialism was to be achieved or organized, and they differed on the role of private property, the degree of egalitarianism, and wheter the traditional family should be preserved. While many emphasized the gradual and modern transformation of society through small, utopian communities, a growing number of socialists became disillusioned with the viability of this approach, and emphasized direct and immediate political action.

The rise of Marxism

File:Kmarx.jpg

Karl Marx

In the mid-19th century, the transformation of socialism into a political ideology was developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who systematized their own account of socialism as the outcome of a revolutionary class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. They bolstered their argument using the dialectic philosophy of Hegel, and became known as left-wing Hegelians.

Marx and Engels claimed to be "scientific socialists," and distinguished themselves from the "utopian socialists" of earlier generations, even though their own view of original human society was idealized and final human society they envisioned was utopian. For the Marxists, socialism was viewed as a transitional stage in the history of human social development characterized by state ownership of the means of production. They said this stage in history would be a transition between the capitalism that currently existed and the ideal communist society, that would mark the final stage of human history. For Marx, this final stage would have all the comraderie and absence of social class that he described in his concept of primitive human society before the development of tools and the system of private property, yet it would contain a garden of material abundance through the collective ownership of industry. According to Marx, once private property had been abolished the state would "wither away," and humanity would move on to a higher stage of society— communism. This technical distinction is used by Marxists, and is the cause of much confusion. The Soviet Union, for example, never claimed that it was was a communist society, even though it was ruled by a Communist party for over seven decades. For communists, the name of the party is not meant to reflect the name of the social system.

Moderate socialism and communism split

In 1864 Marx founded the International Workingmen's Association, or First International, which held its first congress at Geneva in 1866. The First International was an international forum for the promulgation of communist doctrine. However, socialists often disagreed on a strategy for achieving their goals. Diversity and conflict between socialist thinkers proliferated.

Despite the rhetoric about socialism as an international force, socialists increasingly focused their politics on the nation-state, which was the practical seat of politcal power. Socialism became increasingly associated with newly formed trade unions and mass political parties aimed at mobilizing working class voters.

The most notable of these groups was the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (today know as the German Social Democratic Party or SDP), which was founded in 1869. These groups supported diverse strategies from the gradualism of many trade unionists to the radical, revolutionary agendas of Marx and Engels. While the orthodox Marxists in the party, led by Karl Kautsky, managed to retain the Marxist theory of revolution as the official doctrine of the party, in practice the SPD became more and more reformist.

As socialists gained their first experiences in government, the focus of socialism shifted from theory to practice. In Germany, socialists became more pragmatic, as the success of their program increasingly depended on the consent of the middle and propertied classes, who largely retained control of the bureaucratic machinery of the state. Under Kaiser Wilhelm the extension of universal male suffrage and the beginnings of the modern welfare state began and gradually spread to the rest of Europe and the United States by economists and scholars such as John's Hopkins economist Richard T. Ely and social gospel preachers Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch who saw this progressivist social vision as creating the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The condition of the working class gradually improved in the Western world, and the socialist revolution predicted by Marx never happened in Western Europe.

As social democrats moved into government, divisions between the moderate and radical wings of socialism grew increasingly pronounced. Moderates like Eduard Bernstein argued that socialism could best be achieved through the democratic political process (a model increasingly known as social democracy). On the other hand, strong opposition to moderate socialism came from revolutionary socialists in countries such as Russia where neither parliamentary democracy nor capitalist industrial infrastructure—theoretically precursors to "socialism"—existed. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin argued that revolution was the only path to socialism. In 1903, there was a formal split in the Russian social democratic party into revolutionary Bolshevik and reformist Menshevik factions.

Meanwhile, anarchists and proponents of other alternative visions of socialism—emphasizing, for example, the potential of small-scale communities and agrarianism—coexisted with the more influential currents of Marxism and social democracy. The anarchists, led by the Russian Mikhail Bakunin, believed that capitalism and the state were inseparable, and that one could not be abolished without the other. Consequently, they opposed Marxism and most other socialist groups, and a split between the anarchists and the Socialist International soon occurred.

The moderate, or revisionist, wing of socialism dominated the meeting of the Second International in Paris in 1889. The majority of its members, led by Eduard Bernstein, were revisionists. Yet, at the Second International, Lenin and the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg emerged as leaders of the left-wing minority. Followers of German theorist Karl Kautsky constituted another smaller faction.

File:Jaurès02.jpg

Jean Jaurès haranguing workers under a red flag.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, moderate socialism became increasingly influential among many Western European intellectuals. In 1884 British middle class intellectuals organized the Fabian Society. The Fabians helped lay the groundwork for the organization of the Labour Party in 1906. The French Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), founded in 1905, under Jean Jaurès and later Léon Blum adhered to Marxist ideas, but became in practice a reformist party.

In the U.S. a Socialist Labor party was founded in 1877. This party, small as it was, became fragmented in the 1890s. In 1901 a moderate faction of the party joined with Eugene V. Debs to form the American Socialist party. The influence of the party gradually declined, and socialism never became a major political force in the United States. Communism also failed to gain a large following in the U.S.; in fact, in the broader English-speaking world, communism never gained a large mass following.

The distinction between socialists and communists became more pronounced during and after World War I. When the First World War began in 1914, many European socialist leaders supported their respective governments. During the war, socialist parties in France and Germany supported the state wartime military and economic planning, despite their ideological commitments to internationalism and solidarity. Lenin, however, denounced the war as an imperialist conflict urged the workers worldwide to use the war as an occasion for proletarian revolution. This ideological conflict resulted in the collapse of the Second International.

The rise of the Soviet Union

In 1917 the Russian Revolution marked the definitive split between communists and social democrats. Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Europe dismissed the more moderate socialist parties and, for the most part, broke off contact.

The Soviet Communist Party sought to "build socialism" in the Soviet Union. For the first time, socialism was not just a vision of a future society, but a description of an existing one. Lenin's regime nationalized the means of production (except agricultural production), and implemented a system of government through workers' councils (in Russian, soviets). Gradually, however, the Soviet Union developed a bureaucratic and authoritarian model of social development, condemned by moderate socialists abroad as undermining the democratic and socialist ideals of the Russian Revolution. In 1929 Stalin came to power and developed the toltalitarian policy of "socialism in one country."

The Russian Revolution provoked a powerful reaction throughout the Western world. One example was the "Red Scare" in the United States, which effectively destroyed the American Socialist Party of Eugene Debs. In Europe, fascism came to power in Italy in 1922 under Benito Mussolini (a former socialist), and in Germany national socialism developed under Hitler as separate nationalist movements against the ideal of both moderate socialism and communism.

The interwar era and World War II

Despite division of the world socialist movement, Western European socialist parties won major electoral gains in the immediate postwar years. Most notably, in Britain, the Labour party under Ramsay MacDonald was in power for ten months in 1924 and again from 1929 to 1931.

Throughout much of the interwar period, socialist and Communist parties were in continuous conflict. Socialists condemned communists as agents of the Soviet Union, while communists condemned socialists as betrayers of the working class.

However, with the rise of fascism in Italy in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, socialists and communists made attempts in some countries to form a united front of all working-class organizations opposed to fascism. The "popular front" movement had limited success, even in France and Spain, where it did well in the 1936 elections. The failure of the German communists and socialists to form a "popular front" helped the Nazis gain power in 1933. The "popular front" period ended in 1939 with the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Socialists condemned this act as an act of betrayal by the Stalinist Soviet Union.

Many influential religious and labor leaders like Reinhold Niebuhr in the United States, who were originally sympathetic with the Russian Revolution, turned against communism after they visited Russia and witnessed its socialist experiment in the 1920s and 1930s.

Cold War years

In Western Europe, socialism gained perhaps its widest appeal in the period immediately following the end of World War II when poverty loomed large. Even where conservative governments remained in power, they were forced to adopt a series of social welfare reforms that led, in most industrialized countries, to the expansion of the welfare state. The nominally socialist parties became increasingly identified with the the capitalist welfare state and sided against the U.S.S.R. and for the largely backed U.S.-led Cold War policies. This included the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The "Frankfurt school" scholars like Hannah Arendt denounced the Soviet Union as "totalitarian." Inspired by the Second International, the Socialist International was organized in 1951 in Frankfurt, West Germany without communist participation.

In the postwar years, backed by Soviet aid and propoganda, socialism became increasingly influential throughout the Third World which lacked democratic leadership in many post-colonial states. In 1949 the Chinese Revolution established a Communist state. Emerging nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America frequently adopted socialist economic programs. In many instances, these nations nationalized industries held by foreign owners. Soviet aid appealed to political leaders and communist propoganda appealed those who were concerned about the vast economic disparities between the rich and the poor. Some countries, like China, India and Egypt, sought to develop state planning and state-guided models of social development by importing some aspects of the Soviet model.

In the late last quarter of the twentieth century, socialism in the Western world entered a new phase of crisis and uncertainty as the burgeoning welfare state began to force economic collapse in the West. In this period, monetarists and neoliberals attacked social welfare systems as an impediment to economic development. With the rise of Ronald Reagan and "supply side economics" in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in Britain, increasing pressure was put on the Western welfare state to become more efficient. With dramatic economic growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Western countries and international institutions rejected social democratic methods of Keynesian demand management were scrapped in favor of neoliberal policy prescriptions. Even the Soviets came reject the centrally planned economy as economic development based on information technologies in free societies began to rapidly outpace socialist societies.

Western European socialists were under intense pressure to refashion their parties in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to reconcile their traditional economic programs with the integration of a European economic community based on liberalizing markets. The Labour Party in the United Kingdom put together a highly electorally successful set of policies based on encouraging the market economy, while promoting the involvement of private industry in delivering public services.

The last quarter of the twentieth century spelled the end of communists in the Eastern bloc, where the worsening shortages of housing and consumer goods, a stronger black market than official market, lack of jobs for young college graduates, the economic weight of an empire, combined with the lack of individual rights to assembly, association, movement, and speech undermined the legitimacy of the communist regime. With the rapid collapse of Communist party rule in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991, socialism as it was practiced in the Soviet bloc has effectively disappeared worldwide as a political force.

Contemporary socialism and the end of communism

In the 1960s and 1970s new social forces began to change the political landscape in the Western world. The long postwar boom, rising living standards for the industrial working class, and the rise of a mass university-educated white collar workforce began to break down the mass electoral base of European socialist parties. This new "post-industrial" white-collar workforce was less interested in traditional socialist policies such as state ownership and more interested expanded personal freedom and liberal social policies.

Over the past twenty-five years, efforts to adapt socialism to new historical circumstances have led to a range of new left ideas and theories, some of them contained within existing socialist movements and parties, others achieving mobilization and support in the arenas of "new social movements." Some socialist parties reacted more flexibly and successfully to these changes than others, but eventually all were forced to do so.

In the developing world, some elected noncommunist socialist parties and communist parties remain prominent, particularly in India. In China, the Chinese Communist Party has led a transition from the command economy of the Mao period under the banner of "market socialism." Under Deng Xiaoping, the leadership of China embarked upon a program of market-based reform that was more sweeping than had been Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika program of the late 1980s.

In Latin America, left-wing socialism has reemerged in recent years with a nationalist and populist tinge, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez leading the trend. The appeal of socialism has been possible because national income is dependent on the sale of a national resource (oil), rather than the normal production of goods and services necessary for a stable economy which dominated original socialist debates. Political debates reflect how the proceeds from the sale of oil are to be divided, and not how economic development can occur. Ironically, economic development has also decreased in both Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, two other oil producing nations, where battles over control of the resource has taken proirity over genuine economic development.

Socialism and social and political theory

Marxist and non-Marxist social theorists have both generally agreed that socialism, as a doctrine, developed as a reaction to the rise of modern industrial capitalism, but differ sharply on the exact nature of the relationship. Émile Durkheim saw socialism as rooted in the desire simply to bring the state closer to the realm of individual activity as a response to the growing anomie of capitalist society. Max Weber saw in socialism an acceleration of the process of rationalization commenced under capitalism. Weber was a critic of socialism who warned that putting the economy under the total bureaucratic control of the state would not result in liberation but an 'iron cage of future bondage.'

Socialist intellectuals continued to retain considerable influence on European philosophy in the mid-20th century. Herbert Marcuse's 1955 Eros and Civilization was an explicit attempt to merge Marxism with Freudianism. Structuralism, widely influential in mid-20th century French academic circles, emerged as a model of the social sciences that influenced the 1960s and 1970s socialist New Left.

Criticisms of socialism

Criticisms of socialism range from disagreements over the efficiency of socialist economic and political models, to condemnation of states described by themselves or others as "socialist." Many economic liberals dispute that the more even distribution of wealth advocated by socialists can be achieved without loss of political or economic freedoms. There is much focus on the human rights records of communist states. Some critics identify these examples with socialism, while others reject the categorization of such examples as socialist.

Footnotes

Template:Footnotes

References and further reading

• G.D.H. Cole, History of Socialist Thought, in 7 volumes, Macmillan and St. Martin's Press (1965), Palgrave Macmillan (2003 reprint); 7 volumes, hardcover, 3160 pages, ISBN 140390264X
• Friedrich Engels, The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State, Zurich, 1884
• Albert Fried, Ronald Sanders, eds., Socialist Thought: A Documentary History, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1964.
• Phil Gasper, The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document, Haymarket Books, ISBN 1-931859-25-6 paperback, 224 pages, 2005.
• Élie Halévy, Histoire du Socialisme Européen. Paris, Gallimard, 1948
• Michael Harrington, Socialism, New York: Bantam, 1972
• Makoto Itoh, Political Economy of Socialism. London: Macmillan, 1995.
• Michael Newman, "Socialism - a Very Short Introduction", Oxford University Press (2005) ISBN 0-19-280431-6
• Bertell Ollman, Market Socialism: the debate among socialists, ed. (1998) ISBN 0415919673
• Leo Panitch, Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy, and Imagination, ISBN 0813398215
• Selbourne, David, Against Socialist Illusion, London, 1985, ISBN 0-333-37095-3
• James Weinstein, Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left, Westview Press, 2003, hardcover, 272 pages, ISBN 0813341043
• Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1940.
• Friedrich Hayek (1944). The Road to Serfdom. University Of Chicago Press; 50th Anniversary edition. ISBN 0226320618. 
• Ludwig von Mises (1922). Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Liberty Fund. ISBN 0913966630. 

See also

Template:Political ideology entry points

Types of socialism

• Communism
  • Council communism
  • Kautskyism
  • Luxembourgism
  • Marxism-Leninism
    • Stalinism
    • Trotskyism
    • Titoism
    • Maoism
    • Hoxhaism
    • Juche
  • Anarcho-syndicalism
    • Anarchist communism
    • Libertarian socialism
• Democratic socialism
  • Bernsteinism
  • Evolutionary socialism
  • Fabianism
  • Labor Zionism
  • Social democracy
• African socialism
• Arab socialism
• Islamic socialism

Related articles

• Anarchism
• Arab socialism
• Autonomist Marxism
• Capitalism
• Christian socialism
• Cultural revolution
• Fabian Society
• Guevarism
• Guild socialism
• History of socialism
• International socialism
• Localism
• List of socialists
• Market socialism
• Marxism
• Marxist humanism
• Nazism
• Participatory Economics
• Popular Socialism
• Religious socialism
• Socialist economics
• Socialist feminism
• Situationism
• Socialism with Chinese characteristics
• Syndicalism
• Utopian socialism

External links

• In Defence of Marxism, news and analysis
• Industrial Workers of the World
• Marxist.net Marxist resource from the Committee for a Workers' International
• Socialist International
• Socialism by Robert Heilbroner
• PBS' "Heaven on Earth: the Rise and Fall of Socialism"
• The Intellectual Cover for Socialism, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• "The Impossibility of Economic Calculation Under Socialism", by Ludwig von Mises
• Socialism, by Robert Heilbroner
• World Socialism

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Socialism  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Socialism"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.