Socialism

The word was first used in the early 1830s by the followers of Owen in Britain and those of Saint-Simon in France. By the mid-nineteenth century it denoted a vast range of reformist and revolutionary ideas in Britain, Europe, and the United States. All of them emphasized the need to transform capitalist industrial society into a much more egalitarian system in which collective well-being for all became a reality, and in which the pursuit of individual self-interest became subordinate to such values as association, community, and cooperation. There was thus an explicit emphasis on solidarity, mutual interdependence, and the possibility of achieving genuine harmony in society to replace conflict, instability, and upheaval.

A critique of the social-class basis of capitalism was accompanied by the elevation of the interests of working class or proletariat to a position of supreme importance, and in some cases the principle of direct workers' control under socialism was invoked as an alternative to the rule of existing dominant classes and elites. Images of a future ‘classless' society were used to symbolize the need for the complete abolition of socio-economic distinctions in the future: an especially important idea in the Marxist tradition.

However, socialists rarely agreed on a strategy for achieving these goals, and diversity and conflict between socialist thinkers, movements, and parties proliferated, especially in the context of the First and Second International Working Men's Associations (founded respectively in 1864 and 1889). Increasingly, as the nineteenth century developed, socialist aspirations focused on the politics of the nation-state (despite much rhetoric about socialism as an international and even global force) and the harnessing of modern science, technology, and industry. Yet other, alternative visions of a socialist future—emphasizing, for example, the potential of small-scale communities and agrarianism rather than full-scale industrialization—always coexisted with the mainstream tendency. In addition doctrines such as anarchism , communism , and social democracy drew on the key values of socialism, and it was often difficult to separate the various schools and movements from each other. Thus Marx and Engels regarded themselves as ‘scientific socialists' (as opposed to earlier ‘utopian socialists'), but saw socialism in the strict sense of the term to be a transitional phase between capitalism and full economic and social communism.

Once socialists moved into government, the focus of interest in socialism inevitably shifted from theory to practice. The most basic disputes amongst socialists have concerned the role of the state in the ownership, control, and organization of the economy (see state socialism ), the relationship between socialism and democratic politics, and the tension between gradualist (e.g. parliamentary) and revolutionary strategies for change.

By the 1930s two quite different systems of socialism could be seen to represent polar extremes of doctrinal interpretation: the socialism of the Soviet Union under Stalin , and the National Socialism of Hitler in Germany. Liberal, conservative, and even anarchist critics stressed the totalitarian tendency of all socialist thought. After the Second World War the division of Europe into a Western pluralist and liberal democratic bloc and an Eastern Marxist-dominated bloc further accentuated the distinction between alternative concepts of socialism. In Western Europe social democratic and Labour Parties used Keynes to support a non-Marxist approach to the regulation and control of capitalism, stressing the need to achieve social justice and equality through effective management of the economy and including some, but certainly not total, nationalization of industry - and redistributive welfare policies (see welfare state ). Social democrats accepted the reality of the ‘mixed economy', and turned their back on the Marxist analysis of capitalism and the idea of socializing the main instruments of economic production, distribution, and exchange.

Socialism in the Western world entered a new phase of crisis and uncertainty in the 1980s and 1990s as the welfare state has found itself under increasing economic pressure, and as social democratic methods of Keynesian economic management fell victim to alternative neoliberal and new right theories. The collapse of Marxist socialism in the Soviet empire in 1989, and the failures of many Third World socialist regimes, have added further uncertainty. Efforts to modernize, revise, and adapt socialism to new historical circumstances have led to a range of new left ideas and theories over the last twenty-five years, some of them contained within existing socialist movements and parties (today's Venezuala of Hugo Chavez), others achieving mobilization and support in the arenas of ‘new politics', post-materialism , feminism , and environmentalism . There is also a conspicuous reawakening of interest amongst contemporary socialists in basic issues of radical democracy, including the changing relationship between state and civil society , the new dimensions of social pluralism, the need for enhanced opportunities for political participation , and the question of citizenship rights. Some formerly socialist parties no longer support anything recognizable as socialism—see New Labour .

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