Types of socialism

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Types of socialism include a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control[1][2][3] of the means of production[4][5] and organizational self-management of enterprises[6][7] as well as the political theories and movements associated with socialism.[8][better source needed] Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity[9] in which surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole.[10] There are many varieties of socialism and no single definition encapsulates all of them,[11] but social ownership is a common element shared by its various forms.[1][12][13] Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary, how far society should intervene, and whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.[11]

As a term, socialism represents a broad range of theoretical and historical socioeconomic systems and has also been used by many political movements throughout history to describe themselves and their goals, generating a variety of socialism types.[8] Socialist economic systems can be further divided into market and non-market forms.[14] The first type of socialism utilizes markets for allocating inputs and capital goods among economic units. In the second type of socialism, planning is utilized and include a system of accounting based on calculation-in-kind to value resources and goods wherein production is carried out directly for use.[15][16]

There have been numerous political movements such as anarchism, communism, the labour movement, Marxism, social democracy and syndicalism, whose members called themselves socialists under some definition of the term—some of these interpretations are mutually exclusive and all of them have generated debates over the true meaning of socialism.[2][11] Different self-described socialists have used socialism to refer to different things such as an economic system,[17][5] a type of society,[6] a philosophical outlook,[1] an ethical socialism in the form of a collection of moral values and ideals,[18][19][20][21] or a certain kind of human character.[22] Some of those definitions of socialism are very vague[22] while others are so specific that they only include a small minority of the things that have been described as socialism in the past such as a mode of production,[23] state socialism,[24] or the abolition of wage labour.[25]

  1. ^ a b c Busky, Donald F. (2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-275-96886-1. Socialism may be defined as movements for social ownership and control of the economy. It is this idea that is the common element found in the many forms of socialism.
  2. ^ a b Sinclair 1918: "Socialism, you see, is a bird with two wings. The definition is 'social ownership and democratic control of the instruments and means of production.'"
  3. ^ Arnold 1998, p. 8: "What else does a socialist economic system involve? Those who favor socialism generally speak of social ownership, social control, or socialization of the means of production as the distinctive positive feature of a socialist economic system."
  4. ^ Rosser & Rosser 2003, p. 53: "Socialism is an economic system characterised by state or collective ownership of the means of production, land, and capital."; Badie, Berg-Schlosser & Morlino 2011, p. 2456: "Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources."; Brus 2015, p. 87: "This alteration in the relationship between economy and politics is evident in the very definition of a socialist economic system. The basic characteristic of such a system is generally reckoned to be the predominance of the social ownership of the means of production."
  5. ^ a b Zimbalist, Andrew; Sherman, Howard J.; Brown, Stuart (1988). Comparing Economic Systems: A Political-Economic Approach. Harcourt College Pub. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-15-512403-5. Pure socialism is defined as a system wherein all of the means of production are owned and run by the government and/or cooperative, nonprofit groups.
  6. ^ a b Nove, Alec. "Socialism". New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition (2008). A society may be defined as socialist if the major part of the means of production of goods and services is in some sense socially owned and operated, by state, socialised or cooperative enterprises. The practical issues of socialism comprise the relationships between management and workforce within the enterprise, the interrelationships between production units (plan versus markets), and, if the state owns and operates any part of the economy, who controls it and how.
  7. ^ Michie, Jonathan (2001). Readers Guide to the Social Sciences. Routledge. p. 1516. ISBN 978-1-57958-091-9. Just as private ownership defines capitalism, social ownership defines socialism. The essential characteristic of socialism in theory is that it destroys social hierarchies, and therefore leads to a politically and economically egalitarian society. Two closely related consequences follow. First, every individual is entitled to an equal ownership share that earns an aliquot part of the total social dividend…Second, in order to eliminate social hierarchy in the workplace, enterprises are run by those employed, and not by the representatives of private or state capital. Thus, the well-known historical tendency of the divorce between ownership and management is brought to an end. The society—i.e. every individual equally—owns capital and those who work are entitled to manage their own economic affairs.
  8. ^ a b "Socialism". The Free dictionary. 2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) any of various social or political theories or movements in which the common welfare is to be achieved through the establishment of a socialist economic system
  9. ^ O'Hara, Phillip (September 2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy. Vol. 2. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 0-415-24187-1. In order of increasing decentralisation (at least) three forms of socialised ownership can be distinguished: state-owned firms, employee-owned (or socially) owned firms, and citizen ownership of equity.
  10. ^ "Socialism". Glossary of Terms. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  11. ^ a b c Docherty, James C.; Lamb, Peter, eds. (2006). Historical Dictionary of Socialism. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements. Vol. 73 (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. pp. 1–3. ISBN 9780810855601.
  12. ^ Arnold, Scott (1994). The Philosophy and Economics of Market Socialism: A Critical Study. Oxford University Press. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0195088274. This term is harder to define, since socialists disagree among themselves about what socialism 'really is.' It would seem that everyone (socialists and nonsocialists alike) could at least agree that it is not a system in which there is widespread private ownership of the means of production...To be a socialist is not just to believe in certain ends, goals, values, or ideals. It also requires a belief in a certain institutional means to achieve those ends; whatever that may mean in positive terms, it certainly presupposes, at a minimum, the belief that these ends and values cannot be achieved in an economic system in which there is widespread private ownership of the means of production...Those who favor socialism generally speak of social ownership, social control, or socialization of the means of production as the distinctive positive feature of a socialist economic system.
  13. ^ Hastings, Adrian; Mason, Alistair; Pyper, Hugh (21 December 2000). The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford University Press. p. 677. ISBN 978-0198600244. Socialists have always recognized that there are many possible forms of social ownership of which co-operative ownership is one...Nevertheless, socialism has throughout its history been inseparable from some form of common ownership. By its very nature it involves the abolition of private ownership of capital; bringing the means of production, distribution, and exchange into public ownership and control is central to its philosophy. It is difficult to see how it can survive, in theory or practice, without this central idea.
  14. ^ Kolb, Robert (19 October 2007). Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society (First ed.). SAGE Publications. p. 1345. ISBN 978-1412916523. There are many forms of socialism, all of which eliminate private ownership of capital and replace it with collective ownership. These many forms, all focused on advancing distributive justice for long-term social welfare, can be divided into two broad types of socialism: nonmarket and market.
  15. ^ Schweickart, David; Lawler, James; Ticktin, Hillel; Ollman, Bertell (1998). "The Difference Between Marxism and Market Socialism". Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists. Routledge. pp. 61–63. More fundamentally, a socialist society must be one in which the economy is run on the principle of the direct satisfaction of human needs. [...] Exchange-value, prices and so money are goals in themselves in a capitalist society or in any market. There is no necessary connection between the accumulation of capital or sums of money and human welfare. Under conditions of backwardness, the spur of money and the accumulation of wealth has led to a massive growth in industry and technology. [...] It seems an odd argument to say that a capitalist will only be efficient in producing use-value of a good quality when trying to make more money than the next capitalist. It would seem easier to rely on the planning of use-values in a rational way, which because there is no duplication, would be produced more cheaply and be of a higher quality. [...] Although money, and so monetary calculation, will disappear in socialism this does not mean that there will no longer be any need to make choices, evaluations and calculations. [...] Wealth will be produced and distributed in its natural form of useful things, of objects that can serve to satisfy some human need or other. Not being produced for sale on a market, items of wealth will not acquire an exchange-value in addition to their use-value. In socialism their value, in the normal non-economic sense of the word, will not be their selling price nor the time needed to produce them but their usefulness. It is for this that they will be appreciated, evaluated, wanted and produced.
  16. ^ "Socialism and Calculation" (PDF). World Socialist Movement. pp. 1–5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 15 February 2010.
  17. ^ Arnold 1998, p. 8: "What else does a socialist economic system involve? Those who favor socialism generally speak of social ownership, social control, or socialization of the means of production as the distinctive positive feature of a socialist economic system."; Rosser & Rosser 2003, p. 53: "Socialism is an economic system characterised by state or collective ownership of the means of production, land, and capital."; Badie, Berg-Schlosser & Morlino 2011, p. 2456: "Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources."; Brus 2015, p. 87: "This alteration in the relationship between economy and politics is evident in the very definition of a socialist economic system. The basic characteristic of such a system is generally reckoned to be the predominance of the social ownership of the means of production."
  18. ^ Wright, Anthony (1999). "Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism". In Eatwell, Roger; Wright, Anthony (eds.). Contemporary Political Ideologies (2nd ed.). London: Continuum. pp. 80–103. ISBN 978-1-85567-605-3. This was an ideology which, at bottom, was grounded not in materialism but in morals. Thus Bernstein summoned up Kant to point the way towards a politics of ethical choices.
  19. ^ Thompson, Noel W. (2006). Political Economy and the Labour Party: The Economics of Democratic Socialism, 1884–2005 (2nd ed.). Abingdon, England: Routledge. pp. 52–60. ISBN 978-0-415-32880-7.
  20. ^ Berman, Sheri (2008). Understanding Social Democracy (PDF). What's Left of the Left: Liberalism and Social Democracy in a Globalized World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. pp. 12–13. Retrieved 25 February 2020. Regardless of the specific policies they advocated, one thing that joined all budding interwar social democrats was a rejection of the passivity and economic determinism of orthodox Marxism [...] so they often embraced communitarian, corporatist, and even nationalist appeals and urged their parties to make the transition from workers' to 'people's' parties.
  21. ^ Heywood, Andrew (2012). Political Ideologies: An Introduction (5th ed.). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-230-36725-8. The theoretical basis for social democracy has been provided more by moral or religious beliefs, rather than by scientific analysis. Social democrats have not accepted the materialist and highly systematic ideas of Marx and Engels, but rather advanced an essentially moral critique of capitalism.
  22. ^ a b Boyle, James. "What is Socialism?", The Shakespeare Press, 1912. pp. 35. Boyle quotes Pierrerismo Joseph Proudhon as stating that socialism is "every aspiration towards the amelioration of society", and then admitting that, under this definition, "we are all socialists."
  23. ^ Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the name of Socialism: The Left-Wing origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-8047-7566-3. According to nineteenth-century socialist views, socialism would function without capitalist economic categories – such as money, prices, interest, profits and rent – and thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science. While some socialists recognized the need for money and prices at least during the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialists more commonly believed that the socialist economy would soon administratively mobilize the economy in physical units without the use of prices or money.
  24. ^ Ellman, Michael (2014). Socialist Planning (Third ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-1074-2732-7.
  25. ^ McNally, David (1993). Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique. Verso Books. ISBN 978-0-8609-1606-2.