Socialism. Socialism, economic and social system under which essential industries and social services are publicly

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2 Socialism I INTRODUCTION Socialism, economic and social system under which essential industries and social services are publicly and cooperatively owned and democratically controlled with a view to equal opportunity and equal benefit for all. The term socialism also refers to the doctrine behind this system and the political movement inspired by it. Socialism was originally based in the working class and has generally been opposed to capitalism, which is based on private ownership and a free -market economy. Socialists have advocated nationalization (government ownership and control) of natural resources, basic industries, banking and credit institutions, and public utilities. Although the ultimate aim of early socialists was a communist or classless society (see Communism), later socialists have increasingly concentrated on social reforms within capitalism. II SOCIALISM COMPARED WITH COMMUNISM The terms socialism and communism were once used interchangeably. Communism, however, came to designate those theories and movements that advocated the abolition of capitalism and all private profit, by means of violent revolution if necessary. This doctrine was originally put forth by Ge rman theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Vladimir Lenin, who headed the Soviet government after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, defined a socialist society as one in which the workers, free from capitalist exploitation, receive the full product of their labor. Most socialists denied the claim of Communists to have achieved socialism in the Soviet Union. They regarded the Soviet government as an authoritarian tyranny.

3 The modern socialist movement, as distinguished from Communism, had its origin large ly in the late 19th century. The worsening condition of the proletariat, or workers, in western Europe had not brought about the class war predicted by Marx. Many socialist thinkers began to doubt the necessity of revolution and to revise other basic tenets of Marxism. They declared that socialism could best be attained by reformist, parliamentary, and evolutionary methods, including the support of the middle class. III EARLY SOCIALISM Radical intellectuals who considered themselves the heirs of the 18th-century Enlightenment began to use the term socialism in the first half of the 19th century. The principal early theorists were British businessman and philanthropist Robert Owen and the French writers and social crusaders Claude Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. They developed concepts of ideal societies to be attained through the spread of education and expansion of cooperative communities. These theorists were later dubbed utopian socialists for their belief in ideal societies, or utopias. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels regarded the utopian socialists as the forerunners of their own concept of scientific socialism, or Communism. The utopian socialists, like their followers and successors, objected to capitalism on moral and practical grounds. Capitalism, they claimed, was unjust: It exploited workers, degraded them, transformed them into beasts or machines, and enabled the rich to get richer while the workers faced misery. They also claimed that capitalism was an inefficient and irrational mechanism for the development of society s productive forces. For example, it underwent cyclical crises recessions and depressions caused by overproduction or under-consumption (see Business Cycle). Nor did capitalism provide work for all, allowing human resources to remain unused or underutilized. Moreover, it produced luxuries instead of necessities. Socialism at this early stage could be seen as a reaction against the alleged emphasis of 18th- and 19th-century liberalism on individual achievements and private rights at the expense of the welfare of society as a whole. Yet socialists, in common with liberals, were committed to the idea of progress and

4 the abolition of aristocratic privileges. Unlike them, socialists denounced liberalism as a facade behind which capitalist greed could flourish unhindered. The early socialists did more than set out utopian plans. They provided a critique of industrialization from a current perspective rather than from a longing for the society of the past. Industrial society, they said, was here to stay and it could, if regulated properly, be a true civilization. They recognized injustices in society: the existence of a new type of poverty among considerable wea lth, the everincreasing isolation of individuals, and the unceasing and heartless competition that prevailed. Moral outrage at poverty, individualism, and competition was, however, not limited to socialists. It was embraced by writers and thinkers as diverse as French novelist Honoré de Balzac, historian Thomas Carlyle, and conservative British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. What distinguished the early socialists from these conservative thinkers was an optimistic and positive view of industrialization. The point for the early socialists was not to return to a pre -industrial society but to understand the need for a new organization of society. IV INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MARXIST SOCIALISM With Marx and Engels socialism acquired a theory of history and a theory of exploitation. Their publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 marked the end of the dominance of utopian socialism among 19th-century revolutionary thinkers and the arrival of Marxist socialism. To Marx and Engels, capitalism was the result of a historical process characterized by a continual conflict between classes. In their view history proceeded through stages. Each stage consisted of a specific economic system to which corresponded a particular system of power and hence a specific ruling class. The capital system was not everlasting, they claimed, but a temporary historical phenomenon bound to die. By creating a large class of propertyless workers, capitalism sowed the seeds of its own destruction. It would, they claimed, eventually be succeeded by a communist society. Marx and Engels argued that the present capitalist system was unfair, though superior to the socioeconomic system that preceded it. Under capitalism the worke rs freely sold their labor and

5 received wages in return, but this system disguised a profound inequality. The capitalists, Marx and Engels argued, cheated the workers by taking for themselves far more than they paid out in wages and other production costs. This appropriation of wealth, which Marx and Engels called surplus value, gave the owners of capital great wealth, as well as control over the economic development of society. The capitalists appropriated not simply wealth but also power. Marx and Engels viewed the working class as fundamentally united with a common aim of improving their conditions of life. The working class had, as the Communist Manifesto put it, nothing to lose but their chains. Workers were urged to organize themselves into politica l parties and trade unions and to reject any attempt to divide them on the basis of religion, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. Such attempts, they argued, played into the hands of the established powers, for a divided working class was the surest way to ensure the continuation of capitalist rule. In 1864 Marx and Engels, in cooperation with European labor leaders, founded the International Workingmen s Association, generally known as the First International. This largely ineffectual committee ended in By the end of the 19th century, however, Marxist socialism had become the leading ideology of all working-class parties in industrial countries, with the exception of the labor movements in English-speaking countries, where Marxist socialism never established itself. Most European socialist or social democratic the terms are interchangeable political parties were formed between 1870 and In 1889 their representatives met in Paris to form a new association, the Second International, to replace the First. This loosely organized federation upheld a form of Marxism popularized by Engels; August Bebel, leader of the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD); and Karl Kautsky, the SPD s theorist. Following Marx they claimed that capitalism would eliminate small producers until only two antagonistic classes, capitalists and workers, faced each other. A major economic crisis would eventually open the way to socialism and the common ownership of the means of production. By the beginning of the 20th century socialist political parties, in alliance with labor unions, fought for reforms to be obtained in the short or medium term. At the same time these parties maintained that their final goal remained the elimination of capitalism and the birth of a socialist society. This two-

6 stage concept was enshrined in the manifesto of the Second International and in the program of the most important socialist party of the time, the German SPD. The political reforms socialists demanded included universal suffrage (voting rights); equal rights for women; a social protection system of pensions and medical care; regulation of the working day, with the goal of an eight-hour day; and full legalization and recognition of labor unions. V MODERATE SOCIALISM In the late 1890s German SPD leader Eduard Bernstein challenged the orthodox Marxist position represented by Kautsky. In a series of articles Bernstein argued that capitalism had reached a new stage not foreseen by Marx and had developed the capacity to avoid crises. The advent of parliamentary democracy, he claimed, enabled the working class to struggle within the system and to achieve power peacefully. Bernstein and his supporters were in the minority almost everywhere, but his revisionist views came to dominate the socialist and social democratic political parties of Western Europe after In Britain the Fabian Society held views similar to Bernstein s, contending that the changes from capitalism to socialism would be brought about by peaceful means. This group was founded in 1884 by middle-class intellectuals and social reformers, and it attracted such talented people as dramatist George Bernard Shaw, future prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, novelist H. G. Wells, and economist Sidney Webb and his wife, sociologist Beatrice Webb (see Sidney and Beatrice Webb). The Fabian Society directed its efforts more to the middle class than the working class, but it later became affiliated with Britain s Labour Party. VI SOCIALISM IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY Germany s Social Democratic Party (SPD) dominated the European socialist movement at the turn of the 20th century. Its dominance was due to a combination of factors: the prestige and importance of Germany, the prestige of the party s intellectuals, the SPD s superb organization, and above all its

7 electoral strength and the weakness of socialist parties in countries of comparable importance such as France and the United Kingdom. In 1890, when the German Reichstag (parliament) stopped re newing laws that restricted SPD activities, the party became the largest in Germany. By 1914 it had 1 million members. Elsewhere strong labor movements did not necessarily mean strong socialist parties. British trade unions created the Labour Party only in 1900 and did not ally it with the goals of socialism until In the United States the widespread persecution of labor unions made it difficult to form a separate party of any significance. In France workers were organized more slowly, and the socialis t movement remained divided. A World War I Before the outbreak of World War I in 1914 socialists assumed that their demands could be achieved peacefully in democratic countries and that violence might be necessary where despotism prevailed, as in Russia under the tsars. The majority assumed that their task was to build up the movement until the eventual collapse of capitalism would enable socialism to be established. Some socialists, such as SPD member Rosa Luxemburg, impatient with this wait-and-see attitude, advocated the use of the mass general strike as a revolutionary weapon to be deployed when required. On the eve of World War I all socialist parties were united in at least one aim the prevention of the impending war. When war did erupt, however, the two most important socialist parties of the time, the French and the German, chose to support their own governments. In both France and Germany socialists had acquired a stake in the existing social order. Universal or near-universal male suffrage had given them some degree of representation in the legislature, and with this some negotiating strength to secure civil rights and social reforms. Where socialists had made little or no gains, or were banned and persecuted, as in Russia, there was no ground for patriotism. The war effectively broke up the limited unity of European socialism. The Russian Revolutions of 1917 provided a further blow against socialist unity. It separated the supporters of the Bolsheviks, led by V.

8 I. Lenin, from reformist social democrats, most of whom had backed their national governments during the war. Most Communist parties were formed in the years immediately following World War I by Lenin s supporters within the socialist parties. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and in the Communist countries that emerged after World War II, the term socialism indicated a transitional phase between capitalism and Communism. Communists remained committed to a centralized and authoritarian view of socialism, whereby the Communist Party made all the important decisions as the unelected representative of the people. Elsewhere, during the years leading up to World War II, the socialist parties and not the Communists remained the dominant leftist current in the European labor movement and in the electorate as a whole. European socialists rejected the authoritarian concepts of Soviet Communism and accepted all the basic rules of liberal democracy: free elections; civil liberties; political pluralism that is, multiple parties; and the sovereignty (authority and independence) of parliament, the legislative branch. The rivalry between socialists and Communists was interrupted only occasionally, as in the 1930s when they joined forces to oppose fascism. B Between the Wars and World War II Between the two world wars socialists were able to form governments, usually in coalition with or supported by other parties. They were thus able to be in power at times during the 1920s in Britain and Germany, and during the 1930s in Belgium, France, and Spain. In Sweden, where social democrats have been more successful than elsewhere, they governed without interruption from 1932 to In Spain a coalition of socialists and leftist liberals, supported by the Communists, formed a popular front government from 1936 to The leftist coalition provoked a fierce reaction from clerical and military circles led by General Francisco Franco. The resultant Spanish Civil War ended with Franco s victory and the establishment of a dictatorship in Spain that lasted until A similar popular-front government, elected in France in 1936, was more fortunate. It introduced some social reforms but was ousted from power in less than a year. In Germany the SPD formed a government in 1918 and

9 introduced significant social legislation, but it was out power for most of the 1920s. By the 1930s the consequences of the Great Depression had so increased unemployment and social discontent in Germany that the way was opened for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. The 1930s were grim years for the European socialist parties and for democracy in general. In many countries authoritarian regimes of the right held power, and in the Soviet Union, an authoritarian regime of the left was in control. World War II ( ) offered a new chance to European social democracy. Although the Communists tended to lead the main resistance in territories occupied by Nazi Germany and its allies, the socialists emerged from the war as the main party of the left in nearly all European countries. In Eastern Europe, under Soviet influence or occupation, the socialists merged with the Communists, usually against their will, and socialist parties essentially became banned. VII THE POSTWAR YEARS After World War II European socialist parties, frequently leading the government, concentrated on social and economic reforms under capitalism. Although these reforms varied from country to country, the first goal was the introduction of a comprehensive welfare plan that would protect all citizens from the cradle to the grave. Secondly, socialist parties sought to maintain full employment using techniques of economic management developed by liberal economist John Maynard Keynes. It was primarily after 1945 that socialism became associated with management of the economy by the government and expansion of the public sector through nationalization of major industries. Remarkable economic growth during the 1950s and 1960s put an end to the socialist assumption that under capitalism the working class would be constantly impoverished or the economy would stagnate. Western European socialist parties increasingly sought to attract middle -class voters. To do so they openly discarded Marxism (something they had already done in practice), loosened their links with labor unions, and abandoned the idea of an ever-expanding nationalized sector. This late-1950s revisionism proclaimed the new goal of socialism to be wealth redistribution according to principles of social justice and equality. Many centrist and conservative parties in Europe shared these assumptions.

10 VIII THE 1970S AND 1980S A sharp increase in petroleum prices in 1973 triggered widespread inflation in the developed world, while economic growth rates faltered. The idea of a crisis of capitalism reappeared in political discourse. Growing environmental consciousness, though not necessarily aligned with socialism, implied that unchecked capitalist growth was harmful to the environment. The Vietnam War, which ended in 1975 and was followed by the Watergate scandal, weakened the prestige of the United States, the leading capitalist country. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, the tide was turning against the left, at least in northern Europe, particularly in Britain and Germany. Rising unemployment had weakened the labor unions, increased poverty, and made the welfare system far more costly than in the days of full employment. To maintain welfare standards during a time of rising unemployment required increased taxation of those still employed. This move proved unpopular. Conservative parties argued that it was necessary to roll back the state, reduce public spending, and privatize state -owned companies. Socialists were increasingly on the defensive. The growing economic interdependence that developed rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, often referred to as globalization, meant that Keynesian economic policies had become less effective. Pumping money into the economy to increase the demand for goods brought about balance of payments problems (because some of the demand was for goods produced abroad) and inflation. Socialist governments discovered this to their cost as they lost elections in Britain in the 1970s and in France in the 1980s. In Britain and Germany the socialist parties lost elections in, respectively, 1979 and They remained out of power until the second half of the 1990s. In France and Italy the left was deeply divided between socialists and Communists. This helped centrist parties remain in power. An effort by Communists and socialists in France to patch up their differences finally paid off in 1981 with the election of Socialist leader François Mitterrand as president. But the French Socialist Party lost control of the National Assembly in In Italy the Democratic Party of the Left, a reconstituted Communist

11 party, came to power in 1996 at the head of a coalition only after the collapse of the governing parties in the wake of sensational corruption scandals. The coalition lost power in 2001 to a right-wing government headed by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. IX SOCIALISM AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM The collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern and Central Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s brought no comfort to the left in Western Europe. It was generally seen in the West as further evidence that free markets were better at allocating resources than any form of state interference. Although neoliberal ideologies based on free -market capitalism briefly gained ground, they too proved unpopular. European voters became increasingly concerned that cutbacks in government spending, which neoliberals called for, would seriously harm public services, healthcare (free in virtually all of Europe), and education. Socialist parties returned to power in unprecedented number in the 1990s. As the second millennium came to a close, they were in power in almost all member states of the European Union (EU), including the four largest countries: Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. Commentators who had declared socialism dead after the collapse of Communism had to revise their views and heralded the beginning of a new socialism. The right, however, won power in Italy (2001), France (2002), and the Netherlands (2002 and 2003). By the early 2000s the fastest-growing parties in Europe were those able to attract voters concerned about growing unemployment a nd crime and willing to blame immigrant communities and ethnic minorities for these problems. Policy differences have always divided the left. Nonetheless, a remarkable convergence of the European left occurred after 1990 under a new, moderate leadership advocating broadly centrist policies. Such policies are known in Britain as the Third Way, in France as the Gauche plurielle ( plural left ), in Germany as the Neue Mitte ( New Middle ), and in the Netherlands as the Polder Model. The new policy is that inflation is more dangerous than unemployment and that socialists should be pro - business. Socialism as represented by the socialist parties has not only lost its original anticapitalist

12 outlook but is also coming to terms, albeit painfully, with accepting that capitalism cannot be adequately controlled, let alone abolished, in the age of globalization. X SOCIALISM ACROSS THE WORLD Strong socialist or labor parties have remained largely confined to Europe and to countries whose population is or was of mainly European extraction, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. The Social Democratic Party of Japan was out of power from the end of World War II until 1993, when it briefly led a governing coalition. Indonesia had a relatively strong left, after gaining independence from the Netherlands. However, after a 1965 military takeover led by Suharto, the army in Indonesia persecuted Communists and socialists alike, effectively annihilating them. No socialist tradition remained to take advantage of Indonesia s return to democracy in the 1990s. In Latin America only Chile produced a significant socialist party. That party was strong enough to survive underground after a military takeover in Chile in 1973 and be elected to power in 2000, some years after the end of the military dictatorship. After years of military dominance, Brazil elected a social democrat, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, as president in However, his administration veered between neoliberalism and social reforms, placing his social-democratic credentials in dispute. His more radical successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, generally known as Lula, won the presidential election in 2002 at the head of a recently created Workers Party. Elsewhere socialism has usually been a local variant of Communism. In Asia and much of Africa socialism was an ideology advocating modernization by the state, rather than an outright anticapitalist doctrine. Socialist ideas greatly influenced independence and anticolonialist movements, notably the National Congress Party in India and the African National Congress in South Africa. These ideas also influenced postcolonial regimes, including those in power in Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. When in power, African socialist parties concentrated on nation-building and social reform, often at the expense of democratic rule and civil rights. The ideas of social democracy also influenced many parties in economically advanced parts of eastern Asia, especially in the wake of an economic crisis that hit the area in the late 1990s. Leaders made an appeal to ill-defined Asian values to justify proposing

13 control over free markets in ways that are reminiscent of social democracy. Notable examples are Kim Dae Jung, elected president in South Korea in 1998, and Chen Shui-bian, elected president in Taiwan in XI SOCIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES The United States has never had a significant socialist party. The country s failure to develop such a party has puzzled socialist theorists who wrongly assumed that industrialization would always be associated with a strong socialist movement. In general, the two -party system has held sway in American politics, and third parties have fared poorly. The Socialist Labor Party (SLP) was founded in 1877 and ran its first candidate for president of the United States in Six years later, in 1898, labor leader Eugene V. Debs, newspaper publisher Victor Berger, and others organized the Social Democratic Party of America. The next year, in 1899, Morris Hillquit and a group of moderate socialists broke with the SLP leadership and joined in 1900 with the Social Democratic Party in running Debs for U.S. president. After the election, in which Debs won 100,000 votes, a unity convention was held in 1901 that resulted in the organ ization of the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party supported Debs for president in 1904, 1908, and 1912, with Debs receiving 897,000 votes in 1912 as party membership grew. Berger was elected as representative from Wisconsin in 1911, becoming the first Socialist in the U.S. Congress. Disagreements among Socialists during the teens, especially during World War I ( ), over the party s antiwar and anti- Communist stands greatly reduced party membership, however. In 1917 Debs was sent to prison for an antiwar speech in Ohio, but in 1920 he received his largest vote 920,000 as a presidential candidate. In 1924 the Socialists endorsed Wisconsin politician Robert M. La Follette for president on the Progressive Party ticket. Four years later, the Socialist Party nominated Norman Thomas. He received 267,000 votes, and in 1932, during the Great Depression, 885,000. During the next four years,

14 however, the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, enacted many social reforms. Roosevelt s success in rallying much of the labor movement to him weakened the Socialists, and the party s votes in subsequent elections declined steadily. Several mergers occurred between socialist groups from the 1950s on, leading to the formation in 1982 of the Democratic Socialists of American (DSA). Although critical of Democratic Party leadership and the party s corporate backing, the DSA has generally backed Democratic candidates in presidential elections.