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Socialism
History Outline
Development Age of the Enlightenment French Revolution Revolutions of 1848 Socialist calculation debate Socialist economics
Ideas Calculation in kind Collective ownership Cooperative Common ownership Critique of political economy Economic democracy Economic planning Equal liberty Equal opportunity Free association Freed market Industrial democracy Input–output model Internationalism Labour-time calculation Labour voucher Material balance planning Peer‑to‑peer economics Production for use Sharing economy Spontaneism Social dividend Social ownership Socialism in one country Socialist mode of production Soviet democracy Strike action To each according to his contribution/needs Vanguardism Workers' self-management Workplace democracy
Models Communalism Socialist planned economy Decentralized planning Inclusive Democracy OGAS Project Cybersyn Soviet-type Market socialism Lange model Mutualism Socialist market economy Socialist-oriented market Participatory economics
Variants 21st-century African Arab Agrarian Anarchism Authoritarian Blanquism Buddhist Chinese Christian Communism Democratic Democratic road Digital Ethical Ecological Evolutionary Feminist Fourierism Free-market Gandhian Guild Islamic Jewish Laissez-faire Liberal Libertarian Marhaenism Market Marxism Municipal Nationalist Nkrumaism Owenism Popular Reformism Religious Revolutionary Ricardian Saint-Simonianism Scientific Sewer Social democracy State Syndicalism Third World Utopian Yellow Zionist
People Gracchi Brothers Mazdak Ball More Winstanley Morelly Paine Hall Maréchal Roux Saint-Simon Babeuf Buonarroti Chaumette Varlet Saint-Just Owen Fourier Thompson Hodgskin Schulz Leroux Pecqueur Sue Blanqui Ledru-Rollin Dézamy Considerant Proudhon Blanc Andrews Herzen Bakunin Marx Engels Wallace Lavrov Pi Lassalle Saltykov Chernyshevsky Tolstoy Michel Morris Jones Varlin Bebel Lorenzo Mainwaring Kropotkin Carpenter Sorel Parsons Bernstein Iglesias Parsons León Malatesta Kautsky Wilde Taylor Debs Plekhanov Ferrer Dewey Barone Pouget Wells Markievicz Du Bois Gorky Connolly Goldman Gandhi Landauer Berkman Luxemburg Liebknecht Blum Russell Pannekoek Rocker Larkin Witkop Einstein Trotsky Keller Tawney Monatte Schapiro Yarchuk Pankhurst Volin Attlee Spiridonova Nikiforova Kamkov Lukács Pestaña Korsch Polanyi Peiró Seguí Vanzetti Makhno Bordiga Cole Gotman Serge Baron Gramsci Sacco Mratchny Petrichenko Tito Bilash Shchus Maksimov Mohamed Leval Nagy Durruti Soto Kuzmenko Gerhardsen Santillán Wälläri Day Marcuse James García Ascaso Erlander Mett Orwell Mattick Guérin Douglas Montseny Sartre Senghor Allende van der Lubbe Kreisky Mitterrand Chartrand Nasser Mandela Bookchin Dubček Zinn Castoriadis Gorz Thompson Lefort Ward Manley Che Chomsky Gorbachev Avrich Scargill Fotopoulos Newton Wolff Ali Lula Holloway Hampton Žižek Öcalan Corbyn Sankara West Chávez Hedges Marcos Graeber Varoufakis Saito
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Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems^[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production,^[2] as opposed to private ownership.^[3][4][5] It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.^[6] Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative,^[7][8][9] or employee.^[10][11] Traditionally, socialism is on the left wing of the political spectrum.^[12] Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.^[13][14]

Socialist systems divide into non-market and market forms.^[15][16] A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system.^[17] Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and sometimes the profit motive.^[18][19][20] Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence, heading national governments in several countries. Socialist politics have been internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and other times independent and critical of them, and present in industrialised and developing nations.^[21] Social democracy originated within the socialist movement,^[22] supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice.^[23][24] While retaining socialism as a long-term goal,^[25] in the post-war period social democracy embraced 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.^[26][27]

The socialist political movement includes political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that socialists associated with capitalism.^[28] By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify anti-capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production.^[29][30] By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement,^[31] with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century.^[32] Many socialists also adopted the causes of other social movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, and progressivism.^[33]

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 state that in practice, the model functioned as a form of state capitalism.^[34][35][36] Academics have noted some Western European countries have been governed by socialist parties or have mixed economies that are sometimes called "democratic socialist".^[37][38] Following the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world,^[39] 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.^[40] Socialism experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s, most prominently in the form of democratic socialism.^[41][42]

Etymology

According to Andrew Vincent, "he word 'socialism' finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was societas. This latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen".^[43]

Initial use of socialism was claimed by Pierre Leroux, who alleged he first used the term in the Parisian journal Le Globe in 1832.^[44][45] Leroux was a follower of Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled utopian socialism. Socialism contrasted with the liberal doctrine of individualism that emphasized the moral worth of the individual while stressing that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another. The original utopian socialists condemned this doctrine of individualism for failing to address social concerns during the Industrial Revolution, including poverty, oppression, and vast wealth inequality. They viewed their society as harming community life by basing society on competition. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the shared ownership of resources.^[46] Saint-Simon proposed economic planning, scientific administration and the application of scientific understanding to the organisation of society. By contrast, Robert Owen proposed to organise production and ownership via cooperatives.^[46][47] Socialism is also attributed in France to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud while in Britain it is attributed to Owen, who became one of the fathers of the cooperative movement.^[48][49]

The definition and usage of socialism settled by the 1860s, replacing associationist, co-operative, mutualist and collectivist that had been used as synonyms while communism fell out of use during this period.^[50] An early distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialise production while the former aimed to socialise both production and consumption (in the form of free access to final goods).^[51] By 1888, Marxists employed socialism in place of communism as the latter had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for socialism. It was not until after the Bolshevik Revolution that socialism was appropriated by Vladimir Lenin to mean a stage between capitalism and communism. He used it to defend the Bolshevik program from Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for communism.^[52] The distinction between communism and socialism became salient in 1918 after the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the All-Russian Communist Party, interpreting communism specifically to mean socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism and later that of Marxism–Leninism,^[53] although communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism.^[54] According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death".^[55]

In Christian Europe, communists were believed to have adopted atheism. In Protestant England, communism was too close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence socialist was the preferred term.^[56] Engels wrote that in 1848, when The Communist Manifesto was published, socialism was respectable in Europe while communism was not. The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists.^[57] This branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany.^[58] British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill discussed a form of economic socialism within free market. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill posited that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies"^[59][60] and promoted substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives.^[61] While democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, Marxists denounced it as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the proletariat.^[62]

History

The history of socialism has its origins in the Age of Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution, along with the changes that brought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1847-48 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed scientific socialism. In the last third of the 19th century parties dedicated to Democratic socialism arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899.^[63]

In the first half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union and the communist parties of the Third International around the world, came to represent socialism in terms of the Soviet model of economic development and the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production, although other trends condemned what they saw as the lack of democracy. The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, saw socialism introduced. China experienced land redistribution and the Anti-Rightist Movement, followed by the disastrous Great Leap Forward. In the UK, Herbert Morrison said that "socialism is what the Labour government does" whereas Aneurin Bevan argued socialism requires that the "main streams of economic activity are brought under public direction", with an economic plan and workers' democracy.^[64] Some argued that capitalism had been abolished.^[65] Socialist governments established the mixed economy with partial nationalisations and social welfare.

By 1968, the prolonged Vietnam War gave rise to the New Left, socialists who tended to be critical of the Soviet Union and social democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left and others favoured decentralised collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. In 1989, the Soviet Union saw the end of communism, marked by the Revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe, culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Socialists have adopted the causes of other social movements such as environmentalism, feminism and progressivism.^[66]

Early 21st century

Socialism across the world.
Top-left: a picture of the red flags found by the Monument to the People's Heroes, China.
Top-right: a demonstration in Austin, Texas, US by the Democratic Socialists of America.
Bottom-left: a demonstration by the Portuguese Socialist Youth.
Bottom-right: a rally for abortion rights in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia being led by members of the Victorian Socialists.

In 1990, the São Paulo Forum was launched by the Workers' Party (Brazil), linking left-wing socialist parties in Latin America. Its members were associated with the Pink tide of left-wing governments on the continent in the early 21st century. Member parties ruling countries included the Front for Victory in Argentina, the PAIS Alliance in Ecuador, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, Peru Wins in Peru, and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, whose leader Hugo Chávez initiated what he called "Socialism of the 21st century".

Many mainstream democratic socialist and social democratic parties continued to drift right-wards. On the right of the socialist movement, the Progressive Alliance was founded in 2013 by current or former members of the Socialist International. The organisation states the aim of becoming the global network of "the progressive, democratic, social-democratic, socialist and labour movement".^[67][68] Mainstream social democratic and socialist parties are also networked in Europe in the Party of European Socialists formed in 1992. Many of these parties lost large parts of their electoral base in the early 21st century. This phenomenon is known as Pasokification^[69][70] from the Greek party PASOK, which saw a declining share of the vote in national elections—from 43.9% in 2009 to 13.2% in May 2012, to 12.3% in June 2012 and 4.7% in 2015—due to its poor handling of the Greek government-debt crisis and implementation of harsh austerity measures.^[71][72]

In Europe, the share of votes for such socialist parties was at its 70-year lowest in 2015. For example, the Socialist Party, after winning the 2012 French presidential election, rapidly lost its vote share, the Social Democratic Party of Germany's fortunes declined rapidly from 2005 to 2019, and outside Europe the Israeli Labor Party fell from being the dominant force in Israeli politics to 4.43% of the vote in the April 2019 Israeli legislative election, and the Peruvian Aprista Party went from ruling party in 2011 to a minor party. The decline of these mainstream parties opened space for more radical and populist left parties in some countries, such as Spain's Podemos, Greece's Syriza (in government, 2015–19), Germany's Die Linke, and France's La France Insoumise. In other countries, left-wing revivals have taken place within mainstream democratic socialist and centrist parties, as with Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States.^[41] Few of these radical left parties have won national government in Europe, while some more mainstream socialist parties have managed to, such as Portugal's Socialist Party.^[73]

Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of the American socialist magazine Jacobin, argued that the appeal of socialism persists due to the inequality and "tremendous suffering" under current global capitalism, the use of wage labor "which rests on the exploitation and domination of humans by other humans," and ecological crises, such as climate change.^[74] In contrast, Mark J. Perry of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argued that despite socialism's resurgence, it is still "a flawed system based on completely faulty principles that aren't consistent with human behavior and can't nurture the human spirit.", adding that "While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny."^[75] Some in the scientific community have suggested that a contemporary radical response to social and ecological problems could be seen in the emergence of movements associated with degrowth, eco-socialism and eco-anarchism.^[76][77]

Social and political theory

Early socialist thought took influences from a diverse range of philosophies such as civic republicanism, Enlightenment rationalism, romanticism, forms of materialism, Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant), natural law and natural rights theory, utilitarianism and liberal political economy.^[78] Another philosophical basis for a great deal of early socialism was the emergence of positivism during the European Enlightenment. Positivism held that both the natural and social worlds could be understood through scientific knowledge and be analysed using scientific methods.

The fundamental objective of socialism is to attain an advanced level of material production and therefore greater productivity, efficiency and rationality as compared to capitalism and all previous systems, under the view that an expansion of human productive capability is the basis for the extension of freedom and equality in society.^[79] Many forms of socialist theory hold that human behaviour is largely shaped by the social environment. In particular, socialism holds that social mores, values, cultural traits and economic practices are social creations and not the result of an immutable natural law.^[80][81] The object of their critique is thus not human avarice or human consciousness, but the material conditions and man-made social systems (i.e. the economic structure of society) which give rise to observed social problems and inefficiencies. Bertrand Russell, often considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, identified as a socialist. Russell opposed the class struggle aspects of Marxism, viewing socialism solely as an adjustment of economic relations to accommodate modern machine production to benefit all of humanity through the progressive reduction of necessary work time.^[82]

Socialists view creativity as an essential aspect of human nature and define freedom as a state of being where individuals are able to express their creativity unhindered by constraints of both material scarcity and coercive social institutions.^[83] The socialist concept of individuality is intertwined with the concept of individual creative expression. Karl Marx believed that expansion of the productive forces and technology was the basis for the expansion of human freedom and that socialism, being a system that is consistent with modern developments in technology, would enable the flourishing of "free individualities" through the progressive reduction of necessary labour time. The reduction of necessary labour time to a minimum would grant individuals the opportunity to pursue the development of their true individuality and creativity.^[84]

Criticism of capitalism

Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that exist only to generate sufficient demand for products such as high-pressure advertisement to be sold at a profit, thereby creating rather than satisfying economic demand.^[85][86] Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity, such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when their price appreciates, rather than for consumption, even if the commodity cannot be sold at a profit to individuals in need and therefore a crucial criticism often made by socialists is that "making money", or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand (the production of use-values).^[85] The fundamental criterion for economic activity in capitalism is the accumulation of capital for reinvestment in production, but this spurs the development of new, non-productive industries that do not produce use-value and only exist to keep the accumulation process afloat (otherwise the system goes into crisis), such as the spread of the financial industry, contributing to the formation of economic bubbles.^[87] Such accumulation and reinvestment, when it demands a constant rate of profit, causes problems if the earnings in the rest of society do not increase in proportion.^[88]

Socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy. According to socialists, private property becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralised, socialised institutions based on private appropriation of revenue—but based on cooperative work and internal planning in allocation of inputs—until the role of the capitalist becomes redundant.^[89] With no need for capital accumulation and a class of owners, private property in the means of production is perceived as being an outdated form of economic organisation that should be replaced by a free association of individuals based on public or common ownership of these socialised assets.^[90][91] Private ownership imposes constraints on planning, leading to uncoordinated economic decisions that result in business fluctuations, unemployment and a tremendous waste of material resources during crisis of overproduction.^[92]

Excessive disparities in income distribution lead to social instability and require costly corrective measures in the form of redistributive taxation, which incurs heavy administrative costs while weakening the incentive to work, inviting dishonesty and increasing the likelihood of tax evasion while (the corrective measures) reduce the overall efficiency of the market economy.^[93] These corrective policies limit the incentive system of the market by providing things such as minimum wages, unemployment insurance, taxing profits and reducing the reserve army of labour, resulting in reduced incentives for capitalists to invest in more production. In essence, social welfare policies cripple capitalism and its incentive system and are thus unsustainable in the long run.^[94] Marxists argue that the establishment of a socialist mode of production is the only way to overcome these deficiencies. Socialists and specifically Marxian socialists argue that the inherent conflict of interests between the working class and capital prevent optimal use of available human resources and leads to contradictory interest groups (labour and business) striving to influence the state to intervene in the economy in their favour at the expense of overall economic efficiency. Early socialists (utopian socialists and Ricardian socialists) criticised capitalism for concentrating power and wealth within a small segment of society.^[95] In addition, they complained that capitalism does not use available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.^[91]

Marxism

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that socialism would emerge from historical necessity as capitalism rendered itself obsolete and unsustainable from increasing internal contradictions emerging from the development of the productive forces and technology. It was these advances in the productive forces combined with the old social relations of production of capitalism that would generate contradictions, leading to working-class consciousness.^[97]

Marx and Engels held the view that the consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the working class in the broadest Marxist sense) would be moulded by their conditions of wage slavery, leading to a tendency to seek their freedom or emancipation by overthrowing ownership of the means of production by capitalists and consequently, overthrowing the state that upheld this economic order. 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.

Marx and Engels used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably, but many later Marxists defined socialism as a specific historical phase that would displace capitalism and precede communism.^[52][55]

The major characteristics of socialism (particularly as conceived by Marx and Engels after the Paris Commune of 1871) are that the proletariat would control the means of production through a workers' state erected by the workers in their interests.

For orthodox Marxists, socialism is the lower stage of communism based on the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution" while upper stage communism is based on the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", the upper stage becoming possible only after the socialist stage further develops economic efficiency and the automation of production has led to a superabundance of goods and services.^[98][99] Marx argued that the material productive forces (in industry and commerce) brought into existence by capitalism predicated a cooperative society since production had become a mass social, collective activity of the working class to create commodities but with private ownership (the relations of production or property relations). This conflict between collective effort in large factories and private ownership would bring about a conscious desire in the working class to establish collective ownership commensurate with the collective efforts their daily experience.^[96]

Role of the state

Socialists have taken different perspectives on the state and the role it should play in revolutionary struggles, in constructing socialism and within an established socialist economy.

In the 19th century, the philosophy of state socialism was first explicitly expounded by the German political philosopher Ferdinand Lassalle. In contrast to Karl Marx's perspective of the state, Lassalle rejected the concept of the state as a class-based power structure whose main function was to preserve existing class structures. Lassalle also rejected the Marxist view that the state was destined to "wither away". Lassalle considered the state to be an entity independent of class allegiances and an instrument of justice that would therefore be essential for achieving socialism.^[100]

Preceding the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, many socialists including reformists, orthodox Marxist currents such as council communism, anarchists and libertarian socialists criticised the idea of using the state to conduct central planning and own the means of production as a way to establish socialism. Following the victory of Leninism in Russia, the idea of "state socialism" spread rapidly throughout the socialist movement and eventually state socialism came to be identified with the Soviet economic model.^[101]

Joseph Schumpeter rejected the association of socialism and social ownership with state ownership over the means of production because the state as it exists in its current form is a product of capitalist society and cannot be transplanted to a different institutional framework. Schumpeter argued that there would be different institutions within socialism than those that exist within modern capitalism, just as feudalism had its own distinct and unique institutional forms. The state, along with concepts like property and taxation, were concepts exclusive to commercial society (capitalism) and attempting to place them within the context of a future socialist society would amount to a distortion of these concepts by using them out of context.^[102]

Utopian versus scientific

Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists.^[103] Visions of imaginary ideal societies, which competed with revolutionary social democratic movements, were viewed as not being grounded in the material conditions of society and as reactionary.^[104] Although it is technically possible for any set of ideas or any person living at any time in history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label "utopian" by later socialists as a negative term to imply naivete and dismiss their ideas as fanciful or unrealistic.^[105]

Religious sects whose members live communally such as the Hutterites are not usually called "utopian socialists", although their way of living is a prime example. They have been categorised as religious socialists by some. Similarly, modern intentional communities based on socialist ideas could also be categorised as "utopian socialist". For Marxists, the development of capitalism in Western Europe provided a material basis for the possibility of bringing about socialism because according to The Communist Manifesto "hat the bourgeoisie produces above all is its own grave diggers",^[106] namely the working class, which must become conscious of the historical objectives set it by society.

Reform versus revolution

Revolutionary socialists believe that a social revolution is necessary to effect structural changes to the socioeconomic structure of society. Among revolutionary socialists there are differences in strategy, theory and the definition of revolution. Orthodox Marxists and left communists take an impossibilist stance, believing that revolution should be spontaneous as a result of contradictions in society due to technological changes in the productive forces. Lenin theorised that under capitalism the workers cannot achieve class consciousness beyond organising into trade unions and making demands of the capitalists. Therefore, Leninists argue that it is historically necessary for a vanguard of class conscious revolutionaries to take a central role in coordinating the social revolution to overthrow the capitalist state and eventually the institution of the state altogether.^[107] Revolution is not necessarily defined by revolutionary socialists as violent insurrection,^[108] but as a complete dismantling and rapid transformation of all areas of class society led by the majority of the masses: the working class.

Reformism is generally associated with social democracy and gradualist democratic socialism. Reformism is the belief that socialists should stand in parliamentary elections within capitalist society and if elected use the machinery of government to pass political and social reforms for the purposes of ameliorating the instabilities and inequities of capitalism. Within socialism, reformism is used in two different ways. One has no intention of bringing about socialism or fundamental economic change to society and is used to oppose such structural changes. The other is based on the assumption that while reforms are not socialist in themselves, they can help rally supporters to the cause of revolution by popularizing the cause of socialism to the working class.^[109]

The debate on the ability for social democratic reformism to lead to a socialist transformation of society is over a century old. Reformism is criticized for being paradoxical as it seeks to overcome the existing economic system of capitalism while trying to improve the conditions of capitalism, thereby making it appear more tolerable to society. According to Rosa Luxemburg, capitalism is not overthrown, "but is on the contrary strengthened by the development of social reforms".^[110] In a similar vein, Stan Parker of the Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that reforms are a diversion of energy for socialists and are limited because they must adhere to the logic of capitalism.^[109] French social theorist André Gorz criticized reformism by advocating a third alternative to reformism and social revolution that he called "non-reformist reforms", specifically focused on structural changes to capitalism as opposed to reforms to improve living conditions within capitalism or to prop it up through economic interventions.^[111]

Culture

In the Leninist conception, the role of the vanguard party was to politically educate the workers and peasants to dispel the societal false consciousness of institutional religion and nationalism that constitute the cultural status quo taught by the bourgeoisie to the proletariat to facilitate their economic exploitation of peasants and workers. Influenced by Lenin, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party stated that the development of the socialist workers' culture should not be "hamstrung from above" and opposed the Proletkult (1917–1925) organisational control of the national culture.^[114] Similarly, Trotsky viewed the party as transmitters of culture to the masses for raising the standards of education, as well as entry into the cultural sphere, but that the process of artistic creation in terms of language and presentation should be the domain of the practitioner. According to political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz, this represented one of several distinctions between Trotsky's approach on cultural matters and Stalin's policy in the 1930s.^[115]

In Literature and Revolution, Trotsky examined aesthetic issues in relation to class and the Russian revolution. Soviet scholar Robert Bird considered his work as the "first systematic treatment of art by a Communist leader" and a catalyst for later, Marxist cultural and critical theories.^[116] He would later co-author the 1938 Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art with the endorsement of prominent artists Andre Breton and Diego Rivera.^[117] Trotsky's writings on literature such as his 1923 survey which advocated tolerance, limited censorship and respect for literary tradition had strong appeal to the New York Intellectuals.^[118]

Prior to Stalin's rule, literary, religious and national representatives had some level of autonomy in Soviet Russia throughout the 1920s but these groups were later rigorously repressed during the Stalinist era. Socialist realism was imposed under Stalin in artistic production and other creative industries such as music, film along with sports were subject to extreme levels of political control.^[119]

The counter-cultural phenomenon which emerged in the 1960s shaped the intellectual and radical outlook of the New Left; this movement placed a heavy emphasis on anti-racism, anti-imperialism and direct democracy in opposition to the dominant culture of advanced industrial capitalism.^[120] Socialist groups have also been closely involved with a number of counter-cultural movements such as Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Love Music Hate Racism, Anti-Nazi League^[121] and Unite Against Fascism.^[122]

Economics

Socialist economics starts from the premise that "individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members".^[124]

The original conception of socialism was an economic system whereby production was organised in a way to directly produce goods and services for their utility (or use-value in classical and Marxian economics), with the direct allocation of resources in terms of physical units as opposed to financial calculation and the economic laws of capitalism (see law of value), often entailing the end of capitalistic economic categories such as rent, interest, profit and money.^[125] In a fully developed socialist economy, production and balancing factor inputs with outputs becomes a technical process to be undertaken by engineers.^[126]

Market socialism refers to an array of different economic theories and systems that use the market mechanism to organise production and to allocate factor inputs among socially owned enterprises, with the economic surplus (profits) accruing to society in a social dividend as opposed to private capital owners.^[127] Variations of market socialism include libertarian proposals such as mutualism, based on classical economics, and neoclassical economic models such as the Lange Model. Some economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Mancur Olson, and others not specifically advancing anti-socialists positions have shown that prevailing economic models upon which such democratic or market socialism models might be based have logical flaws or unworkable presuppositions.^[128][129] These criticisms have been incorporated into the models of market socialism developed by John Roemer and Nicholas Vrousalis.^{[130][131][when?]}

The ownership of the means of production can be based on direct ownership by the users of the productive property through worker cooperative; or commonly owned by all of society with management and control delegated to those who operate/use the means of production; or public ownership by a state apparatus. Public ownership may refer to the creation of state-owned enterprises, nationalisation, municipalisation or autonomous collective institutions. Some socialists feel that in a socialist economy, at least the "commanding heights" of the economy must be publicly owned.^[132] Economic liberals and right libertarians view private ownership of the means of production and the market exchange as natural entities or moral rights which are central to their conceptions of freedom and liberty and view the economic dynamics of capitalism as immutable and absolute, therefore they perceive public ownership of the means of production, cooperatives and economic planning as infringements upon liberty.^[133][134]

Management and control over the activities of enterprises are based on self-management and self-governance, with equal power-relations in the workplace to maximise occupational autonomy. A socialist form of organisation would eliminate controlling hierarchies so that only a hierarchy based on technical knowledge in the workplace remains. Every member would have decision-making power in the firm and would be able to participate in establishing its overall policy objectives. The policies/goals would be carried out by the technical specialists that form the coordinating hierarchy of the firm, who would establish plans or directives for the work community to accomplish these goals:^[135][136]

The role and use of money in a hypothetical socialist economy is a contested issue. Nineteenth century socialists including Karl Marx, Robert Owen, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and John Stuart Mill advocated various forms of labour vouchers or labour credits, which like money would be used to acquire articles of consumption, but unlike money they are unable to become capital and would not be used to allocate resources within the production process. Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky argued that money could not be arbitrarily abolished following a socialist revolution. Money had to exhaust its "historic mission", meaning it would have to be used until its function became redundant, eventually being transformed into bookkeeping receipts for statisticians and only in the more distant future would money not be required for even that role.^[137]

Planned economy

A planned economy is a type of economy consisting of a mixture of public ownership of the means of production and the coordination of production and distribution through economic planning. A planned economy can be either decentralised or centralised. Enrico Barone provided a comprehensive theoretical framework for a planned socialist economy. In his model, assuming perfect computation techniques, simultaneous equations relating inputs and outputs to ratios of equivalence would provide appropriate valuations to balance supply and demand.^[138]

The most prominent example of a planned economy was the economic system of the Soviet Union and as such the centralised-planned economic model is usually associated with the communist states of the 20th century, where it was combined with a single-party political system. In a centrally planned economy, decisions regarding the quantity of goods and services to be produced are planned in advance by a planning agency (see also the analysis of Soviet-type economic planning). The economic systems of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are further classified as "command economies", which are defined as systems where economic coordination is undertaken by commands, directives and production targets.^[139] Studies by economists of various political persuasions on the actual functioning of the Soviet economy indicate that it was not actually a planned economy. Instead of conscious planning, the Soviet economy was based on a process whereby the plan was modified by localised agents and the original plans went largely unfulfilled. Planning agencies, ministries and enterprises all adapted and bargained with each other during the formulation of the plan as opposed to following a plan passed down from a higher authority, leading some economists to suggest that planning did not actually take place within the Soviet economy and that a better description would be an "administered" or "managed" economy.^[140]

Although central planning was largely supported by Marxist–Leninists, some factions within the Soviet Union before the rise of Stalinism held positions contrary to central planning. Leon Trotsky rejected central planning in favour of decentralised planning. He argued that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, would be unable to coordinate effectively all economic activity within an economy because they operated without the input and tacit knowledge embodied by the participation of the millions of people in the economy. As a result, central planners would be unable to respond to local economic conditions.^[141] State socialism is unfeasible in this view because information cannot be aggregated by a central body and effectively used to formulate a plan for an entire economy, because doing so would result in distorted or absent price signals.^[142]

Self-managed economy