Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled cooperatively; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. As a form of social organization, socialism is based on co-operative social relations and self-management; relatively equal power-relations and the reduction or elimination of hierarchy in the management of economic and political affairs.

Socialist economies are based upon production for use and the direct allocation of economic inputs to satisfy economic demands and human needs (use value); accounting is based on physical quantities of resources, some physical magnitude, or a direct measure of labour-time. Goods and services for consumption are distributed through markets, and distribution of income is based on the principle of individual merit/individual contribution.

As a political movement, socialism includes a diverse array of political philosophies, ranging from reformism to revolutionary socialism. Proponents of the ''State socialist'' form of socialism advocate for the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange as a strategy for implementing socialism; while social democrats advocate public control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Libertarian socialists and anarchists reject using the state to build socialism, arguing that socialism will, and must, either arise spontaneously or be built from the bottom up utilizing the strategy of dual power. They promote direct worker-ownership of the means of production alternatively through independent syndicates, workplace democracies, or worker cooperatives.

Modern socialism originated from an 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticised the effects of industrialisation and private property on society. Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen (1771–1858), tried to found self-sustaining communes by secession from a capitalist society. Henri de Saint Simon (1760–1825), who coined the term ''socialisme'', advocated technocracy and industrial planning. Saint-Simon, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx advocated the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production that results in instability and cyclical crises of overproduction.

Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development, such as Marxist-Leninists, have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a single-party state that owns the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, East German and Chinese communist governments 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).

Goals

The socialist perspective is generally based on a materialist outlook (usually historical materialism, but early socialists favored strict positivism) and an understanding that human behavior is largely shaped by the social environment. In particular, scientific socialism holds that social mores, values, cultural traits and economic practices are social creations, and are not the property of an immutable natural law. The ultimate goal for Marxist socialists is the emancipation of labour from alienating work. Marxists argue that freeing the individual from the necessity of performing alienating work in order to receive goods would allow people to pursue their own interests and develop their own talents without being coerced into performing labour for others. For Marxists, the stage of economic development in which this is possible is contingent upon advances in the productive capabilities of society.

Socialists argue that socialism is about bringing human social organization up to the level of current technological capability to fully take advantage of modern technology. They argue that capitalism is either obsolete or approaching obsolescence as a viable system for producing and distributing wealth in an effective manner. Socialists generally argue that capitalism concentrates power and wealth within a small segment of society that controls the means of production and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation. This creates a stratified society based on unequal social relations that fails to provide equal opportunities for every individual to maximize their potential, and does not utilise available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public, and focuses on satisfying market-induced wants as opposed to human needs. Socialists argue that socialism would allow for wealth to be distributed based on how much one contributes to society, as opposed to how much capital one holds.

Socialists hold that capitalism is an illegitimate economic system, since it serves the interests of the wealthy and allows the exploitation of lower classes. As such, they wish to replace it completely or at least make substantial modifications to it, in order to create a more just society that would guarantee a certain basic standard of living. A primary goal of socialism is social equality and a distribution of wealth based on one's contribution to society, and an economic arrangement that would serve the interests of society as a whole.

Economics

As an economic system, socialism is structured upon production for use – the ''direct allocation'' of resources toward useful production. In some cases, financial calculation is replaced with calculation-in-natura – such as energy accounting or physical quantities. The output generated – goods and services for consumption – is distributed through markets.

This is contrasted with capitalism, where production is carried out for profit, and thus based upon ''indirect allocation''. In an ideal capitalism based on perfect competition, competitive pressures compel business enterprises to respond to the needs of consumers, so that the pursuit of profit approximates production for use through an indirect process.

Market socialism retains the process of capital accumulation, but subjects investment to social control, utilizing the market to allocate the factors of production. The profit generated by publicly owned firms would fund a social dividend, which would be used for public investment or public finance. Market socialist theories range from libertarian theories like mutualism, to theories based on Neoclassical economics like the Lange Model.

The ownership of the means of production can be based on direct ownership by the users of the productive property through worker cooperative; or commonly owned by all of society with management and control delegated to those who operate/use the means of production; or public ownership by a state apparatus. Public ownership may refer to the creation of state-owned enterprises, nationalisation or municipalisation. The fundamental feature of a socialist economy is that publicly owned, worker-run institutions produce goods and services in at least the ''commanding heights'' of the economy.

Management and control over the activities of enterprises is based on self-management and self-governance, with equal power-relations in the workplace to maximize occupational autonomy. A socialist form of organization would eliminate controlling hierarchies so that only a hierarchy based on technical knowledge in the workplace remains. Every member would have decision-making power in the firm and would be able to participate in establishing its overall policy objectives. The policies/goals would be carried out by the technical specialists that form the coordinating hierarchy of the firm, who would establish plans or directives for the work community to accomplish these goals.

Planned economy

A planned economy combines public ownership of the means of production with centralised state planning. This model is usually associated with the centralised Soviet-style command economy. In a centrally planned economy, decisions regarding the quantity of goods and services to be produced are planned in advance by a planning agency. This type of economic system was often combined with a single-party political system, and is thus associated with the Communist states of the 20th century.

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 were to be provided, 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 for producer and consumer goods. The Soviet economy utilized material balance accounting in order to balance the supply of available inputs with output targets, although this never totally replaced financial accounting. Although the Soviet economy was nominally a ''centrally-planned'' economy, in practice the plan was formulated ''on-the-go'' as information was collected and relayed from enterprises to planning ministries.

Socialist economists and political theorists have criticised the notion that the Soviet-style planned economies were socialist economies. They argue that the Soviet economy was structured upon the accumulation of capital and the extraction of surplus value from the working class by the planning agency in order to reinvest this surplus in new production – or to distribute to managers and senior officials, indicating the Soviet Union (and other Soviet-style economies) were state capitalist economies. Other socialists have focused on the lack of self-management, the existence of financial calculation and a bureaucratic elite based on hierarchical and centralized powers of authority in the Soviet model, leading them to conclude that they were not socialist but either bureaucratic collectivism, state capitalism or deformed workers' states.

Self-managed economy

A self-managed, decentralized planned economy, is based upon autonomous self-regulating economic actors and a decentralized mechanism of allocation and decision-making. Historically, this manifested itself in proposals for worker-cooperatives and bottom-up planning through workplace democracy. A degree of self-management was practiced in the economic system of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which contrasts to the centralized planning of enterprises in Soviet-style planned economies.

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 form of decentralized planning is the use of cybernetics, or the use of computers to manage the allocation of economic inputs. The socialist-run government of Salvador Allende in Chile experimented with project cybersyn, a real-time information bridge between the government, state enterprises and consumers.

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.

A contemporary model for a self-managed, non-market socialism is Pat Devine's model of negotiated coordination. Negotiated coordination is based upon social ownership by those affected by the use of the assets involved, with decisions made by those at the most localized level of production.

Michel Bauwens identifies the emergence of the open software movement and peer-to-peer production as a new, alternative mode of production to the capitalist economy and centrally-planned economy that is based on collaborative self-management, common ownership of resources, and the production of use-values through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital.

Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

De-centralized planning is associated with the political movements of social anarchism, anarcho-communism, Trotskyism, council communism, left communism and democratic socialism.

State-directed economy

A state-directed economy is a system where either the state or worker cooperatives own the means of production, but economic activity is directed to some degree by a government agency or planning ministry through coordinating mechanisms such as indicative planning and dirigisme. This differs from a centralised planned economy (or a command economy) in that micro-economic decision making, such as quantity to be produced and output requirements, are left to managers and workers in the state and cooperative enterprises rather than being mandated by a comprehensive economic plan from a centralised planning board. However, the state will plan long-term strategic investment and seek to coordinate at least some aspects of production. It is possible for a state-directed economy to have elements of both a market and planned economy. For example, investment decisions may be semi-planned by the state, but decisions regarding production may be determined by the market mechanism.

State-directed socialism can also refer to ''technocratic socialism''; economic systems that rely on technocratic management over the means of production and economic policy.

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, some of which included a degree of state-directed economic activity. 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.

Nationalisation in the UK was achieved through compulsory purchase of the industry (i.e. with compensation). 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; 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.

Market socialism

Market socialism consists of publicly owned or cooperatively owned enterprises operating in a market economy. It is a system that utilizes the market and monetary prices for the allocation and accounting of the means of production, thereby retaining the process of capital accumulation. The profit generated would be used to directly remunerate employees or finance public institutions. In state-oriented forms of market socialism, in which state enterprises attempt to maximise profit, the profits can be used to fund government programs and services through a social dividend, eliminating or greatly diminishing the need for various forms of taxation that exist in capitalist systems. Yugoslavia implemented a market socialist economy based on cooperatives and worker self-management.

The current economic system in China is formally titled Socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. It combines a large state sector that comprises the 'commanding heights' of the economy, which are guaranteed their public ownership status by law, with a private sector mainly engaged in commodity production and light industry responsible from anywhere between 33% (People's Daily Online 2005) to over 70% of GDP generated in 2005. However by 2005 these market-oriented reforms, including privatization, virtually halted and were partially reversed. The current Chinese economy consists of 150 corporatized state enterprises that report directly to China's central government. By 2008, these state-owned corporations had become increasingly dynamic and generated large increases in revenue for the state, resulting in a state-sector led recovery during the 2009 financial crises while accounting for most of China's economic growth.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has adopted a similar model after the Doi Moi economic renovation, but slightly differs from the Chinese model in that the Vietnamese government retains firm control over the state sector and strategic industries, but allows for private-sector activity in commodity production.

However, the lack of self-management in economic enterprises and the increasing role of privatization suggests that these economies actually represent state capitalism instead of genuine market socialism.

Social 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. In this context, ''socialism'' has been used to refer to a political movement, a political philosophy and a hypothetical form of society these movements aim to achieve. As a result, in a political context socialism has come to refer to the strategy (for achieving a socialist society) or policies promoted by socialist organisations and socialist political parties; all of which have no connection to socialism as a socioeconomic system.

Marxism

In the most influential of all socialist theories, Karl Marx and Friedrich 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. For Marx and Engels, conditions determine consciousness and ending the role of the capitalist class leads eventually to a classless society in which the state would wither away.

Marx wrote: "It is not the consciousness of [people] that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

The Marxist conception of socialism is that of a specific historical phase that will displace capitalism and precede 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 would still be 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.

Marx argued that the material productive forces (in industry and commerce) brought into existence by capitalism predicated a cooperative society since production had become a mass social, collective activity of the working class to create commodities but with private ownership (the relations of production or property relations). This conflict between collective effort in large factories and private ownership would bring about a conscious desire in the working class to establish collective ownership commensurate with the collective efforts their daily experience.

"At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure." A socialist society based on democratric cooperation thus arises. Eventually the state, associated with all previous societies which are divided into classes for the purpose of suppressing the oppressed classes, withers away.

By contrast, 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, considering that socialism "simply represented a system in which moral principles discovered by scientific sociology could be applied". Durkheim could be considered a modern social democrat for advocating social reforms, but rejecting the creation of a socialist society.

Che Guevara sought socialism based on the rural peasantry rather than the urban working class, attempting to inspire the peasants of Bolivia by his own example into a change of consciousness. Guevara said in 1965:

Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, both at an individual level, within the societies where socialism is being built or has been built, and on a world scale, with regard to all peoples suffering from imperialist oppression.

In the middle of the 20th century, socialist intellectuals retained considerable influence in European philosophy. ''Eros and Civilisation'' (1955), by Herbert Marcuse, explicitly attempted to merge Marxism with Freudianism. The social science of Marxist structuralism had a significant influence on the socialist New Left in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Utopian versus scientific

The distinction between "utopian" and "scientific socialism" was first explicitly made by Friedrich Engels in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', which contrasted the "utopian pictures of ideal social conditions" of social reformers 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, according to the ''Communist Manifesto'', "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'', Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, presents an alternative mechanism of how socialism will come about from a Weberian perspective: the increasing bureaucratisation of society that occurs under capitalism will eventually necessitate state-control to better coordinate economic activity.

Eduard Bernstein revised this theory to suggest that society is inevitably moving toward socialism, bringing in a mechanical and teleological element to Marxism and initiating the concept of evolutionary socialism. Thorstein Veblen saw socialism as an immediate stage in an ongoing evolutionary process in economics that would result from the natural decay of the system of business enterprise; in contrast to Marx, he did not believe it would be the result of political struggle or revolution by the working class and did not believe it to be the ultimate goal of humanity.

Utopian socialists establish a set of ideals or goals and present 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 that a socialist system can be achieved by reforming capitalism. Socialism, in their view, can be reached through the existing political system by electing socialists to political office to implement economic reforms.

Revolutionaries, such as Marxists and Anarchists, believe such methods will fail because the state ultimately acts in the interests of capitalist business interests, and a socialist party will either be subsumed by the capitalist system or find itself unable to implement fundamental reforms. They believe that spontaneous revolution is the only means to establish a new socio-economic system. The task of socialist organizations or parties is to educate the masses to build socialist consciousness. They do not necessarily define revolution as a violent insurrection, but instead as a thorough and rapid change.

By contrast, Leninists and Trotskyists advocate the creation of a vanguard party, led by professional revolutionaries, to lead the working class in the conquest of the state. After taking power, Leninists seek to create a socialist state dominated by the revolutionary party, which they see as being essential for laying the foundations for a socialist economy.

Revolutionary Syndicalists argue that revolutionary trade or industrial unions, as opposed to the state or worker councils, are the only means to establish socialism.

Other theorists, such as Joseph Schumpeter, Thorstein Veblen and some of the Utopian socialists, believed that socialism would form naturally and spontaneously without, or with very limited, political action as the capitalist economic system decays into obsolescence.

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, higher status members of society who desire a more rational, efficient economic system. Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, and later evolutionary economist Thorstein Veblen, believed that socialism would be the result of innovative engineers, scientists and technicians who want to organise society and the economy in a rational fashion, instead of the working-class. Social democracy is often advocated by intellectuals and 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 led by, popular solidarity and political action from the lower classes, such as the working class and lower-middle class. Proponents of socialism from below – such as syndicalists and orthodox Marxists — often liken socialism from above to elitism and/or Stalinism.

Allocation of resources

Resource allocation is the subject of intense debate between market socialists and proponents of economic planning.

Many socialists advocate de-centralized participatory planning, where economic decision-making is based on self-management and self-governance and a democratic manner from the bottom-up without any directing central authority. Leon Trotsky held the view that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, operated without the input and participation of the millions of people who participate in the economy and understand/respond to local economic conditions; such central planners would be unable to effectively coordinate all economic activity.

On the other hand, Leninists and some State socialists advocate directive planning where directives are passed down from higher planning authorities to enterprise managers, who in turn give orders to workers.

Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome

Proponents of ''equality of opportunity'' advocate a society in which there are equal opportunities and life chances for all individuals to maximise their potentials and attain positions in society. This would be made possible by equal access to the necessities of life. This position is held by technocratic socialists, Marxists 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 utopian socialists and anarcho-communists.

Politics

The major socialist political movements are described below. Independent socialist theorists, utopian socialist authors, and academic supporters of socialism may not be represented in these movements. Some political groups have called themselves socialist while holding views that some consider antithetical to socialism. The term ''socialist'' has also been used by some politicians on the political right as an epithet against certain individuals who do not consider themselves to be socialists, and against policies that are not considered socialist by their proponents.

Anarchism

Anarchism features the belief that the state cannot be used to establish a socialist economy and proposes a political alternative based on federated decentralized autonomous communities. It includes proponents of both individualist anarchism and social anarchism. Mutualists advocate free-market socialism, collectivist anarchists workers cooperatives and salaries based on the amount of time contributed to production, anarcho-communists advocate a direct transition from capitalism to libertarian communism and anarcho-syndicalists worker's direct action and the General strike.

Democratic socialism

Modern democratic socialism is a broad political movement that seeks to propagate the ideals of socialism within the context of a democratic system. Many democratic socialists support social democracy as a road to reform of the current system, but others support more revolutionary tactics to establish socialist goals. Conversely, modern social democracy emphasises a program of gradual legislative reform of capitalism in order to make it more equitable and humane, while the theoretical end goal of building a socialist society is either completely forgotten or redefined in a pro-capitalist way. The two movements are widely similar both in terminology and in ideology, although there are a few key differences.

Democratic socialism generally refers to any political movement that seeks to establish an economy based on economic democracy by and for the working class. Democratic socialists oppose democratic centralism and the revolutionary vanguard party of Leninism. Democratic socialism is difficult to define, and groups of scholars have radically different definitions for the term. Some definitions simply refer to all forms of socialism that follow an electoral, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one.

Leninism

Leninism promotes the creation of a vanguard party, led by professional revolutionaries, to lead the working class in the conquest of the state. They believe that socialism will not arise spontaneously through the natural decay of capitalism, and that workers by themselves are unable to organize and develop socialist consciousness, therefore requiring the leadership of a revolutionary vanguard. After taking power, Leninists seek to create a socialist state in which the working class would be in power, which they see as being essential for laying the foundations for a transitional withering of the state towards communism (Stateless society). The mode of industrial organization championed by Leninists and Marxism-Leninism is the capitalist model of scientific management inspired by Fredrick Taylor. Leninism branched into Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism and Maoism.

Libertarian socialism

Libertarian socialism is a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production. Libertarian socialists oppose all coercive forms of social organization, promote free association in place of government, and oppose the coercive social relations of capitalism, such as wage labor. They oppose hierarchical leadership structures, such as vanguard parties, and are opposed to using the state to create socialism. Currents within libertarian socialism include Marxist tendencies such as left communism, council communism and autonomism, as well as non-Marxist movements like anarchism.

Social democracy

Traditional social democrats advocated the creation of socialism through political reforms by operating within the existing political system of capitalism. The social democratic movement sought to elect socialists to political office to implement reforms. The modern social democratic movement has abandoned the goal of achieving a socialist economy, and instead advocates for social reforms to improve capitalism, such as a welfare state and unemployment benefits. It is best demonstrated by the economic format which has been used in Sweden, Denmark, Norway & Finland in the past few decades. This approach been called the Nordic model.

Syndicalism

Syndicalism is a political movement that operates through industrial trade unions and rejects state socialism. Syndicalists advocate a socialist economy based on federated unions or syndicates of workers who own and manage the means of production.

History

An early use of the term Socialist appearss in 1738, in the book: ''Scotch Presbyterian eloquence display'd'' By Gilbert Crokatt, John Monroe. The mainstream introduction is attributed to Pierre Leroux, and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud; and in Britain to Robert Owen in 1827, father of the cooperative movement. Socialist models and ideas espousing common or public ownership have existed since antiquity. Mazdak, a Persian communal proto-socialist, instituted communal possessions and advocated the public good. And it has been claimed, though controversially, that there were elements of socialist thought in the politics of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle.

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''. Saint-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. The key focus of Simon's socialism was on administrative efficiency and industrialism, and a belief that science was the key to progress. 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 labour – the cost of the labour (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. Robert Owen's contribution to modern socialism was his understanding that actions and characteristics of individuals were largely determined by the social environment they were raised in and exposed to. On the other hand Charles Fourier advocated phalansteres which were communities that respected individual desires (incluiding sexual preferences), affinities and creativity and saw that work has to be made enjoyable for people. The ideas of Owen and Fourier were tried in practice in numerous intentional communities around Europe and the American continent in the mid-19th century.

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.

First International and Second International

The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), also known as the First International, was founded in London in 1864. The IWA held a preliminary conference in 1865, and had its first congress at Geneva in 1866. Due to the wide variety of philosophies present in the First International, there was conflict from the start. The first objections to Marx's came from the Mutualists who opposed communism and statism. However, shortly after Mikhail Bakunin and his followers (called ''Collectivists'' while in the International) joined in 1868, the First International became polarised into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads The clearest differences between the groups emerged over their proposed strategies for achieving their visions of socialism. The First International became the first major international forum for the promulgation of socialist ideas.

As the ideas of Marx and Engels took on flesh, particularly in central Europe, socialists sought to unite in an international organisation. In 1889, on the centennial of the French Revolution of 1789, the Second International was founded, with 384 delegates from 20 countries representing about 300 labour and socialist organizations. It was termed the "Socialist International" and Engels was elected honorary president at the third congress in 1893. Anarchists were ejected and not allowed in mainly because of the pressure from marxists.

Revolutions of 1917–1936

By 1917, the patriotism of World War I changed into political radicalism in most of Europe, the United States, and Australia. In February 1917, revolution exploded in Russia. Workers, soldiers and peasants established soviets (councils), the monarchy fell, and a provisional government convoked pending the election of a constituent assembly.

In April of that year, Vladimir 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, while he and Leon Trotsky simultaneously led the October Revolution. As a matter of political pragmatism, Lenin reversed Marx's order of economics over politics, allowing for a political revolution led by a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries rather than a spontaneous establishment of socialist institutions led by a spontaneous uprising of the working class as predicted by Karl Marx. On 25 January 1918, at the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!" He 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 1918, 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 World War I, and convoked a Constituent Assembly in which the peasant Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SR) 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.

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 in 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, in favour of the concept of ''Socialism in One Country''. 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

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."

In the postwar years, socialism became increasingly influential throughout the so-called Third World. Countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America frequently 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 democrats in power

The Australian Labor Party, the first social democratic labour party in the world, was formed in 1891. In 1904, Australians elected the first Labor Party prime minister in the world: Chris Watson. In 1945, the British Labour Party, led by Clement Attlee, was elected to office based upon a radical socialist programme. Social Democratic parties dominated post-war politics in countries such as France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Norway. In Sweden, the Social Democratic Party held power from 1936 to 1976, 1982 to 1991, and 1994 to 2006. At one point, France claimed to be the world's most state-controlled capitalist country. The nationalised public utilities included Charbonnages de France (CDF), Electricité de France (EDF), Gaz de France (GDF), Air France, Banque de France, and Régie Nationale des Usines Renault. Post-World War II social democratic governments introduced social reform and wealth redistribution via state welfare and taxation.

United Kingdom

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 benefits, national insurance and state pensions were introduced by the 1945 Labour government. Aneurin Bevan, who had introduced the Labour Party's National Health Service in 1948, criticised the Attlee government for not progressing further, demanding economic planning and criticising the implementation of nationalisation for not empowering the workers with democratic control of operations.

The UK Labour Government nationalised major public utilities such as mines, gas, coal, electricity, rail, iron, steel, and the Bank of England. British Petroleum, privatised in 1987, was officially nationalised in 1951, and there was further government intervention during the 1974–79 Labour Government Anthony Crosland said that in 1956, 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. The Labour government, however, did not seek to end capitalism, and the "government had not the smallest intention of bringing in the 'common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange'", Labour re-nationalised steel (1967, British Steel) after the Conservatives denationalised it, and nationalised car production (1976, British Leyland). In 1977, major aircraft companies and shipbuilding were nationalised.

The National Health Service provided taxpayer-funded health care to everyone, free at the point of service. Working-class housing was provided in council housing estates, and university education became available via a school grant system. Ellen Wilkinson, Minister for Education, introduced taxpayer-funded milk in schools, saying, in a 1946 Labour 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".

The "Nordic model"

The Nordic model refers to the economic and social models of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland). This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterised by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilising the economy. It is distinguished from other welfare states with similar goals by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian and extensive benefit levels, large magnitude of redistribution, and liberal use of expansionary fiscal policy. This has included high degrees of labour union membership. In 2008, labour union density was 67.5% in Finland, 67.6% in Denmark, and 68.3% in Sweden. In comparison, union membership was 11.9% in the United States and 7.7% in France. The Nordic Model however is not a single model with specific components or rules; each of the Nordic countries has its own economic and social models, sometimes with large differences from its neighbours.

Social democrats adopt 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. 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 the 1984–1985 strike against pit closures. In 1989, at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a new ''Declaration of Principles'', saying:

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''.

In the 1990s, released from the Left's pressure, the British Labour Party, under Tony Blair, posited policies based upon the free market economy to deliver public services via private contractors. In 1995, the Labour Party re-defined its stance on socialism by re-wording clause IV of its constitution, effectively rejecting socialism by removing any and all references to public, direct worker or municipal ownership of the means of production. 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."

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 industrialization into French society, are promoted as essential socialist values.

Early 2000s

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 2007–2010 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".

Africa

160px|thumb|Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana and theorist of African Socialism on a soviet postage stampAfrican socialism has been and continues to be a major ideology around the continent. Julius Nyerere was inspired by Fabian socialist ideals. He was a firm believer in rural Africans and their traditions and ujamaa, a system of collectivisation that according to Nyerere was present before European imperialism. Essentially he believed Africans were already socialists. Other African socialists include Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, and Kwame Nkrumah. Fela Kuti was inspired by socialism and called for a democratic African republic. 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. Today many African countries have been accused of being exploited under neoliberal economics.

Asia

The People's Republic of China, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam are Asian countries remaining from the wave of Marxism-Leninist implemented 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. Forms include the Chinese socialist market economy and the Vietnamese socialist-oriented market economy. They utilise state-owned corporate management models as opposed to modeling socialist enterprise on traditional management styles employed by government agencies.

In the People's Republic of 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. In Malaysia, the Socialist Party of Malaysia got its first Member of Parliament, Dr. Jeyakumar Devaraj, after the 2008 general election.

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 Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) won the elections with 43.92% of the votes, the Communist KKE got 7.5% 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 three 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. In the following May 2010 UK general election, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, launched in January 2010 and backed by Bob Crow, the leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), other union leaders and the Socialist Party among other socialist groups, stood against Labour in 40 constituencies. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition plans to contest the 2011 elections, having gained the endorsement of the RMT June 2010 conference.

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

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa refer to their political programmes as socialist. Chávez has adopted the term ''socialism of the 21st century''. After winning re-election in December 2006, Chávez said, "Now more than ever, I am obliged to move Venezuela's path towards socialism."

"Pink tide" is a term being used in contemporary 21st century political analysis in the media and elsewhere to describe the perception that Leftist ideology in general, and Left-wing politics in particular, is increasingly influential in Latin America.

North America

In Canada, the social democratic New Democratic Party shows signs of growing after winning 102/308 seats (up from 37) in the 2011 Canadian federal election.

Socialist parties in the United States reached their zenith in the early 20th century, but currently active parties and organizations include the Socialist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, the latter having approximately 10,000 members.

Criticism of socialism

Economic liberals, pro-capitalist libertarians and classical liberals see private property of the means of production and the market exchange as natural entities or moral rights, which are central to their conceptions of freedom and liberty, and thus perceive public ownership of the means of production, cooperatives and economic planning as infringements upon liberty. Some of the primary criticisms of socialism are distorted or absent price signals, reduced incentives, reduced prosperity, feasibility, and its social and political effects.

Critics from the neoclassical school of economics criticize state-ownership and centralization of capital on the grounds that there is a lack of incentive in state institutions to act on information as efficiently as capitalist firms do because they lack hard budget constraints, resulting in reduced overall economic welfare for society. Economists of the Austrian school argue that socialist systems based on economic planning are unfeasible because they lack the information to perform economic calculation in the first place, due to a lack of price signals and a free price system, which they argue are required for rational economic calculation.

See also

Anarchism

Anti-Globalisation

Anti-capitalism

Class struggle

Communism

Dictatorship of the proletariat

Economic planning

History of socialism

Labour movement

Luxemburgism

Market Socialism

Marxism

Nationalisation

Nano socialism

Proletariat

Proletarian revolution

Public ownership

Production for use

Revolutionary socialism

Social democracy

Social peer-to-peer processes

Socialism (Marxism)

Socialist state

Socialization of production

State ownership

Syndicalism

Third World Socialism

To each according to his contribution

Worker cooperative

Workers' self-management

National:

Fabian Society

History of socialism in Great Britain

Socialism in the United States

Socialism in Canada

Lists:

List of socialist countries

List of communist ideologies

List of socialist songs

List of socialist economists

References

Further reading

Sassoon, Donald. ''One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century''. New Press. 1998. ISBN 1565844866

Guy Ankerl, ''Beyond Monopoly Capitalism and Monopoly 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 84-7209-420-0.

Makoto Itoh, ''Political Economy of Socialism''. London: Macmillan, 1995. ISBN 0-333-55337-3.

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'' , 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 0-415-91967-3

Leo Panitch, ''Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy, and Imagination''. ISBN 0-8133-9821-5.

Emile Perreau-Saussine, ''What remains of socialism?'', 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 978-0-262-18234-8.

Maximilien Rubel and John Crump, ''Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries''. ISBN 0-312-00524-5.

David Selbourne, ''Against 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

"Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Friedrich Engels

"Why Socialism?" by Albert Einstein

"The Soul of Man under Socialism" by Oscar Wilde

What is Socialism?

World Socialist Web Site

Marxist.net – a resource on socialist writers

The Impossibility of Socialism

In Defense of Marxism

What Needs to be Done: A Socialist View by Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates, ''Monthly Review'', November 2009

What is Socialism? by the World Socialist Movement

Category:Economic ideologies Category:Economies Category:Political ideologies Category:Political movements

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Coordinates	30°19′10″N81°39′36″N
Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	The Baroness Thatcher
Honorific-suffix	LG OM PC FRS
Alt	Photograph
Office	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Deputy	William WhitelawGeoffrey Howe
Term start	4 May 1979
Term end	28 November 1990
Predecessor	James Callaghan
Successor	John Major
Office2	Leader of the Opposition
Monarch2	Elizabeth II
Primeminister2	Harold WilsonJames Callaghan
Term start2	11 February 1975
Term end2	4 May 1979
Predecessor2	Edward Heath
Successor2	James Callaghan
Office3	Leader of the Conservative Party
Term start3	11 February 1975
Term end3	28 November 1990
Predecessor3	Edward Heath
Successor3	John Major
Office4	Secretary of State for Education and Science
Primeminister4	Edward Heath
Term start4	20 June 1970
Term end4	4 March 1974
Predecessor4	Edward Short
Successor4	Reginald Prentice
Office5	Member of Parliament for Finchley
Term start5	8 October 1959
Term end5	9 April 1992
Predecessor5	John Crowder
Successor5	Hartley Booth
Birthname	Margaret Hilda Roberts
Birth date	October 13, 1925
Birth place	Grantham, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Party	Conservative Party
Spouse	Denis Thatcher(m. 1951–2003, his death)
Children	Carol ThatcherMark Thatcher
Relations	Alfred Roberts (father)
Alma mater	Somerville College, Oxford
Profession	ChemistLawyer
Religion	Church of England(Since 1951)Methodism (Before 1951)
Signature alt	Signature written in ink }}

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (née Roberts; born 13 October 1925) is a former Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who served from 1979 to 1990.

Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford before qualifying as a barrister. In the 1959 general election she became MP for Finchley. Edward Heath appointed Thatcher Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 she was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, the first woman to head a major UK political party, and in 1979 she became the UK's first female Prime Minister.

After entering , Thatcher was determined to reverse what she perceived as a precipitous national decline.|group=nb}} Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, particularly of the financial sector, flexible labour markets, the sale or closure of state-owned companies, and the withdrawal of subsidies to others. Thatcher's popularity waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support resulting in her re-election in 1983.

Thatcher survived an assassination attempt in 1984, and her hard line against trade unions and tough rhetoric in opposition to the Soviet Union earned her the nickname of the "Iron Lady". Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990 after Michael Heseltine's challenge to her leadership of the Conservative Party.

Thatcher holds a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitles her to sit in the House of Lords.

Early life and education

Margaret Roberts was born on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson) from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops. She and her older sister Muriel were raised in the flat above the larger of the two, located near the railway line. Her father was active in local politics and religion, serving as an alderman and a Methodist lay preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Methodist. He came from a Liberal family but stood – as was then customary in local government – as an Independent. He was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.

Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43. In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford but was initially rejected, and only offered a place after another candidate withdrew. She arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree; in her final year she specialised in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin.

Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's ''The Road to Serfdom'' (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.

After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics. She joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association. One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates. Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the Conservative party's approved list: she was selected in January 1951 and added to the approved list ''post ante''. At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who drove her to her Essex train. In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream.

Early political career

In the February 1950 and October 1951 general elections she campaigned for the safe Labour seat of Dartford, where she attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate. She lost both times to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951. Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation. That same year her twins, Carol and Mark, were born.

Member of Parliament (1959–1970)

Thatcher began looking for a safe Conservative seat in the mid-1950s. She was narrowly rejected as the candidate for Orpington in 1955, but was selected for Finchley in April 1958. She won the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election and was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP). Her maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public. In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching.

In October 1961, Thatcher was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration. After the loss of the 1964 election she became Conservative spokesman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses. She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966, and as Treasury spokesman opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce contrary effects to those intended and distort the economy.

At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism". She argued that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work. Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality and voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion, as well as a ban on hare coursing. She supported the retention of capital punishment and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.

In 1967, she was selected by the United States Embassy in London to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities, political figures, and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Thatcher joined the Shadow Cabinet later that year as Shadow Fuel spokesman. Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport, and then to Education.

Education Secretary (1970–1974)

The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science. In her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools, and imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but she agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes. Her decision provoked a storm of protest from the Labour party and the press, and led to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher". Thatcher wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson [from the experience]. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."

Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered secondary modern–grammar school system of education, and determined to preserve grammar schools, during her tenure as Education Secretary she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensives rose from 32% to 62%.

Leader of the Opposition (1975–1979)

The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, and was defeated in the February 1974 general election. The Conservative result in the general election of October 1974 was even worse, and Thatcher mounted a challenge for the leadership of the party. Promising a fresh start, her main support came from the Conservative 1922 Committee. She defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership. In the second ballot she defeated Heath's preferred successor, William Whitelaw, and became party leader on 11 February 1975; she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath remained disenchanted with Thatcher to the end of his life for what he, and many of his supporters, perceived as her disloyalty in standing against him.

Thatcher began regularly to attend lunches at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich von Hayek; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the welfare state Keynesian economics they believed was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.

Thatcher began to work on her voice and screen image. The critic Clive James, writing in ''The Observer'' in 1977, compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard, but acknowledged her intelligence and mental agility.|group=nb}}

On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union:

In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper ''Krasnaya Zvezda'' (''Red Star'') gave her the nickname "Iron Lady". She took delight in the name, and it soon became associated with her image.

Despite an economic recovery in the late 1970s, the Labour government faced public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79, popularly dubbed the "Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising with the slogan ''Labour Isn't Working''. A general election was called after James Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime Minister.

Prime Minister (1979–1990)

Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of the "Prayer of Saint Francis":

Domestic affairs

Thatcher was Prime Minister at a time of great racial tension in Britain. Her standing in the polls rose by 11 percent after she said in a TV interview during campaigning for the 1979 election: "The moment a minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened. The British character has done so much for democracy, for law, that if there is any fear that it might be swamped, people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in". The Conservatives attracted voters from the National Front, whose support almost collapsed. ''The Economist'' noted "The Tory tide swamped the smaller parties, specifically the National Front, which suffered a clear decline". In confidential official documents she objected to the number of Asian immigrants in July 1979, in the context of limiting the number of Vietnamese boat people allowed to settle in the UK. Her stance on these issues was perceived as part of a rising racist public discourse, which professor Martin Barker called "new racism".

As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under close scrutiny. In July 1986 the ''Sunday Times'' reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues". The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis. After Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as "nonsense" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies. Thatcher later wrote "... I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct. ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up."

Economy and taxation

Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek. Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation, introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditures on social services such as education and housing. Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition. Her new centrally-funded City Technology Colleges did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for Schools was set up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the Social Market Foundation, a right-wing think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial powers".

GDP and public spending by functional classification	% change in real terms1979/80 to 1989/90
GDP	+23.3
Total government spending	+12.9
Law and order	+53.3
Employment and training	+33.3
Health	+31.8
Social security	+31.8
Transport	−5.8
Trade and industry	−38.2
Housing	−67.0
Defence	−3.3

Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies. The 1981 riots in England resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar that included the lines: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!"

Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister. As the recession of the early 1980s deepened she increased taxes, despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists issued towards the end of March 1981.

By 1982 the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery; inflation was down to 8.6% from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s. By 1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970, although manufacturing output had dropped by 30% since 1978 and unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.

Throughout the 1980s revenue from the 90% tax on North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.

Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing domestic rates—a tax based on the nominal rental value of a home—with the Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same amount was charged to each adult resident. The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year, and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership. Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000-strong demonstration in London on 31 March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into the Poll Tax Riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest. The Community Charge was abolished by her successor, John Major.

Foreign affairs

Thatcher took office in the final decade of the Cold War and became closely aligned with the policies of United States President Ronald Reagan, based on their mutual distrust of Communism, although she strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983 invasion of Grenada. During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe, and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices). Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.

On 2 April 1982 the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War. The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her [Thatcher's] premiership". At the suggestion of Harold Macmillan and Robert Armstrong, she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war, which by 5–6 April had authorised and dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands. Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear-powered submarine torpedoed and sank the cruiser ARA ''General Belgrano'' on 2 May. Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and notably by Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the ''Belgrano'', but overall she was considered a highly talented and committed war leader. The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided Labour opposition contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.

The Thatcher government supported the Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the UN after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.Although denying it at the time they also sent the SAS to train the Khmer Rouge alliance to fight against the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government.

Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision making. She had supported British membership of the EC, despite believing that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulation; in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy, despite the urging of her Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, but she was persuaded by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.

In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque, citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.|group=nb}} Polls suggested that less than one in three British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision. She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990. During her talks with US President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention, and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!" Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.

Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was". She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984, and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO. In contrast she was an advocate of Croatian and Slovenian independence. In a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked.

Industrial relations

Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed. Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election. According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".

The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000. Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest. Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar. The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994. The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities. Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.

The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4583 in 1979, when more than 29 million working days were lost. In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1221, resulting in the loss of more than 27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990 there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter. Trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to less than 10 million by the time Thatcher left office in 1990.

Privatisation

The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism". After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated; more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.

The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity. A number of the privatised industries including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement often did so while still under state ownership. British Steel, for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and reduce the workforce by half. Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies like Ofgas, Oftel and the National Rivers Authority. There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries; in most cases privatisation benefitted consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed".

Thatcher always resisted rail privatisation, and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation, she accepted the arguments for privatising British Rail, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994. ''The Economist'' later considered the move to have been "a disaster".

The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation in an attempt to fuel economic growth. Geoffrey Howe abolished Britain's exchange controls in 1979, allowing more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the London Stock Exchange. The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service sectors to compensate for Britain's ailing manufacturing industry. Political economist Susan Strange called this new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy than industry.

Northern Ireland

In 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison began a hunger strike in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed five years earlier under the preceding Labour government. Bobby Sands began the strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions. Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political", but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end. After the deaths of Sands and nine others some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of their political status. Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982 Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".

Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in a PIRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984. Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day. She delivered her speech as planned, a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public.

On 6 November 1981 Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments. On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. In protest the Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast, Ian Gow resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury, and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent by-elections on 23 January 1986.

Resignation

Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by virtually unknown backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer in the 1989 leadership election. Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer. Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success, and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.

During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40 percent, of any post-war Prime Minister. Polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party. A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings, pointing instead to her unbeaten election record.

Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives, and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months. These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent within the Conservative party.

On 1 November 1990 Geoffrey Howe, the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a timetable for Britain to join the European single currency. In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's European stance: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are bowled that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain." His resignation was fatal to Thatcher's premiership.

The next day, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour. Although Thatcher won the first ballot, Heseltine attracted sufficient support (152 votes) to force a second ballot. Thatcher initially stated that she intended to "fight on and fight to win" the second ballot, but consultation with her Cabinet persuaded her to withdraw. After seeing the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech, she left Downing Street in tears. She regarded her ousting as a betrayal.

Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her Chancellor John Major, who oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading up to the 1992 general election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992. Thatcher favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in later years.

Later years

Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership. She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.

Post-Commons

After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation; it closed down in 2005 because of financial difficulties. She wrote two volumes of memoirs, ''The Downing Street Years'' (1993) and ''The Path to Power'' (1995).

In July 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation. She also earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered.

In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a "holocaust". She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty, describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty". She cited A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of revisiting the treaty, the people should have their say.

Thatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (1993–2000) and also of the University of Buckingham (1992–1999), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975.

After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved."

In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations, citing the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War. In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London. Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw, without facing trial.

In the 2001 general election Thatcher supported the Conservative general election campaign, but did not endorse Iain Duncan Smith as she had done for John Major and William Hague. In the Conservative leadership election shortly after, she supported Smith over Kenneth Clarke.

In March 2002, Thatcher's book ''Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World'', dedicated to Ronald Reagan, was released. In it, she claimed there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein was toppled, that Israel must trade land for peace, and that the European Union (EU) was "fundamentally unreformable", "a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure". She argued that Britain should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area. The book was serialised in ''The Times'' on 18 March; on 23 March she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.

Since 2003

Sir Denis Thatcher died on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July. She had paid tribute to him in ''The Downing Street Years'', writing "Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend".

On 11 June 2004, Thatcher attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan. She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier. Thatcher then flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London, on 13 October 2005, at which the guests included the Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair. Geoffrey Howe, by then Lord Howe of Aberavon, was also present, and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."

In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit.

In February 2007, Thatcher became the first living UK Prime Minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill, and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she made a rare and brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron – but bronze will do ... It won't rust." The statue shows her addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.

Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by the artist Richard Stone, an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister. Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.

Thatcher suffered several small strokes in 2002 and was advised by her doctors not to engage in any more public speaking. After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, she was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests. Her daughter Carol has recounted ongoing memory loss.

At the Conservative Party conference in 2010, the new Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would invite Thatcher back to 10 Downing Street on her 85th birthday for a party to be attended by past and present ministers. She pulled out of the celebration because of flu. She was invited to the Royal Wedding on 29 April 2011 but did not attend, reportedly due to ill health.

On American Independence Day 2011 (4 July) Lady Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a 10-foot statue to former American President Ronald Reagan, outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London but was unable to attend due to frail health. On 31 July 2011 it was announced that the former prime minister’s office in the House of Lords had been closed down.

Also in July 2011, Thatcher was named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos Mori poll.

Legacy

Thatcher remains identified with her remarks to the reporter Douglas Keay, for ''Woman's Own'' magazine in September 1987:

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To her supporters, Margaret Thatcher remains a figure who revitalised Britain's economy, impacted the trade unions, and re-established the nation as a world power. She oversaw an increase from 7% to 25% of adults owning shares, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55% to 67% in owner-occupiers. Total personal wealth rose by 80%. Victory in the Falklands conflict and her strong alliance with the United States are also remembered as some of her greatest achievements.

Thatcher's premiership was also marked by high unemployment and social unrest, and many critics fault her economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected by high unemployment as a result of her monetarist economic policieshave still not fully recovered and are also blighted by social problems including drug abuse and family breakdown. Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets, and was right to introduce the poll tax and to remove subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline" which had created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain".

Thatcher often referred after the war to the "Falklands Spirit"; Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peace-time cabinet government.

Critics have regretted Thatcher's influence in the abandonment of full employment, poverty reduction and a consensual civility as bedrock policy objectives. Many recent biographers have been critical of aspects of the Thatcher years and Michael White, writing in ''New Statesman'' in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit. Despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, some critics contend Thatcher did "little to advance the political cause of women", either within her party or the government, and some British feminists regarded her as "an enemy".

The term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.|group=nb}}. Influenced at the outset by Keith Joseph, Thatcherism remains a potent byword in British political parlance, with both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown defining policies in post-Thatcherite terms, and David Cameron saying after a dinner with Thatcher in February 2009: "You have got to do the right thing even if it is painful. Don't trim or track all over the place. Set your course and take the difficult decisions because that is what needs to be done ... I think that influence, that character she had, that conviction she had, I think that will be very important."

Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since Lord Salisbury (13 years and 252 days in three spells starting in 1885), and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool (14 years and 305 days starting in 1812).

Honours

Thatcher became a Privy Councillor (PC) upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) (an order within the personal gift of the Queen) within two weeks of leaving office. Denis Thatcher was made a Baronet at the same time. She became a peer in the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire. She was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter, the UK's highest order of chivalry, in 1995.

She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983, and was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton Club on becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.

In the Falkland Islands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992, commemorating her visit in 1983. Thatcher Drive in Stanley is named for her, as is Thatcher Peninsula in South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.

Thatcher has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour awarded by the US; the Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom; and the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award. She is a patron of the Heritage Foundation, which established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005. Speaking of Heritage president Ed Feulner, at the first Clare Booth Luce lecture in September 1993, Thatcher said: "You didn't just advise President Reagan on what he should do; you told him how he could do it. And as a practising politician I can testify that that is the only advice worth having." Other awards include Dame Grand Cross of the Croatian Grand Order of King Dmitar Zvonimir.

Upon Thatcher's eventual death, it is rumoured that she will be honoured with a state funeral at St Paul's Cathedral. If so, she will be the first prime minister to be honoured this way since Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.

Media depictions

Depictions of Margaret Thatcher have featured in a number of television programmes, documentaries, films and plays; she was played by Patricia Hodge in Ian Curteis's long unproduced ''The Falklands Play'' (2002) and Lindsay Duncan in ''Margaret'' (2009). She was portrayed by Andrea Riseborough in the TV film ''The Long Walk to Finchley''. Thatcher will be played by Meryl Streep in the 2011 film ''The Iron Lady''.

Thatcher was lampooned by satirist John Wells in several media. Wells collaborated with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in ''Private Eye'' magazine, were published in book form, and were then adapted into a West End stage revue as ''Anyone for Denis?'', starring Wells as Denis Thatcher. The stage show was followed by a 1982 TV special directed by Dick Clement. In 1979, Wells was commissioned by comedy producer Martin Lewis to write and perform on a comedy record album titled ''Iron Lady: The Coming Of The Leader'' on which Thatcher was portrayed by comedienne and noted Thatcher impersonator Janet Brown. The album consisted of skits and songs satirising Thatcher's rise to power.

In ''Spitting Image'', Thatcher was portrayed as a bullying tyrant, wearing trousers, and ridiculing her own ministers.

Protest songs

Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for a number of protest songs including The Specials' "Ghost Town", (1981), and The Jam's "Town Called Malice" (Number One in February 1982). Elvis Costello's "Shipbuilding" protested against the Falklands war. Songwriter Billy Bragg released ''Workers Playtime'' in 1988. Paul Weller was a founding member of Red Wedge collective, which unsuccessfully sought to oust Thatcher with the help of music. In 1987, they organised a comedy tour with British comedians Lenny Henry, Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane, Harry Enfield and others.

References

Notes

Footnotes

Bibliography

Further reading

;Biographies

; Political analysis

;Books by Thatcher

;Ministerial autobiographies

External links

Margaret Thatcher Foundation

Margaret Thatcher on the Downing Street website.

Records of the Prime Minister's Office, digitised files from the Prime Minister's Office, covering from the 1979 general election to December 1979.

Actresses (and actors) who have portrayed Thatcher, ''The Telegraph'' (London), 8 February 2011. Retrieved 28 May 2011

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Coordinates	30°19′10″N81°39′36″N
Region	Western philosophy
Era	20th / 21st-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Noam Chomsky
Other names	Avram Noam Chomsky
Birth date	December 07, 1928
Birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania (BA 1949, MA 1951, PhD 1955)
School tradition	Generative linguistics, Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Linguistics PsychologyPhilosophy of languagePhilosophy of mind Politics Ethics
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Religion	Atheist
Notable ideas	Generative grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding, X-bar theory, Chomsky hierarchy, context-free grammar, principles and parameters, Minimalist program, language acquisition device, poverty of the stimulus, Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem, Chomsky Normal Form, propaganda model
Influences	Dwight Macdonald, Pāṇini, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, Mikhail Bakunin, Karl Marx, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Adam Smith, Zellig Harris, Rudolf Rocker, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, George Orwell, C. West Churchman, Alan Turing, W. V. O. Quine
Influenced	Niall McLaren, Colin McGinn, Edward Said, Christopher Hitchens, Steven Pinker, Peter Ludlow, Tanya Reinhart, Morris Halle, Gilbert Harman, Jerry Fodor, Howard Lasnik, Robert Fisk, Neil Smith, Ray Jackendoff, Norbert Hornstein, Jean Bricmont, Marc Hauser, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Lees, Hugo Chavez, Mark Baker, Julian Boyd, Ray C. Dougherty, Derek Bickerton, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert }}

Avram Noam Chomsky (; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Chomsky is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

Ideologically identifying with anarchism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included ''Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'' (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books.

Life and career

Chomsky was born on the morning of December 7, 1928, to Jewish parents in the affluent East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of noted professor of Hebrew at Gratz College and IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) member William Chomsky (1896–1977), a native of Ukraine. His mother, Elsie Chomsky (née Simonofsky)—a native of what is present-day Belarus—grew up in the United States and, unlike her husband, spoke "ordinary New York English". Chomsky's parents' first language was Yiddish, but Chomsky said it was "taboo" in his family to speak it. Although Chomsky's mother was part of the radical activism in the 1930s, he was influenced largely by his uncle who, having never passed 4th grade, owned a newsstand that acted as an "intellectual center [where] professors of this and that argu[ed] all night". Chomsky was influenced also by being a part of a Hebrew-based, Zionist organization, as well as by hanging around anarchist bookstores.

He describes his family as living in a sort of "Jewish ghetto", split into a "Yiddish side" and "Hebrew side", with his family aligning with the latter and bringing him up "immersed in Hebrew culture and literature", though he means more a "cultural ghetto than a physical one". Chomsky also describes tensions he experienced with Irish Catholics and German Catholics and anti-semitism in the mid-1930s. He recalls "beer parties" celebrating the fall of Paris to the Nazis. In a discussion of the irony of his staying in the 1980s in a Jesuit House in Central America, Chomsky explained that during his childhood, "We were the only Jewish family around. I grew up with a visceral fear of Catholics. They're the people who beat you up on your way to school. So I knew when they came out of that building down the street, which was the Jesuit school, they were raving anti-Semites. So childhood memories took a long time to overcome."

Chomsky remembers the first article he wrote was at age 10 while a student at Oak Lane Country Day School about the threat of the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. From the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.

A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia, Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, taking classes with philosophers such as C. West Churchman and Nelson Goodman and linguist Zellig Harris. Harris's teaching included his discovery of transformations as a mathematical analysis of language structure (mappings from one subset to another in the set of sentences). Chomsky referred to the morphophonemic rules in his 1951 master's thesis—''The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew''—as transformations in the sense of Carnap's 1938 notion of rules of transformation (vs. rules of formation), and subsequently reinterpreted the notion of grammatical transformations in a very different way from Harris, as operations on the productions of a context-free grammar (derived from Post production systems). Harris's political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky. Chomsky earned a BA in 1949 and an MA in 1951.

In 1949, he married linguist Carol Schatz. They remained married for 59 years until her death from cancer in December 2008. The couple had two daughters, Aviva (b. 1957) and Diane (b. 1960), and a son, Harry (b. 1967). With his wife Carol, Chomsky spent time in 1953 living in HaZore'a, a kibbutz in Israel. Asked in an interview whether the stay was "a disappointment" Chomsky replied, "No, I loved it"; however, he "couldn't stand the ideological atmosphere" and "fervent nationalism" in the early 1950s at the kibbutz, with Stalin being defended by many of the left-leaning kibbutz members who chose to paint a rosy image of future possibilities and contemporary realities in the USSR. Chomsky notes seeing many positive elements in the commune-like living of the kibbutz, in which parents and children lived together in separate houses, and when asked whether there were "lessons that we have learned from the history of the kibbutz", responded, that in "some respects, the kibbutzim came closer to the anarchist ideal than any other attempt that lasted for more than a very brief moment before destruction, or that was on anything like a similar scale. In these respects, I think they were extremely attractive and successful; apart from personal accident, I probably would have lived there myself – for how long, it's hard to guess."

Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted part of his doctoral research during four years at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. In his doctoral thesis, he began to develop some of his linguistic ideas, elaborating on them in his 1957 book ''Syntactic Structures'', one of his best-known works in linguistics.

Chomsky joined the staff of MIT in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. As of 2010, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 55 years.

In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", in ''The New York Review of Books''. This was followed by his 1969 book, ''American Power and the New Mandarins,'' a collection of essays that established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have raised controversy he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets internationally. In 1977 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title: ''Intellectuals and the State''.

Chomsky has received death threats because of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. He was also on a list of planned targets created by Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; during the period that Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for explosives. He states that he often receives undercover police protection, in particular while on the MIT campus, although he does not agree with the police protection.

Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts, and travels often, giving lectures on politics.

Contributions to linguistics

Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his ''Syntactic Structures'', a distillation of his '' Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory'' (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar. This approach takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules.

Perhaps his most influential and time-tested contribution to the field, is the claim that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances, including novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar although it is also related to rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge.

It is a popular misconception that Chomsky proved that language is entirely innate and discovered a "universal grammar" (UG). In fact, Chomsky simply observed that while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human child will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant capacity the human has which the cat lacks the "language acquisition device" (LAD) and suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to figure out what the LAD is and what constraints it puts on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that would result from these constraints are often termed "universal grammar" or UG.

The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P;)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as ''Lectures on Government and Binding'' (LGB)—makes strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples.

Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for innateness.

More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters," Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P.;

Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of the language acquisition in children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates and Michael Tomasello argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and learned.

His best-known work in phonology is ''The Sound Pattern of English'' (1968), written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply ''SPE''). This work has had a great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky no longer publishes on phonology.

Generative grammar

The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages. The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed universal grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time. Furthermore, he argues that there is an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic knowledge they attain (the "poverty of the stimulus" argument). The knowledge of Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that gap.

Chomsky's theories have been immensely influential within linguistics, but they have also received criticism. One recurring criticism of the Chomskyan variety of generative grammar is that it is Anglocentric and Eurocentric, and that often linguists working in this tradition have a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on a very small sample of languages, sometimes just one. Initially, the Eurocentrism was exhibited in an overemphasis on the study of English. However, hundreds of different languages have now received at least some attention within Chomskyan linguistic analyses. In spite of the diversity of languages that have been characterized by UG derivations, critics continue to argue that the formalisms within Chomskyan linguistics are Anglocentric and misrepresent the properties of languages that are different from English. Thus, Chomsky's approach has been criticized as a form of linguistic imperialism. In addition, Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized on general methodological grounds. Some psychologists and psycholinguists, though sympathetic to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. Other critics (see language learning) have questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar to explain child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient.

Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution.

Chomsky hierarchy

Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of formal languages and whether or not they might be capable of capturing key properties of human language. His Chomsky hierarchy partitions formal grammars into classes, or groups, with increasing expressive power, i.e., each successive class can generate a broader set of formal languages than the one before. Interestingly, Chomsky argues that modeling some aspects of human language requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured by the Chomsky hierarchy) than modeling others. For example, while a regular language is powerful enough to model English morphology, it is not powerful enough to model English syntax. In addition to being relevant in linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy has also become important in computer science (especially in compiler construction and automata theory). Indeed, there is an equivalence between the Chomsky language hierarchy and the different kinds of automata. Thus theorems about languages are often dealt with as either languages (grammars) or automata.

An alternate method of dealing with languages is based upon Formal Power series. Formal Power series as well as the relationship between languages and semi-groups continued to occupy M. P. Schützenberger at the Sorbonne. Formal Power Series are similar to the Taylor Series one encounters in a course on Calculus, and is especially useful for languages where words (terminal symbols) are commutative.

Contributions to psychology

Chomsky's work in linguistics has had profound implications for modern psychology. For Chomsky, linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology; genuine insights in linguistics imply concomitant understandings of aspects of mental processing and human nature. His theory of a universal grammar was seen by many as a direct challenge to the established behaviorist theories of the time and had major consequences for understanding how children learn language and what, exactly, the ability to use language is.

In 1959, Chomsky published an influential critique of B.F. Skinner's ''Verbal Behavior'', a book in which Skinner offered a theoretical account of language in functional, behavioral terms. He defined "Verbal Behavior" as learned behavior that has characteristic consequences delivered through the learned behavior of others. This makes for a view of communicative behaviors much larger than that usually addressed by linguists. Skinner's approach focused on the circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for water was functionally a different response than labeling something as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc. These functionally different kinds of responses, which required in turn separate explanations, sharply contrasted both with traditional notions of language and Chomsky's psycholinguistic approach. Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself to questions of communicative performance ignored important questions. (Chomsky—Language and Mind, 1968). He focused on questions concerning the operation and development of innate structures for syntax capable of creatively organizing, cohering, adapting and combining words and phrases into intelligible utterances.

In the review Chomsky emphasized that the scientific application of behavioral principles from animal research is severely lacking in explanatory adequacy and is furthermore particularly superficial as an account of human verbal behavior because a theory restricting itself to external conditions, to "what is learned," cannot adequately account for generative grammar. Chomsky raised the examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their quickly developing ability to form grammatical sentences, and the universally creative language use of competent native speakers to highlight the ways in which Skinner's view exemplified under-determination of theory by evidence. He argued that to understand human verbal behavior such as the creative aspects of language use and language development, one must first postulate a genetic linguistic endowment. The assumption that important aspects of language are the product of universal innate ability runs counter to Skinner's radical behaviorism.

Chomsky's 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper ''On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior'' (''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,'' volume 13, pages 83–99). MacCorquodale's argument was updated and expanded in important respects by Nathan Stemmer in a 1990 paper, ''Skinner's Verbal Behavior, Chomsky's review, and mentalism'' (''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,'' volume 54, pages 307–319). These and similar critiques have raised certain points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology, such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the differences between Skinner's behaviorism and other varieties. Consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors. On account of these perceived problems, the critics maintain that the review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing. As such, it is averred that those most influenced by Chomsky's paper probably either already substantially agreed with Chomsky or never actually read it. The review has been further critiqued for misrepresenting the work of Skinner and others, including by quoting out of context. Chomsky has maintained that the review was directed at the way Skinner's variant of behavioral psychology "was being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy."

It has been claimed that Chomsky's critique of Skinner's methodology and basic assumptions paved the way for the "cognitive revolution", the shift in American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive. In his 1966 ''Cartesian Linguistics'' and subsequent works, Chomsky laid out an explanation of human language faculties that has become the model for investigation in some areas of psychology. Much of the present conception of how the mind works draws directly from ideas that found their first persuasive author of modern times in Chomsky.

There are three key ideas. First is that the mind is "cognitive", or that the mind actually contains mental states, beliefs, doubts, and so on. Second, he argued that most of the important properties of language and mind are innate. The acquisition and development of a language is a result of the unfolding of innate propensities triggered by the experiential input of the external environment. The link between human innate aptitude to language and heredity has been at the core of the debate opposing Noam Chomsky to Jean Piaget at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975 (''Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky,'' Harvard University Press, 1980). Although links between the genetic setup of humans and aptitude to language have been suggested at that time and in later discussions, we are still far from understanding the genetic bases of human language. Work derived from the model of selective stabilization of synapses set up by Jean-Pierre Changeux, Philippe Courrège and Antoine Danchin, and more recently developed experimentally and theoretically by Jacques Mehler and Stanislas Dehaene in particular in the domain of numerical cognition lend support to the Chomskyan "nativism". It does not, however, provide clues about the type of rules that would organize neuronal connections to permit language competence. Subsequent psychologists have extended this general "nativist" thesis beyond language. Lastly, Chomsky made the concept of "modularity" a critical feature of the mind's cognitive architecture. The mind is composed of an array of interacting, specialized subsystems with limited flows of inter-communication. This model contrasts sharply with the old idea that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any other cognitive process (optical illusions, for example, cannot be "turned off" even when they are known to be illusions).

Approach to science

Chomsky sees science as a straightforward search for explanation, and rejects the views of it as a catalog of facts or mechanical explanations. In this light, the majority of his contributions to science have been frameworks and hypotheses, rather than "discoveries."

As such, he considers certain so-called post-structuralist or postmodern critiques of logic and reason to be nonsensical:

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science", "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.

Although Chomsky believes that a scientific background is important to teach proper reasoning, he holds that science in general is "inadequate" to understand complicated problems like human affairs:

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can’t deal with them... But it’s a complicated matter: Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated.

Debates

Chomsky has been known to vigorously defend and debate his views and opinions, in philosophy, linguistics, and politics. He has had notable debates with Jean Piaget, Michel Foucault, William F. Buckley, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, George Lakoff, Richard Perle, Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, and Alan Dershowitz, to name a few. In response to his speaking style being criticized as boring, Chomsky said that "I'm a boring speaker and I like it that way.... I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is.... People are interested in the issues, and they're interested in the issues because they are important." "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."

Political views

Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism" and he has praised libertarian socialism. Although Chomsky tries to avoid the ambiguity of labels, his political views are often characterized in news accounts as "leftist" or "left-wing," and he has described himself as an anarcho-syndicalist. He is a member of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and the Industrial Workers of the World international union. He published a book on anarchism titled ''Chomsky on Anarchism'', published by the anarchist book collective AK Press in 2006.

Chomsky has engaged in political activism all of his adult life and expressed opinions on politics and world events, which are widely cited, publicized and discussed. Chomsky has in turn argued that his views are those the powerful do not want to hear and for this reason he is considered an American political dissident.

Chomsky asserts that authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example given by Chomsky of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from wandering into traffic. He contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace, a view held (as he notes) by the Lowell Mill Girls.

Chomsky has strongly criticized the foreign policy of the United States. He claims double standards in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all while allying itself with non-democratic and repressive organizations and states such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet and argues that this results in massive human rights violations. He often argues that America's intervention in foreign nations, including the secret aid given to the Contras in Nicaragua, an event of which he has been very critical, fits any standard description of terrorism, including "official definitions in the US Code and Army Manuals in the early 1980s." Before its collapse, Chomsky also condemned Soviet imperialism; for example in 1986 during a question/answer following a lecture he gave at Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua, when challenged about how he could "talk about North American imperialism and Russian imperialism in the same breath," Chomsky responded: "One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck; another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters."

Regarding the death of Osama bin Laden, Chomsky stated: "We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a 'suspect' but uncontroversially the 'decider' who gave the orders to commit the 'supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole' (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, [and] the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region."

He has argued that the mass media in the United States largely serve as a "bought priesthood" of the U.S. government and U.S.-based corporations, with the three intertwined through common interests. In a famous reference to Walter Lippmann, Chomsky along with his coauthor Edward S. Herman has written that the American media manufactures consent among the public. Chomsky has condemned the 2010 US Supreme Court ''Citizens United'' ruling revoking the limits on campaign finance, calling it a "corporate takeover of democracy."

Chomsky opposes the U.S. global "war on drugs", claiming its language is misleading, and refers to it as "the war on certain drugs." He favors drug policy reform, in education and prevention rather than military or police action as a means of reducing drug use. In an interview in 1999, Chomsky argued that, whereas crops such as tobacco receive no mention in governmental exposition, other non-profitable crops, such as marijuana are attacked because of the effect achieved by persecuting the poor. He has stated:

U.S. domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.

Chomsky is critical of the American "state capitalist" system and big business, he describes himself as a socialist, specifically an anarcho-syndicalist, and is critical of "authoritarian" communist branches of socialism. He also believes that socialist values exemplify the rational and morally consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context. He believes that society should be highly organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He believes that the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, were "rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, and retain their revolutionary character."

Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains the "greatest country in the world", a comment that he later clarified by saying, "Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired." He has also said "In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society."

Chomsky objects to the criticism that anarchism is inconsistent with support for government welfare, stating in part:

One can, of course, take the position that we don't care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don't pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That's exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.

Chomsky holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but not strictly pacifist. He prominently opposed the Vietnam War and most other wars in his lifetime. He expressed these views with tax resistance and peace walks. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. He published a number of articles about the war in Vietnam, including "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". He maintains that U.S. involvement in World War II to defeat the Axis powers was probably justified, with the caveat that a preferable outcome would have been to end or prevent the war through earlier diplomacy. He believes that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "among the most unspeakable crimes in history".

Chomsky has made many criticisms of the Israeli government, its supporters, the United States' support of the government and its treatment of the Palestinian people, arguing that " 'supporters of Israel' are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction" and that "Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security may well lead to that consequence." Chomsky disagreed with the founding of Israel as a Jewish state, saying, "I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state." Chomsky hesitated before publishing work critical of Israeli policies while his parents were alive, because he "knew it would hurt them" he says, "mostly because of their friends, who reacted hysterically to views like those expressed in my work." On May 16, 2010, Israeli authorities detained Chomsky and ultimately refused his entry to the West Bank via Jordan. A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister indicated that the refusal of entry was simply due to a border guard who "overstepped his authority" and a second attempt to enter would likely be allowed. Chomsky disagreed, saying that the Interior Ministry official who interviewed him was taking instructions from his superiors. Chomsky maintained that based on the several hours of interviewing, he was denied entry because of the things he says and because he was visiting a university in the West Bank but no Israeli universities.

Chomsky has a broad view of free-speech rights, especially in the mass media, and opposes censorship. He has stated that "with regard to freedom of speech there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer Stalinist/fascist standards". With reference to the United States diplomatic cables leak, Chomsky suggested that "perhaps the most dramatic revelation ... is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government -- Hillary Clinton, others -- and also by the diplomatic service." Chomsky refuses to take legal action against those who may have libeled him and prefers to counter libels through open letters in newspapers. One notable example of this approach is his response to an article by Emma Brockes in ''The Guardian'' which alleged he denied the existence of the Srebrenica massacre. Chomsky's complaint prompted The Guardian to publish an apologetic correction and to withdraw the article from the paper's website.

Chomsky has frequently stated that there is no connection between his work in linguistics and his political views and is generally critical of the idea that competent discussion of political topics requires expert knowledge in academic fields. In a 1969 interview, he said regarding the connection between his politics and his work in linguistics:

I still feel myself that there is a kind of tenuous connection. I would not want to overstate it but I think it means something to me at least. I think that anyone's political ideas or their ideas of social organization must be rooted ultimately in some concept of human nature and human needs.

Some critics have accused Chomsky of hypocrisy when, in spite of his political criticism of American and European military imperialism, early research at the institution (MIT) where he did his linguistic research had been substantially funded by the American military. Chomsky makes the argument that because he has received funding from the U.S. military, he has an even greater responsibility to criticize and resist its immoral actions.

He is also an outspoken advocate against the use of the death penalty and has spoken against the execution of Steven Woods.

I think the death penalty is a crime no matter what the circumstances, and it is particularly awful in the Steven Woods case. I strongly oppose the execution of Steven Woods on September 13, 2011.

Influence in other fields

''Chomskyan'' models have been used as a theoretical basis in several other fields. The Chomsky hierarchy is often taught in fundamental computer science courses as it confers insight into the various types of formal languages. This hierarchy can also be discussed in mathematical terms and has generated interest among mathematicians, particularly combinatorialists. Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results.

The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Niels K. Jerne, used Chomsky's generative model to explain the human immune system, equating "components of a generative grammar ... with various features of protein structures". The title of Jerne's Stockholm Nobel lecture was "The Generative Grammar of the Immune System".

Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability.

Famous computer scientist Donald Knuth admits to reading Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and being greatly influenced by it. "...I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961 ... Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition!".

Another focus of Chomsky's political work has been an analysis of mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), its structures and constraints, and its perceived role in supporting big business and government interests.

Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's book ''Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'' (1988) explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model" of the news media with numerous detailed case studies demonstrating it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." (Media Control)

The model attempts to explain this perceived systemic bias of the mass media in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news must "pass through," which combine to systematically distort news coverage.

In explaining the first filter, ownership, he notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations. The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers), the model expects them to publish news that reflects the desires and values of those businesses. In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information. Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups that attack the media for supposed bias. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note: in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was "anticommunism". However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.) The model describes how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to mobilize an elite consensus, frame public debate within elite perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent.

Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples"—pairs of events that were objectively similar except for the alignment of domestic elite interests. They use a number of such examples to attempt to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder of a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, thus victims of "enemy" states are considered "worthy". But when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story, thus victims of US or US client states are considered "unworthy."

They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to elite interests.

Academic achievements, awards and honors

In early 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970, the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at University of Cambridge; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden; in 1988 the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto, titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape Town, and many others.

Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including from the following:

University of London

University of Chicago

Loyola University of Chicago

Swarthmore College

University of Delhi

Bard College

University of Massachusetts

University of Pennsylvania

Georgetown University

Amherst College

University of Cambridge

University of Colorado

University of Buenos Aires

McGill University

Rovira i Virgili University

Columbia University

Villanova University

University of Connecticut

University of Maine

Scuola Normale Superiore

University of Western Ontario

University of Toronto

Harvard University

Universidad de Chile

University of Bologna

Universidad de La Frontera

University of Calcutta

Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Santo Domingo Institute of Technology

Uppsala University

University of Athens

University of Cyprus

Central Connecticut State University

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Peking University National Tsing Hua University He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others. He is twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" (in 1987 and 1989).

He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.

In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical Society. In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus. In February 2008, he received the President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway. Since 2009 he is an honorary member of IAPTI.

In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany. In April 2010, Chomsky became the third scholar to receive the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship.

Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.

Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine ''Prospect''. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls". In a list compiled by the magazine ''New Statesman'' in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".

Actor Viggo Mortensen with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2006 album, called ''Pandemoniumfromamerica'', to Chomsky.

On January 22, 2010, a special honorary concert for Chomsky was given at Kresge Auditorium at MIT. The concert, attended by Chomsky and dozens of his family and friends, featured music composed by Edward Manukyan and speeches by Chomsky's colleagues, including David Pesetsky of MIT and Gennaro Chierchia, head of the linguistics department at Harvard University.

In June 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which cited his "unfailing courage, critical analysis of power and promotion of human rights".

In 2011, Chomsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".

Bibliography

Filmography

''Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media'', Director: Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick (1992)

''Last Party 2000'', Director: Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan Leitch (2001)

''Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times'', Director: John Junkerman (2002)

''Distorted Morality—America's War On Terror?'', Director: John Junkerman (2003)

''Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause'' (TV), Director: Will Pascoe (2003)

''The Corporation'', Directors: Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott; Writer: Joel Bakan (2003)

''Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land'', Directors: Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff (2004)

''On Power, Dissent and Racism: A discussion with Noam Chomsky'', Journalist: Nicolas Rossier; Producers: Eli Choukri, Baraka Productions (2004)

''Lake of Fire'', Director: Tony Kaye (2006)

''American Feud: A History of Conservatives and Liberals'', Director: Richard Hall (2008)

''Chomsky & Cie'' Director: Olivier Azam (out in 2008)

''An Inconvenient Tax'', Director: Christopher P. Marshall (out in 2009)

''The Money Fix,'' Director: Alan Rosenblith (2009)

''Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space'', Director: Denis Delestrac (2010)

''Article 12: Waking up in a surveillance society'', Director: Juan Manuel Biaiñ (2010)

See also

American philosophy

Axiom of categoricity

Chomskybot

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"

English studies

Knowledge worker

List of American philosophers

Important publications in computability

''The Anti-Chomsky Reader''

References

External links

chomsky.info official website

Noam Chomsky at MIT

Noam Chomsky articles on libcom.org

Noam Chomsky at ''Democracy Now!''

Column archive at ''The Guardian''

Articles and videos featuring Noam Chomsky at AnarchismToday.org

;Interviews and articles

Talks by Noam Chomsky at A-Infos Radio Project

Interview about Human Rights by scholars (English with French subtitles) – 2009

Chomsky media files at the Internet Archive

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Alyssa McDonald on ''New Statesman'', September 2010.

The Real News (TRNN) ">Noam Chomsky Interviews on The Real News (TRNN)

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance – discussion on the "Bush doctrine" and its implications, C-SPAN, Feb 2004

Philosophies of Language & Politics – talk at The Commonwealth Club, October 2009

Thought Economics Interviews Noam Chomsky – Noam Chomsky interviewed on global democracy, April 2011

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Coordinates	30°19′10″N81°39′36″N
name	Ralph Nader
alma mater	Princeton University, Harvard University
birth date	February 27, 1934
birth place
party	Independent
otherparty	Green (affiliated non-member)Reform (affiliated non-member)Peace & Freedom (affiliated non-member)Natural Law (affiliated non-member)Populist Party of Maryland (created to support him in 2004)Vermont Progressive Party (affiliated non-member)
occupation	Attorney, consumer advocate, and political activist
religion	Christian
signature	Ralph Nader Signature.svg
website	nader.org
branch	United States Army
serviceyears	1959
rank	}}

Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is a Lebanese American progressive political activist. Nader is a five-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. He is also an author, lecturer, and attorney.

Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.

Nader came to prominence after publishing his book ''Unsafe at Any Speed'', a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked ''Unsafe at Any Speed'' 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.

Some people claim that Nader acted as a third-party spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.

Background and early career

Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon. His family's native language is Arabic, and he has spoken it along with English since childhood. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant where he talked politics with his customers.

Nader graduated from The Gilbert School in 1951, followed by Princeton University four years later and then Harvard Law School. He served six months on active duty in the United States Army in 1959, then became a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a professor of history and government at the University of Hartford from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, Nader moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and also advised a United States Senate subcommittee on car safety. Nader has served on the faculty at the American University Washington College of Law.

Automobile safety activism

Nader's first consumer safety articles appeared in the ''Harvard Law Record'', a student publication of Harvard Law School, but he first criticized the automobile industry in an article he wrote for ''The Nation'' in 1959 called "The Safe Car You Can't Buy."

In 1965, Nader wrote ''Unsafe at Any Speed'', a book which claimed that many American automobiles were unsafe. The first chapter, "The Sporty Corvair - The One-Car Accident," pertained to the Corvair manufactured by the Chevrolet division of General Motors, which had been involved in accidents involving spins and rollovers. There were over 100 lawsuits pending against GM in connection with accidents involving the popular compact car. These lawsuits provided the initial material for Nader's investigations into the safety of the car.

A 1972 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration safety commission report conducted by Texas A&M; University concluded that the 1960–1963 Corvairs possessed no greater potential for loss of control than its contemporaries in extreme situations. Additionally, according to ''Crash Course'' by Paul Ingrassia, Corvairs were environmentally friendly due to their smaller size and lighter weight, and Nader's safety-focused activism negatively affected the cause for eco-efficiency. However, former GM executive John DeLorean asserted in ''On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors'' (1979) that Nader's criticisms were valid.

In early March 1966, several media outlets, including ''The New Republic'' and ''The New York Times'', reported that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations. Nader sued the company for invasion of privacy and settled the case for $284,000. Nader's lawsuit against GM was ultimately decided by the New York Court of Appeals, whose opinion in the case expanded tort law to cover "overzealous surveillance." Nader used the proceeds from the lawsuit to start the pro-consumer Center for Study of Responsive Law.

Nader's advocacy of automobile safety and the publicity generated by the publication of ''Unsafe at Any Speed'', along with concern over escalating nationwide traffic fatalities, contributed to the unanimous passage of the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. The act established the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and marked a historic shift in responsibility for automobile safety from the consumer to the manufacturer. The legislation mandated a series of safety features for automobiles, beginning with safety belts and stronger windshields.

Activism

Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader's work, came to DC to help him with other projects. They came to be known as "Nader's Raiders" and, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results:

''Nader's Raiders'' (Federal Trade Commission)

''Vanishing Air'' (National Air Pollution Control Administration)

''The Chemical Feast'' (Food and Drug Administration)

''The Interstate Commerce Omission'' (Interstate Commerce Commission)

''Old Age'' (nursing homes)

''The Water Lords'' (water pollution)

''Who Runs Congress?'' (Congress)

''Whistle Blowing'' (punishment of whistle blowers)

''The Big Boys'' (corporate executives)

''Collision Course'' (Federal Aviation Administration)

''No Contest'' (corporate lawyers)

''Destroy the Forest'' (Destruction of ecosystems worldwide)

''Operation: Nuclear'' (Making of a nuclear missile)

In 1971, Nader co-founded the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Public Citizen with fellow public interest lawyer Alan Morrison as an umbrella organization for these projects. Today, Public Citizen has over 225,000 members and investigates congressional, health, environmental, economic and other issues. Nader wrote, "The consumer must be protected at times from his own indiscretion and vanity."

In the 1970s and 1980s Nader was a key leader in the antinuclear power movement. "By 1976, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who later became allied with the environmental movement, 'stood as the titular head of opposition to nuclear energy'." The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group. It was probably the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters. The organization's main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power. Nader advocates the complete elimination of nuclear energy in favor of solar, tidal, wind and geothermal, citing environmental, worker safety, migrant labor, national security, disaster preparedness, foreign policy, government accountability and democratic governance issues to bolster his position.

Nader was also a prominent supporter of the Airline Deregulation Act.

Ecology

Nader spent much of 1970 pursuing a campaign to educate the public about ecology. Nader said that the rivers and lakes in America were extremely contaminated. He joked that "Lake Erie is now so contaminated you're advised to have a typhoid inoculation before you set sail on some parts of the lake."

He also added that river's state of contamination affected humans because many residents get their water supply from these contaminated rivers and lakes. "Cleveland takes its water supply from deep in the center of Lake Erie. How much longer is it going to get away with that?"

Nader told how some rivers are contaminated so badly that they can be lit on fire. "The Buffalo River is so full of petroleum residuals, it's been classified an official fire hazard by the City of Buffalo. We have the phenomenon now known as flammable water. The Cuyahoga River outside of Cleveland did catch fire last June, burning a base and some bridges. I often wonder what was in the minds of the firemen as they rushed to the scene of the action and pondered how to put this fire out. But we're heading in river after river: Connecticut River, Hudson River, Mississippi River, you name it. There's some rivers right outside of Boston, New Hampshire and Maine where if a person fell into 'em, I think he would dissolve before he drowned."

Non-profit organizations

Throughout his career, Nader has started or inspired a variety of nonprofit organizations, most of which he has maintained close associations with:

* Citizen Advocacy Center

* Citizens Utility Boards

* Congress Accountability Project

* Consumer Task Force For Automotive Issues

* Corporate Accountability Research Project

* Disability Rights Center

* Equal Justice Foundation

* Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights

* Georgia Legal Watch

* National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform

* National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest

* Pension Rights Center

* PROD (truck safety)

* Retired Professionals Action Group

* The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest

* 1969: Center for the Study of Responsive Law

PIRG>Public Interest Research Groups

* 1970: Center for Auto Safety

* 1970: Connecticut Citizen Action Group

* 1971: Aviation Consumer Action Project

* 1972: Clean Water Action Project

1972: Center for Women's Policy Studies

* 1973: Capitol Hill News Service

* 1980: ''Multinational Monitor'' (magazine covering multinational corporations)

* 1982: Trial Lawyers for Public Justice

* 1982: Essential Information (encourage citizen activism and do investigative journalism)

* 1983: Telecommunications Research and Action Center

* 1983: National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest

* 1988: Taxpayer Assets Project

* 1989: Princeton Project 55 (alumni public service)

* 1993: Appleseed Foundation (local change)

* 1994: Resource Consumption Alliance (conserve trees)

* 1995: Center for Insurance Research

* 1995: Consumer Project on Technology

* 1997: Government Purchasing Project (encourage purchase of safe products)

* 1998: Center for Justice & Democracy

* 1998: Organization for Competitive Markets

* 1998: American Antitrust Institute (ensure fair competition)

* 1998: Commercial Alert (protect family, community, and democracy from corporations)

* 1999: Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest

* 2000: Congressional Accountability Project (fight corruption in Congress)

* 2001: Citizen Works (promote NGO cooperation, build grassroots support, and start new groups)

* 2001: Democracy Rising (hold rallies to educate and empower citizens)

In 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen to work on other projects, lecturing on the growing "imperialism" of multinational corporations and of a dangerous convergence of corporate and government power.

Presidential campaigns

Ralph Nader has been a frequent contender in U.S. presidential elections, always as an independent candidate or a third party nominee. His activism on behalf of third parties goes back to 1958, when he wrote an article for the ''Harvard Law Record'' critiquing U.S. electoral law's systemic discrimination against them.

Presidential campaign history

1972

Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party in 1972. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in ''Esquire'' magazine in 1971. Psychologist Alan Rockway organized a "draft Ralph Nader for President" campaign in Florida on the New Party's behalf. Nader declined their offer to run that year; the New Party ultimately joined with the People's Party in running Benjamin Spock in the 1972 Presidential election. Spock had hoped Nader in particular would run, getting "some of the loudest applause of the evening" when mentioning him at the University of Alabama. Spock went on to try to recruit Nader for the party among over 100 others, and indicated he would be "delighted" to be replaced by any of them even after he accepted the nomination himself. Nader received one vote for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

1992

Nader stood in as a write-in for "none of the above" in both the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic and Republican Primaries and received 3,054 of the 170,333 Democratic votes and 3,258 of the 177,970 Republican votes cast. He was also a candidate in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic Primary, where he appeared at the top of the ballot (in some areas, he appeared on the ballot as an independent).

1996

Nader was drafted as a candidate for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket during the 1996 presidential election. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some states, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). However, many activists in the Green Party USA worked actively to campaign for Nader that year. Nader qualified for ballot status in 22 states, garnering 685,297 votes or 0.71% of the popular vote (fourth place overall), although the effort did make significant organizational gains for the party. He refused to raise or spend more than $5,000 on his campaign, presumably to avoid meeting the threshold for Federal Elections Commission reporting requirements; the unofficial Draft Nader committee could (and did) spend more than that, but the committee was legally prevented from coordinating in any way with Nader himself.

Nader received some criticism from gay rights supporters for calling gay rights "gonad politics" and stating that he was not interested in dealing with such matters. However, more recently, Nader has come out in support of same-sex marriage.

His 1996 running mates included: Anne Goeke (nine states), Deborah Howes (Oregon), Muriel Tillinghast (New York), Krista Paradise (Colorado), Madelyn Hoffman (New Jersey), Bill Boteler (Washington, D.C.), and Winona LaDuke (California and Texas).

2000

In the 2006 documentary ''An Unreasonable Man'', Nader describes how he was unable to get the views of his public interest groups heard in Washington, even by the Clinton Administration. Nader cites this as one of the primary reasons that he decided to actively run in the 2000 election as candidate of the Green Party, which had been formed in the wake of his 1996 campaign.

In June 2000 The Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) organized the national nominating convention that took place in Denver, Colorado, at which Greens nominated Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be their parties` candidates for President and Vice President.

On July 9, the Vermont Progressive Party nominated Nader, giving him ballot access in the state. On August 12, the United Citizens Party of South Carolina chose Ralph Nader as its presidential nominee, giving him a ballot line in the state.

In October 2000, at the largest Super Rally of his campaign, held in New York City's Madison Square Garden, 15,000 people paid $20 each to hear Mr. Nader speak. Nader's campaign rejected both parties as institutions dominated by corporate interests, stating that Al Gore and George W. Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum". A long list of notable celebrities spoke and performed at the event including Susan Sarandon, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith. The campaign also had some prominent union help: The California Nurses Association and the United Electrical Workers endorsed his candidacy and campaigned for him.

In 2000, Nader and his running mate Winona LaDuke received 2,883,105 votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote (third place overall), missing the 5 percent needed to qualify the Green Party for federally distributed public funding in the next election, yet qualifying the Greens for ballot status in many states.

Nader's votes in New Hampshire and Florida vastly exceeded the difference in votes between Gore and Bush, as did the votes of all alternative candidates. Exit polls showed New Hampshire staying close, and within the margin of error without Nader as national exit polls showed Nader's supporters choosing Gore over Bush by a large margin, well outside the margin of error. Winning either state would have given Gore the presidency, and while critics claim this shows Nader tipped the election to Bush, Nader has called that claim "a mantra — an assumption without data." Nader supporters argued that Gore was primarily responsible for his own loss. But Eric Alterman, perhaps Nader's most persistent critic, has regarded such arguments as beside the point: "One person in the world could have prevented Bush's election with his own words on the Election Day 2000." ''Nation'' columnist Alexander Cockburn cited Gore's failure to win over progressive voters in Florida who chose Nader, and congratulated those voters: "Who would have thought the Sunshine State had that many progressives in it, with steel in their spine and the spunk to throw Eric Alterman's columns into the trash can?" Nader's actual influence on the 2000 election is the subject of considerable discussion, and there is no consensus on Nader's impact on the outcome. Still others argued that even if Nader's constituents could have made the swing difference between Gore and Bush, the votes Nader garnered were not from the Democrats, but from Democrats, Republicans, and discouraged voters who would not have voted otherwise.

The "spoiler" controversy

In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book ''Crashing the Party'' and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all." (which would net a 13%, 12,665 votes, advantage for Gore over Bush.) Michael Moore at first argued that Florida was so close that votes for any of seven other candidates could also have switched the results, but in 2004 joined the view that Nader had helped make Bush president. When asked about claims of being a spoiler, Nader typically points to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that halted a Florida recount, Gore's loss in his home state of Tennessee, and the "quarter million Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida."

A study in 2002 by the Progressive Review found no correlation in pre-election polling numbers for Nader when compared to those for Gore. In other words, most of the changes in pre-election polling reflect movement between Bush and Gore rather than Gore and Nader, and they conclude from this that Nader was not responsible for Gore's loss.

An analysis conducted by Harvard Professor B.C. Burden in 2005 showed Nader did "play a pivotal role in determining who would become president following the 2000 election", but that:

"Contrary to Democrats’ complaints, Nader was not intentionally trying to throw the election. A spoiler strategy would have caused him to focus disproportionately on the most competitive states and markets with the hopes of being a key player in the outcome. There is no evidence that his appearances responded to closeness. He did, apparently, pursue voter support, however, in a quest to receive 5% of the popular vote."

However, Jonathan Chait of ''The American Prospect'' and ''The New Republic'' notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for.

Then there was the debate within the Nader campaign over where to travel in the waning days of the campaign. Some Nader advisers urged him to spend his time in uncontested states such as New York and California. These states – where liberals and leftists could entertain the thought of voting Nader without fear of aiding Bush – offered the richest harvest of potential votes. But, Martin writes, Nader – who emerges from this account as the house radical of his own campaign – insisted on spending the final days of the campaign on a whirlwind tour of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In other words, he chose to go where the votes were scarcest, jeopardizing his own chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, which he needed to gain federal funds in 2004.

When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for "his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash," and "the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician," and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore's environmental record and calling Nader's strategy "irresponsible." He wrote:

You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge... Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless.

2004

Nader announced on December 24, 2003, that he would not seek the Green Party's nomination for president in 2004, but did not rule out running as an independent candidate.

Meeting with John Kerry

Ralph Nader and Democratic candidate John Kerry held a widely publicized meeting early in the 2004 Presidential campaign, which Nader described in ''An Unreasonable Man''. Nader said that John Kerry wanted to work to win Nader's support and the support of Nader's voters. Nader then provided more than 20 pages of issues that he felt were important and he "put them on the table" for John Kerry. According to Nader the issues covered topics ranging from environmental, labor, healthcare, tax reform, corporate crime, campaign finance reform and various consumer protection issues. Nader reported that he asked John Kerry to choose any three of the issues and highlight them in his campaign and if Kerry would do this, he would refrain from the race. For example, Nader recommended taking up corporate welfare, corporate crime—which could attract many Republican voters, and labor law reform—which was felt Bush could never support given the corporate funding of his campaign. Several days passed and Kerry failed to adopt any of Nader's issues as benchmarks of his campaign, so on February 22, 2004, Nader announced on NBC that he would indeed run for president as an independent, saying, "There's too much power and wealth in too few hands."

A Kerry aide who had attended the meeting had a different recollection. "He made more the point that he had the ability to go after Bush in ways that we could not, He did not at all say to Kerry, 'I'm here to make you better on things.' That was not his tone at all."

The New York Times quoted Nader saying after the meeting "Gore was petrified wood, He was stiff as a board, he didn't want to have these kinds of meetings. He didn't want to have meetings like this when he was vice president three years before the election. Kerry is much more open." Nader himself said he had deliberately steered clear of disagreement, telling the Times, "When you go in looking for common ground, it takes up most of the time, doesn't it?"

The campaign

Nader's 2004 campaign ran on a platform consistent with the Green Party's positions on major issues, such as opposition to the war in Iraq. He has detailed the legal reasons George W. Bush and Dick Cheney fit the criteria for war criminals, and why they should have been immediately impeached.

Due to concerns about a possible spoiler effect as in 2000, many Democrats urged Nader to abandon his 2004 candidacy. The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, stated that Nader had a "distinguished career, fighting for working families," and that McAuliffe "would hate to see part of his legacy being that he got us eight years of George Bush." Nader replied to this, in filmed interviews for ''An Unreasonable Man'', by arguing that, "Voting for a candidate of one's choice is a Constitutional right, and the Democrats who are asking me not to run are, without question, seeking to deny the Constitutional rights of voters who are, by law, otherwise free to choose to vote for me." Nader's 2004 campaign theme song was "If You Gotta Ask" by Liquid Blue.

In May 2009, in a new book, ''Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny,'' Theresa Amato, who was Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, alleged that McAuliffe offered to pay off Nader to stop campaigning in certain states in 2004. This was confirmed by Nader, and neither McAuliffe nor his spokeswoman disputed the claim.

In the 2004 campaign, Democrats such as Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe asked that Nader return money donated to his campaign by Republicans who were well-known Bush supporters, such as billionaire Richard Egan. Nader's reaction to the request was to refuse to return any donations and he charged that the Democrats were attempting to smear him. Nader's vice-presidential running mate, Peter Camejo, supported the return of the money if it could be proved that "the aim of the wealthy GOP donors was to peel votes from Kerry." According to the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', Nader defended his keeping of the donations by saying that wealthy contributors "are human beings too."

Nader received 463,655 votes, for 0.38 percent of the popular vote, placing him in third place overall.

2008

In February 2007, Nader criticized Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as "a panderer and a flatterer." Asked on ''CNN Late Edition'' news program if he would run in 2008, Nader replied, "It's really too early to say...." Asked during a radio appearance to describe the former First Lady, Nader said, "Flatters, panders, coasting, front-runner, looking for a coronation ... She has no political fortitude." Some Greens started a campaign to draft Nader as their party's 2008 presidential candidate.

After some consideration, Nader announced on February 24, 2008, that he would run for President as an independent. His vice-presidential candidate was Matt Gonzalez.

Nader received 738,475 votes, for 0.56 percent of the popular vote, earning him a third place position in the overall election results.

Personal life

Nader has never married. Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. "He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn't have both," Croft recalled. "That's the kind of person he is. He couldn't have a wife — he's up all night reading the ''Congressional Record''."

Nader has been described as a Christian by ''The Washington Post''.

Personal finances

According to the mandatory fiscal disclosure report that he filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2000, Nader owned more than $3 million worth of stocks and mutual fund shares; his single largest holding was more than $1 million worth of stock in Cisco Systems, Inc. He also held between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares in the Magellan Fund. Nader owned no car or real estate directly in 2000, and said that he lived on US $25,000 a year, giving most of his stock earnings to many of the over four dozen non-profit organizations he had founded.

Television appearances

In 1988, Nader appeared on ''Sesame Street'' as "a person in your neighborhood." The verse of the song began "A consumer advocate is a person in your neighborhood." Nader's appearance on the show was memorable because it was the only time that the grammar of the last line of the song—"A person who you meet each day"—was questioned and changed in the show. Nader refused to sing the prescriptively improper line, and so a compromise was reached, resulting in Ralph Nader singing the last line as a solo with the modified words: "A person ''whom'' you meet each day." In the same episode, Nader tests "Bob"'s sweater, with permission, and destroys it, telling Bob "Your aunt . . . knitted you a lemon!"

He hosted an episode of NBC's ''Saturday Night Live'' in 1977 and appeared in a 2000 episode.

He was interviewed on ''Da Ali G Show'' by Sacha Baron Cohen.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Nader appeared on NBC's ''Meet The Press'', CNBC with John Harwood, CNN with Rick Sanchez, PBS's ''The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer'', and Fox News Channel with Shepard Smith. He was interviewed by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' in 2008. Also that year he appeared on ''Real Time with Bill Maher''. In 2011, he appeared multiple times on the Fox Business Network primetime show Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano, including a January 19, 2011 joint appearance with Ron Paul.

Works

See also

Shafeek Nader

Critical Mass (Anti-nuclear group)

Notes

''An Unreasonable Man'' (2006). ''An Unreasonable Man'' is a documentary film about Ralph Nader that appeared at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

Burden, Barry C. (2005). Ralph Nader's Campaign Strategy in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election 2005, ''American Politics Research'' 33:672-99.

''Ralph Nader: Up Close'' This film blends archival footage and scenes of Nader and his staff at work in Washington with interviews with Nader's family, friends and adversaries, as well as Nader himself. Written, directed and produced by Mark Litwak and Tiiu Lukk, 1990, color, 72 mins. Narration by Studs Terkel. Broadcast on PBS. Winner, Sinking Creek Film Festival; Best of Festival, Baltimore Int'l Film Festival; Silver Plaque, Chicago Int'l Film Festival, Silver Apple, National Educational Film & Video Festival.

Bear, Greg, "Eon" — the novel includes a depiction of a future group called the "Naderites" who follow Ralph Nader's humanistic teachings.

Martin, Justin. ''Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon.'' Perseus Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-7382-0563-X

References

Further reading

''What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?'' by Jurgen Vsych, Wroughten Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9749879-2-7

''Abuse of Trust: A Report on Ralph Nader's Network'' by Dan Burt, 1982. ISBN 978-0-89526-661-3

''Citizen Nader'' by Charles McCarry Saturday Review Press, 1972 ISBN 0-8415-0163-7

''The Investigation of Ralph Nader'' by Thomas Whiteside 1972.

External links

Nader.org ''official website''

Nader / Gonzalez '08 campaign website

;Articles and interviews

"How Winstedites Kept Their Integrity," article by Nader in the September 1963 issue of ''The Freeman''

Ralph Nader Goes to Washington... Again – The PR.com Interview

Digital History Ralph Nader

Nader, Rare Among Candidates May 5, 2008

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Coordinates	30°19′10″N81°39′36″N
Name	Rand Paul
Jr/sr	United States Senator
State	Kentucky
Term start	January 3, 2011
Preceded	Jim Bunning
Alongside	Mitch McConnell
Birth date	January 07, 1963
Birth place	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Ophthalmologist
Alma mater	Baylor University(1981–1984) Duke University (M.D., 1988)
Religion	Presbyterian(Baptized Episcopalian)
Website	Senator Rand PaulRand Paul 2010
Residence	Bowling Green, Kentucky
Party	Republican
Spouse	Kelley Ashby Paul(m. 1990)
Relations	Ron PaulCarol Wells Paul(parents)
Children	William, Robert, and Duncan }}

Randal Howard "Rand" Paul (born January 7, 1963) is the junior United States Senator for Kentucky. He is a member of the Republican Party. A member of the Tea Party movement, he describes himself as a "constitutional conservative" and a libertarian. He is the son of Republican Congressman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas and had never previously held political office. Paul first received national attention in 2008 when making political speeches on behalf of his father. Rand Paul is the first United States Senator in history to serve alongside a parent in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A graduate of the Duke University School of Medicine, Paul has been a practicing ophthalmologist in Bowling Green, Kentucky, since 1993, and established his own clinic in December 2007. In 1994, he founded Kentucky Taxpayers United, of which he is still the chairman.

In August 2009, Paul officially announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky. Paul won the Republican Party's nomination in May 2010, defeating Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. In the General Election, Paul defeated Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway on November 2, 2010. As a supporter of the Tea Party movement, Paul has been vocal in advocating for term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and the Read the Bills Act, in addition to the widespread reduction of federal spending and taxation. He has gained prominence for his independent positions on many political issues, often clashing with both Republicans and Democrats.

Early life and education

Randal Howard Paul was born on January 7, 1963 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Carol Wells Paul and Ron Paul. Paul's father is a physician and U.S. Representative of Texas's 14th congressional district. The middle child of five, his siblings are Ronald "Ronnie" Paul Jr., Lori Paul Pyeatt, Robert Paul and Joy Paul-LeBlanc. Paul was baptized in the Episcopal Church and became a Christian as a teenager. Despite his father's libertarian views and strong support for individual rights, the novelist Ayn Rand was not the inspiration for Paul's first name; he went by "Randy" while growing up. His wife shortened his name to "Rand".

The Paul family moved to Lake Jackson, Texas in 1968, where Rand was raised and Ron began his medical practice and for an extent of time was the only obstetrician in Brazoria County. When Paul was 13, his father was elected to the United States House of Representatives. In his teenage years, Paul studied the Austrian economists that his father respected, as well as Ayn Rand. Paul went to Brazoswood High School and was on the swimming team and played defensive back on the football team. Paul attended Baylor University from fall 1981 to summer 1984. Paul was enrolled in the honors program at Baylor, and had scored approximately in the 90th percentile on the Medical College Admission Test. During Paul's time at Baylor, he was involved in the swim team and Young Conservatives of Texas and was a member of a secret organization known as the NoZe Brotherhood. Paul left Baylor early when he was accepted into the Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree in 1988 and completed his residency in 1993.

Personal life

In Atlanta, Paul met Kelley Ashby, a Rhodes College English major. Paul and Ashby were married on October 20, 1990, and moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, less than from her hometown of Russellville, Kentucky, in 1993.

Kelley Paul is a freelance writer, and she manages payroll and marketing communications for Paul's surgical practice. The couple have three sons: William, Duncan, and Robert.

Medical career

Paul has held a state-issued medical license since moving to Bowling Green in 1993. He received his first job from Dr. John Downing of Downing McPeak Vision Centers, which brought him to Bowling Green after completing his residency. Paul worked for Downing for about five years before parting ways. Afterwards, he went to work at the Gilbert Graves Clinic, a private medical group in Bowling Green, for 10 years before creating his own practice in a converted one-story house across the street from Downing's office. After his election to the U.S. Senate, Paul merged his practice with Downing's medical practice. Paul has had two malpractice lawsuits filed against him since 1993. Paul was cleared in one case and the other was settled for $50,000. Regardless, his medical work has been praised by Downing and Paul has medical privileges at two Bowling Green hospitals. Paul specializes in cataract and glaucoma surgeries, LASIK procedures, and corneal transplants.

As a member of the Bowling Green Noon Lions Club, Paul founded the Southern Kentucky Lions Eye Clinic to help provide eye surgery and exams for those who cannot afford to pay. He is a regular presenter at the annual Men's Health and Safety Day conference held by The Medical Center of Bowling Green since 1998. In 1999 Paul founded the Non-profit organization National Board of Ophthalmology (NBO).

Board certification

In 2010 the ''Louisville Courier-Journal'' reported that Paul, who described himself as a "board-certified" ophthalmologist, was not certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology (ABO). In 1995, Paul passed the American Board of Ophthalmology boards earning his certification under the ABO for a term of one decade. In 1997, after a dispute with the American Board of Ophthalmology over recertification requirements, Paul, along with 200 ophthalmologists formed the National Board of Ophthalmology (NBO). A spokesperson for the American Board of Medical Specialties stated: "He [Paul] is not board-certified."

Paul's ABO certification lapsed on December 31, 2005, and Paul has since been certified by the NBO. ABO administrator Beth Ann Slembarski says that over 95 percent of the nation’s practicing ophthalmologists have American Board of Ophthalmology certification. Regardless of his additional certifications, Paul has been licensed by the state to practice medicine in Kentucky since 1993, and his license is in good standing with no history of disciplinary action. The Courier-Journal reported: "There is no indication that Paul isn't qualified to practice ophthalmology."

Political activism

As founder and chairman of the anti-tax organization Kentucky Taxpayers United (KTU) since 1994, Paul regularly presents "taxpayers' friend" awards to state legislators. KTU, which regards itself as nonpartisan, but is criticized for being ideological and conservative, examines legislator records on taxation and spending to inform voters where their own lawmakers stand on the issues. Paul's editorial commentary on behalf of KTU has been published and recognized in the ''Kentucky Post''.

KTU sponsors the Taxpayer's Pledge of Americans for Tax Reform, encouraging politicians to pledge publicly to vote uniformly against tax raises. Nine of fifteen Northern Kentucky legislators signed the pledge, such as Senator Dick Roeding and Representative Royce Adams in 1996. In 2000, these legislators considered a hotel room tax hike (favored by Governor Paul Patton for helping expand the Dr. Albert B. Sabin Convention Center in nearby Cincinnati), even though the increase might "incur the wrath of Paul's group," as two newspapers put it.

Paul stated that Patton's argument for "revenue recovery" was merely a euphemism for taxes and said that KTU would fight reelection of any pledge-breakers; Adams requested in writing that Paul's group release him from his pledge, stating that it only applied to his first term. By the close of session in April, the tax increase had failed, although Patton had achieved most of his intended budget; Paul stated legislators were pressured to finalize the budget by deadline rather than to "face accusations of shutting down government."

Paul often speaks on his father's behalf, and he and his son William attended the third Republican presidential debate of 2007 in New Hampshire, as well as campaigned door-to-door in the state for his father. At a New Hampshire rally with 250 in attendance (plus 30 members of his own family), Paul repeated a campaign meme by pretending to take a call from Rudy Giuliani during his remarks, and joking that Giuliani needed campaigners and wanted to borrow the Paul family.

On December 16, 2007, the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Paul spoke at Faneuil Hall in favor of small government principles, calling for what CNN termed a "modern day revolution." He continued campaigning across the country for his father in 2008, traveling as far as Montana.

Paul has authored a book entitled ''The Tea Party Goes to Washington'', released on February 22, 2011, which defends the Tea Party movement.

Electoral history

Primary campaign

In the beginning of 2009, Paul was the focus of an online grassroots movement to draft him in a bid to replace beleaguered Republican Kentucky senator Jim Bunning. The news of his potential candidacy became a topic of national interest and was discussed in the ''Los Angeles Times'' and locally in the Kentucky press. Commenting on Paul's possible candidacy, Congressman Ron Paul noted that "Should Senator Bunning decide not to run, I think Rand would make a great U.S. Senator."

On May 1, 2009, Paul officially confirmed that if Bunning, whose fundraising in 2009 has matched his poor numbers in opinion polling for the 2010 election, declined to seek a third term, he would almost certainly run in the Republican Party primary to succeed him, and formed an exploratory committee soon after, while still promising to stay out of the race if Bunning had ultimately decided to run for re-election. Paul made this announcement on MSNBC's ''The Rachel Maddow Show'', though the news was first broken by a local Kentucky news site.

On July 28, 2009, Bunning announced that he would not run for re-election, after facing insufficient fundraising. This announcement left only Paul and Secretary of State Trey Grayson as the remaining candidates for the Republican nomination, with Paul announcing on August 5, 2009 that he would officially run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican. The announcement was made through a series of national TV events, radio, and other programs, as well as through newspapers in Kentucky.

Early fundraising success

On August 20, 2009, Paul's grassroots planned a moneybomb to kick off his campaign for United States Senate. The official campaign took in $433,509 in 24 hours. According to Paul, This set a new record in Kentucky's political fundraising history in a 24-hour period.

A second "moneybomb" was held on September 23, 2009, to counter a D.C. fundraiser being held for primary opponent Trey Grayson, by 23 Republican United States Senators, 17 of whom voted for the bank bailout. The theme was a UFC "fight" between Paul and "We the People" vs. Trey Grayson and the "D.C. Insiders." The money bomb ended up raising $186,276 for Paul in 24 hours on September 23; bringing Paul's Senate campaign's total raised to over one million. Later in the campaign, Paul claimed his pledge to not take money from lobbyist and Senators who voted for the bailout was only a "primary pledge" and Paul later held a DC fundraiser with the same Senators who were the target of the September 23, 2009 "moneybomb." Paul ended up raising some $3 million during the primary period.

Primary victory

Although Grayson was considered the frontrunner in July 2009, Paul found success characterizing Grayson as a "career politician" and challenging Grayson's conservatism. Paul ran an ad in February that made an issue out of Grayson's September 2008 admission that he voted for Bill Clinton when he was 20 years old. Although the Paul campaign later removed the video from YouTube, Paul's Democratic general election competitor put it back up on October 20 after Paul had taken exception to the Democrat making an issue out of Paul's own college-age actions. James Dobson, a Christian evangelical figure, endorsed Grayson on April 26 based on the advice of what Dobson described as "senior members of the GOP", but on May 3 the Paul campaign announced that Dobson had changed his endorsement to Paul after Paul and some Paul supporters had lobbied Dobson insisting on Paul's social conservative bona fides.

On May 18 Paul won the Republican Senatorial primary by a 23.4% margin, meaning he would face the Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, in the November 2 general election.

General campaign

On June 28, 2010, Rand Paul supporters held their first post-primary online fundraising drive, this time promoted as a "money blast."

BP oil spill comments

On May 21, 2010, Paul generated some controversy by characterizing statements made by Obama administration officials regarding the BP oil spill cleanup as sounding "un-American". Paul said: }} Paul may have been referring to a statement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who said "our job is basically to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum to carry out the responsibilities that they have, both under the law and contractually to move forward and to stop this spill." Salazar's remark was later slightly misquoted as "boot on the throat" by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs clarified at the same press conference, when asked if this metaphor did not imply hostility to BP, "I think the President accurately conveyed in his remarks yesterday that we are going to do everything humanly possible, and ensure that BP is doing everything humanly possible, to deal with this as comprehensively and as quickly as they can."

Private property and civil rights

Paul criticized the ''Bowling Green Daily News'' on May 30, 2002 for supporting the Fair Housing Act. He explained that "a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin." On May 19, 2010, Paul stated that he favors 9 out of 10 titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but had he been a senator during 1960s, he would have raised some questions on the constitutionality of Title II of the Act, which prohibits private businesses who provide public accommodations from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or national origin against their customers, arguing that it infringes upon constitutional freedoms. Paul stated on National Public Radio, "I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism". Paul favors community and neighborhood pressure to persuade private businesses, rather than federal laws that he argued might violate the constitution. Paul said he abhors racism, and he would have marched with Martin Luther King Jr. to repeal Jim Crow Laws. Paul's comments on Title II of Civil Rights Act of 1964 stirred controversy and brought concern among Republican party insiders about his viability in the general election. Paul later released a statement declaring that he would have voted for the Act and stated "unequivocally ... that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964". Paul stating that while he "abhors racism," he doesn't like the idea of the federal government determining who a business may serve. Amid a flurry of controversy, Paul became the first American politician to cancel an appearance on ''Meet the Press'' in their 64-year history. Additionally, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, publicly denounced him, saying that Paul's opposition to the Civil Rights Act is a "misplaced" philosophy for the 21st Century.

Paul addressed his feelings about intentions of the legislation relating to public offices, stating that he "overwhelmingly agrees with the intent of the [Civil Rights Act] which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws," and that Constitutional challenges to the law have been settled by the courts.

College activities

On August 9, 2010, an article was published in ''GQ'' profiling Paul's activities as an undergraduate student at Baylor University. The article noted that during Paul's time at Baylor, he became a member of the NoZe Brotherhood, a college secret society described as a cross between Yale's Skull & Bones and the Harvard Lampoon. The group had an anti-authoritarian bent that often mocked Baylor's strict atmosphere of religiosity, and two years before Paul's arrival, the group had been banned from campus for being, in the words of Baylor's president at the time, "lewd, crude, and grossly sacrilegious." The article also included an account from an anonymous woman who said she was on the swim team with Paul, describing an incident in which Paul and one of his friends from the NoZe Brotherhood had tied her up, blindfolded her, ordered her to take bong hits, and took her to a creek where she was urged to worship a deity called "Aqua Buddha". The woman, who did not allege any wrongdoing on Paul's part, called the incident "sadistic" and "messing with my mind", but also a "joke". Nevertheless, the story received widespread media coverage. A few days later, the woman clarified that she was not physically forced to do anything and that she played along with the prank, and said the whole thing had been blown out of proportion. Coverage of the story died down after Paul denied he had kidnapped anyone or forced anyone to take drugs or worship a so-called "Aqua Buddha". However, coverage of the event was subsequently revived in mid-October when ''Politico'' ran a new story on the topic, this one quoting articles from a 1983 NoZe newsletter as well as a different classmate's claim that in those days "Randy smoked pot, he made fun of Baptists." Within the week, Paul's opponent ran a TV ad asking why Paul had belonged to a group that had mocked Christianity and Christ and had tied up a woman and made her worship "Aqua Buddha". The story received widespread national media attention after a contentious October 17 debate between Paul and Conway in which the two candidates sparred extensively over the accusations and exchanged many insults. Paul refused to shake his opponent's hand after the debate had concluded.

Endorsements

Paul has secured endorsements from several public figures and political organizations. They include the Downsize DC Foundation, Concerned Women for America, Gun Owners of America, Steve Forbes, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, James Dobson, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Cathy Bailey, Jim Bunning, Erick Erickson, National Federation of Independent Business, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, National Right to Life, US Chamber of Commerce, National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition, Mike Huckabee, and Tony Perkins/FRC Action PAC.

U.S. Senate career

Tenure

Paul was sworn in on January 5, 2011 along with his father, marking the first time in congressional history that a child served in the Senate while the parent simultaneously served in the House of Representatives. He was assigned to serve on the Energy and Natural Resources, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and Small Business committees. Paul also formed the Senate Tea Party Caucus with Jim DeMint and Mike Lee as its inaugural members. Paul’s first legislative proposal was to cut $500 billion from federal spending in one year. This proposal includes cutting the Department of Education by 83 percent and the Department of Homeland Security by 43 percent, as well as folding the Department of Energy into the Department of Defense and eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Seven independent agencies would be eliminated and food stamps would be cut by 30 percent. Under Paul’s proposal, defense spending would be reduced by 6.5 percent and international aid would be eliminated. He later proposed a five-year budget plan that he believed would balance the budget.

In February, Paul was one of two Republicans to vote against extending three key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act (roving wiretaps, searches of business records, and conducting surveillance of "lone wolves" — individuals not linked to terrorist groups). In May, he remained the last senator opposing the PATRIOT Act, and was ultimately defeated on May 26.

On March 2, Paul was one of nine senators to vote against a stopgap bill that cut $4 billion from the budget and temporarily prevent a government shutdown, citing that it did not cut enough from the budget. One week later, Paul voted against the Democratic and Republican budget proposals to keep funding the federal government, citing that both bills did not cut enough spending. Both bills failed to pass the senate. He later voted against stopgap measures on March 17 and April 8, both of which passed the senate. On April 14, Paul was one of 19 senators to vote against a budget that cut $38.5 billion from the budget and fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. Paul voiced opposition to U.S. intervention in the Libyan civil war and has criticized President Obama for not gaining congressional consent for Operation Odyssey Dawn. During the debt ceiling crisis, Paul stated that he would only support raising the debt ceiling if a balanced budget amendment was enacted. Paul was a supporter of the Cut, Cap and Balance Act, which was tabled by the Democrats. On August 3, Paul voted against a bill that would raise the debt ceiling.

Committee assignments

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

*Subcommittee on Energy

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

*Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

*Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight

*Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

*Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Political views

Paul supports term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and the Read the Bills Act, in addition to the widespread reduction of federal spending and taxation. He has gained prominence for his independent positions on many political issues, often clashing with both Republicans and Democrats.

Abortion and bioethics

Paul is opposed to abortion and supports a Human Life Amendment and a Life at Conception Act. He also opposes abortion in cases of rape and incest, but supports use of the morning-after pill. He opposes federal funding for abortion. He takes a states' rights position, favoring the overturn of ''Roe v. Wade'' and allowing states to decide on the legality of abortions without federal involvement.

According to the Paul campaign, Paul received a 100% pro-life score on a Kentucky Right to Life survey and indicated on the survey that he opposed human cloning. This was disputed by Kentucky Right to Life, however, who endorsed Paul's primary opponent instead and claimed that Paul did not, in fact, answer the cloning question.

Campaign finance reform

Paul opposes the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and has called it a "dangerous piece of legislation". Instead, he supports regulating the contracts given out by Congress and placing limits on corporations receiving government contracts. Paul opposes legislation limiting the amount of money individuals, corporations, and organizations can give to candidates. Additionally, Paul has proposed "mandating a clause in all federal contracts over $1 million that requires the recipient to pledge not to lobby government or contribute to campaigns during the terms of the contract."

Civil liberties

Paul opposes the USA PATRIOT Act, including warrantless searches and breach of individual privacy.

Economics and tax cuts

Paul has been a longtime opponent of the bank and auto industry bailouts.

He also opposes the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the Federal Reserve's control of the money supply and interest rates. He has advocated allowing the free market to regulate interest rates, and supports Congress' constitutional role in controlling the money supply. Paul endorses H.R. 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, a bill, introduced by his father, mandating an audit of the Federal Reserve. Although Paul would abolish the Federal Reserve, he supports transparency and accountability of the semi-private institution. Additionally, Paul opposes inflation and supports "restoring the value of the dollar that has devalued by approximately 95% since the Federal Reserve's inception in 1913".

Paul supports tax cuts and a Balanced Budget Amendment, and has criticized both Republicans and Democrats on deficit spending.

In October 2010 the Kentucky coordinator for Americans For Fair Taxation stated that Paul would "vote for the FairTax", which would replace federal income taxes with a 23% national consumption tax and includes rebate provisions for taxes on all money spent up to the poverty line. The Associated Press confirmed with a representative of the Paul campaign that the statement fairly reflected Paul's position, but the next day Paul distanced himself from the proposal, saying that while he supports tax reform in general, he hasn't committed to the proposal, adding that it is "a little complicated to administer" and that "it would probably work better at the state level than the national."

Education

Paul supports returning control of education to local communities and parents and thus eliminating the federal Department of Education, but he says that some functions of the Department of Education, such as disbursing student loans and Pell Grants, should be transferred to other departments instead of being eliminated. Paul opposes federal regulation of homeschooling.

Energy

Paul supports allowing the free market to compete and dictate which forms of energy to use. He opposes subsidizing energy companies, and would support allowing tax breaks for companies that produce alternative energy such as wind, solar, or geothermal. He has said that subsidizing the energy industry will only add incentive for companies to lobby the federal government.

Health care

Paul opposes federal government involvement in health care. He would repeal the HMO Act of 1973 that "drives a wedge between the patient and [one's] doctor". He believes that government has driven up the cost of health care and causes the quality and coverage to decrease. Paul would support a free market approach to health care, including tax deductions for medical expenses. He opposes federal regulations discouraging businesses from providing coverage. He supports Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). On Medicare, Paul has suggested higher deductibles as well as changes to premiums or eligibility rules as ways to address what he sees as the program's looming financial problems, saying "You want to have more participation by the person who's receiving the entitlement... by that I mean that they need to be more involved with some sort of economic transaction every time they use their entitlement, and that means they have to bear more of the burden." Paul also stated that he does not support such changes for current retirees or people nearing retirement.

Illegal immigration

Paul has proposed adding security to the border by installing an electronic fence and helicopter stations to respond to breaches. He opposes birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. Paul has said that courts should review the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," to conclude whether or not it should apply to the children of illegal immigrants. If court challenges fail, Paul would support a constitutional amendment that would deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States.

Medical marijuana

Paul believes the issue of medical marijuana is a states' rights issue and that the federal government should not interfere. In August, the Associated Press reported that Paul said he was opposed to the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but the Paul campaign says he was misquoted. Though Paul describes himself as a "social conservative," he was nonetheless described by the AP reporter as holding "libertarian leanings on drugs" and believing some drug sentences were too harsh.

Foreign policy and national defense

Paul holds that the primary Constitutional function of the federal government is national defense, and that the greatest national security threat is the lack of border security. He supports eliminating issuance of visas to people from “about ten rogue nations.” He supports trying terrorists caught on the battlefield in military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Paul believes that when the United States goes to war, Congress must declare war as mandated by the United States Constitution.

During his 2010 Senate campaign Paul questioned the idea that U.S. Middle East policy is "killing more terrorists than it creates." He supported the war in Afghanistan and opposed rapid withdrawal from Iraq. He says he would have voted against the invasion of Iraq and questioned whether the intelligence was manipulated."

He also spoke against U.S. overseas military bases.

Same-sex marriage

Paul opposes same-sex marriage, but believes the issue should be left to the States to decide.

Second Amendment

Paul would oppose all gun control legislation, a position he says is supported by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

References

External links

Senator Rand Paul ''official U.S. Senate website''

Official Campaign Website

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