Socialism refers to various theories of economic
organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and
administration of the
means of
production and allocation of resources, and a society
characterized by equal access to
resources
for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the
amount of labor expended.
Most socialists share the view that
capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth
among a small segment of society that controls
capital and derives its wealth through
exploitation, creates an
unequal society, does not provide equal
opportunities for everyone to maximise their potentialities and
does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum
potential nor in the interests of the public.
Friedrich Engels, one of the
founders of modern socialist theory, and
Henri de Saint-Simon, a French
Utopian Socialism theorist, advocated the
creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of
modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating
the anarchy in production of capitalism. This would allow for
wealth and power to be distributed based on the
amount of work expended in
production, although there is disagreement among socialists
over how and to what extent this could be achieved.
Socialism is not a concrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and
programme; its branches advocate a degree of
social interventionism and economic
rationalisation (usually in the form of economic planning), but
sometimes oppose each other. A dividing feature of the socialist
movement is the split between
reformists
and
revolutionaries on how a
socialist economy should be established. Some socialists advocate
complete
nationalisation of the
means of production, distribution, and exchange; 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, German 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 and
free price
system (but not free prices for the means of production).
Modern
Social democrats propose
selective nationalisation of key national industries in
mixed economies, while maintaining private
ownership of capital and private business enterprise. (In the 19th
and early 20th century the term was used to refer to those who
wanted to completely replace capitalism with socialism through
reform.) Modern social democrats also promote tax-funded welfare
programs and regulation of markets; many, particularly in European
welfare states, refer to themselves as
socialists, despite holding pro-capitalist viewpoints, thus adding
ambiguity to the meaning of the term "socialist".
Libertarian socialism (including
social 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.
Modern socialism originated in the late 18th-century intellectual
and
working class political movement that criticised the
effects of industrialisation and
private ownership on society. The
utopian socialists, including
Robert Owen (1771–1858), tried to found
self-sustaining communes by secession from a
capitalist society.
Henri de Saint Simon (1760–1825), the
first individual to coin the term
socialisme, was the
original thinker who advocated
technocracy and industrial
planning. The first socialists predicted a world improved by
harnessing technology and combining it with better social
organisation, and many contemporary socialists share this belief.
Early socialist thinkers tended to favour an authentic
meritocracy combined with rational social
planning, while many modern socialists have a more egalitarian
approach.
Vladimir Lenin, drawing on
Karl Marx's ideas of "lower" and "upper" stages of
socialism defined "socialism" as a transitional stage between
capitalism and
communism.
Origins
The English word
socialism (1839) derives from the French
socialisme (1832), the mainstream introduction of which
usage is attributed, in France, to
Pierre
Leroux, and to
Marie Roch
Louis Reybaud; and in Britain to
Robert
Owen in 1827, father of the
cooperative movement. Although
socialist models and ideas espousing common ownership have existed
since antiquity with the classical Greek philosophers Plato and
Aristotle, the modern concept of socialism evolved in response to
the development of industrial capitalism. Early socialism was seen
as an extension of classical liberalism by extending liberty and
rights to the industrial economic aspect of life, so that these
values were compatible with the then-emerging industrial
society.
The first advocates of socialism favoured social levelling in order
to create a meritocratic or technocratic society based upon
individual talent. Count
Henri de
Saint-Simon is regarded as the first individual to coin the
term
socialism. Simon was fascinated by the enormous
potential of science and technology and advocated a socialist
society that would eliminate the disorderly aspects of capitalism
and would be based upon equal opportunities. He advocated the
creation of a society in which each person was ranked according to
his or her capacities and rewarded according to his or her
work.
This was accompanied by a desire to implement a
rationally-organised economy based on planning and geared towards
large-scale scientific and material progress, and thus embodied a
desire for a more directed or
planned
economy. Other early socialist thinkers, such as Thomas Hodgkin
and Charles Hall, based their ideas on
David Ricardo's economic theories. They
reasoned that the equilibrium value of commodities approximated to
prices charged by the producer when those commodities were in
elastic supply, and that these producer prices corresponded to the
embodied labor — the cost of the labor (essentially the wages paid)
that was required to produce the commodities. The Ricardian
socialists viewed profit, interest and rent as deductions from this
exchange-value.
West European social critics, including
Robert Owen,
Charles
Fourier,
Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon,
Louis Blanc,
Charles Hall and
Saint-Simon,
were the first modern socialists who criticised the excessive
poverty and inequality of the
Industrial Revolution. They advocated
reform, with some such as Robert Owen advocating the transformation
of society to small communities without private property.
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, the word
communism was too culturally and aurally close to the
Roman Catholic
communion rite, hence
English atheists denoted themselves socialists.
Friedrich Engels argued that in
1848, at the time when the
Communist
Manifesto was published, "socialism was respectable on the
continent, while communism was not." The
Owenites in England and the
Fourierists in France were considered
"respectable" socialists, while working-class movements that
"proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted
themselves communists. This latter branch of socialism produced the
communist work of
Étienne Cabet
in France and
Wilhelm Weitling in
Germany.
The
Marxist conception of socialism is that
of a specific historical phase that will displace capitalism and be
a precursor to communism. The major characteristics of socialism
(particularly as conceived by Marx and Engels after the
Paris Commune of 1871), are that the
proletariat will control the means of production through a
workers' state erected by the workers in
their interests. Economic activity is still organised through the
use of incentive systems and social classes would still exist but
to a lesser and diminishing extent than under capitalism.
For orthodox Marxists, socialism is the lower stage of communism
based on the principle of "
from each according to his
ability, to each according to his contribution" while upper
stage communism is based on the principle of "
from
each according to his ability, to each according to his need";
the upper stage becoming possible only after the socialist stage
further develops economic efficiency and the automation of
production has led to a superabundance of goods and services.
First International
In 1864, the
International
Workingmen's Association (IWA) the First International was
founded in London. Londoner Victor le Lubez, a French radical
republican, invited
Karl Marx to
participate as a representative of German workers. In 1865, the IWA
had its preliminary conference, and its first congress, at Geneva,
in 1866. Karl Marx was a member of the committee; he and Johann
Georg Eccarius, a London tailor, were the two mainstays of the
International, from its inception to its end; the
First International was the premiere
international forum promulgating socialism.
In 1869, under the influence of Marx and Engels, the
Social Democratic
Workers' Party of Germany was founded. In 1875, the SDW Party
merged with the
General German Workers'
Association, of
Ferdinand
Lassalle, metamorphosing to the contemporary
German Social Democratic
Party (SPD). The SPD founded and constituted trade unions in
Germany in the 1870s and in Austria, France, and other countries,
socialist parties and anarchists did like-wise.
Socialists supported and advocated many branches of Socialism the
gradualism of trade unions, the radical revolution of Marx and
Engels who emphasised a worker's state and central democratic
planning of production, and the anarchists/libertarian socialists
who emphasised direct worker control and local power all
co-existing, with Marxism becoming the most influential ideology in
the form of Social Democracy on the continent of Europe. The
anarchists, led by the
Mikhail
Bakunin, believed that capitalism and the state are inseparable
and neither can be abolished without abolishing the other.
In 1871, in the wake of the
Franco-Prussian War, an uprising in
Paris established the
Paris Commune.
According to Marx and Engels, for a few weeks the Paris Commune
provided a glimpse of a socialist society, before it was brutally
suppressed by the French government. Large-scale industry was to be
"based on the association of the workers" joined into "one great
union", all posts in government were elected by universal
franchise, elected officials took only the average worker's wage
and were subject to recall. For Engels, this was what the
Dictatorship of the
proletariat the political, democratic control or governance of
the working class looked like. Marx and Engels argued that the
state is "nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by
another" and a new generation of socialists, "reared in new and
free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of
the state on the scrap-heap".
After the Paris Commune, the differences between supporters of Marx
and Engels and those of Bakunin were too great to bridge. The
anarchist section of the First International was expelled from the
International at the 1872 Hague Congress and they went on to form
the
Jura federation. The First
International was disbanded in 1876.
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 organisations from 20 countries sent 384
delegates. The Second International expelled individuals and member
organisations that it considered to have an anarchist outlook, most
notably Swiss, Italian, and French
anarcho-syndicalists such as
Errico Malatesta and
Mikhail Bakunin. This created a rift,
lasting to this day in many parts of the world, between what
anarchists describe as
libertarian
socialism and authoritarian socialism.
In 1890, The
Social
Democratic Party of Germany used the limited, universal, male
suffrage to exercise the electoral strength necessary to compel
rescission of Germany's
Anti-Socialist Laws. 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.
The
Swedish Social
Democratic Party, ( , SAP, 'Social Democratic Labour Party of
Sweden'), which today contests elections as 'Labour Party Social
Democrats' (Arbetarepartiet-Socialdemokraterna), is the oldest and
largest political party in Sweden, founded in 1889. Commonly
referred to as 'the Social Democrats' (Socialdemokraterna) or
colloquially 'the Socials' (Sossarna), this party suffered a schism
in 1917, when the communists and other Revolutionary Left factions
split from the Social Democrats to form what is now the Left
Party.
In the UK, politically moderate
New
Model Unions dominated unionised labor from the mid–nineteenth
century until the founding of
New
Unionism, which arose after the successful London
matchgirls' strike in
1888. Unskilled workers such as the Dockers and the Gas Workers
were unionised through the activities of socialists such as
Ben Tillett, a founder of the
Independent Labour Party,
Tom Mann (who together with Tillett founded the
dockers
union) and
Will Thorne, who founded
the Gas Workers union. Also under pressure from socialists such as
Keir Hardie, the UK trade union movement
broke from the
Liberal Party and
founded the
Labour Party in the
early twentieth century. The first U.S. socialist party was founded
in 1876, then metamorphosed to a Marxist party in 1890; the
Socialist Labor Party exists
today. An early leader of the Socialist Labor Party was
Daniel De Leon. De Leon helped found the
Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW) which influenced the formation IWW unions
beyond the United States.
When
World War I began in 1914, most
European socialists, under the banner of the Second International,
supported the bellicose aims of their national governments. The
British, French, Belgian, and German social democratic parties
discarded their political commitments to
proletarian internationalism
and worker solidarity to co-operate with their imperial
governments. In Russia,
Vladimir
Lenin denounced the Europeans' Great War as an
imperialist conflict, and urged workers
worldwide to use the war as occasion for
proletarian revolution. The Second International
dissolved during the war. However, Lenin,
Leon Trotsky,
Karl
Liebknecht,
Rosa Luxemburg and
other anti-war Marxists conferred in the
Zimmerwald Conference in September
1915.
Revolutions of 1917–1923
By the year 1917, the patriotism of the
First World War changed into 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), the monarchy fell and a Provisional Government
convoked pending the election 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 at the second All-Russian congress of Soviets of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, while he and Trotsky
simultaneously led the
October
Revolution. On 25 January 1918, at the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin
declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!", proposed an
immediate armistice on all fronts, and transferred the land of the
landed proprietors, the crown and the monasteries to the peasant
committees without compensation.
On 26 January, 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". Governing through the elected soviets, and in
alliance with the peasant-based
Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Bolshevik government began
nationalising banks, industry, and disavowed the national debts of
the deposed
Romanov royal régime. It sued
for peace, withdrawing from the First World War, and convoked a
Constituent Assembly in which
the peasant
Socialist-Revolutionary (SR)
Party won a majority. The Constituent Assembly elected
Socialist-Revolutionary leader
Victor
Chernov President of a Russian republic, but rejected the
Bolshevik proposal that it endorse the Soviet decrees on land,
peace and workers' control, and acknowledge the power of the
Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The next
day, the Bolsheviks declared that the assembly was elected on
outdated party lists and the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee of the Soviets dissolved it.
The Bolshevik Russian Revolution of January 1918 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 in developed
capitalist countries. In 1919, Lenin and Trotsky organised the
world's Communist parties into a new international association of
workers the
Communist
International, (Comintern), also called 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 uprising
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 summarily
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 repel the invasions by Germany, Britain, the
United States and France, who were interfering in the Russian Civil
War beside royalist White Russians. The
great powers orgainsed a crippling economic
boycott of Russia. 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, the Red Army, under its commander Trotsky, had largely
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. While industry remained largely
state-controlled, Lenin acknowledged that the NEP was a necessary
capitalist measure for a country unripe for socialism. Profiteering
returned in the form of "NEP men" and rich peasants (
Kulaks) gained power in the countryside.
In 1922, the fourth congress of the
Communist International took up the
policy of the
United Front, urging
Communists to work with rank and file Social Democrats while
remaining critical of their leaders, who they criticised for
"betraying" the working class by supporting the war efforts of
their respective capitalist classes. For their part, the social
democrats pointed to the dislocation caused by revolution, and
later, the growing authoritarianism of the Communist Parties. When
the Communist Party of Great Britain applied to affiliate to the
Labour Party in 1920 it was turned down.
In 1923, on seeing the Soviet State's growing coercive power, the
dying Lenin said Russia had reverted to "a bourgeois tsarist
machine... barely varnished with socialism." After Lenin's death
(January 1924), the
Communist Party of the
Soviet Union then increasingly under the control of Joseph
Stalin rejected the theory that socialism could not be built solely
in the Soviet Union with the
Socialism in One Country slogan.
Despite the marginalised
Left
Opposition's demand for the 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.
The
Russian Revolution of October
1917 brought about the definitive ideological division between
Communists as denoted with a capital "С" 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

Joseph Stalin
In 1945, the world’s three great powers met at the Yalta Conference
to negotiate an amicable and stable peace. UK Prime Minister
Winston Churchill joined USA
President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee. With the
relative decline of Britain compared to the two
superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union,
however, many viewed the world as "bi-polar" a world with two
irreconcilable and antagonistic political and economic
systems.
Many
termed the Soviet
Union
"socialist", not least the Soviet Union itself, but
also commonly in the USA, China, Eastern Europe, and many parts of
the world where Communist Parties had gained a mass base. In
addition, scholarly critics of the Soviet Union, such as economist
Friedrich Hayek were commonly cited
as critics of socialism. This view was not universally shared,
particularly in Europe, and especially in Britain, where the
Communist Party was very weak.
In 1951, British Health Minister
Aneurin
Bevan expressed the view that, "It is probably true that
Western Europe would have gone socialist after the war if Soviet
behaviour had not given it too grim a visage. Soviet Communism and
Socialism are not yet sufficiently distinguished in many
minds."
In 1951, the
Socialist
International was re-founded by the European social democratic
parties. It declared: "Communism has split the International Labour
Movement and has set back the realisation of Socialism in many
countries for decades... Communism falsely claims a share in the
Socialist tradition. In fact it has distorted that tradition beyond
recognition. It has built up a rigid theology which is incompatible
with the critical spirit of Marxism."
The last quarter of the twentieth century marked a period of major
crisis for Communists in the Soviet Union and the
Eastern bloc, where the growing shortages of
housing and consumer goods, combined with the lack of individual
rights to assembly and speech, began to disillusion more and more
Communist party members. With the rapid collapse of Communist party
rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991,
the Soviet version of socialism has effectively disappeared as a
worldwide political force.
In the postwar years, socialism became increasingly influential
throughout the so-called
Third World.
Countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America frequently adopted
socialist economic programmes. In many instances, these nations
nationalised industries held by foreign owners. The Soviet Union
had become a superpower through its adoption of a planned economy,
albeit at enormous human cost. This achievement seemed hugely
impressive from the outside, and convinced many nationalists in the
former colonies, not necessarily communists or even socialists, of
the virtues of state planning and state-guided models of social
development.
This was later to have important consequences
in countries like China
, India
and Egypt
, which tried
to import some aspects of the Soviet model.
Social Democracy in power
In 1945, the British
Labour Party,
led by
Clement Attlee, was elected to
office based upon a radical, socialist programme. Social Democratic
parties dominated the post-war French, Italian, Czechoslovakian,
Belgian, Norwegian, and other, governments. In Sweden, the
Social Democratic
Party held power from 1936 to 1976 and then again from 1982 to
1991 and from 1994 to 2006. Labour parties governed Australia and
New Zealand. In Germany, the Social Democrats lost in 1949. In
Eastern Europe, the war-resistance unity, between 'Social Democrats
and Communists, continued in the immediate postwar years, until
Stalin imposed Communist régimes.
In the UK, the Labour Party was influenced by the British social
reformer
William Beveridge, who
had identified five "Giant Evils" afflicting the working class of
the pre-war period: "want" (poverty), disease, "ignorance" (lack of
access to education), "squalor" (poor housing), and "idleness"
(unemployment). Unemployment benefit, as well as national insurance
and hence state pensions, were introduced by the 1945 Labour
government. However
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, and criticising the
implementation of nationalisation for not empowering the workers
with democratic control of operations.
Bevan's
In Place of Fear became the most widely read
socialist book of the post-war period. It states: "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?"
Socialists in Europe widely believed that fascism arose from
capitalism. The
Frankfurt Declaration of the re-founded
Socialist International stated:
1. From the nineteenth century onwards, Capitalism has
developed immense productive forces. It has done so at the cost of
excluding the great majority of citizens from influence over
production. It put the rights of ownership before the rights of
Man. It created a new class of wage-earners without property or
social rights. It sharpened the struggle between the
classes.
Although the world contains resources, which could be
made to provide a decent life for everyone, Capitalism has been
incapable of satisfying the elementary needs of the world’s
population. It proved unable to function without devastating crises
and mass unemployment. It produced social insecurity and glaring
contrasts between rich and poor. It resorted to imperialist
expansion and colonial exploitation, thus making conflicts, between
nations and races, more bitter. In some countries, powerful
capitalist groups helped the barbarism of the past to raise its
head again in the form of Fascism and Nazism.| The Frankfurt
Declaration 1951
The post-war social democratic governments introduced social reform
and wealth redistribution via state welfare and taxation. The UK
Labour Government
nationalised major
public utilities such as mines, gas, coal, electricity, rail, iron,
steel, and the Bank of England. France claimed to be the world's
most State-controlled, capitalist country.
In the UK, the National Health Service provided free health care to
all. 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,
saying, 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?" Clement Attlee's
biographer argued that this policy "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".
In 1956,
Anthony Crosland said that
25 per cent of British industry was nationalised, and that public
employees, including those in nationalised industries, constituted
a similar percentage of the country's total employed population.
However, the Labour government did not seek to end capitalism, in
terms of nationalising of the commanding heights of the economy, as
Lenin had put it. In fact, the "government had not the smallest
intention of bringing in the ‘common ownership of the means of
production, distribution, and exchange’", yet this was the declared
aim of the Labour Party, stated in its 'socialist clause',
Clause 4 of the Labour Party Constitution. Cabinet
minister
Herbert Morrison argued
that, "Socialism is what the Labour Government does." Crosland
claimed capitalism had ended: "To the question, ‘Is this still
capitalism?’, I would answer ‘No’."
Social Democracy adopts free market policies
Many social democratic parties, particularly after the Cold war,
adopted
neoliberal-based market
policies that include
privatization,
liberalization,
deregulation and financialization; resulting in
the abandonment of pursuing the development of moderate socialism
in favor of
market liberalism.
Despite the name, these pro-capitalist policies are radically
different from the many non-capitalist
free-market socialist theories that have
existed throughout history.
In 1959, the German
Social Democratic Party
adopted the
Godesberg Program,
rejecting
class struggle and
Marxism. In 1980, with the rise of conservative
neoliberal politicians such as
Ronald Reagan in the U.S.,
Margaret Thatcher in Britain and
Brian Mulroney, in Canada, the Western,
welfare state was attacked from within. As education secretary of
the Conservative Government, 1970–1974, Margaret Thatcher abolished
free milk for school children.
Monetarists and
neoliberalism attacked social welfare systems
as impediments to private entrepreneurship at public expense.
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 leader
Neil Kinnock 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
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 new
Declaration of Principles,
saying that
Democratic socialism is an international movement for
freedom, social justice, and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a
peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where
each individual can live a meaningful life with the full
development of his or her personality and talents, and with the
guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of
society.
The objectives of the Party of European Socialists, the European
Parliament's socialist bloc, are now "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." As a result, today, the rallying cry of the
French Revolution "Egalité, Liberté, Fraternité" which overthrew
absolutism and ushered capitalism into French society, are promoted
as essential socialist values.
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."
Socialism in the 21st century
Those who championed socialism in its various Marxist and class
struggle forms sought out other arenas than the parties of social
democracy at the turn of the 21st century.
Anti-capitalism and
anti-globalisation movements rose to
prominence particularly through events such as the opposition to
the
WTO meeting of 1999 in
Seattle. Socialist-inspired groups played an important role in
these new movements, which nevertheless embraced much broader
layers of the population, and were championed by figures such as
Noam Chomsky. The
2003 invasion of Iraq led to a
significant
anti-war movement in which
socialists argued their case.
The
Financial
crisis of 2007–2009 led to mainstream discussions as to whether
"Marx was right".
Time magazine ran
an article 'Rethinking Marx' and put Karl Marx on the cover of its
European edition in a special for the 28 January 2009 Davos
meeting. While the mainstream media tended to conclude that Marx
was wrong, this was not the view of socialists and left-leaning
commentators.
A Globescan BBC poll on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of
the Berlin Wall found that 23% of respondents believe capitalism is
"fatally flawed and a different economic system is needed", with
that figure rising to 40% of the population in some developed
countries such as France; while a majority of respondents including
over 50% of Americans believe capitalism "has problems that can be
addressed through regulation and reform". Opinions regarding the
demise of the Soviet Union are also heavily divided between the
developed and developing world, with the latter believing the
disintegration of the Soviet Union was a bad thing.
Africa
African socialism continues to be
a major ideology around the continent. In South Africa the
African National Congress (ANC)
abandoned its partial socialist allegiances after taking power, and
followed a standard neoliberal route. 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 creation
of a market economy in land and housing.
Asia
The
People's Republic of China, North Korea
, Laos
and Vietnam
are Asian
states remaining from the first wave of socialism in the 20th
century. States with socialist economies have largely moved
away from centralised economic planning in the 21st century,
placing a greater emphasis on markets, in the case of the Chinese
Socialist market economy
and Vietnamese
Socialist-oriented market
economy,
worker cooperatives
as in Venezuela, and utilising
state-owned corporate management models as
opposed to modeling socialist enterprise off traditional management
styles employed by government agencies.
In
New
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 programme of
market-based reform that was more sweeping than had been Soviet
leader
Mikhail Gorbachev's
perestroika program of the late 1980s.
Deng's programme, 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.
Elsewhere in Asia, 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. In Singapore,
a majority of the GDP is still generated from the state sector
comprising government-linked companies. In Japan, there has been a
resurgent interest in the
Japanese Communist Party among
workers and youth.
Europe
In Europe,
the socialist Left Party in
Germany
grew in
popularity due to dissatisfaction with the increasingly neoliberal
policies of the SPD, becoming the fourth biggest party in
parliament in the general election on 27 September 2009.
Communist
candidate Dimitris Christofias
won a crucial presidential runoff in Cyprus
, defeating
his conservative rival with a majority of 53%. In Greece, in
the general election on 4 October 2009, the Communist KKE got 7.5%
of the votes and the new Socialist grouping, (
Syriza or "Coalition of the
Radical Left"), won 4.6% or 361,000 votes.
In Ireland, in the
2009 European
election, Joe Higgins of the
Socialist Party took one of four
seats in the capital
Dublin European
constituency. In Denmark, the
Socialist People's Party
(SF or Socialist Party for short) more than doubled its
parliamentary representation to 23 seats from 11, making it the
fourth largest party.
In the UK, the
National
Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers put forward a
slate of candidates in the 2009 European Parliament elections under
the banner of
No
to the EU – Yes to Democracy, a broad left-wing
alter-globalisation coalition involving
socialist groups such as the
Socialist Party, aiming
to offer an alternative to the "anti-foreigner" and pro-business
policies of the
UK Independence
Party, and raising the possibility of a left-led electoral
challenge at the UK general election in 2010.
In France, the
Revolutionary Communist
League (LCR) candidate in the 2007 presidential election,
Olivier Besancenot, received
1,498,581 votes, 4.08%, double that of the Communist candidate. The
LCR abolished itself in 2009 to initiate a broad anti-capitalist
party, the
New Anticapitalist
Party, whose stated aim is to "build a new socialist,
democratic perspective for the twenty-first century".
Latin America
In some Latin American countries,
Third-world socialism has re-emerged
in recent years, with a
populist,
anti-imperialist stance, the rejection of
the policies of
neoliberalism, and the
nationalisation or part
nationalisation of oil production, land and other assets.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and Ecuadorian
president Rafael
Correa for instance, refer to their political programmes as
socialist, combining it with populism and support for the poor
indigenous populations.
Chávez adopted the term
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."
United States
Socialist parties in the United States reached their zenith in the
early twentieth century, but currently active parties and
organizations include the
Socialist
Party USA, the
Socialist
Workers Party and the
Democratic Socialists of
America, which has approximately 10,000 members.
A December 2008 Rasmussen poll found that when asked whether
Americans supported a
state-managed
economy or a free-market economy, 70% preferred free-market
capitalism, with only 15% preferring a state-managed economy.An
April 2009 Rasmussen Reports poll, conducted during the
financial crisis of
2007–2009, suggested that there had been a growth of support
for socialism in the United States. The poll results stated that
53% of American adults thought capitalism was better than
socialism, and that "Adults under 30 are essentially evenly
divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are
undecided". The question posed by Rasmussen Reports did not define
either capitalism or socialism, allowing for the possibility of
confusing socialism with regulated capitalism.
Economics
Economically, socialism denotes an economic system of state
ownership and/or worker ownership of the
means of production and distribution. In
the
economy of the Soviet
Union, state ownership of the means of production was combined
with central planning, in relation to which goods and services to
make and provide, how they were to be produced, the quantities, and
the sale prices.
Soviet economic planning was an alternative to allowing the market
(
supply and demand) to determine
prices and production. During the
Great
Depression, many socialists considered Soviet-style planned
economies the remedy to capitalism's inherent flaws
monopoly,
business
cycles,
unemployment, unequally
distributed wealth, and the economic exploitation of workers.
In the West, neoclassical
liberal
economists such as
Friedrich
Hayek and
Milton Friedman said
that socialist planned economies would fail, because planners could
not have the business information inherent to a market economy (cf.
economic calculation
problem), nor would managers in Soviet-style socialist
economies match the motivation of profit. Consequent to Soviet
economic stagnation in the 1970s and 1980s, socialists began to
accept parts of their critique. Polish economist
Oskar Lange, an early proponent of
market socialism, proposed a central
planning board establishing prices and controls of investment. The
prices of producer goods would be determined through trial and
error. The prices of consumer goods would be determined by supply
and demand, with the supply coming from state-owned firms that
would set their prices equal to the
marginal cost, as in
perfectly competitive markets. The
central planning board would distribute a "social dividend" to
ensure reasonable income equality.
In western Europe, particularly in the period after
World War II, many socialist and social
democratic parties in government implemented what became known as
mixed economies. In the biography of the 1945 UK Labour Party Prime
Minister Clement Attlee, Francis Beckett states: "the government...
wanted what would become known as a mixed economy". Beckett also
states that "Everyone called the 1945 government 'socialist'."
These governments
nationalised major
and economically vital industries while permitting a free market to
continue in the rest. These were most often monopolistic or
infrastructural industries like mail, railways, power and other
utilities. In some instances a number of small, competing and often
relatively poorly financed companies in the same sector were
nationalised to form one government monopoly for the purpose of
competent management, of economic rescue (in the UK,
British Leyland, Rolls Royce), or of
competing on the world market.
Also in the UK,
British Aerospace
was a combination of major aircraft companies
British Aircraft Corporation,
Hawker Siddeley and others.
British Shipbuilders was a combination
of the major shipbuilding companies including Cammell Laird, Govan Shipbuilders, Swan Hunter
, and Yarrow
Shipbuilders Typically, this was achieved through compulsory
purchase of the industry (i.e. with compensation). In the
UK, the nationalisation of the coal mines in 1947 created a coal
board charged with running the coal industry commercially so as to
be able to meet the interest payable on the bonds which the former
mine owners' shares had been converted into.
The modern socialist system in the People's Republic in China,
formally titled the socialist market economy, combines a large
state sector that comprises the 'commanding heights' of the economy
with a growing private sector mainly engaged in commodity
production and light industry, and is responsible from anywhere
between 33% (People's Daily Online 2005) to over 50% of GDP
generated in 2005. Directive centralized planning based on
mandatory output requirements and production quotas have been
displaced by the free-market mechanism for most of the economy and
directive planning in some larger state industries. One of the
major changes between the old planned economy and the socialist
market model is the
corporatization
of state institutions, with 150 of them reporting directly to the
central government. By 2008, these state-owned corporations have
became increasingly dynamic and generated a large increase in
revenue for the state, with the state-sector leading the recovery
of economic growth in 2009 during the wake of the financial crises.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has adopted a similar model after
the
Doi Moi economic renovation, officially
called the socialist-oriented market economy. This differs from the
Chinese model in that the Vietnamese government retains firm
control over the state sector and strategic industries, but allows
for a considerable increase in private-sector activity for firms
engaged in commodity production.
Proponents of the socialist market economic system defend their it
from a Marxist perspective, stating that a planned socialist
economy can only become possible after first establishing the
necessary comprehensive commodity market economy and letting it
fully develop until it exhausts its historical stage and gradually
transforms itself into a planned economy. They distinguish
themselves from market socialists who believe that economic
planning is unattainable, undesirable or ineffective at
distributing goods, viewing the market as the solution rather than
a temporary phase in development of a socialist planned
economy.
Some socialists propose various decentralised, 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 labour divisions. Productive resources would be legally
owned by the
cooperative and rented to
the workers, who would enjoy
usufruct
rights.
Another, more recent, variant is
participatory economics, wherein the
economy is planned by decentralised 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.
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.
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. Marx and Engels believed the
consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the "working
class" in the broadest Marxist sense) would be molded by their
"conditions" of "wage-slavery", leading to a tendency to seek their
freedom or "emancipation" by throwing off the capitalist ownership
of society. In this highly influential outlook, conditions
determine consciousness and ending the role of the capitalist class
leads eventually to a classless society in which the state would
wither away.
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
rationalisation started in capitalism. As a 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 considerable influence in European philosophy;
Eros and Civilisation
(1955), by
Herbert Marcuse,
explicitly attempts to merge Marxism with
Freudianism. The social science of
structuralism had a significant influence on
the socialist
New Left in the 1960s and the
1970s.
Divisions within socialist theory
* Utopian versus Scientific:
The distinction between "
utopian"
and "
scientific socialism" was
first explicitly made by Engels in
Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific, who contrasted the "utopian pictures of ideal
social conditions" of social reformers, on the one hand, with the
Marxian concept of scientific socialism. Scientific socialism
begins with the examination of social and economic phenomena—the
empirical study of real processes in society and history.
For Marxists, the development of capitalism in western Europe
provided a material basis for the possibility of bringing about
socialism because "What the bourgeoisie produces above all is its
own grave diggers" namely the working class, which must become
conscious of the historical objectives set it by society. In
Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy, Schumpter, an Austrian economist,
presents an alternative mechanism of how socialism will come about
from a Weberian perspective: the increasing bureaucratization of
society that occurs under capitalism will eventually necessitate
state-control in order to better coordinate economic
activity.
Some, like
Eduard Bernstein, then
revised this theory to suggest that society is inevitably moving
toward socialism, bringing in a mechanical and teleological element
to Marxism often the subject of criticism and intiating
Evolutionary socialism.
Utopians may be motivated by the belief that moving toward
socialism is a necessity for human survival or progress, but have
typically emphasized alternatives to capitalism. The utopian method
is based on establishing a set of ideals or goals and presenting
socialism as an alternative to capitalism with subjectively better
attributes. Examples of this form of socialism include Robert
Owen's
New Harmony community.
* Reform versus
Revolution:
Reformists, such as classical
Social
Democrats, believe a socialist system can be achieved by
reforming capitalism. Socialism, in their view, can be reached
through the existing political system by reforming private
enterprise. Revolutionaries, such as Marx himself, orthodox
Marxists,
Leninists
and
Trotskyists, believe such methods
will fail because, in their view, the state ultimately acts in the
interests of capitalist business interests. For these socialists,
revolution is the only means to establish a brand-new
socio-economic system, although it is worth noting that by the term
revolution Marxists do not necessarily mean bloodshed, but
rather a thorough-going and rapid change. "Both Marx and Engels
and, later, Lenin on many ocassions referred to a
peaceful
revolution, that is, one attained by a class struggle, but not by
violence."
* Socialism from Above or Below:
Socialism from above refers to the viewpoint that reforms
or revolutions for socialism will come from or be led by the higher
status groups in society, such as
intellectuals or in some cases, capitalists
themselves, who desire a more rational, efficient economic system.
Claude Henri De Saint Simon
believed that socialism would come from above - from engineers,
scientists and technicians who want to organize society and the
economy in a rational, logical fashion. Social Democracy is often
advocated by intellectuals, the middle-class as well as the working
class segments of the population.
Socialism from below refers to the position that socialism
can only come from and be lead by
popular
solidarity and political action from the lower classes, such as the
working class and lower-middle class.
Syndicalist, orthodox Marxist and Leninist
groups champion "socialism from below". Proponents of socialism
from below often liken socialism from above approaches to
elitism. However, socialism from below can be
considered a form of
populism.Throughout
history, socialism has been championed and advocated by both
intellectuals and the working-class alike.
* Technocratic/Scientific
Management versus Democratic
Management:
This distinction refers to the differing positions in regard to how
state institutions and the economy are to be managed. Some
proponents of technocratic socialism include
Claude Henri De Saint Simon, the
Bolshevik
Alexander Bogdanov and
the democratic socialist
H.G Wells. They
might include proponents of
scientific
economic planning (except those, like the
Trotskyists, who tend to emphasize the need for
democratic workers control), and socialists inspired by
Taylorism. They show a tendency to promote
Scientific management, whereby
technical experts manage institutions and receive their position in
society based on a demonstration of their technical expertise or
merit, with the aim of creating a rational, effective and stable
organization.
By contrast, proponents of democratic management propose
worker-self management (
autogestion): a
system whereby management decisions are made democratically, or a
manager is elected by all the members of the institution. Groups
that promote democratic management are
Libertarian socialists,
Social anarchists and
Syndicalists. Many
Trotskyists, following Trotsky, argue that the
destruction of democratic workers' control of the economy through
the workers' councils in Russia by
Stalin was
a critical juncture in the growth of the bureaucracy and led to the
poor performance of the planned economy in Russia. They demand a
democratically drawn up national plan of production developed
through workers' committees.
* Allocation of Resources: Economic planning versus Market versus Democratic Planning:
Resource allocation is the subject of intense debate between
market socialist and proponents of
planned economies. Market
socialists believe the market mechanism is either the most
efficient or the only viable means of allocating resources and
determining what is to be produced. Examples of market socialists
include
Ricardian socialism and
the
Socialist market
economy. Socialist theories that involve the market as the main
arbitrator of economic decision-making are sometimes viewed as a
temporary, transitional phase between capitalism and a fully
planned economy. Proponents of economic planning argue that the
market is irrational and prone to unstable cyclical fluctuations
and does not prioritize production according to a rational plan
that conforms to social goals. They argue that the state can better
allocate resources effectively. Proponents of democratic planning
reject both state-led planning and the market, instead arguing for
inclusive decision-making on what should be produced and its
distribution based on direct democracy or
council democracy.
* Equality of
opportunity versus Equality of
outcome:
This dichotomy concerns the type of equality promoted by socialists
and what a socialist society would look like. Proponents of
equality of opportunity advocate a society in which there
are equal opportunities and
life
chances for all individuals to maximize their potentialities
and attain positions in society, made possible by equal access to
the necessities of life for all members of society. This position
is held by technocratic socialists, Marxian socialists and Social
democrats.
Equality of outcome refers to a state where
everyone receives equal amounts of rewards and an equal level of
power in decision-making, with the belief that all roles in society
are necessary and therefore none should be rewarded more than
others. This view is shared by some communal-type utopian
socialists and
Anarcho-communists.
Criticism
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.
In the
economic calculation
debate,
classical liberal
Friedrich Hayek argued that a
socialist
command economy could not
adequately transmit information about prices and productive quotas
due to the lack of a
price
mechanism, and as a result it could not make rational economic
decisions.
Ludwig von Mises argued
that a socialist economy was not possible at all, because of the
impossibility of rational pricing of capital goods in a socialist
economy since the state is the only owner of the capital goods.
Hayek further argued that the social control over distribution of
wealth and private property advocated by socialists cannot be
achieved without reduced prosperity for the general populace, and a
loss of political and economic freedoms. Hayek's views were echoed
by the British Prime Minister
Winston
Churchill in an electoral broadcast prior to the
British general election
of 1945:
See also
Notes
- Newman, Michael. (2005) Socialism: A Very Short
Introduction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-280431-6
- "Socialism". Oxford English Dictionary. "1. A theory or policy
of social organisation which aims at or advocates the ownership and
control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc.,
by the community as a whole, and their administration or
distribution in the interests of all. 2. A state of society in
which things are held or used in common."
- "Socialism".Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary
- Socialism, (2009), in Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved
October 14, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551569/socialism, "Main"
summary: "Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to
unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the
hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market
competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce
their dominance in society."
- Marx and Engels Selected Works, Lawrence and Wishart, 1968, p.
40. Capitalist property relations put a "fetter" on the productive
forces.
- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific at
Marxists.org
- Chapter III: Historical Materialism
- "Market socialism," Dictionary of the Social Sciences.
Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press 2002; and "Market
socialism" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed.
Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003.
See also Joseph Stiglitz, "Whither Socialism?"
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995 for a recent analysis of the market
socialism model of mid–20th century economists Oskar R. Lange,
Abba P.
Lerner, and Fred M. Taylor.
- http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h44-ph.html
- Lenin refers specifically to Marx's Critique of the Gotha
Program in his 1917 book State and Revolution
- "In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it
will develop into communism", Lenin, State and Revolution,
Selected Works, Progress publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 320. (End of
chapter four)
- Leroux: socialism is “the doctrine which would not give up any
of the principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” of the
French
Revolution of 1789. "Individualism and socialism" (1834)
- Oxford English Dictionary, etymology of socialism
- Russell, Bertrand (1972). A History of Western Philosophy.
Touchstone. p. 781
-
http://www.economictheories.org/2008/10/aristotle-and-plato-communism.html
-
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/contemp/pamsetc/socfrombel/sfb_2.htm
- http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/utopia.htm
- Engels, Frederick, Preface to the 1888 English Edition of
the Communist Manifesto, p202. Penguin (2002)
-
http://www.economictheories.org/2008/07/karl-marx-socialism-and-scientific.html
- MIA: Encyclopaedia of Marxism: Glossary of
Organisations, First International (International Workingmen’s
Association), accessed 5 July 2007
- Engels' 1891 Preface to Marx, Civil War in France, Selected
Works in one volume, Lawrence and Wishart, (1968), p256, p259
- The Second (Socialist) International
1889–1923 accessed 12 July 2007
- Engels, 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in
France 1848–1850
- cf Footnote 449 in Marx Engels Collected Works on
Engels' 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France
1848–1850
- Lenin, Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of workers and
soldiers' deputies 25 January 1918, Collected works, Vol 26,
p239. Lawrence and Wishart, (1964)
- Lenin, To workers Soldiers and Peasants, Collected
works, Vol 26, p247. Lawrence and Wishart, (1964)
- Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 26, pp. 264–5. Lawrence
and Wishart (1964)
- Strictly, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries won - the Left
SR's were in alliance with the Bolsheviks.
- Declaration of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) group at the
Constituent Assembly meeting January 5, 1918 Lenin,
Collected Works, Vol 26, p. 429. Lawrence and Wishart
(1964)
- Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 26, p. 434.
Lawrence and Wishart (1964)
- Payne, Robert; "The Life and Death of Lenin", Grafton:
paperback pp. 425–440
- Bertil, Hessel, Introduction, Theses, Resolutions and
Manifestos of the first four congresses of the Third
International, pxiii, Ink Links (1980)
- "We have always proclaimed, and repeated, this elementary truth
of Marxism, that the victory of socialism requires the joint
efforts of workers in a number of advanced countries." Lenin,
Sochineniya (Works), 5th ed. Vol. XLIV p. 418, Feb 1922.
(Quoted by Mosche Lewin in Lenin's Last Struggle, p. 4.
Pluto (1975))
- Soviet history: NEPmen
- Serge,
Victor, From Lenin to Stalin, p. 55.
- Serge, Victor, From Lenin to Stalin, p. 52.
- Bevan, Aneurin, In Place of Fear, p 63, p91
- The Frankfurt Declaration
- 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.
- Crosland, Anthony, The Future of Socialism, p52
- Bevan, Aneurin, In Place of Fear p.50, pp.126–128,
p.21 MacGibbon and Kee, second edition (1961)
- British Petroleum, privatised in 1987, was officially
nationalised in 1951 per government archives [1] 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 denationalised it, and nationalised car production
(1976, British Leyland), [2]. In
1977, major aircraft companies and shipbuilding were
nationalised
- The nationalised public utilities include CDF (Charbonnages de
France), EDF (Électricité de France), GDF (Gaz de France), airlines
(Air France), banks (Banque de France), and Renault (Régie
Nationale des Usines Renault) [3].
- "One of the consequences of the universality of the British
Health Service is the free treatment of foreign visitors." Bevan,
Aneurin, In Place of Fear p.104, MacGibbon and Kee, second
edition (1961)
- Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, p247. Politico's
(2007)
- Crosland, Anthony, The Future of Socialism, pp.9, 89.
Constable (2006)
- Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, Politico, 2007,
p243
- Crosland, Anthony, The Future of Socialism p46.
Constable (2006)
- Socialist International - Progressive Politics For
A Fairer World
- R Goodin and P Pettit (eds), A Companion to Contemporary
political philosophy
- Labour Party Clause Four
- Karl Marx: did he get it all right?, The Times (UK),
October 21, 2008,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4981065.ece
- Capitalism has proven Karl Marx right again, The Herald
(Scotland), 17 Sep 2008,
http://www.heraldscotland.com/capitalism-has-proven-karl-marx-right-again-1.889708
- Rethinking Marx, Peter Gumbell, Time magazine, 28
January 2009,
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1873191_1873190_1873188,00.html
- Karl Marx makes cover of TIME magazine, January 28,
2009,
http://cogsciandtheworld.blogspot.com/2009/01/karl-marx-makes-cover-of-time-magazine.html
- Capitalist crisis - Karl Marx was right Editorial, The
Socialist, 17 Sep 2008,
www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/6395
- Marx is being proved right, David Cox, The Guardian,
29 January 2007,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jan/29/marxisbeingprovedright
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References and further reading
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Socialism, Cambridge MA: Schenkman, 1978.
- Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, Politico's (2007)
978-1842751923
- 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
1-4039-0264-X.
- Friedrich Engels,
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Pathfinder; 2r.e.
edition (December 1989) 978-0873485791
- Friedrich Engels, The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Zurich,
1884.
- Albert Fried and 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, paperback, 224 pages, 2005.
ISBN 1-931859-25-6.
- Élie Halévy, Histoire
du Socialisme Européen. Paris, Gallimard, 1948.
- Michael Harrington,
Socialism, New York: Bantam, 1972. .
- Jesús Huerta de Soto,
Socialismo, cálculo económico y función
empresarial (Socialism, Economic Calculation, and
Entrepreneurship), Unión Editorial, 1992. ISBN
8472094200.
- Makoto Itoh, Political Economy of Socialism. London:
Macmillan, 1995. ISBN 0333553373.
- Oskar Lange, On the Economic
Theory of Socialism, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1938. .
- Michael Lebowitz, Build
It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century, Monthly Review
Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58367-145-5.
- Marx, Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Penguin
Classics (2002) 978-0140447576
- Marx, Engels, Selected works in one volume, Lawrence
and Wishart (1968) 978-0853151814
- Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An
Economic and Sociological Analysis [4432], Liberty Fund, 1922. ISBN 0-913966-63-0.
- Joshua Muravchik, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of
Socialism, San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002. ISBN
1-893554-45-7.
- Michael Newman, Socialism: A Very Short Introduction,
Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-280431-6.
- Bertell Ollman, ed., Market
Socialism: The Debate among Socialists, Routledge, 1998. ISBN
0415919673
- Leo Panitch, Renewing Socialism:
Democracy, Strategy, and Imagination. ISBN 0-8133-9821-5.
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[4433], in Patrick Riordan (dir.), Values in
Public life: aspects of common goods (Berlin, LIT Verlag, 2007),
pp. 11–34
- Richard Pipes, Property and
Freedom, Vintage, 2000. ISBN 0-375-70447-7.
- John Barkley Rosser and Marina V. Rosser, Comparative
Economics in a Transforming World Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2004. ISBN 9780262182348.
- Maximilien Rubel and John
Crump, Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries. ISBN 0-312-00524-5.
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Socialist Illusion, London, 1985. ISBN 0-333-37095-3.
- Katherine Verdery, What
Was Socialism, What Comes Next, Princeton. 1996. ISBN
0-691-01132-X
- James Weinstein, Long
Detour: The History and Future of the American Left, Westview
Press, 2003, hardcover, 272 pages. ISBN 0-8133-4104-3.
- Peter Wilberg, Deep Socialism: A New Manifesto of Marxist
Ethics and Economics, 2003. ISBN 1-904519-02-4.
- Edmund Wilson, To the Finland
Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1940. .
External links