Socialism

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] No single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[12] but social ownership is the common element.[4][13] Traditionally, socialism is on the left-wing of the political spectrum.[14] Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, the structure of management in organizations, and different approaches from below or from above. Some socialists favour a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach, while others disagree on whether government is the correct vehicle for change.[15][16]

Socialist systems divide into non-market and market forms.[17] Non-market socialism substitutes factor markets with integrated economic planning and engineering, or technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing a different economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws and dynamics than those of capitalism.[18] 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.[19] Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of socially owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend.[20][21][22]

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.[23]

Social democracy originated within the socialist movement,[24] supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice.[25][26] While retaining socialism as a long-term goal,[27] 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.[28] Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism, with more democratic control of companies, investments and natural resources.[29]

The socialist political movement includes political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-end 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that socialists associated with capitalism.[12] 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.[30][31] By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement,[32] with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century.[33] Many socialists also adopted the causes of other social movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, and progressivism.[34]
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 posit that in practice, the model functioned as a form of state capitalism.[35][36][37] Several academics, political commentators, and scholars have noted that some Western European countries have been governed by socialist parties or have mixed economies that are sometimes called "democratic socialist".[38][39] Following the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries have moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world,[40] 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.[41] Socialism experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s, most prominently in the form of democratic socialism.[42][43]