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Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic and social systems, which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can be public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element, and is considered left-wing. Different types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.

Socialist politics has been both internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and at other times independent and critical of them, and present in both industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, since the post-war period it came to embrace 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. Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism, with more democratic control of companies, currencies, investments, and natural resources.

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. Several academics, political commentators, and scholars have distinguished between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first representing the Eastern Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties such as Britain, France, Sweden, and Western countries in general, among others. Following the end of the Cold War, many of these countries have moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world. (Full article...)

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Socialism with Chinese characteristics, meaning socialism adapted to Chinese conditions, is the official ideology of the Communist Party of China (CPC), claimed to be based upon scientific socialism. This ideology supports the creation of a socialist market economy dominated by the public sector since China is, as claimed by the CPC, in the primary stage of socialism. The People's Republic of China (PRC) government maintains that it has not abandoned Marxism but has developed many of the terms and concepts of Marxist theory to accommodate its new economic system. The CPC argues that socialism is compatible with these economic policies. In current Chinese Communist thinking, China is in the primary stage of socialism—a view which explains the PRC government's flexible economic policies to develop into an industrialized nation.

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Eduard Bernstein (German: [ˈeːduaʁt ˈbɛʁnʃtaɪn]; 6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he began to identify what he believed to be errors in Marxist thinking and began to criticize views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history. He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics and rejected the Hegelian perspective of an immanent economic necessity to socialism. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various socialism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Encounter between Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Che Guevara in Cuba, three radical icons of the 1960s (from History of socialism)
Image 2Mikhail Bakunin speaking to members of the International Workingmen's Association at the Basel Congress in 1869 (from Socialism)
Image 3Statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in Alexanderplatz, Berlin (from History of socialism)
Image 4The celebration of the election of the Commune on 28 March 1871—the Paris Commune was a major early implementation of socialist ideas. (from Socialism)
Image 5Eduard Bernstein
Image 6Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of French socialism (from History of socialism)
Image 7Rosa Luxemburg, prominent Marxist revolutionary and martyr of the German Spartacist uprising in 1919 (from Socialism)
Image 8Leonid Brezhnev (from History of socialism)
Image 9Salvador Allende, President of Chile and member of the Socialist Party of Chile, whose presidency and life were ended by a CIA-backed military coup (from Socialism)
Image 10Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, main theorist of mutualism and influential French socialist thinker (from Socialism)
Image 11Edward Carpenter, philosopher and activist who was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party as well as in the early LGBTI western movements (from Socialism)
Image 12Noam Chomsky, an American libertarian socialist (from History of socialism)
Image 13FAI militia during the Spanish Revolution in 1936 (from Socialism)
Image 14Presidents Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in World Social Forum for Latin America (from History of socialism)
Image 15Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana and theorist of African socialism, on a Soviet Union commemorative postage stamp (from History of socialism)
Image 16Alexis Tsipras, socialist Prime Minister of Greece who led the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) through a victory in the January 2015 Greek legislative election (from History of socialism)
Image 17New Harmony, a utopian attempt as proposed by Robert Owen (from History of socialism)
Image 18Mao Zedong in 1959 (from History of socialism)
Image 19Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist Vladimir Lenin in1920 (from Socialism)
Image 20Mikhail Bakunin speaking to members of the IWA at the Basel Congress in 1869 (from History of socialism)
Image 21The first anarchist journal to use the term libertarian was Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social, published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque, the first recorded person to describe himself as libertarian. (from Socialism)
Image 22Arabic letters "Lam" and "Alif" reading "Lā" (Arabic for "No!") are a symbol of Islamic Socialism in Turkey. (from Socialism)
Image 23Pierre Leroux founder of the Parisian newspaper Le Globe in which the term socialism first appeared (from History of socialism)
Image 24Antonio Gramsci, member of the Italian Socialist Party and later leader and theorist of the Communist Party of Italy (from Socialism)
Image 25Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden for the Swedish Social Democratic Party (from Socialism)
Image 26Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–1991) (from Socialism)
Image 27Socialists in Union Square, New York City on May Day 1912 (from Socialism)
Image 28Socialist feminist Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in 1910 (from Socialism)
Image 29Charles Fourier, influential early French socialist thinker (from Socialism)
Image 30The writings of Karl Marx provided the basis for the development of Marxist political theory and Marxian economics. (from Socialism)
Image 31Einar Gerhardsen, Prime Minister of Norway for the Labour Party (from Socialism)
Image 32Barricades Boulevard Voltaire, Paris during the uprising known as the Paris Commune (from History of socialism)
Image 33Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin opposed the Marxist aim of dictatorship of the proletariat in favour of universal rebellion and allied himself with the federalists in the First International before his expulsion by the Marxists (from History of socialism)
Image 34Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, early French socialist (from Socialism)

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Gheorghe Eminescu, nephew of Romania's national poet, spent time in communist prisons, including one which allocated him a 25-centimeters-wide (10-inch) sleeping area?
... that the title and cover art for Molchat Doma's 2018 album Etazhi reference the Stalinist and socialist-realist architecture that inspired its lyrical themes?
... that Western media treated Egyptian activist Gihan Ibrahim as a face of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, but rarely mentioned her revolutionary-socialist political views?
... that a Socialist Youth League candidate in the 1990 Bosnian general election registered his ethnicity as 'Eskimo' as an apparent protest against ethnic registry requirements for candidates?
... that Julia Dawson's first Clarion Van was named for Scottish socialist Caroline Martyn?
... that British writer Adolphe Smith Headingley popularised the singing of the socialist anthem "The Red Flag" to the tune of "O Tannenbaum" against the wishes of its lyricist?
... that the Lithuanian-Belorussian Soviet Republic exchanged 13 detained German diplomats for 24 jailed leaders of the Kaunas Soviet of Workers Deputies?

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“

If it were possible to speak in any manner seriously with Radek on serious subjects, we would have made an attempt to explain to him that it is impossible, in 1932, in answer to the question whither does the development of U.S.S.R. lead to refer to the political “fundament” of the socialist construction. The insufficiency of this reference alone was exposed for the first time on a major scale in 1921 when the question of the reciprocal relations with the peasantry was posed point blank. The creation of the economic jointure between the city and the village was then proclaimed to be the creation of the genuine foundation of socialist construction. Of such nature was the basic task of the N.E.P. The theoretical formula of the jointure is very simple: the nationalized industry must provide the peasantry with products indispensable to it, in such quantity, of such quality and at such prices as would entirely eliminate or reduce to a minimum, in the reciprocal relations between the state and the basic mass of the peasantry, the factor of extra-economic force, that is, the administrative seizure of peasant labor. The discussion concerns of course not the kulaks, in relation to whom a special task is posed; to limit their exploiting activities and not to allow them to turn into the dominant power in the village. The establishment of a reciprocal relationship of voluntary “barter” between industry and rural economy, between the city and village would impart an immutable firmness to the political interrelation between the proletariat and the peasantry. To socialism, of course, in such a case, there would still remain a long and a difficult road. But on this fundament – on the fundament of a jointure between the city and the village acceptable to the moujik, the economic work could be confidently pushed ahead, without rushing apace or dropping back, by maneuvering on the world market and in accordance with the tempo of the development of the revolution in the Occident and the Orient. Not only would the road not have led to national socialism, but it would have been of use to nobody. It would suffice, if the still isolated economy of the Soviet Union became one of the preparatory elements of the future international socialist society. He who talks about “the fundament of socialism” in 1932 has no right to retreat to the line of 1918, without even making an attempt to hold to the line of 1921; i.e., without giving an answer to the question: Did we succeed, during the 12 years that elapsed since the introduction of the N.E.P. to realize the jointure, in the Leninist sense of the word? Did the 100 percent collectivization assure such reciprocal relations between the city and the village as would reduce the extra-economic force, if not to zero, then clearly approximately to it? In this is the whole question. And to this fundamental question one is still compelled to give a negative answer. The 100 per cent collectivization has come about not as the crowning and the fruition of an achieved jointure, but as an administrative screening of its absence. To keep mum on this question, to circumvent it, to beat around the bush with words, is to call the greatest danger’s upon the dictatorship of the proletariat ... But of course, it is not from Radek that one should except an analysis of the problem of the jointure.

”

— Leon Trotsky, The Foundations of Socialism, 1932

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