Socialism

Socialism is the left-wing political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic as well as social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such(a) systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, or cooperative. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social usage is the one common element. Different race of socialism undergo a change based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the formation of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on if government, especially existing government, is the adjustment vehicle for change.

Socialist systems are shared into inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and decentralisation above all, whether to instituting non-market socialism or market socialism.

Socialist politics has been both internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and at other times self-employed grownup and critical of them, and produced in both industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, since the post-war period it has come to embrace a Keynesian mixed economy within a predominantly developed capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity that expands state intervention to include income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state. Economic democracy proposes a race of market socialism, with more democratic advice of companies, currencies, investments and natural resources.

The socialist political movement includes a set of political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism. By the behind 19th century, after the pretend of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify opposition to capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some work of social ownership of the means of production. By the 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, with socialism itself becoming the nearly influential secular movement of the 20th century. Socialist parties and ideas proceed a political force with varying degrees of power to direct or established and influence on any continents, heading national governments in numerous countries around the world. Today, many socialists have also adopted the causes of other social movements such(a) as feminism, environmentalism and progressivism.

While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's number one nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, several scholars posit that in practice, the proceeds example functioned as a form of state capitalism. Several academics, political commentators, and scholars have distinguished between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the number one representing the Eastern Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties such(a) as Britain, France, Sweden, and Western countries in general, among others. However, coming after or as a result of. the end of the Cold War, many of these countries have moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the innovative capitalist world.

Etymology

For Andrew Vincent, "[t]he word 'socialism' finds its root in the Latin , which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was . This latter word could intend companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic belief of a consensual contract between freemen".

Initial use of socialism was claimed by Pierre Leroux, who alleged he first used the term in the Parisian journal in 1832. Leroux was a follower of Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled utopian socialism. Socialism contrasted with the liberal doctrine of individualism that emphasized the moral worth of the individual whilst stressing that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another. The original utopian socialists condemned this doctrine of individualism for failing to address social concerns during the Industrial Revolution, including poverty, oppression, and vast wealth inequality. They viewed their society as harming community life by basing society on competition. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the shared ownership of resources. Saint-Simon proposed economic planning, scientific management and the applications of scientific understanding to the organisation of society. By contrast, Robert Owen proposed to organise production and ownership via cooperatives. Socialism is also attributed in France to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud while in Britain this is the attributed to Owen, who became one of the fathers of the cooperative movement.

The definition and usage of socialism settled by the 1860s, replacing associationist, co-operative, and mutualist that had been used as synonyms while communism fell out of use during this period. An early distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialise production while the former aimed to socialise both production and consumption in the form of free access togoods. By 1888, Marxists employed socialism in place of communism as the latter had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for socialism. It was non until after the Bolshevik Revolution that socialism was appropriated by Vladimir Lenin to intend a stage between capitalism and communism. He used it to defend the Bolshevik code from Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for communism. The distinction between communism and socialism became salient in 1918 after the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the All-Russian Communist Party, interpreting communism specifically to mean socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism and later that of Marxism–Leninism, although communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists committed to socialism. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free link of producers, etc. He used these terms totally interchangeably. The conception that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death".

In Christian Europe, communists were believed to have adopted atheism. In Protestant England, communism was tooto the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence socialist was the preferred term. Engels wrote that in 1848, when The Communist Manifesto was published, socialism was respectable in Europe 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 branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill discussed a form of economic socialism within a liberal context that would later be invited as liberal socialism. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy 1848, Mill posited that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic design based on socialist policies" and promoted substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives. While democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, Marxists denounced it as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the proletariat.