Portal:Socialism

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Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can be public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element, and is considered left-wing. Different types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.

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

While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, several scholars posit that in practice, the model functioned as a form of state capitalism. Several academics, political commentators, and scholars have noted that some Western countries, such as France, Sweden and the United Kingdom, have been governed by socialist parties or have mixed economies sometimes referred to as "democratic socialist". Following the end of the Cold War and the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries have moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world, while many former socialist politicians and political parties embraced "Third Way" politics, remaining committed to equality and welfare, while abandoning public ownership and class-based politics. Socialism experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s, most prominently in the form of democratic socialism. (Full article...)

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Scientific socialism is the term first used by Friedrich Engels to describe the social-political-economic theory first pioneered by Karl Marx. The purported reason why this form of socialism is "scientific socialism" (as opposed to "utopian socialism") is that it is said to be based on the scientific method, in that its theories are held to an empirical standard, observations are essential to its development, and these can result in changes and/or falsification of elements of the theory.

Although the term socialism has come to mean specifically a combination of political and economic science, it is also applicable to a broader area of science encompassing what is now considered sociology and the humanities. The distinction between utopian and scientific socialism originated with Marx, who criticized the utopian characteristics of French socialism and English and Scottish political economy. Engels later argued that utopian socialists failed to recognize why it was that socialism arose in the historical context that it did, that it arose as a response to new social contradictions of a new mode of production, i.e. capitalism. In recognizing the nature of socialism as the resolution of this contradiction and applying a thorough scientific understanding of capitalism, Engels asserted that socialism had broken free from a primitive state and become a science. This shift in socialism was seen as complementary to shifts in contemporary biology sparked by Charles Darwin and the understanding of evolution by natural selection; Marx and Engels saw this new understanding of biology as essential to the new understanding of socialism, and vice versa.

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William Morris by Frederick Hollyer, 1887

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, fantasy writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he helped win acceptance of socialism in fin de siècle Great Britain.

Morris was born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy middle-class family. He came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying classics at Oxford University, where he joined the Birmingham Set. After university, he married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships with Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and with Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed Red House in Kent where Morris lived from 1859 to 1865, before moving to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others, which became highly fashionable and much in demand. The firm profoundly influenced interior decoration throughout the Victorian period, with Morris designing tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, and stained glass windows. In 1875, he assumed total control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various socialism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Arabic letters "Lam" and "Alif" reading "Lā" (Arabic for "No!") are a symbol of Islamic Socialism in Turkey. (from Socialism)
Image 2FAI militia during the Spanish Revolution in 1936 (from Socialism)
Image 3Edward Carpenter, philosopher and activist who was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party as well as in the early LGBTI western movements (from Socialism)
Image 4Statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in Alexanderplatz, Berlin (from History of socialism)
Image 5Leonid Brezhnev (from History of socialism)
Image 6Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of French socialism (from History of socialism)
Image 7Salvador Allende, President of Chile and member of the Socialist Party of Chile, whose presidency and life were ended by a CIA-backed military coup (from Socialism)
Image 8Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist Vladimir Lenin in1920 (from Socialism)
Image 9Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–1991) (from Socialism)
Image 10Mikhail Bakunin speaking to members of the IWA at the Basel Congress in 1869 (from History of socialism)
Image 11Barricades Boulevard Voltaire, Paris during the uprising known as the Paris Commune (from History of socialism)
Image 12Antonio Gramsci, member of the Italian Socialist Party and later leader and theorist of the Communist Party of Italy (from Socialism)
Image 13Pierre Leroux founder of the Parisian newspaper Le Globe in which the term socialism first appeared (from History of socialism)
Image 14Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden for the Swedish Social Democratic Party (from Socialism)
Image 15Alexis Tsipras, socialist Prime Minister of Greece who led the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) through a victory in the January 2015 Greek legislative election (from History of socialism)
Image 16The writings of Karl Marx provided the basis for the development of Marxist political theory and Marxian economics. (from Socialism)
Image 17Charles Fourier, influential early French socialist thinker (from Socialism)
Image 18Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana and theorist of African socialism, on a Soviet Union commemorative postage stamp (from History of socialism)
Image 19Einar Gerhardsen, Prime Minister of Norway for the Labour Party (from Socialism)
Image 20Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin opposed the Marxist aim of dictatorship of the proletariat in favour of universal rebellion and allied himself with the federalists in the First International before his expulsion by the Marxists (from History of socialism)
Image 21Rosa Luxemburg, prominent Marxist revolutionary and martyr of the German Spartacist uprising in 1919 (from Socialism)
Image 22Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, main theorist of mutualism and influential French socialist thinker (from Socialism)
Image 23Mikhail Bakunin speaking to members of the International Workingmen's Association at the Basel Congress in 1869 (from Socialism)
Image 24Eduard Bernstein
Image 25The celebration of the election of the Commune on 28 March 1871—the Paris Commune was a major early implementation of socialist ideas. (from Socialism)
Image 26Noam Chomsky, an American libertarian socialist (from History of socialism)
Image 27Mao Zedong in 1959 (from History of socialism)
Image 28The first anarchist journal to use the term libertarian was Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social, published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque, the first recorded person to describe himself as libertarian. (from Socialism)
Image 29Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, early French socialist (from Socialism)
Image 30New Harmony, a utopian attempt as proposed by Robert Owen (from History of socialism)
Image 31Karl Marx in 1875 (from Socialism)
Image 32Encounter between Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Che Guevara in Cuba, three radical icons of the 1960s (from History of socialism)
Image 33Socialists in Union Square, New York City on May Day 1912 (from Socialism)
Image 34Socialist feminist Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in 1910 (from Socialism)
Image 35Presidents Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in World Social Forum for Latin America (from History of socialism)
Image 36R. H. Tawney, founder of ethical socialism (from Socialism)

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Martine Froger was elected to the National Assembly of France without the support of the national leadership of her party?
... that by mid-1920, hundreds of German and Austrian communists fought in Red Army units in Turkestan?
... that the short-lived Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia had a Yiddish-language state theatre?
... that the death records of Dmitrii Milev, a Soviet Moldavian writer, were falsified to obscure mention of his execution during the Great Purge?
... that a Socialist Youth League candidate in the 1990 Bosnian general election registered his ethnicity as 'Eskimo' as an apparent protest against ethnic registry requirements for candidates?
... that British writer Adolphe Smith Headingley popularised the singing of the socialist anthem "The Red Flag" to the tune of "O Tannenbaum" against the wishes of its lyricist?
... that Marcela Revollo's pragmatic approach to legislating led her to cooperate with both neoliberal and socialist governments on women's rights legislation?

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“

I believe Socialism is the grandest theory ever presented, and I am sure it will someday rule the world. Then we will have attained the Millennium.… That is the state we are drifting into. Then men will be content to work for the general welfare and share their riches with their neighbors.

”

— Andrew Carnegie, New York Times (2 January 1885) "A Millionaire Socialist"

...Archive