Socialism

Updated 5 January 2026

Socialism is a political ideology that promotes the self-management of society. It describes the state of societies in which residents manage their community's resources and workers manage their respective trades, as well as the movements that attempt to achieve such a state. Disputes within socialism are many and varied,Newman, Michael. Socialism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. 2005. p. 15. "[S]ocialism has been both centralist and local; organized from above and built from below; visionary and pragramatic; revolutionary and reformist; anti-state and statist; internationalist and nationalist; harnessed to political parties and shunning them; an outgrowth of trade unionism and independent of it; a feature of rich industrialized countries and poor peaseant-based communities; sexist and feminist; committed to growth and ecological." but the core of its thought includes the following four characteristics: 1) a conception of justice that prioritizes human need, 2) a belief in cooperative social organization, 3) an emphasis on popular sovereignty, and 4) an economy in which resources are held in common.

Socialism emerged after the growing merchant class became powerful enough to oppose the feudal relations that dominated Europe, which led to the establishment of liberal governments, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution. In one sense, capitalism improved these societies by ending the exploitation of the peasantry by a small number of lords who exchanged military protection for a food tax; however, it also introduced the exploitation of a small number of individual owners over socially produced goods, leading to widespread poverty amidst unprecedented wealth. Though nominally controlled by the people, positions within the nation-state tended to be held by the educated and wealthy members of society, who enacted rules that benefitted them with little regard for the general populace. Radicals, having witnessed these changes, cried for a greater degree of popular sovereignty, one which would better compensate participants in cooperative efforts and thereby reduce the toil of workers.

The socialist's concern with human need is typified in their focus on poverty, which is identified with capitalism—the deprivation of access to resources under the standard of property. Socialists believe the legal "right" of private property is unjust, especially given its history of dispossessing and otherwise harming the masses, e.g., Acts of Enclosure, genocide of indigenous peoples in the name of colonial or imperial expansion. They can be seen as either abolishing property,Reclus, Élisée. Evolution and Revolution. 1891. "Yes: they [Socialists] do desire to put an end to the monopoly of land and capital, and to restore them to all, and, in this sense, however glad they may be to secure to every one the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, they are the enemies of property." or restoring property to its rightful place:Liebknecht, Wilhelm. Socialism: What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish. 1901. p. 9. "One can see how absurd the allegation is that we propose to abolish property. Not the abolition of property is sought but the abolition of the deprivation of property, the false property which is the appropriation of other's property; the social thievery." they seek to abolish property claims based on divine or legal right in order to allow everyone access to resources. Jean Jaurès explains this well in his article, "The Socialist Aim":

The main idea of Socialism is simple and noble. Socialists believe that the present form of property-holding divides society into two great classes. One of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is obliged to pay to the other, the capitalist, a sort of tax, in order to be able to live at all, and exercise its faculties to any degree. Here is a multitude of human beings, citizens; they possess nothing, they can live only by their work. But in order to work they need an expensive equipment which they have not got, and raw materials and capital which they have not got. Another class owns the means of production, the land, the factories, the machines, the raw materials, and accumulated capital in the form of money. The first class is, then, forced to put itself into the hands of the second, and naturally this capitalist and possessing class, taking advantage of its power, makes the working and non-owning class pay a large forfeit. It does not rest content after it has been reimbursed for the advances it made and has repaired the wear and tear on the machinery. It levies in addition every year and indefinitely a considerable tax on the product of the workman and farmer in the form of rent for farms, ground rent, rent of land in the cities, taxes for the payment of the public, industrial profit, commercial profit, and interest on stocks and bonds.

Therefore, in our present society, the work of the workers is not their exclusive property. And since, in our society founded on intensive production, economic activity is an essential function of every human being, since work forms an integral part of personality, the proletarian does not own his own body absolutely. The proletarian alienates a part of his activity, that is, a part of his being, for the profit of another class. The rights of man are incomplete and mutilated in him. He cannot perform a single act of his life without submitting to this restriction of his rights, this alienation of his very individuality. He has hardly left the factory, the mine, or the yard, where part of his effort has been expended in the creation of dividends and profits for the benefit of capital, he has hardly gone back to the poor tenement where his family is huddled together, when he is face to face with another tax, other dues in the shape of rent. And besides this, State taxation in all its forms, direct taxation and indirect taxation, pares down his already twice-diminished wage, and this not only to provide for the legitimate running expenses of a civilised society and for the advantage of all its members, but to guarantee the crushing payment of interest on the public debt for the profit of that same capitalist class, or for the maintenance of armaments at once formidable and useless. When, finally, the proletarian tries to buy, with the remnant of wages left to him after these inroads, the commodities which are necessities of daily life, he has two courses open to him. If he lacks time or money, he will turn to a retail dealer, and will then have to bear the expense of a cumbrous and unnecessary organisation of intermediary agents; or else he may go to a great store, where over and above the direct expenses of management and distribution he has to provide for the profit of ten or twelve per cent. on the capital invested. Just as the old feudal road was blocked and cut up at every step by toll-rights and dues, so, for the proletarian, the road of life is cut up by the feudal rights imposed upon him by capital. He can neither work nor eat, clothe nor shelter himself, without paying a sort of ransom to the owning and capitalist class.

And not only his life but his very liberty suffers by this system. If labour is to be really free, all the workers should be called upon to take part in the management of work. They should have a share in the economic government of the shop, just as universal suffrage gives them a share in the political government of the city.Jaurès, Jean. "The Socialist Aim." Studies in Socialism. Trans. Mildred Minturn. New York: The Knickerbocker Press. 1906. pp. 3-5.

Utopian Socialism

It should be remarked that when Marx and Engels chose to use the term Communist, it did not, of course, have the totalitarian associations which it has acquired in the mid-twentieth century. They had in mind setting themselves in opposition to the early nineteenth-century 'utopian socialists,' those who did not try to anchor their analysis of society in a concrete historical examination of the relationship of classes but instead dreamed of states of perfection, achieved through reason, universal harmony, or a benevolent despot. In the last third of the nineteenth century, the movement inspired by Marx and Engels usually described itself as socialist or social democratic.Howe, Irving. Essential Works of Socialism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. p. 29.

Socialism developed in the early 19th century and drew upon Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality, but replaced its emphasis on individualism with solidarity. These early socialists lionized reason and believed that modern science -demanded- society be restructured to accommodate recent advances. They designed new forms of social organization and founded intentional communities that implemented these ideas, an approach others criticized as impractical and idealist."Socialism." Encyclopedia Britannica. "" The most famous of these utopian socialists were Charles Fourier and Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, in France, and Robert Owen in England.

Scientific Socialism

Socialism, Marxism and communism are not synonymous. To treat them as such is to ignore their theoretical differences and the disputes within 'the left'. Socialism is in fact the theoretical genus of which Marxism is a species and anarchism another; communism is best viewed as political practice, rather than ideology.Barbara Goodwin. Using Political Ideas. 5th ed. p. 101.

German philosophy at this time was deeply affected by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's dialectics, which posits that ideas become more sophisticated as their contradictions are resolved, giving rise to new ideas. Among those influenced by Hegel was Karl Marx, who opposed the philosopher's idealism and instead proposed that history progressed through the dialectical interplay of material forces, a theory he called historical materialism. In his view, people were divided into classes based on their relationship to the means of production, and the antagonism between classes would resolve to new economic relations until everyone shared access to Earth's natural wealth and classes disappeared. He and his collaborators, most notably Friedrich Engels, distinguished their dialectical methods from those of other socialists and referred to themselves as scientific socialists, as opposed to the utopianism of those such as Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Owen. Due to its close association with Marx, scientific socialism is often simply referred to as Marxism.

Achieving Socialism

Apart from reinforcing the utopian vision of decentralized communities, its [anarchism's] main contributions to socialism were in its intransigent opposition to the state, and its belief that a revolutionary movement should prefigure the society it wished to create.Newman, Michael. Socialism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. 2005. p. 15.

The terms socialism and communism both can refer to the state of society which socialists desire, the classless society in which the means of production are controlled by everyone instead of a few; however, the meaning of these terms diverge when considering the methods used to achieve such a state. Though some utopian currents believed there could be smooth and peaceful transitions to socialism, Marxists and anarchists argued that governments would never voluntarily renounce their power and, therefore, a revolution brought upon by the masses was necessary.Rocker, Rudolf. Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. Pluto Press. 1989. p. 23. "In common with the founders of Socialism, Anarchists demand the abolition of all economic monopolies and the common ownership of the soil and all other means of production, the use of which must be available to all without distinction; for personal and social freedom is conceivable only on the basis of equal economic advantages for everybody." Whereas anarchists believed that a revolution would immediately render the means of production into the hands of the people, Marxists believed a socialist government must acquire state power to prevent reactionary forces from effecting a relapse.

Toward the end of the 19th century, a fissure formed within the Marxists with some now claiming that liberal democracies could be used to gradually steer a society to socialism. These socialists organized in social democratic parties and believed that people could elect representatives to republican governments who will draft, and work to enact, socialist policies such as reduced hours of work, higher wages, retirement and healthcare benefits, and industry nationalization. After the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917, revolutionary Marxists formed parties under the name of Communism, while evolutionary Marxists did so as socialists or social democrats.

Social Democracy

Recent usage has given the term a different nuance: 'social democrat' today siuggests someone whose priority is to give capitalism and liberal democracy an acceptable face by promoting a mixed economy and a welfare state, while 'democratic socialist' signifies a socialist who wants democratically organized socialism by contrast with, say, the bureaucratic socialism of communist countries.Goodwin, Barbara. Using Political Ideas. 5th ed. p. 111.

In recent times, social democracy is no longer associated with the gradual reformation of democratic states into socialists societies. Perhaps owing to the failures of their political parties, social democracy is now regarded as a movement that attempts to ameliorate the negative effects of capitalist ownership with state redistribution. Because social democrats use a welfare state financed by high corporate taxation to provide for human need without attacking the legal right to private property, thereby leaving the fundamental relationship between individuals and property unchanged, they are not socialists, but left-wing liberals.

Misconceptions

Socialism is not government activity.Cross, Ira B. "Socialism; Its Definition and Differentiation from Other Schemes for Social Betterment". Essentials of Socialism. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1912. pp. 16-17. "Socialism is not Government Ownership, although by many people, and strange to say even by some so-called socialists, they are considered as being identical. The socialists declare that government ownership is a reform which merely substitutes the government, controlled by the capitalists, for the capitalist as an employer of labor. It brings about only a change of taskmaster, and in many respects a most unsatisfactory change, for under government ownership the workers have less control over wages, hours, and the conditions of employment than under private ownership and operation. As a rule, governmental employees are not permitted to form trade-unions, nor can they actively participate in politics. At times of strikes, armed force can be used more effectively to compel them to return to work. The socialists also argue that any great amount of government ownership would seriously hinder the concentration of industry, and thereby prolong the life of capitalistic society, by doing away with many unfair discriminations, thus enabling the small corporation to compete on an equal footing with the large corporation. It is because of these things that they ordinarily oppose government ownership, although by some it is advocated as a stepping-stone to the establishment of socialism." This accusation is largely a result of associating socialism necessarily with totalitarian regimes like the USSR and Maoist China. Though these authoritarian states were guided by Marxist theories (Marxism-Leninism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, respectively), it would be folly to equate all of socialism with these few examples or their guiding ideologies. Even Friedrich Engels, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific states that "since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism."

Nazism is not a type of socialism. This attempt to tar socialism by associating it with a common bogeyman is predicated on two facts—the name of the Nazi party included the term national socialist,McKay, Iain. "An Anarchist FAQ After 20 Years." Web blog post. Anarchist Writers. 18 July 2016. "Few (bar the propertarians who fail to recognise the oxymoronic nature of 'anarcho'-capitalism) would tolerate adding Nazism to accounts of socialism based on them having 'socialist' in their party name..." and totalitarian states existed in both the Third Reich and some Communist regimes. The second charge socialists have already answered, while the first ignores the fundamental attributes of socialism not present in Nazi Germany—Nazi Germany was a fascist society socialized into hierarchies, which "protected property and the economic elite," and concentrated power into the hands of a few leaders. "It is no accident, although it is a paradox, that Hitler called his party the National Socialist Party. Given the fascists' elevated notion of the 'Volk' or race, it is quite consistent for fascist governments to improve the wellbeing of the master race as far as possible, while treating other races as sub-human."Goodwin. p. 190.

Although an opposition to fascism is inherent to socialism, the movement known as Antifa is distinct from socialism. Antifa, an abbreviation for antifascists, is a spontaneous gathering of left-wingers that oppose various concentrations of power, most notably fascism (the "New Right"), absolutism (the "Old Right"), and Bolshevism (the authoritarian left). This is not to be confused with a common tactic of left-wing protesters to protect themselves from capture and persecution, the black bloc. Black bloc protesters conceal their identities by gathering in mass; wearing clothes that hide their skin, hair, and faces; and, most famously, dressing all in black. These three groups—socialists, Antifa, and black bloc protesters—share substantial membership, but should not be seen as the same organization.