Here's everything you need to know:. What is socialism? Broadly, it's a political and economic system under which the means of production are owned by the community as a whole, with government ensuring the equitable distribution of wealth. But socialism has taken many forms.
Socialism has morphed into Soviet-style communism and spawned Latin American dictatorships, while in Europe, many countries combine socialistic principles with capitalism and democracy. In the U. Still, socialism has largely dwelled on the margins of American politics, until it was revived by the campaign of Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders. What is Sanders' preferred form of socialism? A self-described "democratic socialist," Sanders believes government should aggressively use taxes and social programs to limit income inequality and provide health care, day care, and a college education to all without charge.
But he doesn't spurn private enterprise. When did socialism arise? It began as a response to the dire poverty and inhumane working conditions in industrialized Europe in the early 19th century.
One of the first thinkers called a "socialist" was Robert Owen, an idealistic Welsh mill owner who in the s created a number of short-lived "utopian" communities — basically, collectives — in Britain and the American Midwest. But socialism really took off in midcentury, spurred by the writings of German philosopher Karl Marx and the rise of labor unions. How did it spread to the U. The first socialist to hold public office in the U.
Debs see below , a fiery railroad-union leader who ran for president five times. But by the s, U. Nor could he, since the state is based upon the existence of classes—which no longer exists in socialism or Communism. In other words, what social functions will remain in existence that are analogous to present state functions?
This points to the fundamental difference between a state and the functions now performed by one representative bodies, coordinating bodies between cooperatives, etc. Here not only is the state imported into the lower phase of Communism—it exists in a higher phase as well. The state is now fetishized to the point of making it an eternal fact of human existence.
Although Marx never devoted a book or even a single published essay to a discussion of a post-capitalist society, here we have managed to touch on only a few of a considerable number of discussions about the nature of socialism found in his work for a fuller and detailed discussion, see Hudis It could be argued that the lack of discussion of this dimension of his thought has less to do with the fact that the texts that contain them are unknown than the ideological blinders that have stood in the way of grasping them.
Yet there is one issue on which virtually all commentators agree: Marx held that a socialist society could come into existence only on the basis of existing material conditions. There is no path to the future that does not emerge from the material conditions of the present. But this does not free our generation from envisioning the future as the guide to action in the present. Basso, Luca. Translated by David Broder. Chicago: Haymarket.
Find this resource:. Dunayevskaya, Raya. Marxism and Freedom, from Until Today. Amherst, NY: Humanities Books,. Benanav, Aaron. Federici, Silvia. Schmidt and C. London: Pluto Press. Holloway, John. Hudis, Peter. Kosik, Karel. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Lebowitz, Michael. The Socialist Alternative: from Gotha to Now. New York: Monthly Review. Lenin, V. The State and Revolution. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Martineau, Jonathan. Marx, Karl. The Ethnological Notebooks.
Edited by Lawrence Krader. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum. New York: International Publishers. Capital , Vol. Translated by Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin. Translated by David Fernbach. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Smith, A. Retrieved August 6, Stetsenko, Anna. Martin, J. Sugarman, and K. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Tombazos, Stavros. But Marx presumes that it would not be able to sustain itself over the long term and on a societal level. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice.
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The Critique of the Gotha Program 5. Conclusion References Notes. Go to page:. The Vision of a Post-Capitalist Society in the Young Marx Marx no sooner announced his conversion to Communism than he began to enter into intense debates with other radical tendencies over their understanding of the alternative to capitalism.
Kosik , In capitalism, however, time takes on a peculiar, inverted character. Marx writes in the section on the value form in chapter one: When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said in the customary manner that a commodity is both a use-value and an exchange-value, this was, strictly speaking, wrong. Marx explicitly spells out this vision of a new society in the Grundrisse : The general character of labor would not be given to it only by exchange; its communal character would determine participation in the products.
Marx [—] a Not all forms of social mediation are constitutive of value production. He writes in the former: With collective production, money capital is completely dispensed with. But these tokens are not money; they do not circulate Marx [] Conclusion Although Marx never devoted a book or even a single published essay to a discussion of a post-capitalist society, here we have managed to touch on only a few of a considerable number of discussions about the nature of socialism found in his work for a fuller and detailed discussion, see Hudis Find this resource: Google Preview WorldCat p.
Find this resource: Google Preview WorldCat. Notes: 1 For a discussion of how distribution according to actual labor time addresses the problem of efficiency and economizing time, see Hudis — All rights reserved.
Sign in to annotate. Delete Cancel Save. Cancel Save. Socialism describes any political or economic theory that says the community, rather than individuals, should own and manage property and natural resources.
These systems vary widely in structure, but they share an opposition to an unrestricted market economy, and the belief that public ownership of the means of production and making money will lead to better distribution of wealth and a more egalitarian society.
The intellectual roots of socialism go back at least as far as ancient Greek times, when the philosopher Plato depicted a type of collective society in his dialog, Republic B. In 16th-century England, Thomas More drew on Platonic ideals for his Utopia , an imaginary island where money has been abolished and people live and work communally.
In the late 18th century, the invention of the steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution , which brought sweeping economic and social change first to Great Britain, then to the rest of the world. Factory owners became wealthy, while many workers lived in increasing poverty , laboring for long hours under difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. Socialism emerged as a response to the expanding capitalist system.
It presented an alternative, aimed at improving the lot of the working class and creating a more egalitarian society. In its emphasis on public ownership of the means of production, socialism contrasted sharply with capitalism, which is based around a free market system and private ownership.
Sketch of a city plan for a new community in Indiana, based on the principles advocated by Robert Owen, a socialist philanthropist. The city was designed to give "greater physical, moral, and intellectual advantages to every individual. Early socialists like Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and Charles Fourier offered up their own models for social organization based on cooperation rather than competition.
Owen, who had owned and operated textile mills in Lanark, Scotland, headed to the United States in to launch an experimental community in New Harmony, Indiana. His planned commune was based on the principles of self-sufficiency, cooperation and public ownership of property.
The experiment soon failed, and Owen lost much of his fortune. One of these, based in Red Bank, New Jersey, lasted into the s. For Marx, society was made up of classes: When certain classes controlled the means of production, they used that power to exploit the labor class.
Though Marx died in , his influence on socialist thought only grew after his death. His ideas were taken up and expanded upon by various political parties such as the German Social Democratic Party and leaders like Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.
Christian socialism, or collective societies formed around Christian religious principles. Anarchism saw not just capitalism but government as harmful and unnecessary. Social democracy held that socialist aims could be achieved through gradual political reform rather than revolution.
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