Mediaboss Marketing

From New World Encyclopedia

Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which the ownership of industry and the distribution of wealth are determined by the state or by agents of the state or the collective. In its most general sense, socialism seeks the co-prosperity and common cause of all people, which could be accomplished without force in religious and utopian communities. But, in general practice, it refers to the use of state force to redistribute wealth.

Socialism developed as a political ideology in the nineteenth century as a reaction to industrial injustice, labor exploitation, and unemployment in Europe. For Karl Marx, who helped establish and define the modern theory of socialism, societal problems were rooted in an economic system which relied on the private ownership of property, and led to wealth remaining in the hands of a few and at the cost of the laborers who were the source of wealth. Marx advocated a revolution of the working class which would lead to collective ownership of the means of production (property and capital). This control, according to Marx's successors, may be either direct, exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils, or it may be indirect, exercised on behalf of the people by the state.

Currently, there is a diverse array of ideas that have been referred to as "socialist," from forms of "market socialism," which advocate achieving economic justice through taxation and redistribution through state welfare programs to the hardcore communists who advocate total state control of all property and the economy, to a unique Asian and unclear variant known as "socialism with Chinese characteristics."

"Socialism" has often been used as a slogan by unscrupulous leaders seeking political power. They prey on the frustration and sense of injustice of low-paid or unemployed people. Both the National Socialism in Germany under Hitler and the Soviet-style developed by Lenin and his successors became totalitarian states that denied personal freedom to citizens. These totalitarian political systems had no checks and balances on power, which human civilization has learned is necessary to control the human tendency to take more than what one produces.

As an economic system, the command economy failed because it lacked understanding of human nature and economic incentive and rationally organized people as parts of a giant machine. People are unmotivated when they are asked to give whatever the state requests and to accept whatever the state decides to give. Further, no centralized system of rational distribution of goods and services can account for individuals at different stages of growth, or for biological or intellectual differences. As such, a rational command economy cannot understand what each person needs and provide true economic justice. By the mid-1980s, both Russia and China gave up on their experiments with a command economy. Today, some socialists propose selective nationalization of key industries within the framework of mixed economies. Others advocate "market socialism" in which social control of economy rests on a framework of market economics and private property.

In the history of political thought, elements of socialism long predate the rise of the workers movement of the late nineteenth century, particularly in Plato's Republic and Thomas More's Utopia. These theories are based on an ideal that everyone will live together with the best possible peace, prosperity, and justice in one mutually supportive human communityco-prosperity and common cause. Plato's Republic even advocates the sharing of wives and children. Aristotle criticized the idealism of Plato's Republic in his Politics,[1] saying that if all things were held in common, nothing would get cared for, and that if people had no property they could not host a guest or perform charitable acts that create community and give life meaning.

Early Christian communities aspiring to the social ideals of a caring and committed "body of Christ" are said to have eventually won over the Roman Empire by their attitude and exemplary concern and love for each other. However, once they attained power they were often accused of abandoning their idealism and becoming more Roman than Christian.

The term "socialism" was first used in the context of early nineteenth-century western European social critics as mass society was beginning to develop with the modern bureaucratic state and the mass production of goods through industrialization. The ideas were rooted in a diverse array of doctrines and social experiments associated primarily with British and French thinkersespecially Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, and Saint-Simon. These theorists were reacting to the excesses of poverty and inequality in the period and, like young children who notice inequality, advocated reforms such as the equal distribution of wealth and the transformation of society into small communities in which private property was to be abolished. Outlining principles for the reorganization of society along collectivist lines, Saint-Simon and Owen sought to build socialism on the foundations of planned, utopian communities. At the same time, utopian socialist religious communities like the Amish and the Shakers were developing in the United States.

Early socialists differed on how socialism was to be achieved or organized, and they did not agree on the role of private property, the degree of egalitarianism, and whether the traditional family should be preserved. While many emphasized the gradual and modern transformation of society through small, utopian communities, a growing number of socialists became disillusioned with the viability of this approach, and emphasized direct and immediate political action.

Visit link:
Socialism - New World Encyclopedia