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Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and an egalitarian society characterized by equal opportunities for all individuals and a fair or egalitarian distribution of wealth.[1][2] Modern socialism originated in the late nineteenth-century working class political movement as well as the intellectual movement that criticized the effects of industrialization on society. Karl Marx posited that socialism would be achieved via class struggle and a proletarian revolution which represents the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.[3][4]

The first socialists predicted a world improved by both technology and better social organization, and many modern socialists share this belief [5][6], although modern socialists have a bigger emphasis on egalitarianism whereas traditional socialists favored meritocracy. Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, creates an unequal society and does not provide equal opportunities for everyone in society to attain such status. Therefore socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.[1]

Socialism is not a discrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and program; its branches advocate a degree of social interventionism and economic rationalization, sometimes opposing each other. Another dividing feature of the socialist movement is the split on how a socialist economy should be established between the reformists and the revolutionaries. Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development, have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, Polish and Chinese Communists in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism combining co-operative and State ownership models with the free market exchange.[7] Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies combined with tax-funded welfare programs and the regulation of markets; Libertarian socialism (which includes Socialist Anarchism and Libertarian Marxism) rejects state control and ownership of the economy altogether and advocates direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers' councils and workplace democracy.


Etymologically, the English word socialism (1839) derives from the French socialisme (1832), the mainstream introduction of which usage is attributed, in France, to Pierre Leroux[8] and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud; and in Britain to Robert Owen in 1827, father of the cooperative movement.[9][10]

Western European social critics were the first, modern socialists – Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, and Saint-Simon, who criticised the excessive poverty and inequality consequence of the Industrial Revolution, and advocated reform via the egalitarian distribution of wealth and the transformation of society to small communities without private property. Saint-Simon delineated collectivist principles reorganizing society to so build socialism upon planned, utopian communities.

Linguistically, the contemporary connotation of the words socialism and communism accorded with the adherents' and opponents' cultural attitude towards Religion. In Christian Europe, of the two, communism was believed the atheist way of life. In Protestant England, communism was too-culturally and -aurally close to the Papist Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists.[11]

In 1847, Frederick Engels said socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not. The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves Communists. This latter branch of socialism, was powerful enough to produce the communisms of Étienne Cabet, in France, and Wilhelm Weitling, in Germany.[12]

First International




Socialists supported and advocated many branches of Socialism – from the gradualism of trade unions to the radical revolution of Marx and Engels to the anarchists emphasizing small-scale communities and agrarianism; all co-existing with the most influential Marxism and Social Democracy. The Anarchists, led by the Mikhail Bakunin, believed Capitalism and State inseparable, neither can be abolished without abolishing the other.</font>

Second International

As the ideas of Marx and Engels gained popularity, especially in central Europe, socialists founded the Second International in 1889, the centennial of the French Revolution. Three hundred socialist and labor union organizations from 20 countries sent 384 delegates.[14]

In 1890, The Social Democratic Party of Germany used the limited, universal, male suffrage to exercise the electoral strength necessary to compel rescindment of Germany's Anti-Socialist Laws.[15] In 1893, the SPD received 1,787,000 votes, a quarter of the votes cast. Before the SPD published Engels's 1895 introduction to Karl Marx's Class Struggles in France 1848–1850, they deleted phrases that they felt were too revolutionary for mainstream readers.[16]


Revolutions of 1917–1923

File:Stalin Lenin jk.jpg

By the year 1917, the patriotism propelling the First World War metamorphosed to political radicalism in most of Europe, the United States (cf. Socialism in the United States), and Australia. In February, popular revolution exploded in Russia when workers, soldiers, and peasants established 'soviets (councils) wielding executive power in a Provisional Government valid until convocation of a Constituent Assembly. In April, Lenin arrived in Russia from Switzerland, calling for "All power to the soviets." In October, his party (the Bolsheviks) won support of most soviets while he and Trotsky simultaneously led the October Revolution. On 25 October 1917, at the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!"[17]

On 26 October, the day after assuming executive power, Lenin wrote Draft Regulations on Workers' Control, which granted workers control of businesses with more than five workers and office employees, and access to all books, documents, and stocks, and whose decisions were to be "binding upon the owners of the enterprises".[18] Immediately, the Bolshevik Government nationalised banks, most industry, and disavowed the national debts of the deposed Romanov royal régime; it governed via elected soviets; and it sued for peace and withdrew from the First World War. Despite that, the peasant Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) Party won the Constituent Assembly against the Bolshevik Party, who then acted resolutely the next day.[19]

The Constituent Assembly convened for 13 hours (16.00 hrs 5 Jan – 4.40 hrs 6 Jan 1918). Socialist-revolutionary leader Victor Chernov was elected President of a Russian republic and the next day, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly.[20] The Bolshevik Russian Revolution of October 1917 engendered Communist parties worldwide, and their concomitant revolutions of 1917-23. Few Communists doubted that the Russian success of socialism depended upon successful, working-class socialist revolutions effected in developed capitalist-economy countries.[21][22] In 1919, Lenin and Trotsky organised the world's Communist parties into a new international association of workers – the Communist International, (Comintern), also denominated the Third International.

In November 1918, the German Revolution deposed the monarchy; as in Russia, the councils of workers and soldiers were comprised mostly of SPD and USPD (Independent Social Democrats) revolutionaries installed to office as the Weimar republic; the SPD were in power, led by Friedrich Ebert. In January 1919. the left-wing Spartacist Putsch challenged the SPD government, and President Ebert ordered the army and Freikorps mercenaries to violently suppress the workers' and soldiers' councils. Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were captured and summarilly executed. Also that year, in Bavaria, the Communist régime of Kurt Eisner was suppressed. In Hungary, Béla Kun briefly headed a Hungarian Communist government. Throughout, popular socialist revolutions in Vienna, Italy's northern industrial cities, the German Ruhr (1920) and Saxony (1923) all failed in spreading revolutionary socialism to Europe's advanced, capitalist countries.

In Russia in August 1918, assassin Fanya Kaplan shot Lenin in the neck, leaving him with wounds from which he never fully recovered. Earlier, in June, the Soviet government had implemented War Communism to manage the foreign economic boycott of Russia and invasions by Imperial Germany, Imperial Britain, the United States and France (interfering in the Russian Civil War beside royalist White Russians). Under war communism, private business was outlawed, strikers could be shot, the white collar classes were forced to work manually, and peasants could be forced to provide to workers in cities.

By 1920, as Red Army commander, Trotsky had mostly defeated the royalist White Armies. In 1921, War Communism was ended, and, under the New Economic Policy (NEP), private ownership was allowed for small and medium peasant enterprises; industry remained State-controlled, Lenin acknowledged that the NEP was a necessary capitalist measure for a country mostly unripe for socialism, thus the existence of NEP businessmen and NEP women (NEP Men) flourished and the Kulaks gained capitalist power as rich peasants.[23]

In 1923, on seeing the Soviet State's greatly coercive power, the dying Lenin said Russia had reverted to "a bourgeois tsarist machine... barely varnished with socialism."[24] After Lenin's death (January 1924), the Communist Party of the Soviet Union  – then controlled by Joseph Stalin  – rejected the theory that socialism could not be built solely in the Soviet Union, and declared the Socialism in One Country policy. Despite the marginal Left Opposition's demanding restoration of Soviet democracy, Stalin developed a bureaucratic, authoritarian government, that was condemned by democratic socialists, anarchists and Trotskyists for undermining the initial socialist ideals of the Bolshevik Russian Revolution.[25][26]

Inter-war era and World War II


The Russian Revolution of October 1917 brought about the definitive ideological division between Communists as denoted with a capital "C" on the one hand and other communist and socialist trends such as anarcho-communists and social democrats, on the other. The Left Opposition in the Soviet Union gave rise to Trotskyism which was to remain isolated and insignificant for another fifty years, except in Sri Lanka where Trotskyism gained the majority and the pro-Moscow wing was expelled from the Communist Party.


After World War II







In 1949, the Chinese Revolution established a Communist state in China. Criticizing the invasion and trade embargo of the young Soviet state, Bevan wrote "At the moment it looks as though the United States is going to repeat the same folly in China... You cannot starve a national revolution into submission. You can starve it into a repressive dictatorship; you can starve it to the point where the hellish logic of the police state takes charge."[29]

Social Democracy in power

File:Attlee BW cropped.jpg


At first, Social Democracy held the view of having begun a serious assault against want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness, the five "Giant Evils" afflicting the working class, identified by the British social reformer William Beveridge.[30] However, from the Labour Party's left wing, Aneurin Bevan, who had introduced the Labour Party’s National Health Service in 1948, criticised the Attlee Government for not progressing further, demanding that the "main streams of economic activity are brought under public direction" with economic planning, criticising the implementation of nationalization for not empowering the workers, in the nationalised industries, with democratic control of operations.

In Place of Fear, the most widely read socialist book of the period, Bevan begins: "A young miner in a South Wales colliery, my concern was with one practical question: Where does the power lie in this particular state of Great Britain, and how can it be attained by the workers?" [31][32] The Frankfurt Declaration of the re-founded Socialist International stated:


The post-war social democratic governments introduced social reform and wealth redistribution via state welfare and taxation. The new U.K. Labour Government effected the nationalizations of major public utilities such as mines, gas, coal, electricity, rail, iron, steel, and the Bank of England.[33] To wit, France claimed to be the world's most State-controlled, capitalist country.[34]

In the UK, the National Health Service provided free health care to all of the British population. Working-class housing was provided in council housing estates, and university education available via a school grant system. Ellen Wilkinson, Minister for Education, introduced free milk in schools, sayining, in a 1946 Labor Party conference: Free milk will be provided in Hoxton and Shoreditch, in Eton and Harrow. What more social equality can you have than that? To wit, Clement Attlee's biographer says this contributed enormously to the defeat of childhood illnesses resulting from bad diet. Generations of poor children grew up stronger and healthier, because of this one, small, and inexpensive act of generosity, by the Attlee government.[35]

In 1956, Anthony Crosland said that 25 per cent of British industry was nationalized, and that public employees, including those in nationalised industries, constituted a like percentage of the country's total employed population.[36] Yet the Social Democrats did not seek ending capitalism; national outlook and dedication to the "post-war order" prevented nationalization of the industrial commanding heights, as Lenin put it. In 1945, they were denominated socialist, but, in the UK, Social Democrats were the parliamentary majority, The government had not the smallest intention of bringing in the ‘common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange’ as written in Clause 4 of the Labor Party Constitution;[37] nevertheless, Crosland said Capitalism had ended: To the question, ‘Is this still capitalism?’, I would answer ‘No’.[38] In 1959, the German Social Democratic Party adopted the Godesberg Program, rejecting class struggle and Marxism.


In the 1980s and 1990s, western European socialists were pressured to reconcile their socialist economic programmes with a free-market-based communal European economy. In the UK, the Labour Party struggled much; Neil Kinnock’s made a passionate and public attack against the Party's Militant Tendency at a Labour Party conference, and repudiated the demands of the defeated striking miners after a year-long strike against pit closures. In the 1990s, released from the Left's progressive pressure, the Labour Party, under Tony Blair, posited policies based upon the free market economy to deliver public services via private contractors.

In 1989, at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a Declaration of Principles, saying that

The objectives of the Party of European Socialists, the European Parliament's socialist bloc, are "to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law." Today, the rallying cry of the French Revolution  – "Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity"  – now constitute essential socialist values.[40]

In 1995, the British Labour Party revised its political aims: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that, by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create, for each of us, the means to realise our true potential, and, for all of us, a community in which power, wealth, and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few."[41] Cabinet minister Herbert Morrison said, "Socialism is what the Labour Government does."[37]

21st century

Main article: Socialism of the 21st century

In some Latin American countries, socialism has re-emerged in recent years, with an anti-imperialist stance, the rejection of the policies of neo-liberalism and the nationalisation or part nationalisation of oil production, land and other assets. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Bolivian President Evo Morales, for instance, refer to their political programs as socialist. Chávez has coined the term "21st century socialism" (sometimes translated more literally as "Socialism of the 21st century"). After winning re-election in December 2006, President Chávez said, "Now more than ever, I am obliged to move Venezuela's path towards socialism."[42]

In the developing world, some elected socialist parties and communist parties remain prominent, particularly in India and Nepal. The Communist Party of Nepal in particular calls for multi-party democracy, social equality, and economic prosperity.[43] In China, the Chinese Communist Party has led a transition from the command economy of the Mao period to an economic program they term the socialist market economy or "socialism with Chinese characteristics." 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. Deng's program, however, maintained state ownership rights over land, state or cooperative ownership of much of the heavy industrial and manufacturing sectors and state influence in the banking and financial sectors. In South Africa the ANC abandoned its partial socialist allegiances on taking power and followed a standard neo-liberal route. But from 2005 through to 2007 the country was wracked by many thousands of protests from poor communities. One of these gave rise to a mass movement of shack dwellers, Abahlali baseMjondolo that, despite major police suppression, continues to advocate for popular people's planning and against the marketization of land and housing. Communist candidate Dimitris Christofias won a crucial presidential runoff in Cyprus, defeating his conservative rival with a majority of 53%.[44] The Left Party in Germany has also grown in popularity.[45]

African socialism continues to be a major ideology around the continent. The People's Republic of China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam are states remaining from the first wave of socialism in the 20th century.






Some socialists propose various decentralized, worker-managed economic systems. One such system is the cooperative economy, a largely free market economy in which workers manage the firms and democratically determine remuneration levels and labor divisions. Productive resources would be legally owned by the cooperative and rented to the workers, who would enjoy usufruct rights.[50] Another, more recent, variant is participatory economics, wherein the economy is planned by decentralized councils of workers and consumers. Workers would be remunerated solely according to effort and sacrifice, so that those engaged in dangerous, uncomfortable, and strenuous work would receive the highest incomes and could thereby work less.[51] Some Marxists and anarcho-communists also propose a worker-managed economy based on workers councils, however in anarcho-communism, workers are remunerated according to their needs (which are largely self-determined in an anarcho-communist system). Recently socialists have also been working with the technocracy movement to promote such concepts as energy accounting.[How to reference and link to summary or text]

Social and political theory

Marxist and non-Marxist social theorists agree that socialism developed in reaction to modern industrial capitalism, but disagree on the nature of their relationship. Émile Durkheim posits that socialism is rooted in the desire to bring the state closer to the realm of individual activity, in countering the anomie of a capitalist society. In socialism, Max Weber saw acceleration of the rationalization started in capitalism. As critic of socialism, he warned that placing the economy entirely in the state's bureaucratic control would result in an "iron cage of future bondage".

In the middle of the twentieth century, socialist intellectuals retained much influence in European philosophy; Eros and Civilization (1955), by Herbert Marcuse, explicitly attempts to merge Marxism with Freudianism. The social science of structuralism much influenced the socialist New Left in the 1960s and the 1970s.


Main article: Criticisms of socialism

Criticisms of socialism range from claims that socialist economic and political models are inefficient or incompatible with civil liberties to condemnation of specific socialist states. There is much focus on the economic performance and human rights records of Communist states, although some proponents of socialism reject the categorization of such states as socialist.




This statement was challenged the next day by the Labour Party candidate, Clement Attlee, who went on to win the election.[55][56][57][58][59]

See also


  1. 1.0 1.1 Newman, Michael. (2005) Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-280431-6
  2. "Socialism" Merriam-Webster. Merriam Webster Online.
  3. Marx, Karl, Communist Manifesto, Penguin (2002)
  4. "Socialism" Encyclopedia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  5. Frank E. Smitha, Adam Smith, Socialists and Liberals (2003)
  6. [1]. MacroHistory: World History.
  9. Oxford English Dictionary, etymology of socialism
  10. Russell, Bertrand (1972). A History of Western Philosophy. Touchstone. p. 781
  11. Williams, Raymond (1976). Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society, Fontana.
  12. Engels, Frederick, Preface to the 1888 English Edition of the Communist Manifesto, p202. Penguin (2002)
  13. MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of Organisations, First International (International Workingmen’s Association), accessed 5 July 2007
  14. The Second (Socialist) International 1889–1923 accessed 12 July 2007
  15. Engels, 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France 1848–1850
  17. Lenin, Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of workers and soldiers' deputies 25 October 1917, Collected works, Vol 26, p239. Lawrence and Wishart, (1964)
  18. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 26, pp. 264–5. Lawrence and Wishart (1964)
  19. Caplan, Brian Lenin and the First Communist Revolutions, IV. (HTML) George Mason University. URL accessed on 2008-02-14.
  23. Soviet history: NEPmen
  24. Serge, Victor, From Lenin to Stalin, p. 55.
  25. Serge, Victor, From Lenin to Stalin, p. 52.
  26. Brinton, Maurice (1975). The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control 1917–1921 : The State and Counter-revolution. (HTML) Solidarity. URL accessed on 2007-01-22.
  27. Bevan, Aneurin, In Place of Fear, p 63, p91
  28. 28.0 28.1 The Frankfurt Declaration
  29. Bevan, Aneurin, In Place of Fear, p63
  30. cf Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, Politico, 2007, p243. "Idleness" meant unemployment, and hence the starvation of the worker and his/her family. It was not then a pejorative term. Unemployment benefit, as well as national insurance and hence state pensions, were introduced by the 1945 Labour government.
  31. Crosland, Anthony, The Future of Socialism, p52
  33. British Petroleum, privatized in 1987, was officially nationalised in 1951 per government archives [2] with further government intervention during the 1974–79 Labour Government, cf 'The New Commanding Height: Labor Party Policy on North Sea Oil and Gas, 1964–74' in Contemporary British History, Volume 16, Issue 1 Spring 2002 , pages 89–118. Elements of these entities already were in public hands. Later Labour re-nationalised steel (1967, British Steel) after Conservatives de-nationalized it, and nationalized car production (1976, British Leyland), [3]. In 1977, major aircraft companies and shipbuilding were nationalised
  35. Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, p247. Politico's (2007)
  36. Crosland, Anthony, The Future of Socialism, pp.9, 89. Constable (2006)
  37. 37.0 37.1 Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, Politico, 2007, p243
  38. Crosland, Anthony, The Future of Socialism p46. Constable (2006)
  39. Socialist International - Progressive Politics For A Fairer World
  40. R Goodin and P Pettit (eds), A to contemporary political philosophy
  41. Labour Party Clause Four
  43. Communist Party of Nepal'
  44. Christofias wins Cyprus presidency'
  45. Germany’s Left Party woos the SPD'
  47. Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, (2007) Politico's.
  48. Socialist Party of Great Britain (1985). The Strike Weapon: Lessons of the Miners’ Strike (PDF), London: Socialist Party of Great Britain. URL accessed 2007-04-28.
  49. Hardcastle, Edgar (1947). The Nationalisation of the Railways. Socialist Standard 43 (1).
  50. Vanek, Jaroslav, The Participatory Economy (Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press, 1971).
  52. Hayek, Friedrich (1994). The Road to Serfdom, 50th anniversary, University of Chicago Press.
  53. Hans-Hermann Hoppe. A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. Kluwer Academic Publishers. page 46 in PDF.
  54. Alan O. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek: A Biography. (2003). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226181502 p.137
  55. Morgan, Kenneth (1984). Labour in power, 1945-1951, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  56. Harris, Kenneth (1983). Attlee, 1st American, New York: Norton.
  57. Spartacus Educational, The 1945 General Election
  58. The Listener magazine, 14 June 1945.
  59. Williams, Francis (1949). Fifty years' march; the rise of the Labour Party, London: Odhams Press.

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