Socialism
Socialism is a leftist economic system with worker ownership or control of the all the major means of production and distribution of goods and services.[1] Socialism is an economic system that calls for democratic control of businesses, and the decentralization of the economic sector. Socialism has often been mistaken for systems such as State Capitalism, Totalitarian Oligarchy (or known to most of the world as Communism), or Regulated Capitalism by propagandists from both the western and eastern worlds[2]. There are very few examples of actual Socialism occuring, but those few would be Yugoslavia during the Cold War, the Anarchist territories of Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Anarchist Ukraine, and the Cooperative system of business.
Cooperative System of business & Socialism
In Socialism, the system of business that most closely resembles the model of business that Socialism works with, is the Cooperative. A cooperative is defined by the International Cooperative Alliance's Statement on the Cooperative Identity as "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise". A cooperative may also be defined as a business owned and controlled equally by the people who use its services or by the people who work there. A cooperative is a legal entity owned and democratically controlled by its members. Members often have a close association with the enterprise as producers or consumers of its products or services, or as its employees.
Cooperatives are based on the cooperative values of "self-help, self-responsibility, democracy and equality, equity and solidarity" and the seven cooperative principles:
1. Voluntary and Open Membership 2. Democratic Member Control 3. Member Economic Participation 4. Autonomy and Independence 5. Education, Training and Information 6. Cooperation among Cooperatives 7. Concern for Community
Cooperatives are dedicated to the values of openness, social responsibility and caring for others. Such legal entities have a range of social characteristics. Membership is open, meaning that anyone who satisfies certain non-discriminatory conditions may join. Economic benefits are distributed proportionally to each member's level of participation in the cooperative, for instance by a dividend on sales or purchases, rather than according to capital invested. Cooperatives may be classified as either worker, consumer, producer, purchasing or housing cooperatives.[3]
Influence of Russia on socialism
Not until the birth of the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution did the idea become generally accepted that socialism meant government seizing ownership of the economy. This was accepted due to government-run propaganda, used to inspire the masses of Russia to believe that the system that the Soviet Union has implemented was, in fact, Socialism (as opposed to its actual system, State Capitalism). It was then commonly accepted that regulation of business was a way of implementing Socialism, due to propaganda from Corporation-run media
Types of Socialism
There are seven main kinds of Socialism.
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.
"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 emphasizes 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
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.
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 most 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 such as Left anarchism, Communalism, Participism, and Inclusive Democracy.
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, and Finland in the past few decades.[57] 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.
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.
Quotes
Some quotes on socialism by historical figures and great thinkers.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
"I've always doubted that the socialists had a leg to stand on intellectually"
"The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy"
-- L. Neil Smith
"Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean â power over people, power to the State."
"All socialism involves slavery"
"Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism."
"Socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility"
"Marriage is socialism among two people."
See also
External links
- The Intellectuals and Socialism, By F.A. Hayek, The University of Chicago Law Review, (Spring 1949), pp. 417-420, 421-423, 425-433.
- Socialism Encyclopædia Britannica.
- What Liberals Say - Category: Socialism, Accuracy In Media
Bibliography
- Busky, Donald F. Communism in History and Theory: From Utopian Socialism to the Fall of the Soviet Union (2002) excerpt and text search
- Dougherty, Jude P. "Socialist Man: A Psychological Profile," Modern Age Volume 46, Number 1-2; Winter/Spring 2004 online edition, a conservative critique
- Laslett, John, ed. Failure of a Dream: Essays in the History of American Socialism (1984)
- Lindemann, Albert S. A History of European Socialism (1984)
- Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Gary Marks. It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (2001), Lipset was a leading conservative scholar excerpt and text search
- Malia, Martin. Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia (1995) excerpt and text search
- Muravchik, Joshua. Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (2003) by conservative historian excerpt and text search
- Novak, Michael. Capitalism and Socialism: A Theological Inquiry (1988) excerpt and text search, bu leading conservative scholar
- Nove, Alec. An Economic History of the USSR 1917-1991 (3rd ed. 1993)
- Pipes, Richard. Communism: A History (2003), by a leading conservative
- Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States. (1998) online edition