Socialism

I

Introduction

Socialism, economic and social system under which essential industries and social services are publicly and cooperatively owned and democratically controlled with a view to equal opportunity and equal benefit for all. The term socialism also refers to the doctrine behind this system and the political movement inspired by it.

Socialism was originally based in the working class and has generally been opposed to capitalism, which is based on private ownership and a free-market economy. Socialists have advocated nationalization (government ownership and control) of natural resources, basic industries, banking and credit institutions, and public utilities. Although the ultimate aim of early socialists was a communist or classless society (see Communism), later socialists have increasingly concentrated on social reforms within capitalism.

II

Socialism Compared with Communism

The terms socialism and communism were once used interchangeably. Communism, however, came to designate those theories and movements that advocated the abolition of capitalism and all private profit, by means of violent revolution if necessary. This doctrine was originally put forth by German theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Vladimir Lenin, who headed the Soviet government after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, defined a socialist society as one in which the workers, free from capitalist exploitation, receive the full product of their labor. Most socialists denied the claim of Communists to have achieved socialism in the Soviet Union. They regarded the Soviet government as an authoritarian tyranny.

The modern socialist movement, as distinguished from Communism, had its origin largely in the late 19th century. The worsening condition of the proletariat, or workers, in western Europe had not brought about the class war predicted by Marx. Many socialist thinkers began to doubt the necessity of revolution and to revise other basic tenets of Marxism. They declared that socialism could best be attained by reformist, parliamentary, and evolutionary methods, including the support of the middle class.

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III

Early Socialism

Radical intellectuals who considered themselves the heirs of the 18th-century Enlightenment began to use the term socialism in the first half of the 19th century. The principal early theorists were British businessman and philanthropist Robert Owen and the French writers and social crusaders Claude Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. They developed concepts of ideal societies to be attained through the spread of education and expansion of cooperative communities. These theorists were later dubbed “utopian socialists” for their belief in ideal societies, or utopias. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels regarded the utopian socialists as the forerunners of their own concept of “scientific socialism,” or Communism.

The utopian socialists, like their followers and successors, objected to capitalism on moral and practical grounds. Capitalism, they claimed, was unjust: It exploited workers, degraded them, transformed them into beasts or machines, and enabled the rich to get richer while the workers faced misery. They also claimed that capitalism was an inefficient and irrational mechanism for the development of society’s productive forces. For example, it underwent cyclical crises—recessions and depressions—caused by overproduction or under-consumption (see Business Cycle). Nor did capitalism provide work for all, allowing human resources to remain unused or underutilized. Moreover, it produced luxuries instead of necessities.

Socialism at this early stage could be seen as a reaction against the alleged emphasis of 18th- and 19th-century liberalism on individual achievements and private rights at the expense of the welfare of society as a whole. Yet socialists, in common with liberals, were committed to the idea of progress and the abolition of aristocratic privileges. Unlike them, socialists denounced liberalism as a facade behind which capitalist greed could flourish unhindered.

The early socialists did more than set out utopian plans. They provided a critique of industrialization from a current perspective rather than from a longing for the society of the past. Industrial society, they said, was here to stay and it could, if regulated properly, be a true civilization. They recognized injustices in society: the existence of a new type of poverty among considerable wealth, the ever-increasing isolation of individuals, and the unceasing and heartless competition that prevailed.

Moral outrage at poverty, individualism, and competition was, however, not limited to socialists. It was embraced by writers and thinkers as diverse as French novelist Honoré de Balzac, historian Thomas Carlyle, and conservative British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. What distinguished the early socialists from these conservative thinkers was an optimistic and positive view of industrialization. The point for the early socialists was not to return to a pre-industrial society but to understand the need for a new organization of society.

IV

Industrialization and Marxist Socialism

With Marx and Engels socialism acquired a theory of history and a theory of exploitation. Their publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 marked the end of the dominance of utopian socialism among 19th-century revolutionary thinkers and the arrival of Marxist socialism. To Marx and Engels, capitalism was the result of a historical process characterized by a continual conflict between classes. In their view history proceeded through stages. Each stage consisted of a specific economic system to which corresponded a particular system of power and hence a specific ruling class. The capital system was not everlasting, they claimed, but a temporary historical phenomenon bound to die. By creating a large class of propertyless workers, capitalism sowed the seeds of its own destruction. It would, they claimed, eventually be succeeded by a communist society.

Marx and Engels argued that the present capitalist system was unfair, though superior to the socioeconomic system that preceded it. Under capitalism the workers freely sold their labor and received wages in return, but this system disguised a profound inequality. The capitalists, Marx and Engels argued, cheated the workers by taking for themselves far more than they paid out in wages and other production costs. This appropriation of wealth, which Marx and Engels called surplus value, gave the owners of capital great wealth, as well as control over the economic development of society. The capitalists appropriated not simply wealth but also power.

Marx and Engels viewed the working class as fundamentally united with a common aim of improving their conditions of life. The working class had, as the Communist Manifesto put it, “nothing to lose but their chains.” Workers were urged to organize themselves into political parties and trade unions and to reject any attempt to divide them on the basis of religion, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. Such attempts, they argued, played into the hands of the established powers, for a divided working class was the surest way to ensure the continuation of capitalist rule.

In 1864 Marx and Engels, in cooperation with European labor leaders, founded the International Workingmen’s Association, generally known as the First International. This largely ineffectual committee ended in 1876. By the end of the 19th century, however, Marxist socialism had become the leading ideology of all working-class parties in industrial countries, with the exception of the labor movements in English-speaking countries, where Marxist socialism never established itself.

Most European socialist or social democratic—the terms are interchangeable—political parties were formed between 1870 and 1890. In 1889 their representatives met in Paris to form a new association, the Second International, to replace the First. This loosely organized federation upheld a form of Marxism popularized by Engels; August Bebel, leader of the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD); and Karl Kautsky, the SPD’s theorist. Following Marx they claimed that capitalism would eliminate small producers until only two antagonistic classes, capitalists and workers, faced each other. A major economic crisis would eventually open the way to socialism and the common ownership of the means of production.

By the beginning of the 20th century socialist political parties, in alliance with labor unions, fought for reforms to be obtained in the short or medium term. At the same time these parties maintained that their final goal remained the elimination of capitalism and the birth of a socialist society. This two-stage concept was enshrined in the manifesto of the Second International and in the program of the most important socialist party of the time, the German SPD. The political reforms socialists demanded included universal suffrage (voting rights); equal rights for women; a social protection system of pensions and medical care; regulation of the working day, with the goal of an eight-hour day; and full legalization and recognition of labor unions.

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