The Probert Encyclopaedia of General Information

SOCIALISM

Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organisation based upon the public ownership of the means of production and support of the poor, weak and needy by the strong and rich, and first proposed by philanthropic churchmen of the 19th century, men like Samuel Barnett. The term socialism (first coined in England by Robert Owen in 1816) covers a wide range of positions from communism at one extreme to social democracy at the other, and is therefore difficult to define with precision. It is less easy to say what socialists are for than what they are against, namely untrammelled capitalism, which in socialist eyes enriches the owners of capital at the expense of their employees, provides no security for the poor, and sacrifices the welfare of society to private gain. Most socialists have responded by arguing that the community as a whole should own and control the means of production, distribution, and exchange to ensure a more equitable division of a nation's wealth, either in the form of state ownership of industry, or else in the form of ownership by the workers themselves. They have also often advocated replacing the market economy by some kind of planned economy. The aim of these measures is to make industry socially responsible, and to bring about a much greater degree of equality in living standards. In addition, socialists have argued for special provision for those in need, in the form, for instance, of a welfare state.

Socialism as a political ideal was revolutionised by Karl Marx in the mid-19th century, who tried to demonstrate scientifically how capitalist profit was derived from the exploitation of the worker, and argued that a socialist society could be achieved only by a mass movement of the workers themselves. Both the methods by which this transformation was to be achieved and the manner in which the new society was to be run remained the subject of considerable disagreement and produced a wide variety of socialist parties, ranging from moderate reformers to ultra left-wing communists dedicated to upheaval by violent revolution. A revolutionary upheaval is represented by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto published in 1848 as necessary in order to replace capitalism. Bernstein in his book Evolutionary Socialism published in 1898 states that capitalism can be modified and changed by gradual, parliamentary methods. These debates have been somewhat overshadowed in recent years by the question of whether socialism is viable at all as an alternative to capitalism. Most Western socialists now opt for social democracy, others for market socialism. It is only in certain developing countries that traditional socialist aims still attract widespread support among political leaders.
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