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Libertarian Socialism

This is my personal take on socialism. Specifically it means a) everyone's basic needs should be met b) following that, the government should be as small as practical.

Of course "everyone" "basic needs" and "practical" need further description.

"Everyone" means everyone. Without regard to their nationality, work ethic, ability, etc. You didn't ask to be here (as far as we can tell) so to be asked to provide for your own survival is double-billing. If we're to be any better than the animals we need to account for the worth and dignity of individuals on some other level than how much money they can make.

"Basic needs" fit into 3 categories of rights: a) That which ensures basic survival (nutrition, sleep, and protection from nature) b) That which enables you to build upon that survival to have a "life", since survival by itself is meaningless (education, socialization and gainful activity) c) That without which you would not be able to use the tools in b to accomplish anything (freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and the right to privacy)

Basic needs need not be a house in the suburbs, a dog, and a station wagon. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a warm piece of pipe were more what I had in mind. If you want more than that, that's where Priviledges of citizenship, luck, family support, or your own hard work come in. This means that the Libertarian aspect isn't contrary to the socialism aspect as most people would assume.

How small government can practically be is something I haven't really worked on too much. Suffice it to say that with the inclusion of a single law, maximum personal worth, all these things would be funded and more without taking away anything someone has the right or need for anyway, and leave plenty to go 'round for other governmental projects which fit more loosely into the realm of "privileges of citizenship" such as health-care, means of artistic expression and the oversight which would keep things from degrading.

I welcome your thoughts (you know who you are) HavenBastion 07:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

See libertarian socialism. Your description might resemble some forms of LS, but doesn't describe other forms. Jacob Haller 18:37, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Definitions Section

A new section should be added to the begining of the article that explains what socialism is to various groups, this would be very helpful to laymen that are not as versed in socialist rhetoric as we are. The groups should range from the Marxist definition, to the neo-con definition to be as inclusive as possible. Possibly divided into a leftist section, and a rightist section to avoid confusion. (Demigod Ron 00:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC))

Plato

I don't understand what Plato is doing in this article. IMO he was a statist, but not a socialist. Can anyone explain why he should be mentioned, along with their sources? This follows from a smilar discussion at Talk:Communism#Plato. Grant | Talk 09:28, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains The Republic's relevance to socialism and, in particular, the issue of private property:
"There should be no confusion about private property. When Socrates describes the living situation of the guardian classes in the ideal city (415d-417b), he is clear that private property will be sharply limited, and when he discusses the kinds of regulations the rulers need to have in place for the whole city (421c ff.), he is clear that the producers will have enough private property to make the regulation of wealth and poverty a concern" [1].
-- WGee 01:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

From that it sounds as if only the Guardian (reader? ;-) class is "sharply limited" in the property it can hold. That it certainly different from conventional class structures, but I still wouldn't call it socialist. Some conservatives also favour limits on the ownership of property, the means of production and so on. Grant | Talk 12:57, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I can't consider Plato's means socialist, and I don't think anyone could consider his ends (strict hierarchies, etc.) socialist either. Jacob Haller 19:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Nobody is calling Plato or his ideas "socialist." The article simply says that "certain elements of what is typically thought of as socialism long predate the rise of the workers movement of the late 19th century, particularly in Plato's Republic . . ." That much is verified by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. -- WGee 02:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
there aren't none elements tipically of socialism in Plato. The limitation of property for only a class is not element of socialism. --Francomemoria 12:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I thought I edited out that Plato reference months ago... In this passage he is talking about what is proper to the different classes of society - the rulers should have power but no wealth, the merchants wealth but no power and so on. This is not an idea predating socialism. Plato's views have nothing to do with equality (his utopia is highly inegalitarian) or social justice or social ownership of the common wealth, or anything like that. I think this should be removed. BobFromBrockley 13:11, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
The Encyclopædia Britannica refers to Plato's Republic in its article on socialism; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy devotes a section to communism in its article "Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic"; and even more encyclopedias refer to it in their articles on communism, including the Columbia Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia of Russian History, and the Legal Encyclopedia [2]. So I think it is appropriate to make a brief reference to The Republic when discussing the origins of socialism. -- WGee 18:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
agree with BobFromBrockley, is this encyclopedies wrongs this not a good reason for wrong also in wikipedia, unlucky i haven't source in English.--Francomemoria 20:05, 6 April 2007 (UTC) and in Stanford article communism section is not write that Plato is a back of socialism or communism, i've already tell critic on other, but britannica i can't see the socialism article is not free--Francomemoria 20:14, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
(You can access the socialism article on Britannica Concise for free [3].) I have just demonstrated that several reliable sources regard The Republic as relevant to the origins of socialism or communism. And according to WP:ATT, we must not refuse to conform to their opinions by deliberately removing all references to The Republic. -- WGee 01:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thanks for link, also britannica not write motive for this back as Plato's Republic they write with not motivation it's not a serious work. if you wan report need a source that explain this back and not only write there is a back a Plato. --Francomemoria 10:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

What was all of this discusssion about? The article establishes no relationship between Socialism and Plato. It simply makes a truthful statement -- "Plato's Republic and Thomas More's Utopia have been cited".

Archive

It takes me quite a while to scroll or drag or whatever technique to get to the bottom. Perhaps an archiving should be in order sometime soon? Fephisto 19:28, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree! Sorry to have introduced a new topic before this happened! BobFromBrockley 16:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Libertarian socialism

I edited the Economics section to include reference to libertarian socialism. This was swiftly edited out. I'm not too precious about my own contribution, but I think that (a) it is insane that this page is not allowed to even MENTION libertarian socialism, as if it does not exist, and (b) the phrase "Anarcho-syndicalists and elements of the New Left influenced by Trotskyism propose..." which has returned where I introduced libertarian socialism is clunky and unclear. Here's the paragraph after my edit:

Many socialists do not advocate a state-managed economy, but instead argue for various forms of decentralized, worker-managed economic systems. These socialists are often called libertarian socialists. For example, anarcho-syndicalists call for workers to control the economy directly through trade unions. Elements of the New Left, council communists and some Trotskyists stress various forms of democraticworkers' control or workers' self-management. Other libertarian socialists and mutualists advocate the "cooperative economy," a largely free market economy in which workers manage the firms and democratically determine remuneration levels and labor divisions; in this system, productive resources are legally owned by the cooperative and rented to the workers, who enjoy usufruct rights.[1] Another, more recent, variant is "participatory economics," wherein the economy is planned by decentralized councils of workers and consumers. In that system, workers are remunerated solely according to effort and sacrifice, so that those engaged in dangerous, uncomfortable, and strenuous work receive the highest incomes and can thereby work less.[2]

Here's what it says now:

Anarcho-syndicalists and elements of the New Left influenced by Trotskyism propose decentralized, worker-managed economic systems. One such system is Jaroslav Vanek's "cooperative economy," a largely free market economy in which workers manage the firms and democratically determine remuneration levels and labor divisions. Productive resources would be legally owned by the cooperative and rented to the workers, who would enjoy usufruct rights.[3] Another, more recent, variant is "participatory economics," wherein the economy is planned by decentralized councils of workers and consumers. Workers would be remunerated solely according to effort and sacrifice, so that those engaged in dangerous, uncomfortable, and strenuous work would receive the highest incomes and could thereby work less.[4]

Here's why WGee edited it:

"Libertarian socialism" is poorly defined and is not used by the sources I consulted; nor are obscure council communists or mutualists mentioned (mutualism is not even compatible w/ Vanek's coop econ

What do other people think? BobFromBrockley 16:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to sound so huffy, but my edit summary is basically correct. As you can see in the article, I consulted an undergraduate comparative economics textbook as the basis of my edits, and it explicitly says what groups advocate what economic systems. In your revision, you wrote that Mutualists support Vanek's "participatory economy," although that is incorrect. First, in the participatory economy, wages need not be equal to the product of one's labor; second, the means of production are not owned by the workers, but by the state; third, Vanek admits that indicative state planning might be necessary in the participatory economy; finally, the participatory economy does not preclude the charging of interest or private ownership of land.
With regard to the ambiguity of the term libertarian socialism, Chomsky says that it is merely a synonym for anarchism, whereas other authors say that the term also encompasses council communism and autonomist Marxism. Even if the term were clearly defined, there would be no need to use an imprecise umbrella term when it could be replaced with the names of specific groups. -- WGee 23:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
We should be careful with every term. The two versions speak of:
  • Socialists
  • Libertarian Socialists
  • Anarcho-Syndicalists
  • New Left
  • Council Communists
  • Some Trotskyists
  • Mutualists
  • Cooperative Economy
  • Participatory Economics
Are there any economic proposals associated with some "libertarian socialists" (broadly defined) but not supported by any "libertarian socialists" (= anarchists)? If not, the blanket term should not pose any problems.
The Trotskyist reference drives me nuts. There are many traditions associated with Trotsky; some are more libertarian, some are more authoritarian. Similarly, there are many traditions associated with Stalin or Mao. The present statement seems at once too general (it doesn't say which Trotskyist traditions, e.g. POUM and Situationism) and too specific (it does address other traditions, e.g. in Hungary or Yugoslavia might be relevant).
The participatory economy seems to be a form of collectivism (in the anarchist sense). Collectivism may be a subset of mutualism, but not a synonym for it. (Mutualism encompasses much of individualism as well as collectivism). I think a general discussion of socialism should cover mutualism, but that's another issue. Jacob Haller 02:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
(No accusation of huffyness intended!) I'm not too fussed about protecting my wording. I didn't mean that mutualism is variant of participatory economics but rather that participatory economics is a variant of non-state socialism. Obviously, whatever the paragraph says, it needs to be clear.
More generally, of course libertarian socialism is a vague and confusing term - as is socialism. An encyclopedia article on socialism should mention its main currents (and lib soc is a significant current of socialism, altho obviously not as significant as social democracy/reformist socialism and Communism/revolutionary socialism) and then indicate the specific groups under this term. My bottom line is that the article has to MENTION libertarian socialism somewhere; I can't understand why this is controversial.
Finally, the syndicalist/Trotskyist/"elements of the New Left" reference (in the article twice, I think both times replacing concise mentions of libertarian socialism): this formulation seems to me patently confusing and in need of changing. BobFromBrockley 16:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I removed the misleading "influenced by Trotskyism" passage. As of now it only refers to "Anarcho-syndicalists and elements on the New Left," which is still far too narrow. IMHO, subbing libertarian socialists for anarcho-syndicalists woyld be better; listing more tendencies within LS would be best. Jacob Haller 08:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Whole paragraph should be removed. I never heard for "Jaroslav Vanek" and he seems like a non-notable person. -- Vision Thing -- 19:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
His economic system is notable enough to be mentioned in an undergraduate textbook about comparative economics. It's even mentioned in the general "Overview of Comparative Economics" chapter, which means that it is especially relevant to the subject. -- WGee 00:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Whether Jaroslav Vanek and these two systems are mentioned in some economic textbook is irrelevant. This is a general article about socialism, not detailed article about all possible socialist economic systems. As far as I can see, both "cooperative economy" and "participatory economics" are purely theoretical concepts which were never tested in practice. Giving them third of space which is given to Soviet styled economies is clear example of undue weight. -- Vision Thing -- 20:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not concerned about Vanek either way. But I strongly disagree with removing paragraph, as libertarian socialism - including co-op movement, IS important, whether or not it has been tested in reality. Equating socialist economics with Soviet system is very misleading, as vast majority of socialists do not identify with socialist system. I also agree with J Haller that term "libertarian socialism" is correct, rather than more obscure "Anarcho-syndicalists and elements on the New Left". BobFromBrockley 11:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
In the past vast majority of socialist identified socialist system with Soviet system. Today vast majority of socialist identify socialist system with social democracy. "Libertarian socialism" is a group of fringe philosophies, which probably doesn't deserve any mention in the article, let alone any prominent coverage. -- Vision Thing -- 19:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)


Vision Thing you are wrong, Libertarian socialism/anarchism has always been a large minority within socialism and grown in the last 15 years. You are then saying that Bakunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon etc are fringe philosophers within the socialist movement?

And what does Trotsykism have to do with anarcho-syndicalism?

Socialist economics/POV tag

I've put a POV tag there. Vanek response is pretty much irrelevant to the points Mises has raised in terms of economic calculation. It would be better if the whole section there would be shortened, that will make it NPOV. Intangible2.0 09:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The section is socialist economics, and that describes one breed of socialist economics, it isn't criticisms of socialism - maybe the Mises stuff needs moving? What are you suggesting is POV--Red Deathy 10:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I've never heard of Vanek and don't think he should be mentioned in the article (although I suppose a text by him would be an appropriate footnote reference if the term co-operative econ remains. However, (a) I don't see in what way the para is POV. What's POV about it? (Yes, maybe Mises stuff in earlier para would go better in criticisms section.) (b) I certainly don't think the para should be deleted, as it is an important - it should be re-written, perhaps using some of the material from my suggested version above. BobFromBrockley 11:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Some users have a legitimate concern that the economic system of the Soviet Union is not being given its due weight relative to theoretical alternatives. However, the proper way to go about rectifying that perceived imbalance is to add more information about the economic system of the Soviet Union, not to remove all the information about theoretical alternatives. The section is currently too short considering the importance of its subject, so size cannot be used as an excuse to cut information. -- WGee 00:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree. For example there is no mention that socialist economies in practice had large black markets. I should also mention that economic calculation applies to both theory and practice. Intangible2.0 17:24, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I didn't propose turning the section into an anti-Socialist essay. And I'm removing the tag until you explain what, exactly, makes the section biased. -- WGee 15:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Can you point to any socialist country that did not have a large black market? Besides black markets in socialist countries are a good thing. They are the only way how people can actually get what they really want (like obtaining foreign currency, whereby needed goods from abroad could be obtained without the auspices of a socialist government). I am not trying to write an anti-socialist section. But one should also not forget that socialism, at large, is a dismissed ideology. Your comment is tantamount to saying that when writing about National Socialist race ideas, one should not mention how these ideas caused the slaughter of millions of people. Intangible2.0 16:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Virtually every developing country, whether Socialist or capitalist, has a rampant black market, so I fail to see how this is pertinent to socialism in particular. -- WGee 17:12, 22 April 2007 (UTC) In Socialist economies, black markets are the products of poor economic planning; in capitalist economies, black markets arise out of monetary mismanagement, market failures, or unenforceable laws. So why single out socialism? -- WGee 17:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Undue weight is part of NPOV policy. As for black market, I thought it's well known that USSR's economy would collapse much earlier if they had had well developed black market. It's the only thing that enabled them to keep going for such a long time. -- Vision Thing -- 20:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Right, I suggest breaking up the economics section into three sub-sections - Soviet Economy ; Mixed Economy ; Co-operatives. Move the stuff about economic calculation into criticisms This would be a much broader approach and would remove the apprent undue weight problem, IMNSHO.--Red Deathy 08:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent suggestion. Economic calc and black market stuff, if relevant, should clearly be in crit section, not this section. Only hesitation, am not sure "co-operatives" is broad enough term. Would "non-state socialism" be better? BobFromBrockley 11:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Those theories are not notable in any major way. If they are to be mentioned, that can be done in small section in Socialist economics, not here. Criticism should not be ghettoized if they can be naturally spread out through the article. -- Vision Thing -- 19:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Am I alone in thinking libertarian socialism is notable? And that co-operative and mutualist economic theories are fairly notable? If I am, I'll shut up about this! BobFromBrockley 15:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Not alone. I tried adding coverage earlier. I believe Shawn did so as well. Jacob Haller 18:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The most notable libertarian socialist/cooperative-based economic systems are already mentioned, and this is about as much coverage as they should get considering the broad scope of this article. It's also as much coverage as some people will tolerate before igniting another edit war. -- WGee 00:52, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Mixed economy and co-operatives are as much part of the experience of actually existing socialism (sic) as the Soviet union - indeed, I seem to recall some dictionaries used to define socialism as a mixed economy and declared that total state ownership in the SU *communism*. The fact that in the UK today, in some regions, the state has a greater percentage of GDP than in some post soviet states indicates that mizxed economy 'socialism' (as some would call it) is alive and well and as deserving on consideration as the Pact planning.--Red Deathy 06:48, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
"The most notable libertarian socialist/cooperative-based economic systems are already mentioned" - er, actually the term libertarian socialist doesn't otherwise appear on the page, and cooperative based economic systems are mentioned only v briefly in intro. We seem to be arguing over a few seperate issues here:
  1. The title: "Socialism as an economic system" or "Socialist economic systems". I think that the section should be in the plural - it looks at state-based (Soviet model), mixed and (unless it's deleted) non-state. These are three v different systems, so I think plural is better.
  2. One section or three subsections: Red Deathy's suggestion that the section should be broken up.
  3. POV tag: As far as I can tell, the POV tag is over the mention or not of Mises and over the inclusion or not of criticisms, and possibly over whether Mises, Hayek and Friedman should be called classical liberal or conservative. I'm neutral about these. Couldn't we strike a compromise like "Liberal and conservative economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises argued that socialist planned economies were..."?
  4. Libertarian socialism: The question of whether non-state socialist economic systems, such as co-operativism, mutualism, workers' councils, are notable enough to be included in the section - and whether they are allowed to be named libertarian socialism, non-state socialism, or the vague and weasly "Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left..."
BobFromBrockley 09:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Given co-operatives from Owen onwards have been part of the socialist morass I think they're worth mentioning - also Venexuela (without further comment) is seeing worker co-ops as patr of the Chavez business (sort of). I think Socialist Economics suffices as a title.--Red Deathy 09:50, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Co-operatives should not dominate the section. Soviet Union is mentioned because it gives empirical confirmation of the economic calculation problem. One could mention Mao's China as well. Intangible2.0 10:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
No-one is suggesting that co-operatives should dominate the section - a couple of sentence in the third para of a 3-para section is all. Of course the Soviet Union is more important to the section's purpose. Soviet Union is not mentioned because it gives empirical confirmation of the economic calculation problem; it is given prominence in the section because its economy, for many, was prototypical of socialist economics (yes, Mao's China would also be relevant here, and I'd have no problem with Mao's China being mentioned!). I think RD's Socialist Economics as a title is sensible: is neutral on whether or not there are more than one systems. BobFromBrockley 11:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The new title looks good to me. I think, given the importance of economics to socialist criticism of capitalism and socialist proposals to replace capitalism, the whole section should be expanded. At the same time, this concerns economic systems more than political systems, we can break up both state-socialist and libertarian-socialist categories in this section and pair them other ways, e.g.:

  1. General observations. The calculation problem could go here.
  2. Soviet planned economy.
  3. Soviet NEP, Chinese system.
  4. Western mixed economies.
  5. Cooperatives (e.g. Mondragon/MCC) and collectivist anarchist systems. Possibly also Yugoslav system and Kuzbass autonomous industrial colony.
  6. Labor unions.
  7. Socialist market economies. Mutualism, etc. as well as what Marx calls 'Bourgeois socialism' (in the Manifesto).
  8. someplace in there, gift economies, anarcho-communism, and perhaps Fourier as well.

Perhaps some of these can be grouped together, certainly some topics will be longer than others. Does this sound good? Jacob Haller 20:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The title "Socialism as an economic system" was chosen intentionally in order to indicate that socialism is not only a political theory, but also an economic system. The title "Socialist economic systems" does not convey that meaning because it suggests that an economic system is only one component of socialism, when, in fact, an economic system can constitute socialism.
Two of the most prominent forms of non-state socialism are mentioned in the section: the free market "cooperative economy" and the democratically planned "participatory economy." There is no way that we could go so far as to discuss Mutualism, which is discredited by most socialists and has little historical significance, in this introductory article.
Finally, I still do not understand how the sentence "Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left..." is vague: it states two specific socialists movements. If anything, libertarian socialism, an umbrella term that many regard as a synonym for anarchism (including Chomsky), is vague. -- WGee 22:30, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Socialism has been associated with several distinct economic systems. I listed seven general systems above, though some are mutually compatible. So the reference to an economic system was misleading.
Anarcho-syndicalism is way too specific. Elements of the New Left is way too vague. Moreover, some anarcho-communists, collectivists, mutualists, libertarian communists, autonomous Marxists, etc. propose similar systems without all being either syndicalists or elements of the new left. Finally, other elements of the new left propose completely different systems.
I'm not going to push mutualism in a short summary. But I'd like to see more thorough coverage everywhere, possibly including some coverage of mutualism etc. If we could coordinate corrections here with expansion of Socialist economics it might work much better. Jacob Haller 01:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
The two contemporary socialist economic theories discussed in the third paragraph are the only ones notable enough to be mentioned in the textbook I consulted, and they have been proposed by syndicalists and New Leftists. Although other socialist groups might propose different economic systems, they are evidently not important enough to be discussed in this very broad article. -- WGee 03:54, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
  1. Not all syndicalists, or all New Leftists, propose either approach.
  2. Not all proponents of either approach are either syndicalists or New Leftists. Jacob Haller 04:53, 28 April 2007 (UTc)
I've read nothing that suggests that Mutualists or autonomist Marxists support any of the two economic systems discussed in the third paragraph. Even if they do, they are too uninfluential (both historically and currently) to be mentioned in this general article. -- WGee 17:49, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Syndicalist economic systems

Syndicalists have not all supported either the cooperative or the participatory economy. I have rewritten the opening of the cooperatives statement to emphasize that libertarian socialists in general have shared those goals, but have proposed several different decentralized, worker-managed economic systems, not just those two. Moreover, not all syndicalists have been libertarian socialists. I have started another paragraph stating that:

Syndicalists focus on labor organizing. Most syndicalists expect unions to have a central role in socialist economics; some syndicalists have favored state socialism, more have favored anarchist communism, many have favored collectivist (e.g. cooperative and participatory) economies, and some have favored market economies.

Now I'm most familiar with the American (pre-Wobbly and Wobbly industrial unionist) tradition, e.g.:

  1. state socialism Earl Browder, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Z. Foster
  2. anarchocommunism Johann Most, Ricardo Flores Magon
  3. collectivist economies apparently Bill Haywood
  4. market economies Joseph Labadie, Dyer Lum, apparently Ralph Chaplin by 1919-20 Jacob Haller 19:24, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
When I added the third paragraph to satisfy the demands of several editors who were vexed at the omission of heterodox socialism, I made sure to mention only the two most notable economic systems to have found support among the anti-authoritarian left. My yardstick for notability was the overview section of an undergraduate textbook on comparative economics. Other economic systems proposed by anarchists or syndicalists are too insignificant to be discussed in the introduction of that textbook, and hence to insignificant to be discussed in this general article. -- WGee 05:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
If any one system, besides unionism itself, can claim majority support among syndicalists it is libertarian communism, with cooperativism/collectivism claiming far less support. I am not aware of any systematic survey of syndicalist opinion on the matter. As written, the old text understated the range of syndicalist opinion, and misplaced the mode as well. Jacob Haller 19:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Economic System(s): Topics to Cover

Can we agree on what topics to include (and not to include)? I proposed the following list above:

  1. General observations. The calculation problem could go here.
  2. Soviet planned economy.
  3. Soviet NEP, Chinese system.
  4. Western mixed economies.
  5. Cooperatives (e.g. Mondragon/MCC) and collectivist anarchist systems. Possibly also Yugoslav system and Kuzbass autonomous industrial colony.
  6. Labor unions.
  7. Socialist market economies. Mutualism, etc. as well as what Marx calls 'Bourgeois socialism' (in the Manifesto).
  8. someplace in there, gift economies, anarcho-communism, and perhaps Fourier as well.

WGee argued against including the market economies. I'd like to expand the whole section, since this is one of the most important topics for the article. Also, can people say what they are most familiar with and most interested in improving? Jacob Haller 05:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to disagree. These are things which need to go in the main article, Socialist economics, while this section of this article should be fairly succint. BobFromBrockley 10:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for spelling conversion

I feel compelled to bring this back to the table. Is there ANY way that we can convert the spelling in this article to British English? The reason I would favour this is because such would be the more European way to go in stylistic characteristic. Socialism is an inherently European ideology (at least in the systematic sense), it enjoyed a higher degree of success in Europe and elsewhere in the Non-American world, and the United States now more than ever is going the opposite direction of socialism. In fact the only relation the U.S. has ever had with this ideology (though an important one to note) is that it has played a role as the world's biggest opposer to it, why then should we use the American spelling medium in describing this ideology's history and socio-political attributes?EnglishEfternamntalkcontribs 02:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Policy. WP:ENGVAR to be precise. --Guinnog 02:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Rewording of "condemned" to "criticized"

This pertains to the rewording of the word "condemned" to "criticized" (ugghh, having to write that with American spelling, yuck, but that is not the point), for the reason that there is no sufficient evidence that ALL socialists of the 19th century went to the extend that they "condemned" BOTH capitalism and private property. To add to this, "condemned" is a harsh word which implies malice and that socialist thought is "malicious", in fact I don't think well of this word being used to describe any type of opinion, and that is why I have re-worded the word in other articles in the past. Furthermore, while all socialists are ideologically against capitalism, it would be inaccurate to state that they all are against private property as well. We all know that not all socialists seek to do away or even alter rules of private property. If the sentence was reworded to describe capitalism only, then "and" would be appropriate, but since this is not the case, I think "and/or" is more accurate, and I don't see how it would be unencyclopedic. Bottom line, unless something could be cited that proves that all socialists, each and every one, condemned both capitalism and private property, the current revision might be acceptable,....but since it is unencyclopedic to use the terms "all", "nothing", "always", "never", except in very select cases, I don't see how even that would work. It is for this reason that I conclude the change is necessary, general consensus on this matter in the past has favoured this direction.EnglishEfternamntalkcontribs 03:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Ludwig von Mises / Socialism as an economic system section

Can anyone tell me why he should not be mentioned, and how not mentioning him is NPOV? One can check Google Scholar, and easily see that one should mention Mises. Intangible2.0 08:12, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. However it does help us get further here. Ludwig von Mises gives me 4,000+ hits in Google Scholar, which also shows that his Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth gives 300+ hits. Do you have any reference that can attest to the "marginality" of Ludwig von Mises? Intangible2.0 10:38, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
BTW, I am not sure if Milton Friedman should be mentioned. I do not remember him writing particularly on this topic. Intangible2.0 11:38, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
  • (from rfc)Hayek is mentioned and the calculation problem is linked. That's enough information, and I see no POV problems here. Hornplease 12:18, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Intangible, Hayek and Friedman are Nobel laureates; Ludwig von Mises is not. That attests to the eminence of the former two and the less important role of the latter. -- WGee 17:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
So where is that brilliant essay by Milton Friedman then? The reason why I want to include Mises here is because he started the debate. Hayek "weakened" the arguments of Mises, by moving into a direction of Walrasian equilibrium theory, which is a different epistemology altogether. Intangible2.0 18:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Hayek may have weakened the argument in your eyes, but strengthened it immensely in the eyes of mainstream economic science. Adding Mises would unbalance the section, in my opinion. Hornplease 21:36, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any harm in adding Ludwig von Mises together with Hayek and Friedman. He is certainly prominent enough to be mentioned. -- Vision Thing -- 20:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Not to mainstream economists. Further, it unbalances the criticism towards the Austrian school. Hornplease 07:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Mises delivered a devastating criticism of socialism which Hayek and Friedman built upon. Not including him is POV. http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Sociological-Ludwig-von-Mises/dp/0913966630/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-1917630-9655259?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187281291&sr=8-1

Mises used a special definition of socialism. Jacob Haller 18:47, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Please elaborate on special definition of socialism. How is Mises defining it any differently than anyone else? The same could be said of Marx's defination of capitalism, which was quite different in the 1800's Jcchat66 23:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
It's incorrect that Mises used a "special definition of socialism." I quote Mises: "To abolish private property in the means of production, to make the means of production the property of the community, that is the whole aim of Socialism." [4] Rocket Socket 00:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
That's exactly the special definition I was referring to. See also chapter 6:

If the Coal Syndicate delivers coal to the Iron Syndicate a price can be fixed only if both syndicates [or their members?-JH] own the means of production in the industry. But that would not be Socialism but Syndicalism.

Mises' description of "not socialism but syndicalism" here includes mutualism, some forms of collectivist anarchism, some other forms of market socialism, and many forms of syndicalism. He defines syndicalism as follows in chapter 16:

In that sense Syndicalism is to be understood as a movement whose object is to bring about a state of society in which the workers are the owners of the means of production.

Again, Mises describes much of what has generally been considered socialism as another system. There are some criticisms specific to common ownership and others specific to individual ownership, or degrees in-between, and it makes sense to use one word for common ownership and another word for all other degrees, but to refer to Mises' arguments without clarification may lead readers to equivocate between Mises' definition and other definitions. Jacob Haller 03:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
But this definition Mises uses is almost universal in every dictionary and encyclopedia since Marx's use of the word. The aims of socialism have always been the same ... social and economic planning in contrast with either aristocratic social planning or no planning at all. In short all socialist doctrine depends upon the means of production being controlled by an idealist intellectual class, instead of being controlled by aristocracies (nobility, capitalist, mercantilists, corporations, etc.) Of course, those that think there should be no social planning end up joining one of the other groups out of ignorance, or confuse Adam Smith and John Locke with one of the aristocractic groups.
Bull, equivocation, and false division. See the perpetual definitional debates. See socialist literature proposing, and criticizing, various systems, describing them as socialist. Your contrast between planning/not-planning depends on "planning = any method which reaches rational economic decisions," while your statement about an "idealist industrial class" depends on "planning = a centralized group making economic decisions." Jacob Haller 18:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Bull? Yet another attempt to make things more complex than they really are, so that a special intellectual class can justify its existence once again in history. Socialist depend on special definitions to convince people that only they can save the world, and that the world is being destroyed by some enemy of the people, just like most religions. Its an ago-old formula, so recognize it for what it is. Even Antonio Gramsci recognized the need for socialist to use religious models to spread their beliefs. Keep it simple ... socialist promote the advancement of power by an elite ... period. It does not matter what religion, ideology, or dogma is used to that end. While classic liberals desire to fight fire by eliminating the fire entirely, socialists try to fight fire with fire. But read below ... give it your best shot to define the various flavors of socialism ... for you will find that they are all connected, and that there is really no escape from its true identity. Jcchat66 18:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
So who is the ruling elite in, for example, Dyer Lum's socialism? Jacob Haller 20:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Typical of socialist to latch on to non-socialists. Some day I predict John Locke or Adam Smith will be called socialist, given enough time. Lum was no socialist. He is worthy of praise for his condemnation of monopolies and loathing of growing capitalist power, but being anti-capitalist does not put one into the socialist camp. If there exist no social or economic planners, then there is no socialism. Jcchat66 02:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Lum called his own system socialism (Lum, in Parsons, chapter 6, at the bottom of section 2). Jacob Haller 04:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I was not aware of that from what research I have done, which is by no means thorough. Unfortunately there are too many people using the word socialism for too many different ideals. Just because someone calls themselevs by a label, or others use a label to describe someone that never used it, does not make it true. I only seek to define the ideals that bind all variants of socialism together, otherwise the word is useless. Liberalism on the other hand is well-defined with core beliefs; rule of law as opposed to all other forms of rulership, for even democracy would depend on laws to functon at all, lest it be elected out of existence. Also, emphasis on individual liberties based upon realistic observation of human nature (while socialism usualy struggle against human nature as most religions do.) Emphasis on free will instead of destiny-driven societies that have been the most dominate in history. Socialist seldom, if ever, mention free will. And liberalism always emphasizes the natural tendancy of all government to abuse its power, which is were rule of immutable law is the most logical solution (short of out right anarchy.) Socialism appears to depend upon the modern philosphies of idealists and the hope of some kind of altruism in human nature, all untested and unfounded. Liberalism is an attempt to create the best social system possible within the framework of observable human nature (realism as opposed to idealism). To classic liberals, the ownership of land by the working class is the best defence against exploitation (as even Lum believed, provided corporations were returned to their former status of being unable to own land.) While socialists generally (but not always) believe all land ownership should be abolished, instead of simply abolishing the citizen-status of corporations instead (since they live forever and have an unfair advantage over the flesh and blood person). Both liberals and socialists seem to regard something like the British East India Company as a horror, but go about fixing this horror in entirely different ways. These are key differences that I can find. The purpose of all this is the define the differences better. After all, the cause of bettering human society may well depend on all liberals becoming socialists, or all socialists becoming liberals. Stand divided, and we all fall. Jcchat66 17:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
But yes, the various socialist beliefs should be explained in detail, though it may be pointless. There must be some kind of common bond between all socialist positions to be able to use the same word. Jcchat66 06:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Being bold

OK, I've gone and put in a few sub-headings and a start-up paragraph for mixed economies - let us know what you think - reckon it needs further knocking into shape...--Red Deathy 11:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The trichotomy is misleading. First, the central components of participatory economics are not cooperatives, but rather workers' and consumers' councils that plan the economy (that being said, the participatory economy could technically be discussed under the first heading). Secondly, the hybrid nature of market socialism and the pivotal effect of the economic planning controversy on mainstream socialism mean that they should not be lumped into the "Planned economies" section. Finally, "mixed economies" (i.e., the economies of all industrialized nations) are considered manifestations of advanced market capitalism; only libertarians would call them socialist. We can, however, discuss post-WWII indicative planning in the United Kingdom and France, but the eventual discrediting of dirigisme in both countries must be mentioned. For now, the subheadings should be removed, nor do I envision the section becoming long enough to warrant subheadings in the future. -- WGee 18:25, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, it is a common enough trichotomy - I remember dictionaries whose definition of socialism was basically 'mixed economies', and certainly many 'socialist' parties for whom a mixed ecobnomy was the goal rather than the means to full communal ownership. The significant difference being that mixed economies were planning under liberal democracy. Now, from my own ultra-left POV, yes, these were just elements of a degeneratuive state capitalism, but from an NPOV a significant part of the 'socialist experience'. I think some sort of subcategorisation is improtant - yes, maybe co-operatives wasn't quite suitable for that para (I thought it read OK) but deserve a specific mention for their place in socialist economic thought/experience. Anyway, it was worth a try.--Red Deathy 06:52, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I liked the trichotomy (there's word I never used before), except I think heading the third section "Co-operatives" confusing, because what the third section referred to was the family of socialist economic systems which don't identify socialisation with the state. The most common term for this family is libertarian socialsm, which is an umbrella term (as is democratic socialism, for example) including co-ops, workers' councils, etc. "Anarcho-syndicalists and elements of the New Left" is a terrible way of summarising this family, as that leaves so much out - "elements of the New Left" being vague and more or less meaningless (what elements?) and "Anarcho-syndicalists" being too specific (just one of the currents that favour non-state systems). BobFromBrockley 09:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
VisionThing objects to libertarian socialist and to footnotes to Tucker and Kropotkin. Kropotkin described himself as a socialist. As a Misesite writes: "Peter Kropotkin, the famous late 19th- and early 20th-century Russian communist anarchist, stated that there are essentially two kinds of socialism: statist socialism and anarchism."[5] Tucker described himself as a socialist, indeed in the article JH's footnote cites[6]. "Anarcho-syndicalists and elements of the New Left" doesn't begin to capture the range of those who have proposed non-state socialist economic systems - e.g. William Morris, GDH Cole, Proudhon, to give three "notable" examples. BobFromBrockley 10:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
  1. Do Kropotkin's & Tucker's overviews of anarchism support my statement that "libertarian socialists propose several different decentralized, worker-managed economic systems"? Presumably, libertarian socialist systems include anarchist (socialist) systems (worker managed economic systems proposed by those who consider themselves both anarchists and socialists), council communist systems, autonomous Marxist systems, etc. Therefore, the set of libertarian socialist systems is at least as varied as the set of anarchist (socialist) systems it includes.
  2. Is libertarian socialism the best term for the subject? Harder call. I noted the problems with generalizing about anarcho-syndicalism or syndicalism in general. I think statements about elements of the New Left [influenced by Trotskyism] were vague in the short version and screwy in the long version. Libertarian socialism looks like the best match, imho. The term includes stateless Marxists, etc. and excludes capitalists. Jacob Haller 19:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Hitler also described himself as a socialist. Shall we add him to equation too? -- Vision Thing -- 13:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, the 1st International included many individualist anarchist members, including William Greene. Even Engels describes Proudhon as a socialist (preface to the Communist Manifesto) and Marx describes Proudhon, and even some radical liberals, as socialists (Communist Manifesto, part 3, section 2), without endorsing their model. So actually excluding individualist anarchism goes against historical understandings of socialism and the socialist movement. Jacob Haller 21:29, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Socialist organizations

I added an international grouping to the list of socialist organisations and it was deleted without comment. I wonder what the reasoning is for the list of socialist organisations? Is it possible to list the main international socialist groupings? As it stands the list seems rather selective.

I pesonally think there should be short list, if one can be agreed, as some guidance, and they could perhaps be confined to international groupings, as they are currently, but with omissions. I know there is a discussion above which did not conclude this, but some organisations have been added since. Andysoh 14:50, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

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Socialism as an economic system

Although the section must be expanded, it should continue to focus on Soviet-style socialism, market socialism, and their bastions. Mixed economies (i.e., the economies of every industrialized nation) or welfare states are not considered socialist but rather manifestations of advanced market capitalism. Participatory or syndicalist economics can be discussed as well, but the focus should remain on the centrally planned economy of the Soviet Union, "socialism with Chinese characteristics," and the market socialist economies of Communist Hungary and Yugoslavia, in accordance with textbooks on comparative economics such as Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy (Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 2004). -- WGee 02:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

What do you say? "Mixed economies (i.e., the economies of every industrialized nation) or welfare states are not considered socialist but rather manifestations of advanced market capitalism." What?! Mixed economies are not advanced market capitalism. Mixed economies are by definition part capitalism and part socialism. See the article mixed economy. Mixed economy is manifestation of non-market socialist characteristics being introduced into what was a capitalist economy or capitalist characteristics being introduced into what was a socialist economy. Working Poor 02:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Why don't you actually read the provided source, or any other general textbook on comparative economics for that matter? -- WGee 18:31, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
The majority of people who currently claim to be socialists - that is, social democrats - would consider mixed economies to fit their definition of socialism. The article does currently cover social democracy, so why shouldn't it cover the economic views of social democrats? If you believe that social democracy is not a form of socialism, that's fine, but you must then remove it from the entire article, not merely one section.
In any case, the economy section as it stood before was clearly inadequate. Please remove any paragraphs you deem inappropriate from the new section rather than reverting. -- Nikodemos 02:24, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I believe that the reason social democrats call themselves social democrats, rather than democratic socialists, is that they are not socialists and do not consider themselves to be. Democratic socialists support slowly supplanting a capitalist ecoonomy with a socialist one, while social democrats support reform within the capitalist system, i.e. a mixed economy. That's my understanding of the difference between the terms. ~Switch t c g 05:10, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
My own personal POV is that you are correct, and social democracy is not a form of socialism. However, the largest organization of social democratic parties in the world is called the Socialist International, and many social democratic parties claim to be socialist (e.g. French Socialist Party). -- Nikodemos 05:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. ~Switch t c g 05:50, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with whether or not social democrats consider themselves socialists; neither your contributions nor the section to which they were made concern that issue. Since you inserted information about contemporary Western economies (i.e., "mixed economies" or "welfare states") into a section entitled "Socialism as an economic system," the implication follows that such economies are socialist. My problem is that mainstream literature on comparative economics indicates that they are actually advanced capitalist economies rather than socialist ones, and thus should not be discussed in that section. I dislike your approach to expanding the section in general, as you have shifted the focus away from socialist economic systems and how they (would) work to the broad economic principles that socialists advocate. -- WGee 07:10, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
That is because I meant my edits to provide the framework for further development of the section. I strongly object to the previous state of that section, which not only gave ridiculous undue weight to the Soviet Union, but also seemed to be more concerned with Western criticisms of the Soviet economy than with explaining how that economy actually worked.
I will restore my edits, with some changes: 1. I will comment out the section on social democracy; 2. I will give a summary of the workings of the Soviet economy. -- Nikodemos 07:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I reinserted the paragraph about the liberal critique of socialist planning because the economic calculation problem actually engendered market socialism, which is discussed in the following paragraph. It would be unencyclopedic to omit the cause of the effect. -- WGee 18:52, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
In theoretical terms, you had free-market advocates like Proudhon and Tucker active in the socialist movement in the 19th century (and others in the 20th century). In practical terms, the NEP was a mixed economy in the 1920s. Jacob Haller 22:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I was going to mention earlier that we should add information about the NEP as a type of mixed-market socialism, although I think Proudhon's economic theory is too obscure and uninfluential to be included in this general entry on socialism. -- WGee 22:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps a shorter summary of the liberal challenge would be in order (along with a note that it is, in fact, a challenge from liberal free market economists, rather than the vague notion of "western economists"). The reason I dislike having any argumentation in sections not dedicated to argumentation is because argumentation attracts POV-pushers. -- Nikodemos 22:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
But the paragraph is only three sentences long, and the economic calculation debate surely deserves at least that much attention considering its impact on contemporary socialist economic theory. I understand your concern about POV-pushers running wild with arguments and counter-arguments, but in this case it is not helpful to force all criticism into one section. We'll just have to be extra vigilant. -- WGee 22:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
That is correct, the paragraph is short, but then again, the entire section is short. Undue weight is relative to the size of an article or section. Three sentences can be too much in a stub (such as we have here), or too little in a section that is 30 kb long. In any case, I will again try to stick to your suggestions while rephrasing the text and providing a link to the economic calculation problem. The ultimate solution, I think, will be to simply expand the section. -- Nikodemos 23:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

<-------Sorry for being so nitpicky, but there were a couple of problems with your rephrasing; see the edit summaries. Now that the market socialism paragraph has been expanded a bit, perhaps we could just leave the critical paragraph alone. Like you said, the ultimate solution will be to expand the section rather than condense the economic calculation debate into one sentence. Eventually, I hope to see a section that includes subheadings, comparable in length to the history section. -- WGee 00:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

You do seem to be rather inflexible, but that's okay. Any inconvenience is more than made up by your role as a bastion against POV-pushers. :) (could I ask for your assistance with two other articles, by the way?) Getting back on topic, please do not remove my text explaining which socialists support the Soviet model. Starting out with "In the Soviet Union" seems rather abrupt and may create all sorts of different false impressions. The general template should be: *This group of socialists supports this economic model, and here is a description of the model*. How many models do we have, by the way? I count four as of now: Soviet, Trotskyist, market socialist, and "participatory". We should aim to expand each of them into sub-sections. Finally, note that the sentence "they argued that socialist planned economies would eventually fail" is original research. There is no such concept as the "failure" of an economic model in academic economics. There is only poor performance on various indicators. What liberals argued was that centrally planned economies would allocate goods and services in a non-optimal way, whereas market economies would allocate them optimally. -- Nikodemos 01:33, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Hopefully I've adequately addressed your concern about who advocates what economic system by mentioning that Marxist-Leninists advocate central command planning.
We could replace fail with collapse, as in "to break down suddenly in strength or health and thereby cease to function." Either way, I'm quite sure that the reader will know what we mean. We are not writing scholarly economic literature; we are simply summarizing information in laymen's terms.
We should aim to discuss the following socialist economic models in addition to the current ones:
-- WGee 02:27, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

In my understanding, Trotskyist economic proposals vary as much as other Marxist economic proposals. The article implies that Trotskyists share common economic proposals (distinct from other Marxists) and, probably inadvertently, implies that these proposals influenced anarcho-syndicalism (et al.). There is some back-and-forth between anarchist and Marxist proposals (some direct and some via libertarian Marxism/council communism), but anarcho-syndicalism predtates Trotskyism. It is probably better to say that both influenced the new left. The typology of non-state (not necessarily anarchist) systems could use some work, perhaps cross-referencing non-state systems like collectivism (e.g. Parecon) and syndicalism with comparable state sustems (I've never studied the Yugoslav model) and non-state communism with decentralized forms of state communism (???) and so on. Jacob Haller 04:23, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Mixed economies

The paragraph on mixed economies should be removed. According to the textbook Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2004), the planned market economies of Sweden, Japan, and France were "varieties of advanced market capitalism," not forms of socialism. Our categorization of economic systems must not contradict those of mainstream sources. -- WGee 21:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC) That being said, I recant my earlier statement that it would be appropriate to discuss the immediate post-WWII economies of France and Britain. -- WGee 21:38, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a section on socialist economics - since nationalisation and the mixed economy were the actions (largely) of mnominally socialist parties, I think it shoudl say. Certainly, within popular definitions of socialism (which NPOVwise we should be aware of) mixed economies are a product of socialistickness. IMNSHO - certainly I think we need to mention something about nationalisation under capitalism. I don't dispute the source you cite (personally I'd call it state capitalism and have done).--Red Deathy 06:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, 'Dictionary of economics / Bannock, Baxter & Davis. London : The Economist in association with Profile books, 2003.' defines a mixed economy as a market economy, but also categorises Western European social democracies under socialism, so I'll restore the para.--Red Deathy 12:00, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
The section is about socialist economic systems, not socialist economics. A mixed economy or welfare state in which a select group of industries are publicly owned may incorporate certain socialist economic principles, but it is not a socialist economic system. This is verified by the aforementioned textbook on comparative economic systems. -- WGee 18:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
And the contrary is verified by the economic dictionary. I suggest we rename the section, if that's the bar, but mixed economies belong in there somewhere, else we're POV neglecting the work of self identified socialist movements in government. IMNSHO.--Red Deathy 09:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Red Deathy. Many movements and parties which have been called socialist (e.g. British Labour Party) advocated mixed economy. And why shouldn't section look at socialist economics and socialist economic systems? BobFromBrockley 11:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

1.I brought another previous discussion from the archives to help with this ongoing discussion:

I notice WGee has reverted the headline 'Socialist economic practice' to 'Socialism as an economic system'. Of course these are two different things. So:

2. Maybe place 'mixed economies' under a separate heading: 'Socialist economic practice'? I agree with those (above) who argue that mixed economies, as a matter of fact of socialist post war government practice, (and especially since nationalisation is under so much criticism by modern political parties including previously 'socialist' ones) can hardly be missed out of an article on socialism.

3. In the 'Socialism as an economic system' section, one must, I think, avoid the implication that socialists in general think that the Soviet Union is socialist, or that its economy, with no genuine democracy to regulate the central plan, could be considered a socialist economy.

One the one hand no one would deny that those that call themselves Communist with a big C say that the Soviet Union is socialist, but in Europe at any rate, those that don't call themselves Communist, e.g. who call themselves socialists, (or of course Trotskyists, or in many cases Marxists) do not consider the Soviet union, or its economy, socialist.

In an article on Socialism, this distinction is imperative, and it should surely be stated at the outset.

4. WGee suggested an edit of the mixed economy entry. Here a slight first edit to a putative Mixed economy section called Socialist economic practice, to show a. that the term 'mixed economy' was the common term of the time: (I've quoted in full in the ref, but we need not) and b. that it is now widely understood that they remained capitalist and c. Some criticism from within the movement. Something like:

Socialist economic practice

In western Europe, particularly in the period after World War II, many socialist parties in government implemented what became known as mixed economies.[5] These govenments nationalised major and economically vital industries while permitting a free market to continue in the rest. These were most often monopolistic or infrastructural industries like mail, railways, power and other utilities. In some instances a number of small, competing and often relatively poorly financed companies in the same sector were nationalised to form one government monopoly for the purpose of competent management, of economic rescue (in the UK, British Leyland, Rolls Royce), or of competing on the world market[6]. Typically, this was achieved through compulsory purchase of the industry (i.e. with compensation). For example in the UK the nationalization of the coal mines in 1947 created a coal board charged with running the coal industry commercially so as to be able to meet the interest payable on the bonds which the former mine owners' shares had been converted into. [7][8]

These nationalised industries would frequently be combined with Keynsian economics and incomes policies to try and guide the whole economy.[9] Nevertheless, most economists, and many socialists, consider that these economies were (or are) capitalist economies, and the asperations of those who believed the mixed economy would abolish boom and slump, mass unemployment, and industrial unrest, were disappointed with the onset of the first world wide recession of 1973-4, the oil crisis of this period, and the monetary instability which followed. Some far left socialists, as well as some workers in the nationalised industries, also criticised the nationalisations for not estabilshing workers' control of the nationalised industries, through elected representatives, and the amount of compensation paid to the previous owners.

Andysoh 21:58, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

That seems to be an excellent re-write: but I'm not so sure about splitting the sections, especially with regard to you health warning regarding the SU et al - I think they should remain in the same section, but then, I would, wouldn't I?--Red Deathy 06:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Good, well, I'm happy either way, so I'd be interested in what others felt. Andysoh 23:43, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Market socialism def.

I rm'ed 172's def. because at least one or two sources (Ollman, for one) I've seen would define market socialism as one that uses market mechanisms for allocation, not necessarilly in competition with a private sector (i.e. competition between state owned enterprises, and planned markets). I'll defer to an authoritative citation, obviously.--Red Deathy 13:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

What you removed [7] is not my definition. Nikodemos keeps periodically deciding to either remove or change the reference to market socialism in the intro, seemingly piqued over the removal of (his preferred conception?) "libertarian socialism." (This is frustrating-- not the high quality of work I'd grown accustomed to expecting from him over the years.) I suppose I ended up restoring something different from what I thought I was restoring. Now that I have read the sentence, I see that it is not an adequate summary of all well-known understandings of the term. I will insert a new description. 172 | Talk 14:37, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, that was my definition. I thought we were referring specifically to China's "socialist market economy," since market socialism was enclosed in quotations marks. This reminds me that we should expand the "Socialism as an economic system" section to include the various forms of market socialism, especially "socialism with Chinese characteristics," with its publicly owned "town and village enterprises." We should also discuss participatory economics in the form of worker-managed cooperatives, employee stock ownership programmes, and worker co-management, which has recently taken root in Venezuela. I will probably only be able to help expand the section sometime next semester, though, in early spring. -- WGee 22:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
No need to apologize. It's not your fault that sentence on market socialism keeps getting removed without warning. The definition was one of the ones out in the literature, just perhaps not the most widely accepted. 172 | Talk 01:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Market socialism

I disagree with the definition of market socialism in this article: "have proposed various forms of market socialism, attempting to reconcile the presumed advantages of cooperative or state ownership of the means of production with letting market forces, rather than central planners, guide production and exchange." This is not the normal understand of market socialism. In market socialism the means of production are privately owned but prices are set by the government to influence production policies. Central planners are indeed guiding production. The definition is sourced but I'd like to see what those sources say. I doubt they say what this article says they say. Road to nowhere 18:01, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Briannica "Socialism" article says: "Others advocate a “market socialism” in which the market economy would be directed and guided by socialist planners." [8] Road to nowhere 18:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
See Market socialism definition above. And about 30 other threads. Jacob Haller 20:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Touted - "solicit custom, pester;"

Hi WGee, Touted - "solicit custom, pester;" - touted is often used in a derogatory way. Rather than "Soviet economic planning was touted as an alternative to allowing prices..." If you don't like "presented" how about:

  • Communists argued that Soviet economic planning was preferable to allowing prices...

Or something similar.

Incidentally, some room should perhaps be made for the criticism from Trotsky (who as you know first argued for the five year plan system) who argued that it was the snuffing out of democratic control through genuine workers' soviets that made the soviet planners remote and unaccountable. Perhaps following Hayek Andysoh 20:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

WGee replied '"Touted" can also mean "to promote or praise energetically; publicize." This really isn't a big deal, except that it is best to be as concise as possible when writing an encyclopedia article".'
It is certainly only a word, but I think you are usually, quite correctly, very careful with use of words. Consider, for instance, how you would feel if the article said:
  • In the West, liberal economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman touted the idea that socialist planned economies ...
I would tend to want to correct that too. Yet it could be argued that this is what Conservatives did, and energetically too. But this shows that we do have a POV if we keep "touted", with its negative associations, notwithstanding its positive ones, unless we use the same terms for Hayek, etc. "Argued" is the best term.
It would be useful if the editors would share their thoughts on this here. Alternatively, to keep things short, we could replace "was touted" with "was presented", my original edit. This is not a question of bias in favour of central planning, but of using neutral terms.
Andysoh 02:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a difference either way. I can see the slight negative connotation of "touted," but for me it isn't a very strong connotation. However, I would support using the term "argued" or something similar because, while the POV on "touted" might not be strong, "argued" is certainly NPOV, so there would be no reason not to say "argued."
On the issue of being concise, if the word "touted" is literally replaced with "argued" it is exactly the same number of words and the meaning is mostly the same; they may or may not have "touted" (Was it energetic? How publicized was it?), it certainly was their argument. Meviin 04:08, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

The Russian Revolution provoked a powerful reaction...

The following passage struck me as odd:

  • The Russian revolution provoked a powerful reaction throughout Western society, one example being the so-called "Red Scare" in the U.S., which effectively destroyed Eugene V. Debs's Socialist Party of America. In Europe, fascism emerged as a movement opposed to both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism, presenting itself as a "Third Way."[6]

It might be better to put something like:

  • The Russian revolution of October 1917 gave rise to the formation of Communist Parties around the world, and the revolutions of 1917-23 which followed. A Communist regime briefly held power in Hungary whilst there were revolutions in Germany and Vienna, and also in the industrial centres of northern Italy.

If we not too concerned about length, we need not abandon the USA information, which is significant:

Andysoh 00:47, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I think definately your first proposed sentence and maybe the second too. "Provoked" kind of implies that the red scare was a sensible fight-back, and also that the revolution destroyed the SPA, which it didn't. I'd be inclined to stop at the first sentence, as Debs is mentioned a little earlier and Cannon is not so important in this context (e.g. why Cannon here but not, say, Bordiga or Sylvia Pankhurst or Gramsci). Keep up with this excellent editing! BobFromBrockley 15:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Bob, those are good points. I have been working and re-working over your points:
1. Do you think that this (below) is better? In this version a mention of Cannon is not so out of place , and incidentally, Pankhurst and Gramsci ought to be mentioned in the article somewhere. But I take your points about the other problems with that paragraph.
So how about:
* The Russian revolution of October 1917 gave rise to the formation of Communist Parties around the world, and the revolutions of 1917-23 which followed. Communist revolutions across Europe seemed a possibility. Communist regimes briefly held power under Béla Kun in Hungary and under Kurt Eisner in Bavaria. There were revolutions, coups and uprisings in Germany and Vienna, and also in the industrial centres of northern Italy. In the course of the German Revolution, the German Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were killed. In the USA, the Communist Party USA was formed from former adherents of the Socialist Party of America. One of the founders, James Cannon, went on to become the leader of Trotskyist forces outside the Soviet Union.
This is a very slight adaptation of the history of socialism article
2. If we discuss the red scares in the US and elsewhere, McCarthyism, withchunts, we should, perhaps somehow see if we can balance things out: we could easily find references to representatives of the capitalist class arguing that the communists were out to take away the property, savings, and even the money of ordinary people, and contrast it with where Marx and Engels argue in the Communist Manifesto that Communism was for the abolition of the property of the owners of industry and commerce, the capitalist class (like nationalisation), not to remove the "hard won" possessions from working class people. Property is defined in terms of productive (bourgois) property, i.e, capital, property which can turn a profit, create interest, rent or other earnings. (Discussed as you know in brief in II -- PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html].


3. But I also think this point (in 2 above) is an important distiction to make in the section on the rise of Marxism, since it remains a common misapprehension about Marxism, although more so in the USA. But also the sentence on Marx in the otherwise excellent opening second para of the article, "For Karl Marx, who helped establish and define the modern socialist movement, socialism implied the abolition of money, markets, capital, and labor as a commodity", is problematic in this sense. I think it could be seen as unintentionally hinting at the interpretation of those opponents of communism to whom Marx and Engels replied in the Communist Manifesto, without putting the opposing viewpoint. I personally think it would be better to remove this sentence as attempting too much, and follow what the Encylopedia Britannica does.
The Encylopedia Britannica does not attempt to summarise Marxism in the opening paras. Instead, it points to the social deprivation to give the context in which socialist ideas arose. It introduces Marxism later on. We should perhaps give this approach some consideration in due course.
4. In addition the aricle is not about fascism, and that point on fascism in the original paragraph I questioned, as it is posed, is peripheral. However fascism is significant to socialism, and this undoubtedly was the intention of the paragraph. One needs to discuss the socialist viewpoint: that funding of fascism by big industrialists was, in the view of many socialists (who we can perhaps quote or ref) precisely to smash trade unionism, socialists and the soviet union, as a tool of laissez-faire capitalism, however fascism may present itself, and this might be worth working in.
Just some (a little less) hurried thoughts for feedback, sorry to go on. Andysoh 21:00, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Re 1: Your proposed para is perfect. Yes, probably Gramsci and maybe Pankhurst should be in article somewhere.
Re 2-3: Am not sure right now, will read this.
Re 4: I think this is too controversial a topic to introduce, as it has been fought over at various other pages, e.g. Economics of fascism and Anti-capitalism, so I would steer clear of introducing it here. BobFromBrockley 09:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. OK. I'll leave (1) a few days to see if there are other views. I'll drop (4) on your advice, and I'll try to find time to attempt some specific wording for (2) and (3) to see if I can come up with something concrete to discuss here. Andysoh 13:11, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Re 1: Was Eisner assassinated as well?
Re 3: I think the current statements about Marx in the 2nd paragraph of the intro pose POV and OR/Synthesis problems. Jacob Haller 01:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi Jacob,
re 3, I've drafted below a sentence at the end of the 2nd paragraph which might be better
Several encylcopedias I've looked at all find the origins of socialism in the industrial revolution and the impoverishment of the working class, and place in their opening remarks something along these lines:
"The modern socialist movement had its origin largely in the working class movement of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution had brought many economic and social changes. Factory owners became very wealthy, while long hours and impoverishment faced the factory workers.<ref>Commenting on the death of milliner Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years old, who died after working uninterruptedly for 26 1/2 hours, the respectable Morning Star, 23 June 1863, said, 'Our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.' Quoted in Marx, Karl, Capital, p365, Pelican, 1976 [9]</ref>. Socialists criticised the suffering and injustices resulting from the concentration of property in the hands of the capitalist class."
I suggest replacing the last new sentence with Socialists criticised the concentration of property in the hands of the capitalist class, and the injustices resulting from this concentration. or Socialists criticised the injustices resulting from the concentration of property in the hands of the capitalist class. Some socialists, most notably Proudhon, were pro-market, and not all socialists would have had strong pro-market or anti-market positions, and unfettered capitalism poses definitional, if not POV, problems. Capitalism as we know it includes both market and state institutions. Strengthening state regulation unfetters the state elements in capitalism and fetters the market elements in capitalism, and vice-versa. Early/mid 19th-century socialists had as little agreement on how their interaction created capitalism's injustices as present-day socialists do. Jacob Haller 22:54, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, excellent, I've added that into the draft above, and added 'suffering'. I feel we're missing feedback on this from some other editors, since it is in the intro, so am reluctant to proceed until we do, although it is not really controversial. Andysoh 13:32, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I thought Marx's ironic use of the quote from the free trade newspaper might make a suitable double reference for the assertion of long hours and impoverishment, although it gives nothing of the full horror of the circumstances described by Marx. But I am not concerned if editors think it is over the top. Incidentally there is some duplication of "since the 19th century" which can be removed in the intro perhaps.
Re Eisner, you are of course right. But I'm not sure I can incorporate the fate of Eisner in Munich (February 1919) without giving the impression that the whole post 1917 era was one of assassinations! Any help welcome.
Perhaps I can go ahead with 1. and you can enhance it.
Andysoh 22:31, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I think: Go ahead with (1): proposed wording is definate improvement. (2) Although I understand your concern, I'm not altogether clear what you are proposing. Are you talking about where the actual red scare is mentioned, balancing this with a clear statement that Marx was not into appropriating property? Or are you talking about this being clear from the article in general? I'd be wary about overburdening a section that is essentially a short version of (a section in) another article. (3) Proposed redraft as worked out by both of you looks great to me. BobFromBrockley 14:19, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Bob, have done 1. and thought I'd wait a bit on 3. in case any other editors wanted to pitch in, since its a line in the intro. I'll drop 2 and 4. Andysoh 21:37, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Archived old talk to Archive 8 and Archive 9

After several requests over the last twelve months (!) for some archiving, I split the old talk page into two archives (see top of page for details).

None of the discussions, so far as I could see, were current, or lasted beyond April, but if anyone wants to cut and paste any discussions back into here, they will have no difficulty at all in doing this. I made no attempt at refactoring the discussions. Andysoh 10:52, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Socialist influences of J.K. Rowling

There is a lot of controversy on the J.K. Rowling page on how to treat her idolization of long-time socialist Jessica Mitford and inclusion of names from Mitford's autobiography in her Harry Potter series, such as Dobby, the house-elf who inspired Hermoine to form SPEW to advocate on behalf of elf-worker rights.

There are moves to completely delete the Politics of J.K. Rowling, despite her many instances praising Mitford and subject of equity of magical creatures and mud-blood wizards in her books. If you take interest in finding a balanced article, please participate in the discussion. Despite the book being fictional, it does serve as an important allegory. Libertycookies 14:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Aspirations or "Rhetoric", theory or "agenda" - POV? And removal of link

A recent revert by WGee unfortunately changed "aspirations" back to "rhetoric", and "theory" back to "agenda".

Perhaps the reverting of these changes was an oversight, as these words, in their context, were clearly POV.

I have tried to improve the section a little with a reference to the semial work of the period. I also wonder whether the removal of the link to the article workers' movement, and the comment "we don't need any more links to crappy, inaccurate articles" is not really appropriate. I didn't restore the link, but would be interested in what the perceived inaccuracies in the article are, so that they can be changed.

Andysoh 00:03, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Clearly this is another case of bourgeois censorship. I changed the article back to a more accurate form and I'll be keeping a close eye on it from now on. (Demigod Ron 02:27, 17 June 2007 (UTC))

original research and conflict of interest

It turns out that the latest changes to the intro by Paul Spicker is a kind of "original research", which is against wiki standards.

Our existing para, (despite its faults, carefully discussed,) was put aside (before Jacob helped out) for:

  • collectivist values, such as values of liberty, equality and fraternity

with a reference to a book by a "P spicker, 2006, Liberty, equality fraternity, Bristol: Policy Press".

It is wrong anyway.

The French revolution of 1789's slogan, "Liberty, equality, fraternity" may, in today's world, seem quite left-wing, but in the view of many, it was the slogan of the overturn of the feudal order and the introduction of capitalism into France.

I think Jacob is right to try to revise these changes Paul made on Sunday, but I think it might be better to go back to what we had, and discuss it through on the talk page.

I am very much against reverting whereever possible, but I think in this case I would have.Andysoh 13:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not keen on these new bullet points - some are repetetive, some redundant (i.e. the Owenite one says they want to set uop a utopian community, but the list-set if of values underpinning tthe kind of society socialists want to see) - prior to your revert equality was listed twice. Basically, we have two key characteristics - equality and some sort of change of conditions of ownership...I preferred the para as it was prior bullets - it was teh best unhappy comprimise on offer...--Red Deathy 14:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I would prefer to return the first para. The rest seems fine.
Minor suggestions for the first para:
Can we get democracy in there?
Do you think maybe we could use ‘society’ instead of ‘socio-economic system’ here, and introduce the latter more accurate term later on? It makes it more accessible.
The term ‘community’ could mean the ‘business community’ so it is problematic, but the following sentence clarifies this, so it’s ok.
So we would have:
"Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a society in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to democratic control by the community.[11]
"This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state or worker ownership of the means of production."
Andysoh 15:05, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't much like the old version, and I don't like the bullet-point version either. Depending how we define "property," "democratic," "control" and "community," that sentence can be hopelessly vague or incredibly narrow. Does "property" include personal possessions? Does it include personal means of production or only social means of production? Does "democratic" mean majoritarian-democratic, consensus-democratic, or something else? What does "control" mean? What does "community" mean? Does it mean "people in area X" or "partners and others affected by project Y"? Someone familiar with one definition (and not the other definitions) could 'read in' several generalizations about socialism, which describe some forms, but not other forms.

I got fed up with the whole issue. When Spicker rewrote the intro, I though the intro was now unambiguously too narrow to include several socialist philosophies, and initially added the dubious tag, then reversed course and added the two points about goals. Jacob Haller 15:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Precisely. My particular bug bear was that most people think of ‘property’ as personal possessions today. I don’t like ‘doctrine’, either!
But to a certain extent we find that the more precisely we define it, the more it eludes us. We may introduce more terms, and disagree on the precise meaning of those terms too!
One solution, which seems to be what the encyclopaedias have done, is to use just a few bold words to begin with and let the rest of the article fill it out with the historical survey.
How about indicating the ‘’main trends’’? If we do, taking the historical development of social democracy and also the Soviet Union, etc into account, then we cannot avoid a definition which looks something like that of the Oxford University Press Political dictionary:
  • A political and economic theory or system of social organization based on collective or state ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Like capitalism, it takes many and diverse forms.
We could perhaps move up (and split into three) the last para, which is concrete and sufficiently well referenced, so that we have :


Socialism refers to a broad array of theories and political movements. A significant trend represents socialism as a society based on collective or state ownership of the means of production.[12]
Some socialists have championed the complete nationalization of the means of production, while social democrats have proposed selective nationalization of key industries within the framework of mixed economies. Some Marxists, including those inspired by the Soviet model of economic development, have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production, while other have advocated nationalization only of the "commanding heights" of the economy and a plan of production under democratic workers' control and management.
Others, including Communists in Yugoslavia and Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese Communists since the reform era, and some Western economists, have proposed various forms of market socialism, attempting to combine the cooperative or state ownership of the means of production with market forces, rather than let central planners guide production and exchange.[13]
Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the U.S. New Left favor decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. Others may advocate different arrangements.
The modern socialist movement had its origin largely in the working class movement of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution had brought many economic and social changes. Factory owners became very wealthy, while long hours and impoverishment faced the workers.[14]. Socialists criticised the suffering and injustices resulting from the concentration of wealth and property in the hands of the capitalist class.
Although socialism has its origins as a political movement in mediaeval Europe, with links to radicalism in some of the guilds and the egalitarianism of political dissenters like the Levellers, the word "socialism" was not current until the 1830s. It has been attributed to Pierre Leroux, author of "Individualism and socialism" (1834).
[end of intro]
Andysoh 17:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia guidelines state that "This policy does not prohibit editors with specialist knowledge from adding their knowledge to Wikipedia ... If an editor has published the results of his or her research in a reliable publication, then s/he may cite that source while writing in the third person and complying with our NPOV policy."

I made the initial edits because of the serious confusion throughout the article between Marxism and socialism. Although Marxists, and some right wing critics, have consistently argued that marxism and communism represent socialism, the claim has never accepted by the leading socialist parties. Anthony Crosland's classic "The future of socialism" (1956) identified the contributory traditions to socialism in the UK as including natural law; Owenism; christian socialism; the labour theory of value; fabianism; marxism; syndicalism; guild socialism; William Morris; the Independent Labour Party; planning; paternalism; and the welfare state. I have also corrected the mistaken claim that socialism was a movement of the later nineteenth century, with a reference to Leroux.

The reference to principles, now removed, referred to collectivist principles of liberty and fraternity as well as equality. Liberty, equality and fraternity are not confined to socialism, as Andysoh comments above, but that is because each has an individualist as well as a collective interpretation. Individual liberty, individual equality and freedom of association are liberal, not socialist, principles. The crucial distinction comes from the word "collectivist". Collectivist principles of liberty include aspects of "positive freedom" such as capacity and entitlement, liberation and empowerment. Fraternity typically includes mutual aid, solidarity and collective action. Socialism depends on the collective interpretation of these principles, and it is difficult to understand alternative forms of socialism like Christian socialism, guild socialism, Owenism (which is not simply "utopian") or the co-operative movement without them.

The article in this form still gives the misleading impression that socialism is synonymous with marxism or communism. The principal socialist movements in Europe, like the British Labour Party, the French Parti Socialiste and the Party of European Socialists, which is the largest bloc in the European parliament, are not marxist. Marxism is an analysis of society. Socialism is variously understood as a set of principles, a model society, or an approach to social, economic and political organization; it is possible to take any one part with or without the others.

Paul Spicker 17:10, 26 June 2007
You replaced definition sourced to Britannica for one sourced to your own work. Before making any major changes in the introduction of the article please try to achieve consensus on this talk page first. -- Vision Thing -- 18:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

No, I didn't. I added two alternative referenced definitions to the existing referenced definition. I wrote:

"Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements based around either

- * collectivist values, such as values of liberty, equality and fraternity [15];

- * an ideal model of society, such as those envisaged by Owenists [16] or utopian socialists like Fourier and Saint-Simon;

- * arguments for the control by the community of economic production, property and the distribution of wealth[17] "


If you do not accept the first reference - I understand the reservation - try others. The Parti Europeene Socialiste, which is the largest bloc in the Europe Parliament, describes its central objectives in these terms:

"The object of the PES is to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law."

P Self, writing the contribution on Socialism in R Goodin and P Pettit (eds), A companion to contemporary political philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, writes: "The rallying cry of the French Revolution - equality, liberty and fraternity - now constitute essential socialist values."

The article as it stands fails to address or include the mainstream of socialist thought. It is consequently seriously deficient.

Paul Spicker 19:58, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

We were in the middle of discussing some minor changes to the intro, which I think will be helpful here.
At present the article is mainly about the history of socialist thought. Your quotes can make an important addition to the article.
But one cannot look at the current socialist parties, as they call themselves, and say, this is what they call themselves, so this is what socialism is. Or even, this is what they say they stand for, so this is what they in practice what they do. These may be widely separated things.
I agree with Vision Thing putting us back to where we were. The bullet points were not referenced as they stood, and could be criticised by the same criterion.
This would be the advantage of using the Oxford University Press Political dictionary, were we to revise the existing Encyclopeida Brittanica wording.
Jacob Haller is surely right to identify problems with a number of words in the existing definition, which do not appear in the OUP dictionary: "property," "democratic," "control" and "community".
Frankly, the OUP definition is clearer, and as long as it is made clear that it is only one trend, even if a substantial one, it is perhaps an improvement.
We could say
  • Socialism refers to a broad array of theories and political movements. A significant trend represents socialism as a ‘political and economic theory or system of social organization based on collective or state ownership of the means of production'.[ref OUP dic]
We could add something along the lines of
  • Today in Europe, according to some commentators, “The rallying cry of the French Revolution - equality, liberty and fraternity - now constitute essential socialist values” [Paul’s ref]
We would be mistaken not to recognise the irony in these lines carry however, and I would be interested in their context.
We should also discuss getting Crosland's right wing socialist views on the article in a UK section perhaps, alongside identifying the left wing trends in the Labour Party. But I think we cannot be too restrictive, or prescriptive, UK centric, and the definition of socialism is wider, especially historically in Europe. Andysoh 20:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
OED gives 1. A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all. 2. A state of society in which things are held or used in common. - I tend to find OED defs to be of high quality, and that isn't an exception.--Red Deathy 08:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Even better, as an authority, and a starting point (except for the re-introduction of problematic terms 'property' (as opposed to 'capital'? - questionable) and community (business community?). It is essentially the same definition, but since nothing's perfect, an alternative might then be something like:
"Socialism refers to a broad array of theories and political movements. The most significant trend defines socialism in terms of a theory or policy of social organization which "aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all".[ref the OED]
"Today in Europe, according to some commentators, socialist values embraced by Socialist Parties such as the Parti Europeene Socialiste, which in 2007 was the largest bloc in the Europe Parliament, can be described as "The rallying cry of the French Revolution - equality, liberty and fraternity" [ref to R Goodin and P Pettit (eds), A companion to contemporary political philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell]"
This would give a contemporary feel to our article, and something to return to later in the article.
Incidentally Crosland's views are after a fashion well represented in our article, and reference to his The Future of Socialism will help the article specify the origins of the ideas it espouses. For instance, in addition to the theme of "continuous conflict", the Crosland theme is rehersed quite a lot in the section, 'Cold war years' and 'Contemporary socialism', if not in the sections above as well. What's lacking really is the views he was unsuccessfully arguing against within the Labour Party, Anuerin Bevan in particular and his In Place of Fear, and the constitutional committment (in clause 4 part 4) of the Labour Party to exactly the socialism defined by the OED which his colleague Gaiskill failed to get removed in 1959.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Andysoh 09:49, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, the principles of the Socialist international are instructive - they are authoritative of a sort as they represent the hegemonic trends within contemporary socialism - I think the thing to note is the stress on equality - that is the minimum - after all, as the doc points out, Liberals and Conservatives are quite happy with inequality (of outcome). Something else for the pot.--Red Deathy 10:11, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

NPOV dispute

The proposals here do not meet the objections. This article, wittingly or otherwise, tries to impose a primary definition on a disparate range of material. An encyclopaedia needs to reflect the range of concepts that are used, and that cannot be done with a single definition, negotiated or not.

The distortion of perspective permeates the article. Almost all the article is about communism, not socialism - and indeed, this article parallels the Wikipedia entry on communism very closely, in structure and content. Socialism does not have its origins in the late nineteenth century. I find it hard to believe that the reference to Leroux, who probably invented the word, has been removed. There is no reference to socialist values, and no place where they would fit this narrative. Ethical socialism, mutual aid and collective action disappear.

The need for change is urgent. This group of contributors must allow alternative definitions and understandings to be included. I have entered the POV symbol to warn potential users of the contentious and misleading nature of the article.

[[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]] 11:17, 27 June 2007 (UTC)]

I think you are being a little hasty, as any mediator will say. Wiki often suggests waiting a week just for suggestions to be responded to - people can't all be at their computers every day of the week.
The reference to Leroux has been removed while the matter is discussed in, hopefully, an inclusive manner. I certainly want it back in. I also agree with Red deathy about using the current Freedom principles of the Second international. So your points are being considered carefully.
Various socialist values did not fall out of the sky, they arose from somewhere. They should have a place in the article, if they can be attributed to someone or thing. The theories of Crosland, which some call revisionist because they attacked the constitution of the Labour Party and its core values, are already in the article, and can be made more specific. Bernstein is already highlighted. They are a legitimate trend.
I've made several suggestions and you've not yet made specific comments on them. I tried to suggest that we specify the "most significant trend" (historically, in line with various authorities) and made specific suggestions around the points you make.
You should make specific edit suggestions here in the talk page.
We established here a while back, quite correctly, that an historical approach to the subject allows for a rounded out factual view of what socialism is, how it developed, instead of an episodic or subjective view.
Historically this is properly given by the authorities we've cited.
Keep in mind that the UK history, as reflected by Crosland, is very different to that in Europe, marked, in the view of socialists in Europe in the past by a very low level of understanding of the ideas of socialism, by errors in underestimating the nature of capitalism (its crises, etc) as examined by Marxists in the previous century and meeting with a great deal of objections in the Labour Party at the time.
In the US, it is very widespread and one might say deeply ingrained that the West including Europe is capitalist and the East, the Soviet Union in particular, was socialist, as can be seen by the recent addition of "Katherine Verdery: Anthropology of Socialist Societies" link at the bottom of the page, which is typical. For this reason, we end up distinguishing various trends of socialism, and our main task is to ensure they are properly weighted, and where there are serious doubts about whether something is socialist or not, such as the Soviet Union, that this is made clear.
Nevertheless, the article ends prematurely, as the editors are well aware, and have been discussing developing it in various ways. Feel free to suggest sections and fill them out, not forgetting to reference them.Andysoh 12:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, to try and consense the conversation, bearing WP:LEAD in mind, the lead should introduce teh topic and give a brief over-view, it isn't definitive, nor should it try to be. Also, it needs to be wary of undue weight - minority positions can be examined in the later stages of the article. Given that most historic socialist parties had some sort of stated goal of common ownership, I think we can fairly put that into the lead, since it prepresents teh predominant definition fo socialism - with, as present, an indication that there is no one definition of the subject. I stand by the current def. as NPOV (it certainly isn't how I'd define socialism, personally, but it is the most NPOV we've come up with yet).--Red Deathy 12:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

This article is not an historical account of socialism. It is a contentious, partial account of a particular strand of socialist views, primarily classifiable in terms of communism, and difficult to distinguish from Wikipedia's article on that subject. Alternative perspectives have been removed. The insistence that changes must be agreed on the talk page first is contrary to Wikipedia's recommended approach. Wikipedia's policy on Wikipedia: Neutral Point of View states that "The policy requires that, where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic, these should each be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader ..."

I have responded to the proposition for a "compromise" with the argument that no single definition can encapsulate the conflicting elements. These positions have to be balanced by alternative viewpoints. I made a proposal above which, whatever its deficiencies, at least adverts to alternative positions, which was fully referenced, and did not seek to excise contrary views; the reasons for rejecting it appear to be that people think that a single definition from a dictionary is better. Citing dictionaries as authorities is generally enough to establish that a term is indeed used in the way suggested, which is not in dispute; it does not however establish that the terms is used primarily or exclusively in that way.

The POV symbol refers to the article as it is. I refer you to the guidance on the use of the symbol in the policy on Wikipedia: NPOV dispute. Please leave it alone. If you wish it to be removed, you must allow alternative perspectives to be recorded within the article.

[[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]] 13:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)]

The problem is, the version you proposed above was tautologous, the disparate elements have a common core, or series of historically defined common coreas. Also, it's worth noting that historically socialism and communism were synonyms, for a substantial while - after all, the communist states called themselves socialist. Something like communal control of wealth lies at teh essntial core of historically hegemonic socialistic tendenaacies, and that is why the lead should kick off from that, and minor tendencies should be given due weight further down. I'm happy to hear of re-writing the intro, but I certainly wasn't happy with your prior offering. What, specifically, do you want to have included?--Red Deathy 14:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC) p.s. was acting under the guidance: The editor who adds the tag must address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort.--Red Deathy 14:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
You might consider, Paul, that you initially placed what appeared to be your own definition with a reference to your own work. You did not start out very well, and it might be worth taking a breather before getting too heavy, take the tag off and reading what we have written.
By the way, please can you start your points by colons on this talk page to make it clearer where your talk begins.
In addition, I notice you seem not to have a functioning user name link. It would be good to fix that.
You exaggerate the similarities between the Communism page and the socialism page, but Red deathy is right to point out the relationship between the two. It could be argued that there has long been a trend which attempts to diminish or even hide this relationship.Andysoh 14:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
I proposed inclusion of three central understandings of socialism, in place of the current one. They are socialism as a system of values; as a vision of society; and as a set of approaches to economic and political organisation. Each was referenced. They have been removed. These views are distinct and separable, and important factions accepted one while rejecting others - for example, the Marxists rejected ethical socialism and the social democrats rejected utopian socialism. Reddeathy is probably right to say that socialism and communism were closely identified for a substantial period (about 1918 to 1945) but in the period since the second world war the idea of socialism as a system of values has been the most prominent use of the term in Europe.
The article is biased, but that is not the central reason for invoking Wikipedia's NPOV policy. Normally the way to deal with bias is to present countervailing evidence, and that is what I began by doing. The central problem here is that two or three people have chosen to remove referenced material because it was not consistent with their views. This is counter to WP guidance and philosophy, and the repeated removal of the NPOV tag is a basic breach of Wikipedia policy. If it happens again I will need to go to the next stage of dispute resolution.

{Paul Spicker 15:11, 27 June 2007 (UTC)]

Actually, they were synonyms in the 19th. Century, Morris, for example, used them interchangeably, 1918 was when the distinction began to set in. Your three distinct variations are not distinct, the second two are the same thing - a vision is of a set of approaches to economics (in fact with the Owenites it was something put into practice). Likewise, values are a set of economic practices if they are lived up to - and all of them have an actuating essence behind them which is egalitarianism, democracy and a critique of market behaviour. If they were that distinct they'd be different things, but out def. should look at the (predominant) commonality.--Red Deathy 15:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Paul, try to assume good faith. Most of the edits attempted to work on what you did. You introduced two references, one to your own work and one to Owen. Owen is significant, and we could have discussed that, but you seem to take into account insufficiently the history of socialism in Europe the 19th C, and I suggest it would repay study.
The division into those three bullet points was your own conception, and it was worked on, referenced or not. It remained original research. Your notion that Marxism rejects ethical socialism will be met by the question - whose ethics? The ethics of the working class or those of the capitalist class? This is not to say you are wrong and Marxism is right, but that there is more than one point of view on how many types of socialism there are, how they relate, and so on, and when you decide to edit an article in Wikipedia you have to accept that.
Try to consider that, however awful you may find the article, it is you who is breaching wiki policy with the POV tag, as red deathy has shown, and you would get nowhere in a dispute resolution.
The article needs improving. Just help to do that collectively rather than individually.
As it happens, I’m going to show you how below. Andysoh 22:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Red Deathy, consider Proudhon and Bakunin, both of whom, for all their differences with each other, considered socialism and communism two distinct ideas, supporting the former and opposing the latter. Both Proudhon and Bakunin opposed majoritarian democracy (favoring decentralization and what has been termed consensus democracy). And Proudhon favored markets... So of these three concerns, the second and third may predominate, but are not universal, in the socialist movement. Jacob Haller 01:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I think a visit to christianity may pay (benchmarking is always useful) last I checked unitarians may be excluded from the definition in the lead. That is not a problem, such differences can be addressed in the text, the lead is general. Jacob Haller you're quite right, I should have said critique of existing markets Prodhoun did indeed advocate something like a co-operative market economy (although by reduction to small property holdings and co-operatives he was advocating common ownership, as distinct from monopoly class ownership, arguably).--Red Deathy 07:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

The discussion in the NPOV dispute continues with the topic "The lead" immediately below. [[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]] 11:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)]

It's not clear to me why the whole article needs a POV tag now. I removed the tag but Paul replaced it without comment. If there is still a section which needs work, let's note it here, tag it if we must, and work on it. Here's what I added:
"In 1989, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International at Stockholm adopted a Declaration of Principles which declares that "Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society."[82] The objectives of the Party of European Socialists, the socialist bloc in the European Parliament, are "to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law." The companion to contemporary political philosophy states: "The rallying cry of the French Revolution - equality, liberty and fraternity - now constitute essential socialist values."[83]
"In 1995, the UK Labour Party revised its aims: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few."[84]"

Andysoh 01:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


The NPOV symbol is intended to inform users that there is a problem with the neutrality of the article. I have detailed this, with evidence, at length. All amendments are reverted, regardless of the inclusion of evidence and sources - but so, more seriously, is the signal to users that there is a dispute.

This will be my final posting. I have given this process several months, but now I have determined, because of my experience with this article, to discontinue contact with Wikipedia, and have asked for my user page to be deleted.

Paul Spicker 15:19, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

The NPOV tag is also meant to be accompanied by practical proposals for change, yet despite your initial changes, you haven't given any concrete pointers for what we could do to remedy your perception of bias. Given that you say you are retiring from the field, I am going to remove the POV tag, because there wuill be no way of discussing the matter with you to rectify it. For the record, I ahve problems and doubts about sections of the article, but recognise that stability and consensus is important, simply adding a big POV tag wouldn't change that - we've discussed your changes at length and you don't seem to be able to garner consensus support, that's the way it goes. I would suggest, though, that you don't stop trying, after a bit of battering, and with occaisional small changes you could get a better result.--Red Deathy 07:53, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The lead

Based on the use of the term by other self-described socialists, I'd point to:

  • Social and economic egalitarianism, often including division or rotation of authority.
  • Sometimes support for "to each each according to his work" or "labor has a right to all that it creates" OR
(Either determined by calculation or emerging from market/strike processes)
  • Sometimes support for "to each according to his needs" or post-scarcity economics.
  • Opposition to monopoly power.
  • Sometimes support for community or state control of monopolies AND/OR
  • Sometimes support for breakups of monopolies.
(Either via government intervention or via market competition or via division among communities)
  • Usually opposition to concentrations of property (which overlaps with monopoly power).
  • Sometimes favoring community control, as with monopolies (one option above) OR
  • Sometimes support for possession standards or more limited property standards OR
  • Sometimes support for land taxes, property taxes, citizens' dividends, or progressive taxation OR
  • Sometimes opposition to inheritance, support for inheritance taxes, or support for voluntary distribution of larger estates. Jacob Haller 08:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I would say that in part the first criterion (economic equality) drives the rest. Further, I'd say that at present the lead encapsulates all of the above, especially if you're clear that control by the community doesn't necessarilly mean state power, or even democratic power. But, I'd say that list provides a good basis for further discussion.--Red Deathy 09:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I think on reflection that my initial proposal contains too little about the diversity of socialist views rather than too much. Here is an expanded version.

"Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements based around various combinations of

  • (1)social values, such as liberty, equality and fraternity. The objectives of the Party of European Socialists, the socialist bloc in the European Parliament, are “to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law." The Socialist International declares that “Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society.” [18]
  • (2) a broad movement to improve society through collective action. Proudhon described socialism as “every aspiration towards the amelioration of society”; Owen argued for “a national proceeding” in the formation of character [19]; the Fabian society describes itself as “characterised by a passionate commitment to social justice and a belief in the progressive improvement of society” [20]
  • (3) an ideal model of society, such as those envisaged by Owenists [21] or utopian socialists like Fourier and Saint-Simon;
  • (4) a set of collective approaches to economic and political organization, based on workers’ movements, cooperation, mutual aid, planning and organised social welfare. Examples are syndicalism, guild socialism and the co-operative movement.
  • (5) critiques of the social organisation of industrial society, including Marxism, William Morris’s anti-commercialism, anti-capitalism and anarchism
  • (6) arguments for the control by the community of economic production, property and the distribution of wealth[22]". J S Mill understood socialism to be “any system which requires that the land and instruments of production should be the property, not of individuals, but of communities or associations, or of the government.” [23].

There is no agreement among socialists about common methods. Crosland writes: “The various schools of thought which have classed themselves, and been called by others, ‘socialist’ - Owenites and Marxists, Fabians and Christian Socaialists, syndicalists and Guild Socialist - have differed profoundly over the right means; and no one means has a better title to the label ‘socialist’ than any other. The one single element common to all the schools of thought has been the basic aspirations, the underlying moral values.” [24]"

Please note, as before, that this gives evidence for all points and does not remove the existing (single) reference. If you disagree, the proper procedure is not to suppress this submission but to counter it with other material.

[[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]] 11:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)]

Right, obvious verfiaibility is a condition for inclusion, but that does not mean that verified material must be included, we could reject on grounds of style or context, or otehr policies - that's just for the record. Now, (3) is tautologous, since the ideal society is based on the precepts/values enumerated under other points. (2) reads to me like a continuation/re-phrasing on (1) i.e. improvement in terms of certain values. (4) is (2) reworded, since both deal with collective action for improvement. (5) well, not only socialists critique industrial society, Romantic anti-capitalists and reactionaries do too. (6) is just (2) & (4) again, or, rather, is an extrapolation thereof. I'll add that bullet points read atrociously (especially in a lead) and frankly, the above is just an exopanded version of the points already covered by the current lead, but in more detail (detail which belongs in the body of the text).--Red Deathy 12:04, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
This is a substantive, not a stylistic, disagreement. Your comments seem to say that you do not agree that socialism has anything like the variety I am identifying, and you think that the current single definition encapsulates everything else. This view is not shared by any of the sources cited. Utopian socialism, in point 3, is neither equivalent to nor derived from other principles, like ethical socialism; a vision of society is not the same as any other point. Point (2) includes a very wide range of action, including action by the state (for the Fabians) and employers (for Owen); it certainly is not, then, equivalent to (4). I agree that (5) is not exclusive to socialists, but the purpose is not to exclude people from the definition of socialism who are claimed to be in it; this approach has been referred to as "analytical socialism", e.g. in the journal Imprints. (You will note, I hope, that in each of those replies I have cited evidence.)
The development of material in Wikipedia depends not on people censoring views that they disagree with, but on putting countervailing positions and evidence instead. I take issue with your assertion that "we could reject" this amendment. You are not a moderating group, and you have no right to do so. If you disagree, please think instead about how your disagreement can effectively be expressed and how other points of view can be incorporated.
[[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]] 14:52, 28 June 2007 (UTC)]
Well, I was just making the point that verfiability is a necessary but not sufficient grounds for inclusion, before critiquing your suggestion, wikpedia works on census and you are we for the purposes of that comment. Utopian socialism is necesarilly imagining socialism in action (i.e. logically it is a utopia that presupposes the concept of socialism), for example there could well be a Crosslandite utopia, which would be what would exist if Crosslandites always got their way. Just as a choclate eaters utopia presupposes chocolate and eating. If (2) includes a wide range of actions then it icnludes workers actions without the state, (4) is merely a refinement of (2). My complaints are not substantive, i don't disagree that these are features of socialism, but that the expression put forward above is repetatios and tautologous, and doesn't say much more than a (broad) reading of the current lead encapsulates. I am, therefore, putting forard my alternative, which is the status quo. So, for the record, I don't disagree with the general thrust of your point, but do disagree with your current way of expressing it I think Andysoh's suggestion below is very good, though, and could be a basis for moving forward.--Red Deathy 15:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Rushed thoughts, sorry for being roughtly expressed:
A lot of work has gone into both these lists, but it remains the case that if someone says "Who says that socialist thought/ideas/action can or should be summarised that way?" we have no authority to turn to even though we have each one referenced (e.g. original research). And as red deathy showed, this can be disputed.
If we approach the question historically (in chronological order), we have no such problem.
Socialism refers to a broad array of theories and political movements. The term is thought to originate with Pierre Leroux [ref]"Individualism and socialism" (1834) A quote would be good![/ref].
Early thought identified with the socialist tradition, such as the diggers and levellers in the XX century believed that XXX XXX [ref]
The XX tradition of XX e.g. Saint simon believed that XXXX [ref] Proudhon, Bakunin etc [ref]
Socialist ideas were uinited in the Marxist viewpoint in the last third of the 19th century, which argued for the XXZ XX [ref]
In 1918 The constitutution of the Labour Party adopted as its aims "the common ownership of the means of production distribuition and exchange" [ref]
After the October 1917 revolution the Communist Party ... Soviet Union defined socialism meant XX XX, eventually covering half the globe, ?although other trends strongly disputed that this constituted socialism [refs]
In 1945 in Europe socilaist partys in power was "socialism" - Mixed economy, etc
in 197? the Party of European Socialists, the socialist bloc in the European Parliament, adopted the aims “to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law." [ref]
In 1995 the UK Labour Party changed its aims to be XXXX [ref]
[Intro ends]
Then the article can follow this summary through . Just rushed thoughts Andysoh 14:33, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
By the way, the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on socialism says, before dicsussing the influence of marxism in depth:


You may be able to access the entry here [10]
Andysoh 14:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Leroux is cited in the French entry in Wikipedia as defining socialism as « la doctrine qui ne sacrifiera aucun des termes de la formule Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité » - "the doctrine which would not give up any of the principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The identification of socialism with those three principles is, of course, where we started.
In the historical summary, the main issue I would counter is the statement that socialism was "united" under Marxism. The quote from Crosland explains, fairly clearly, why it was not. The quotation from Britannica is an example of the kind of contrary position I have been asking for, and it might be included as a counter-argument. But it is a point of view - not an authoritative statement.
Andysoh's proposition would be better than the current, woefully inadequate, history. But it would not deal with the need to explain what socialism is and what the contributory positions are, and the article will remain fundamentally unbalanced until that is done.
[[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]] 15:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)]
FWIW OED Gives the etymology as follows a. F. socialisme (1832), or independently f. SOCIAL a. + -ISM. See also next. The early history of the word is somewhat obscure. The first use of F. socialisme appears to have been in the Globe of 13 Feb. 1832, where it was employed in contrast to personnalité. In its modern sense it is variously claimed for Leroux or Reybaud, writing within three or four years after this. A different account, assigning the priority of this use to England, is given in the Encycl. Brit. (1887) XXII. 205; according to this the word originated in 1835 in the discussions of a society founded by Robert Owen. --Red Deathy 15:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree we have to be careful with the Pierre Leroux reference. For instance, Yes, he says this socialism did not give up the ideals of the 1789 revolution, but is this because it went further in its ideals, e.g. as Babeuf did? Incidentally Babeuf was very important to the development of Marxism – you might call the tradition he started one of the three strands which make up Marxism, although Babeuf could be excluded from the intro. It would be good to balance it out with the Owenites.

Re Marxism “uniting” I quoted above from the Encyclopaedia Britannica which says “But from the viewpoint of the subsequent development of socialism their ideas seem to be tributaries feeding the mighty stream of the Marxist movement that came to dominate the socialist tradition in the last third of the 19th century.” Crosland is by comparison by far the minority position, and this is particularly true when viewed internationally.

I tried to say no more and no less than that. It could be underpinned by any number of other references as well, but it does come as a surprise to English people because of our relative isolation from the continental tradition, and the fact that our English history, with many notable exceptions, can tend to downplay the continental tradition.

I have tried to say that the historical method is the only way to say what socialism “is” without departing into original research, or remaining with what we’ve got. Hope this helps Andysoh 15:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


If we take into account Red Deathy’s marvellous research, we might re-arrange the intro to a construction something like this:

Socialism refers to a broad array of theories and political movements. Early use of the term is variously attributed to Pierre Leroux in 1834, who called socialism “the doctrine which would not give up any of the principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” of the French Revolution of 1789. [25] or to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France, or else in England to Robert Owen considered the father of the cooperative movement. [26]
Early movements identified with the socialist tradition include the levellers and the diggers at the time of the English Civil War of the mid 17th Century , the latter believing that land should be held in common.
Following the French revolution of 1789, Saint Simon, the founder of French socialism, argued that a brotherhood of man that must accompany the scientific organization of industry and society[27] . Proudhon pronounced that “Property is theft” and that socialism was “every aspiration towards the amelioration of society”. Proudhon termed himself an anarchist as did Bakunin, the father of modern anarchism, a libertarian socialist, a theory by which the workers would directly manage the means of production through their own productive associations.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).
In the last third of the 19th century social democratic parties arose in Europe drawing mainly from Marxist ideology, which essentially called for the common ownership of the means of production. [28][29]
In the twentieth century the Soviet Union and the Communist Parties of the Third International around the world came to represent socialism in terms of XX XX, although other trends strongly disputed that this outlook constituted socialism [refs]
In 1918 the UK Labour Party adopted as its aims "the common ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange" [30]
In 1945 European Socialist Parties in power were considered socialist administrations.[31] They established the 'mixed economy' with partial nationalisations and social welfare.
In recent decades Socialist Parties in Europe have redefined their aims. [ref German SDP; in 1995 the UK Labour Party changed its aims to be XXXX etc] and reversed their policy on nationalisations.
In 197? the Party of European Socialists, the socialist bloc in the European Parliament adopted the aims, "to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law".
By 1968 the prolonged Vietnam war (1959-1975), gave rise to the New Left, socialists who tended to be critical of the Soviet Union and social democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left and others favored decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils.[ref]. Trotskyists demanded the restoration of workers’ (soviet) democracy in the Soviet Union and other through political revolution. [ref]
At the turn of the 21st century, in Latin America Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez championed ‘Socialism of the 21st Century’ [ref], which included a policy of nationalisation of national assets such as Oil, a pan-American approach of XX Bolivar, and termed himself a Trotskyist supporting 'permanent revolution'. [news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6246219.stm]”


[Intro ends]

Andysoh 16:03, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I just dug out my copy of Crosland's book, and in my opinion, (of course I know Paul disagrees, I accept that) although Crosland lists the main influences, he makes it quite clear that the main influence on socialists is Marxism, at least up to that time. He opens the book, on page one, stating that socialists in the 1930s held the "predominantly Marxist analaysis" of revolution, and immediately spends some time setting out how will attempt to refute that outlook. He even terms his outlook a revision of the Labour Party's position - I thought that was a term used by others. Andysoh 20:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I just figured out Paul's point about the question of socialism being united behind marxism, and re-worded this line above, together with trying to fill out one or two of the XXXs. Feel free to help out Andysoh 23:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

These outlines suggest that the social-democratic parties are the "highest stage of socialism," that Marxism-Leninism diverged from this in the early 20th century, and stopped developing, that anarchism diverged from this in the late 19th century, and stopped developing, etc. Moreover, some statements that Marxism represented the mainstream by 1900 may involve circular logic, e.g.: Jacob Haller 01:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

  1. Propose definition: Socialists propose state ownership of the means of production.
  2. Deduction: Therefore anarchists, et al., are not socialists.
  3. Observation: Therefore socialists, as observed after exclusion of anarchists, et al. propose state ownership of the means of production.
  4. Propose definition: Socialists ...
Can I just say, this is all good stuff - although I'd add a small rider that the current wording is sufficiently broad to encompass all traditions - after all, control is a weak word ranging from statutory regulation (Health and Safety Acts, etc.) to nationalisation and even at a pinch mutualism - it has survived as a wording because it is so broad (alsmost to the point of meaninglessness)....oh, and also, Labour's current Clause IV "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."--Red Deathy 08:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I think Jacob’s points are very important.
I completely omitted the section we have on “Contemporary socialism”!
At them moment, in the introduction, we have
* Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left favor decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. Others may advocate different arrangements.
I have removed “U.S.” as I think it can safely be argued that this applies in Europe and elsewhere.
Putting this into historical context, we might have something roughly like this
“By 1968 the prolonged Vietnam war (1959-1975), gave rise to the New Left, socialists who tended to be critical of the Soviet Union and social democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left and others favored decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils.[ref]. Trotskyists demanded the restoration of workers’ (soviet) democracy in the Soviet Union and other through political revolution. [ref]
“At the turn of the 21st century, in Latin America Hugo Chavez championed a policy of nationalisation of national assets such as Oil and termed himself a Trotskyist supporting ‘permanent revolution’. [news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6246219.stm]”
I’m not sure if this addresses some of Jacob’s concerns.
But hopefully this should address the lack of balance which suggests a monolithic socialism arising in the form of social democracy and the soviet union.
Still missing is the fact that both social democracy and the soviet union fought a continual battle against critical trends within them (vis Kinnock’s blast against Liverpool City Council at 1985 Labour Party conference, felt to be so central that it was used in the election campaign, and of course the extent of Stalin’s civil war against real or imagined supporters of Trotskyism, running through to 1937, etc).
Then you have Hungary 1956, France 1968, Czechoslovakia 1968, Chile 1971-3, Portugal 1974, Sandinistas, struggles in Southern Africa and the Middle East. These must be dealt with in the body of the article, I guess.


I’m not sure how to summarise Labour’s new constitutional aims! Perhaps wealth in the hands of the many – seems odd when the gap between rich and poor has got greater than ever.
The new wording of the first intro para of the current ‘live’ article is very good.
My only serious concern, shared with Jacob, was the reference to what Marx implied, and we have a new text for that (above).
But Paul, Jacob and others have expressed concern about it, and I suspect that it is not as accessible, or even felt to be POV, compared to our new version, especially to people whose concrete experience of what ‘socialism’ seems to mean does not appear to encompass this wording.
Andysoh 10:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

The rise of the Soviet Union: Broke off contact?

I had trouble with the following two sentences opening the "The rise of the Soviet Union" section.

  • "The Russian Revolution of 1917 marked the definitive split between Communists and social democrats. Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Europe dismissed the more moderate socialist parties and, for the most part, broke off contact."

Yet the fourth congress the Communist International (December 1922) discussed "Left Unity" and it became policy to unite with other socialists at local level in local struggles while criticising the social democractic leaders.

In Britain, of course, the CPGB attempted to affiliate to the Labour Party almost every year from 1920 until well into the late 1930s, and many Communist Party members or fellow travellers, like Jim Mortimer, entered the labour Party and ended up in leading positions. As a formulation, even with the equivocation, 'broke off contact' doesn't work. ("Dismissed" is not the best word either.)

Apart from the "Third Period", (when they practiced 'contact' with the social democracts of a different sort!) ideologically the Communist Parties were committed to various forms of collaboration with other left and petty-bourgeois parties, under the later Popular Front ideology and the preceding Two Stage theory in particular, but also dating from the fourth Congress which attempted to curb the ultra-left tendencies.

Of course this is only one side to it, but it is a side that is missing. Jacob also made some points I’ve incorporated here for clarity.

How about something like:

  • The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the formation of the Communist International (also termed the Third International or Comintern) in 1919, brought about the definitive ideological division between Communists (denoted with a capital “C”) on the one hand, and other communist and socialist trends such as anarcho-communists and social democrats.

What do others think? Andysoh 22:23, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I strongly support this or similar wording, as this has bothered me about the article too! BobFromBrockley 10:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
OK I'll go ahead with this unless anyone objects Andysoh 14:29, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Decision time on the POV tag and re-worked alternative

Perhaps we should try to decide by the end of this week what to do about the POV tag?

I think the POV tag should go whether or not we change the lead paragraph.

Why the POV tag should go

Paul quoted Anthony Crossland’s passage on the origins of socialism as justification for the POV tag, in contrast to the assertions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However right at the start of Crossland’s book, The Future of Socialism, (in the fourth paragraph) Crossland himself says that in the UK Labour Party in the 1930s:

"...the younger generation... for the most part took to Marxism, which thus had to wait almost a century before achieving a major influence on the British Left."

In other words, while on the continent Marxism had been a major influence since 1848 (Crossland implies), it took almost a century for it to do the same in Britain. He continues

"The Fabian tradition offered no effective counter-attraction – indeed, its best known leaders deserted, and became amongst the foremost exponent of the Marxist gospel... A very few socialist thinkers stood outside the Marxist stream." (The Future of Socialism, p4, Constable, (2006))

Furthermore this younger generation were playing a central role by the time of the 1945 Labour government and after. Crossland cites Professor Harold Laski, who was the Labour Party chair in the crucial years of 1945-6. He omits to mention Aneurin Bevan and his immensely popular In Place of Fear, which was reprinted ten years after it was issued, with its panegyric to Marxism, who brought in the NHS, often seen as Labour’s crowning glory.

The repeated removal of the POV tag, without attempting to resolve the issues it identifies, fails to recognise that there are different views of socialism, This article is deeply biased towards a particular, highly contentious, interpretation of the topic which is largely inconsistent with the mainstream use of the term in Europe. The POV tag is an attempt to draw attention to the existence of such a disagreement with minimal disruption. Paul Spicker 17:55, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
The article has been substantially reworked, many of the concerns you listed have been addressed - what *substantively* would you like to see done to the article? Constructive suggestions rather than drive by tagging would be appreciated.--Red Deathy 08:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I have made extensive, detailed comments on this talk page about what needs to be included; there is a fully referenced, written section here. The introductory section misrepresents the meaning of "socialism", and nothing in the lengthy historical material contradicts that misrepresentation. The emphasis on Marxism, which is a serious distortion, has been reduced but not balanced by countervailing views. Socialism is more than a socio-economic system and cannot adequately be defined in those terms. The introduction takes in one more meaning than before but still identifies socialism with the aspirations of communism. This muddle runs throughout the article.
I am more than willing to extend and deepen the article, confining all corrections and amendments to referenced material, but I cannot do so while being blocked. Paul Spicker
No-one has ever blocked you. You have been encouraged to propose changes.
Your original re-write of the opening material, which was referenced to your own published work, was correctly removed.
If you remove the opening lines and replace them with material referenced to your own work, or those purely representing your own point of view, you will have to contend with the fact that your views are not representative and will not be accepted by wiki editors.
You made a second proposal, this time correctly on the talk page, but it still was you own division of socialism into several streams, which were more or less British based, and of considerably less relevance, especially outside of the UK, (e.g. in Europe, the USA or India for instance) than the development of social democracy on the continent under the influence of Marxism in particular.
Nevertheless, your suggestions were intensively discussed, some were incorporated, others were shown to be false. This despite the fact that it was you who acted against wiki protocol, tried to impose your own point of view, moreover in a somewhat confrontational, authoritarian way. Putting the POV tag on the article is a continuation of this confrontational style. Since this is not atypical of new editors, this was tolerated then more broadly than it might continue to be. You should remove the tag.
The article as it stands is entirely mainstream in its positioning of Marxism, following the Encyclopaedia Britannica quite closely, for example. Your rejection of the Encyclopaedia Britannica as an expression of bias was unsourced and as an approach or model it cannot be easily dismissed.
In point of fact, in an attempt to incorporate your views, the article is already slightly UK centric, but this is set in the context that the UK was by far the world's No 1. superpower in 1900, owning a fifth of the globe and a fifth of the world's peoples, and even after WW2, still was one of the three "great powers" at Yalta. On this basis, even a reference to Christian Socialism and Tawney would not be out of place, and the UK could be given it's own section. I'll proceed to do this.
Nevertheless be careful not to bring to the article a British bias based on your mis-reading of Crossland's 'The future of socialism'. Crossland's work, right from the outset, as has been pointed out in the discussion, clearly gives backing to the article's emphasis on Marxism, which was quoted in full. You made no reply to this.
Here is the relevant material, copied from elsewhere on this talk page:
"...the younger generation... for the most part took to Marxism, which thus had to wait almost a century before achieving a major influence on the British Left."
In other words, while on the continent Marxism had been a major influence since 1848 (Crossland implies), it took almost a century for it to do the same in Britain. He continues
"The Fabian tradition offered no effective counter-attraction – indeed, its best known leaders deserted, and became amongst the foremost exponent of the Marxist gospel... A very few socialist thinkers stood outside the Marxist stream." (The Future of Socialism, p4, Constable, (2006))
Furthermore this younger generation were playing a central role by the time of the 1945 Labour government and after. Crossland cites Professor Harold Laski, who was the Labour Party chair in the crucial years of 1945-6. He omits to mention Aneurin Bevan and his immensely popular In Place of Fear, which was reprinted ten years after it was issued, with its panegyric to Marxism, who brought in the NHS, often seen as Labour’s crowning glory.
[Quote ends]
I'll do some work on the suggestion I made above tonight.
Andysoh 18:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
This has now been done. Please discuss concerns before tagging any item, as per wiki policy. Andysoh 20:12, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

The alternatives

Red Deathy prefers the first para as is. However since Paul felt strongly about the current lead paragraph, and Jacob felt it could be improved, and I felt it to be correct but not easily recognisably so, we all discussed alternatives.

New definition: My point was that, as a definition of what Socialism means in various contexts, one cannot simply develop a schematic of one’s own out of any historical context, referenced or not. It is open to charges of original research and, if the Marxism page is anything to go by, will be a matter of continual contention. Jacob or Paul could re-cast their outlines chronologically in terms of when historically these ideas emerged, or follow the suggestions I sketched out. This would be an indisputable concrete précis of socialism.

My proposal perhaps could be shortened and could undoubtedly be much improved. It now looks something like this:

Socialism refers to a broad array of theories and political movements. Early use of the term is variously attributed to Pierre Leroux in 1834, [32] or to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France, or else in England to Robert Owen, who is considered the father of the cooperative movement.[33]
Early movements identified with the socialist tradition include the levellers and the diggers in the UK in the mid 17th Century, the latter believing that land should be held in common.
Following the French revolution of 1789, Saint Simon, who is called the founder of French socialism, argued that a brotherhood of man that must accompany the scientific organization of industry and society.[34] Proudhon pronounced that “Property is theft” and that socialism was “every aspiration towards the amelioration of society”. Proudhon termed himself an anarchist, as did Bakunin, the father of modern anarchism, a libertarian socialist, a theory by which the workers would directly manage the means of production through their own productive associations.[35]
In the last third of the 19th century social democratic parties arose in Europe drawing mainly from Marx and Engels who developed what they termed ‘scientific socialism’.
In the twentieth century the Soviet Union and the Communist Parties of the Third International around the world mainly came to represent socialism in terms of Soviet model of economic development, the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production, although other trends condemned what they saw as the lack of democracy. Others, including Communists in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese Communists since the reform era, and some Western economists, have proposed various forms of market socialism, reconciling the cooperative or state ownership of the means of production with market forces, letting the market guide production and exchange rather than central planners.[36]
In 1945 European Socialist Parties in power were considered socialist administrations by some. In the UK Herbert Morrison said "Socialism is what the Labour government does", whereas Aneurin Bevan argued that under socialism the “main streams of economic activity are brought under public direction”.[37] Some argued that capitalism had been abolished. [38] Socialist governments established the 'mixed economy' with partial nationalisations and social welfare.
In recent decades Socialist Parties in Europe have redefined their aims. [39] and reversed their policy on nationalisations.
In 197? the Party of European Socialists, the socialist bloc in the European Parliament adopted the aims, "to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law".
By 1968 the prolonged Vietnam war (1959-1975), gave rise to the New Left, socialists who tended to be critical of the Soviet Union and social democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left and others favored decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils.[ref]. Trotskyists demanded the restoration of workers’ (soviet) democracy in the Soviet Union and other through political revolution. [ref]
At the turn of the 21st century, in Latin America Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez championed what he termed 'Socialism of the 21st Century', which included a policy of nationalisation of national assets such as Oil, anti-imperialism, and termed himself a Trotskyist supporting 'permanent revolution'. [news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6246219.stm]”


[Intro ends]

Current definition: I’d be happy to stick with the current first para notwithstanding the issues we have raised, unless there’s support for a new version. If we stick with what we’ve got, we should remove the sentence on what Marx implied for the reasons discussed above. In addition, there is the slip of the fingers in relation to "late-19th century" in the second para, and the repetition of 19th century two more times, and two re-statements of the fact that socialism means different things to different people. These can go without loss.

I could do these changes to the ‘current definition’ unless we agree to work on a 'new definition'. Andysoh 20:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Current definition: This is an excellent suggestion - except the first sentence: (1) socialism has also referred to a system of society (and certain societies) not just to movements; (2) we should give some indication of what unites these disparate movements - could I suggest opposition to actually existing/contemporary capitalism - I realise that that is slightly circular, since it bounces off to the fiercely fought over lead at capitalism (been stable quite some while now though), but it actually probably is what unites the disparate socialisms. Overall though, my first preference is for the status quo, second for the above revision.--Red Deathy 07:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
The POV tag needs to stay because the article as a whole, and the definition at the outset, is seriously, deeply imbalanced. Virtually all the comments about this issue on this discussion page put a point of view which see socialism as a common, unifying doctrine. This is characterised in the article as based on "the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole" (the text until yesterday) or "a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community". Both "definitions" misrepresent the position by claiming a unity of methods and approaches which is explicitly denied in the literature.
Here are some examples from standard textbooks in politics. Vincent writes: "there is no such single thing as socialism.There are rather socialisms ... There are multiple definitions of the concept and numerous ways of actually conceptualizing it." (Modern Political ideologies, Blackwell, 1995). Heywood writes: "one of the difficulties of analysing socialism is that the term has been understood in a at least three distinctive ways. From one point of view, Socialism is seen as an economic model, usually linked to some form of collectivisation and planning. ... The second approach treats socialism as an instrument of the labour movement. ... in this book, socialism is understood in a third and broader sense as a political creed or ideology, characterised by a particular cluster of ideas, values and theories. (Political ideologies, Macmillan, 1998). Geogehan argues that socialists have no doctrines in common, but are linked instead by "family resemblance". "It is necessary to have a certain definitional modesty. It will not be possible to produce a definition of socialism that does full justice to similarity and difference." (Socialism, in R Eccleshall et al, Political ideologies, Routledge 1984.)
I have cited a range of alternative views to those stated in the article. You might not agree, but that is not a reason to censor the article to exclude the views you disagree with, or to continue to suppress the information that there are alternative views. The POV tag, which is the minimal intervention reommended in Wikipedia, at least tells readers that they need to be careful. It will need to remain until alternative views are taken into account.[[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]] 12:19, 3 July 2007 (UTC)]
Suppose we can take that as a vote for the alternative intro. You must noticed that the introduction alone states three times, in various words, that "A diverse array of doctrines and movements have been referred to as 'socialist.'" As regards the rest of the article, can you specify some specific views that are 'censored' - you mean unintentionally omitted - so that we can address this? Or views that are "suppressed", by which you mean, in fact, the same thing?
If not, it will be difficult to justify the tag. Andysoh 12:37, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Paul, but the article already says it is a broad array of doctrines, and note the "family resemblance" to do with "communal control" which is a weak term that ranges from nationalisation to health and safety laws - you're taking coals to Newcastle.--Red Deathy 12:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

The article opens with the statement: "Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community." That is wrong; this is not a description of the array of socialist views and it is not the main kind of issue that socialist views share. (Look, e.g., at Owenism.) What has been excluded from this article is a sense of what the broad array of doctrines does say - which I have been detailing, with citations, at some length. [[[User:Paul Spicker|Paul Spicker]]]

Owen's cooperatives: definition: "autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise". Covered by our defintion.
Nevertheless, what's underlying this is a difficulty of accessibility of understanding the definition we have. Andysoh 13:18, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Ownenism does envisage communal control - in the form of co-operatives an intentional communities - hence my point, communal control is a weak term that captures most variants of socialism. Your quotes above talk of a "familly resemblance" that is the familly resemblance, that or rejection of contemporary capitalism (Oxford COmpanion of Politics, I think). Maybe our definition is effective to those with the skill of catechising political slogans, and dragging every ounce of meaning out of them--Red Deathy 13:21, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Your two statements say different things, and neither position is the same as the opening statement of the article. The first is about cooperatives; the second is about "communal control" of an "intentional community" - in Owen's model, exemplified by education: both are socialist approaches, but neither proposes controlling property and the distribution of wealth. Paul Spicker 14:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Owen's model does propose precisely controlling property and distribution of wealth, within the coop. Andysoh 14:08, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Opposition to capitalism: As it happens we have already discussed this in the sense of the last sentence:
The modern socialist movement had its origin largely in the working class movement of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution had brought many economic and social changes. Factory owners became very wealthy, while long hours and impoverishment faced the factory workers.<ref>Commenting on the death of milliner Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years old, who died after working uninterruptedly for 26 1/2 hours, the respectable Morning Star, 23 June 1863, said, 'Our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.' Quoted in Marx, Karl, Capital, p365, Pelican, 1976 [11]</ref>. Socialists criticised the suffering and injustices resulting from the concentration of property in the hands of the capitalist class.
May be this will do. Discussed above to replace the sentence about what Marx implied.
Andysoh 13:38, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Paul I didn't mean which views of yours had been censored, but which notable views from the history or current socialist traditions had been censored, in the body of the article. Andysoh 14:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Calling Proudhon's or Tucker's socialism "... control by the community" really stretches the meaning of "control." Now Marx tars Proudhon's system as "bourgeois socialism" in the Manifesto, but Marx couldn't exclude Proudhon's system from the socialist movement. Jacob Haller 14:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

That would be a vote for the alternative? Andysoh 14:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Um, no neutral. I don't think either version addresses my concerns. Jacob Haller 14:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, in as much as Prodhoun advocated co-operatives, not really, but at a stretch I'd point out that they envisaged ownership diffused throughout the community so that no one section controlled so much property as to be able to lord it over everyone else - so in that sense it is control by the community, but a community of individuals.--Red Deathy 06:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Cooperatives are present in, but not an essential part of, Proudhon's system, and others took positions beyond even Proudhon's, and were also considered socialists. Furthermore, non-socialist movements may also bring property and the distribution of wealth under the control of the community. Jacob Haller 13:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Andysoh asks: what are the key views excluded from this article? Both the lead and the article as a whole fail to address alternative understandings of socialism I outlined in the points labelled 1, 2 and 4 by Red Deathy:

  • the view that socialism is defined in terms of collectivist social values, such as liberty, equality and fraternity
  • the understanding of socialism as a broad movement to improve society through collective action, and
  • socialism as a set of collective approaches to economic and political organization, based on workers’ movements, cooperation, mutual aid, planning and organised social welfare.

The claim that socialism was subsumed by or integrated into the Marxist model is a strongly held ideological position, recognised but disagreed with by each of the four political science texts cited (Vincent, Heywood, Geogehan and Self). Paul Spicker 18:58, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Some socialists certaibnly didn't believe in liberty, ask a Stalinist - NPOV-wise they are socialists and must be included in the term (there were "Stalinists" within social democracy, before anyone complains that Stalinists were communists). I actually think that "improve society through collective action (second above) is a good phrase, and could be used to replace the first sentence, it says much the same thing, but a bit better. Throughout the article it recognises that there were diverse modes of expression of socialism. That list is a much better rendering of your point - anyway, to try and break the log-jam a little, i'm going to be bold and alter the first sentence to reflect the above.--Red Deathy 06:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
There are two problems with that objection. One is the idea that Stalinists came out against socialist values. On the contrary, the 1936 Constitution declares: "Article 125. In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law: freedom of speech; freedom of the press; freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; freedom of street processions and demonstrations." Stalin said one thing and did another.
More fundamentally, however, it's the wrong kind of objection. All the texts I've cited press the argument that there are no universal, essential values, methods or ideas which are common to all socialists and all forms of socialism. That is why no single definition can offer a neutral point of view. Paul Spicker 10:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Your texts have also addressed the familly resemblances, our aim should be to express as much of that familly resemblance, which I think your second principle above does, as concisely as possible. Anyway, how do the recent changes grab you?--Red Deathy 12:06, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
"Family resemblance" (the term is from Wittgenstein) doesn't mean that there is a common, underlying thread. If in a family A looks like B, and B looks like C, it doesn't follow that A is like C - they might resemble each other in different ways. In this case, we don't have to look for common ground between Rosa Luxemburg, R H Tawney, Paolo Freire and Roy Hattersley to accept that they might all be reasonably be described as "socialists".
There is still a problem with the content. It's important to establish that some brands of socialism are not committed to any specified form of socio-economic system. Paul Spicker 13:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
A might not look like C but to have a familly resemblance they have to share some common/essential features - call me an essentialist if you like. A might have the familly hands, B teh familly hair, but those features still have to be recognisably familly - and your list is pretty much ptting forward a set of essential features, my objection to which was not their content (it was a true list) but its expression because I believe those features can be summed up more precisely - as I believe your sentence 2 lifted from above does.--Red Deathy 13:51, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
The later Wittgenstein did indeed show that there was no connection, giving the example of the word ‘game’ as I recall. I think Paul is right. The modern European Socialist bloc is called and call themselves socialist, and as an NPOV we would have to mention them, but it would be fair to reference those commentators who suggest that, on a European basis, their 'liberty, equality and fraternity' is the curtailment of civil liberties to defend liberty (against terrorism), privatisation and closure of public services to preserve equality of access, and (more so in the UK) war and occupation to fraternally help the people of oil rich regimes. Andysoh 16:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


Red Deathy is right to continue trying to improve the current version. I've added stuff from this talk page.
I'm reluctant to press my own version. Even though Paul gave it some weak support, as did Red Deathy, it is hardly a wholesale endorsement. It is perhaps stylisticly a little clumbsy. We may have to stick with some version of what we've got. Andysoh 09:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, the idea that the commanding heights of the economy should be nationalised, rather than every peasant holding and petite bourgois establishment (shops, etc), etc, goes back through Lenin and Trotsky to the Communist Manifesto where it is quite specific about it. But of course, it is complicated by the fact that for Bevan (or else for others like him) that was socialism, whereas for Marx that was the (democratic) dictatorhsip of the proletariat, a necessary step on the way. Andysoh 09:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Can this sentance go?
  • "As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state or worker ownership of the means of production."
It is the last sentence in the first para. IT is surely a restatement of what has already been said? Andysoh 09:29, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Some early definitions

(feel free to add more)

Proudhon, letter to Marx, 1846: Jacob Haller 23:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I myself put the problem in this way: to bring about the return to society, by an economic combination, of the wealth which was withdrawn from society by another economic combination. In other words, through Political Economy to turn the theory of Property against Property in such a way as to engender what you German socialists call community and what I will limit myself for the moment to calling liberty or equality.

Intro is still POV

I discussed my concerns above. I have read much more of the early socialist literature, and no longer believe that any one definition can encompass all the movements traditionally called "socialist." Almost every political/economic ideology endorses some kind of "collective action" insofar as political/economic ideologies involve relations among people; but most non-socialist ideologies endorse more collective action (and collective institutions) than some socialist ideologies. At one level "control by the community" is inevitable, but again, some socialist ideologies leave as much as possible to the individual members of the community.

I think that socialism has acquired two distinct meanings, one focusing on cooperation (and community institutions) and the other focusing on class struggle. Marxism, Fabianism and certain other socialist ideologies link these, but some other socialist ideologies involve the cooperation without class struggle (as in Fourier's model; Fourier even thought that capital deserved returns) or class struggle without much cooperation (as in Warren's).

I think that we could legitimately use the class-struggle standard to the virtual exclusion of the cooperation standard, disambiguating the cooperation standard (where class struggle isn't involved) to the Cooperative movement. Jacob Haller 00:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


The problem is that for a very long time many, many socialist movements used a definition that broadly said common ownership of the MoP, I think, and this may address another of Paul's concerns, if we throw in egaltioarian "egalitarian collective action" we may specify something beyond the elitism of liberalism and conservativism (and their avowed individualism). I'll do that now--Red Deathy 13:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Jacob's proposal here is still trying to impose a single definition. There are four problems with that: that it imposes an original personal classification rather than one based on published material; that "class struggle" is not exclusively socialist (the concept is shared with anarchism and Hegelianism); that it continues to confuse socialism (which is variously understood as as set of principles, a social movement, a method or an approach to social change) with the Marxist analysis of society; and, irrespective of those objections, that any single definition in the name of "disambiguation" must fail to reflect the range of the subject matter.
It seems to me that three out of four participants in this discussion have now accepted that there are diverse, distinct understandings of socialism and what it means. The issue should not at this stage be whether the article has to to change, but how this diversity can best be expressed. Paul Spicker 14:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Who claims that Marxism is an 'analysis of society' in the sense of something distinct from socialism? i.e. that it is in some way to be removed from the account together with all those within the socialist movement who considered Marxism (in some form or another) to be the highest expression of the socialist movement? I am not suggesting that this viewpoint should not be aired - in fact it should, but, like all the views expressed in this article after the edits of the last two months, it should be properly attributed to its source, and placed in its proper historical context.
Socialism is what the wikipedia somewhere calls a POV subject; that is, that there simply is no agreement on a wide range of issues. All these points apply:
"On certain topics, there is naturally less "expertise" and scientific thinking, and more "opinion". This is especially the case of topics such as morals or religion, based on faith, as well as politics.
"We should then list all points of views, according to their importance, and, if possible, be precise as to who holds them. There exist some cases where the vast majority of political parties, politicians and journalists hold a certain opinion, while a sizeable minority do not: both views should be stated.
"One common problem with politics is the natural tendency of considering the major political opinions of one's country as "normal", while considering those held in other countries as "abnormal", silly, or misguided. Thus, for instance, an article written from an American point of view may judge that the European fondness for welfare state solutions is misguided, or express this point of view in oblique ways; the same could be true of an article written from a European point of view on justice and firearms in the United States. Writers should thus combat this natural tendency of considering the point of view of one's groups as the "majority" and "natural" point of view, and giving to it more space and more focus." Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial
The only thing missing here is a lesson that this article learnt after literally years of edit wars. If one approaches the matter with a strictly chronological historical approach, one is able to "let the facts speak for themselves" much more clearly.
Andysoh 18:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Paul, I'm not aware of the role of class struggle in non-socialist Hegelianism. I know that it appears in some early non-socialist and near-socialist forms of classical liberalism, which influenced anarchism, and it appears in socialist anarchism, so that anarchists who support class struggle (including some market anarchists) almost always consider themselves socialists, and anarchists who oppose class struggle (including some anarchocommunists) almost never do.
I'm not sure that Fourier's model and Warren's can fit in the same definition of socialism, unless we create enough room for every other non-socialist political ideology in-between. They considered themselves, and their contemporaries considered them, socialists. Jacob Haller 01:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Two NPOV suggestions

1. Paul is correct to insist that we may not omit the new definition of socialist aims as averred by the Parti Europeene Socialiste.

How about adding to the end of the Intro

  • "The Parti Europeene Socialiste, founded in 1992 and currently the largest bloc in the Europe Parliament, describes its central objectives in terms of those of the European Union, namely the "principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law".[40]"

I suspect it would be wrong to raise the objections of social commentators here.

2. In view of Paul's objections, the opening lines of the section 'The rise of Marxism' is perhaps trying to say too much in too few words. It stands as:

"In the mid-19th century, the transformation of socialism into a political doctrine occurred as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed their own account of socialism as the outcome of a revolutionary class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie."

How about replace with something like:

The mid-19th century saw the rise of Marxism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels drew from the socialist or communist ideas born in the French Revolution of 1789, the German philosophy of GWF Hegel, and English political economy, particularly that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Marx and Engels developed a body of ideas which they called scientific socialism, more commonly called Marxism.

In their 1848 Communist Manifesto, they saw the motor force of history in terms of the stuggle between classes,[41] and famously declared that the working class would be the "grave digger" of the capitalist class.

Andysoh 09:29, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Surely the SI takes precedence over the PES, after all, it is the second international, and has been around for over a hundred years or so? It also has a semi-legitimate claim to be the authoritative source on what socialism is about (its definition is suitably pluralistic).
So, I'd suggest:
The Socialist International (the affiliate body for most of the world's socialist parties, describes its socialism as "an international movement for freedom, social justice and solidarity"[42]
Owzat?--Red Deathy 09:45, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
That's fine by me. I'll go ahead.

Andysoh 10:33, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I support both Red Deathy's suggestion, and the Andysoh's reworking of Marxism bit, which doesn't currently quite work. BobFromBrockley 10:45, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The Second International never represented the socialist movement as a whole, and excluded much of the movement. Jacob Haller 15:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Why include refoundations of the Second International and not refoundations of the First?

If the SI can claim to represent part of the socialist movement as a refoundation of the 2nd International (and the Second International never represented all of the movement) then the International Workers Association can claim the same as a refoundation of the 1st. Of course, the 3rd, 2nd Mk II, and 1st Mk II, were all founded in 1919-1923. Jacob Haller 13:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Partly because the Socialist Labor Party represents the last living continuation of 1st International, as a continuous entity...--Red Deathy 14:42, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Isn't it more to do with their 'notability'? While it is true this concept is reflected though official society, there can be no objection to a mention to the various trends in the right place in the article. In the intro perhaps one can only deal with the main trends? Andysoh 15:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
The SI, like the 2nd International before it, represents one faction within the socialist movement, and the IWA represents another. Counting parties is only one measure of relevance, reflecting one strategy and one factional ideology. Jacob Haller 16:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with that, and feel strongly that the political content is by far the most important thing.
- But - if the social democratic parties nominally gathered round the reconstituted Second International have been in and out of power in Europe and elsewhere, it gives the SI more notability, or notoriety, from the point of view of the introduction to a wiki article, although this argument should not be used to exclude proper mention of other ideologies within the article.
More than a few SI members can claim to have helped invade countries and more or less destroy them on the basis of nothing more than patently faked evidence - the Labour Party at one time had invaded as many countries as the number of years it had been in power, although Iraq took the edge off the zeal there, I think. Few internationals can match these impressively notable statistics.
Actually, I suppose, except the parties of the Second International in 1914 which voted to support their governments in World War One... Andysoh 21:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Or perhaps we could mention the European Socialist bloc instead - the original proposal above, or some varient of it?
Andysoh 17:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Early distinctions between socialism and communism

In the Manifesto, 1847, Marx identifies communism with one kind of socialism: "critical-utopian socialism." In his early letters, Marx often refers to "communists and socialists" or otherwise pairs the terms in ways which imply he views these as related ideas, but not synonyms.

In the Philosophy of Misery, 1846, chapter 2, Proudhon, identifies communism as the negation of property:

In social economy, it is not the same: thus we see, for example, that property being proved by its results to be false, the opposite formula, communism, is none the truer on this account, but is deniable at the same time and by the same title as property.

At times in this work, Proudhon steps outside the socialist movement to criticize it; here he uses the term to describe state-socialism, particularly Blanc's. Moreover, he regards communism as the extreme case of socialism (so defined) or democracy (identified with the latter). Jacob Haller 23:52, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

In a letter to Marx, 1846, another to Abram, 1848, and one to Girardin, 10 Nov. 1849, Proudhon identifies himself as a socialist, so his critique in 1846 cannot be read to exclude Proudhon from socialism. Jacob Haller 00:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

ISTR Morris would interchangeably call himself communist or Socialist - there certainly wasn't a hard and fast divide between them - although, I suppose if the choice of term was a preference for sounding 'hard' on one side or anotehr this may have reflected deeper social differences within the movement (as later emerged).--Red Deathy 07:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Bias issues in history section

I believe that the current history section is strongly biased towards Marxism.

  1. It treats all pre-Marxist theories as Early socialism.
  2. It devotes an entire subsection to The rise of Marxism.
  3. It ignores certain important influences on Marxism which coevolved with Marxism and became rivals to Marxism.
  4. It titles another section Moderate socialism and communism, implying that communism is more socialist than any other theory, while using communism as a rough synonym for Marxism.
  5. That subsection mentions Marx 5 times, Engels 7 times, Kautsky twice, Berstein twice, Lenin twice, Luxemburg once, Jaures once, Blum once, and Debs once, as opposed to Bakunin twice, for nineteen references to seven Marxists (there are some double references to Marx and Engels) and two references to one non-Marxist. Jacob Haller 00:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, (1) the problem is that Marxism arrived at teh same time as the formalisation and fruition of the socialist movement in the late nineteenth century, we could, I suppose, neutralise the titles by referring to time periods Early 19th C.; Late 19th C.. This would help address (2), partly, since the Rise of Marxism could become a subset of Late 19th C. (although it does merit a section all to itself, uit is vaguely signiciant to the deveelopment of Socialism, influencing as it did the Socialist States in Eastern Yurp. (3) WOuld thos certain influences be Anarchism, which has it's own page? I don't see the implication in (4) that you're drawing from it, it's the names of two signiciant trends by their most notable and self-identified titles. (5) Bakunin, in significance terms is lucky to get more than one reference, but perhaps that could be balanced out by way of MacDonald and Hardy, Shaw or Webb - why no reference to Martov - what about the ultra-left like Mattick and Pannekoek, Bordiga?--Red Deathy 07:16, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
One solution to Jacob's first point would be to insert a short section or sections between early Socialism and the 'Rise of Marxism' and move the material which we wish to develop into them from the early Socialism section. Proudhon and Owen, etc.
Now this might cause some disagreement, but I think it would be right.
It has been argued in the recent past that there is a conflict with this page and that of the History of Socialism page, and that the section here on the 'history of socialism' should not be expanded, as it should be expanded there.
But Jacob has already pointed to the tension between the two pages on the talk page of the history of socialism, and Duncan suggested we just get on with developing both pages for now.
It seems to me that if one argues that the best way to approach the subject "socialism" is to do it historically, which I completely agree with, then one cannot at the same time argue against the expansion for clarification and to correct bias of the history section - otherwise we have a catch-22 situation.
At some point in the future, this tension should be resolved. I'm not proposing that we look at this now. At the moment I'm abiding by Duncan's suggestion.
For now, we must be able to expand this article in the history section. In my opinion Jacob should feel no impediment to expand the "Early socialism" section to correct the impression that everything pre-Marxism is "Early" in the sense of undeveloped.
I think the titles need looking at.
If we can work through the sections bit by bit identifying disputed material, we can address the inadequacies in terms of the narrowness of the focus, over-generalisation and any tendentiousness, as well as introducing proper references
Andysoh 10:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not familiar enough with Owen or Fourier to discuss their systems in depth. As for Proudhon, I'd like to group him with Bakunin, but Proudhon starts a few years before Marx, Marx sometimes responds to Proudhon (e.g. the Manifesto largely represents the opposition to the Philosophy of Misery) and Bakunin largely reacts to Marx. Moderate socialism and Communism essentially ignores the non-Marxist trends, giving passing references if that to Lasalle, Fabianism, and anarchism.

Another idea I had was to divide early cooperative socialism (Owen, Fourier, etc.) from early class-struggle socialism. Jacob Haller 15:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to expand the Rise of Marxism subsection to cover all trends in the mid-19th-century, from 1840-1864. Any alternate subsection titles?

I'd suggest dividing Moderate socialism and Communism into The First International and The Second International and its contemporaries. Jacob Haller 15:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to bring the History of Socialism sections into line with this article, and it could easily be divided (and expanded) into three: The First International, Paris commune of 1871 and The Second International and its contemporaries.
If we do Proudhon and the libertarian socialists, we have to do Owen and others, I'd have thought, with proper weight.
We do have to have regard for the wiki policy - the article will be weighted towards well known socialist trends, and weighted towards those with the most impact on thought and society. But weighted, in my opinion, does not in any way mean to exclude all but the most notable - that only impoverishes the material. Andysoh 18:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but I, personally, don't have the necessary expertise to cover Owen or Fourier. Jacob Haller 19:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

One more idea: I was thinking of replacing Early socialism with Socialism and cooperatives (e.g. Fourier, Owen, etc.) and the second section with Socialism and class struggle (moving Proudhon in with Marx). Jacob Haller 22:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I can't find more than fragments of Fourier in English. Anyway, in these fragments, Fourier envisions continuing hierarchies, and focuses on psychological considerations. Owen doesn't say much about hierarchies, but, like Fourier, also focuses on psychological considerations. By contrast Proudhon and Marx pit themselves against capitalism and the vestiges of feudalism, envision the end of hierarchy in the postrevolutionary society, and focus on economic considerations (although reaching different conclusions). I expect that others will fall into the same two categories. Jacob Haller 23:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
How about Origins of socialism under Early socialism? I've added it, but feel free to change! Now we can have sub heads here for the four identified with a para or two on each, for instance as per the Encyclopedia Britannica. Of course, it would be interesting to have further material on Proudhon
The Encyclopedia Britannica has two paras on saint simon and two on Fourier ("who was more than little mad"!) and one large para on Owen and one on Proudhon
Then it says "In the perspective of intellectual history, all of these pre-Marxist socialist thinkers produced ideas of considerable intrinsic worth. But from the viewpoint of the subsequent development of socialism their ideas seem to be tributaries feeding the mighty stream of the Marxist movement that came to dominate the socialist tradition in the last third of the 19th century."
It has five substancial paras on Marx, and then a para on Lassalle, then after five more paras, three short paras and a pic on Bakunin. Then we have the first and second internationals as per your suggestion, taking us to a little more than a third of the article.
I think we have to have a Marx heading to give due weight, so I would be in favour of keeping "Marxism and the socialist movement" or else "Marx and the socialist movement"
I removed this:
*Early socialists differed about how socialism was to be achieved; they differed sharply on key issues such as centralized versus decentralized control, the role of private property, the degree of egalitarianism, and the organization of family and community life.
We've already explained that socialists differed in the intro, this statement tells us twice that they differed. Rather than more generalisations which emphasise how socialists are split, we need to move on to concrete facts about specific individuals. And what we don't say, is what the Oxford University Press Political Dictionary says, in the second sentance of its entry "Like capitalism, [socialism] takes many and diverse forms".
Andysoh 22:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope to read up on Owen and expand that section, and then more of Proudhon and expand that section as well. Jacob Haller 03:19, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

date seems wrong

I think the date is wrong on this:

  • "The moderate, or revisionist, wing of socialism, led by Eduard Bernstein, dominated the meeting of the Second International in Paris in 1889. Lenin and the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg emerged as leaders of the more radical minority, with followers of German theorist Karl Kautsky constituting a smaller faction."

Bernstein was close to Engels until his death in 1895. It was only after Engel's death that "Bernstein became an advocate of reformism, coining the aphorism: “The movement is everything, the final goal nothing”."

I've temporarily removed it. Possibly this describes the meeting of 1900 in Paris? We can re-insert it if we can date it accurately. Andysoh 23:24, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Temporarily moved para here

I removed this para for now. It's clear what it is trying to say, but there are some problems, which I found it difficult to resolve by a copy edit.

  • As socialists gained more power and began to experience governmental authority first-hand, the focus of socialism shifted from theory to practice. Within government, socialists became more pragmatic, as the success of their program increasingly depended on the consent of the middle and wealthy classes who largely retained control of the bureaucratic machinery of the state. Moreover, with the beginnings of the modern welfare state, the condition of the working class began to gradually improve in the Western world, thus delaying further the socialist revolution predicted by Marx for Western Europe.

Firstly, the socialists had no power in the period in question. The SPD, which is the main party under discussion, had representatives in the Reichstag, but the Reichstag was powerless until the revolution of 1918.

Secondly, this mistake was repeated in the following para, this time emphasising splits: “As social democrats came to power and moved into government, divisions between the moderate and radical wings of socialism grew increasingly pronounced.” There was division, but it cannot have been for this reason. So I removed that also.

Third, the second sentence says they had no power. This is presumably what is meant by the wealthy classes retaining control of the state, although it is probably a generalization to attempt to include the UK, and as a result does not really fit the bill in Germany and elsewhere.

Fourth, the reference to welfare state is problematic. Presumably it is not intended to refer to the post 1945 period out of context. There was social insurance in Germany under Bismarck, but is this what is being referred to? The revolution of 1918 achieved democracy in Germany, and after that revolution, in the 1930s, some elements of a welfare state were introduced, but in a situation of catastrophic capitalist collapse, not due to gradual improvements. This puts a question mark over the thesis about “the condition of the working class began to gradually improve in the Western world” when that statement is placed in the context of Germany, Bernstein and reform or revolution. “Thus delaying further the socialist revolution predicted by Marx for Western Europe” could be amended with “until after the 1917 Russian revolution” perhaps. Andysoh 23:53, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Russia was never part of Western Europe and conditions of life in Russia were not at the same level as the rest of Europe, it had not industrialised and thus was unsuitable for a 'Marxist' revolution as there was no urban working class to speak of. Revolution caused more by defeat in the Russo-Japan war in 1901 and the WWI and poverty of people compared to other European Monarchies. Russian revolution was supported and encouraged by Germany in the run up to and early part of WWI.
First nation in the world to have national insurance was New Zealand in 1898; this was not socialism but liberalism as it was only available to certain people and you only got out what you paid in plus profits. I believe Britain also had one by 1911? or some time around then. Further problems of welfare state caused by improvements in medical knowledge. Originally average age of death was 66 so people could expect one year of pension after lifetime of work, now average age of death 72 or about in Western Europe.
Interaction with Civil Service led to increased size of Government per Durkheim as more Socialists tried to achieve required more money and more civil servants and led to 'counter-revolution' in 1980's in the UK and US against big government and high taxation.
When Conservatives drifted too far to the right (e.g. flat taxation) Socialists moved to the right and occupied the electable 'Centre'; i.e. Liberal Conservatism having taken on certain socialist ideas such as the welfare state.
RichardColgate 04:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for those observations. I've attempted to add back the substance of these two issues in respect of the period before 1917: 1. with reference to Bismarck's welfare provision, and the other issues sometimes cited as giving rise to the revisionism of Bernstein. 2. Developed the introductory paras on Russian social democracy in the section: The Second International. Andysoh 14:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

NPOV - Socialism as one half of the economic political cleavage

Since this is supposed to be a part of the Politics series can we not add a mention somewhere in the introduction that socialism is one half of the urban socio-economic cleavage.

Note: A cleavage being one way of dividing political opinion in a society - the others would include urban/rural, centre/periphery and religious cleavages.

Socialism is very much an urban ideology which also doesn't seem to be made clear from the article. Certainly in the United Kingdom, Liberalism is the traditional opposition to Conservatism in rural areas.

Criticisms of Socialisms

Here no note is made of the chief difference between socialism and liberal conservatism which would be the two liberal extremes of the urban socio-economic cleavage (though obviously communism and fascism are the authoritarian extremes); Liberal Conservatism encourages equality of opportunity and Socialism encourages equality of reward irrespective of effort.

This is also missing from the main ciriticisms of socialism article.

RichardColgate 04:09, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

That's just not true. Quite a lot of socialist movements have had their roots in rural areas. And many socialists hold that, to quote one slogan, "labor has a right to all that it creates." Jacob Haller 17:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Socialism is an ideology?

Would it not be more Neutral to also mention that Socialism is an ideology rather than 'a series of movements' as the current article starts.

How about - "Socialism refers to a broad array of movements and ideologies which aim to improve society..."
Andysoh 14:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Socialism could not have existed before the industrial revolution

Whilst Socialism may have developed from pre-existing philosophies, to claim that it existed prior to the industrial revolution and the urbanisation of the working classes, enclosure of the common land etc. is spurious and misleading.

Whilst Marxism is not Socialism it does have a large influence and this was solely a review of the social processes which accompanied the industrial revolution.

RichardColgate 04:28, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

The article says "certain elements of a socialist or communist outlook long predate the socialism that emerged in the first half of the 19th Century..."
It does so in concert with general opinion on the subject, as for instance demonstrated in the Encyclopedia Britannica and other sources. I've added a ref. The diggers and levellers have always historically been embraced by the Labour movement in the UK as the first socialists, although more so the Diggers.
Andysoh 14:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

John Jacques Rousseau

More key quotes for Rousseau:

'A man, even if his chains are made of garlands, is still a slave.'

'He who first enclosed a piece of land declaring, "This is mine." Is the true founder of modern civil society.'

However he wasn't that concerned with all forms of inequality that are an issue to us today...

'Love is an artificial sentiment, born of use in society and nurtured with great skill and care in order to make dominant, the sex that ought to obey'.

from A Discourse on Inequality, Penguin Classics (translated).

The inter-war era and World War II

The inter-war era and World War II section was a stub which didn't mention World War II, so I have expanded it a little. It is still as yet wholly inadequate to describe the period. Andysoh 00:01, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Neoliberalism

Someone keeps describing existing economies as neoliberal and attributing intereference in free to trade to them. First of all neoliberalism is an economic philosophy. It's not a existing system. Second of all it's a philosophy of free trade. It stands in opposition to tarrifs and subsidies since that distorts free market prices.Rocket Socket 16:30, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

This is an article about socialism, and as such it needs to express what various socialists think.
I think what you are missing here is that we are accurately reporting socialist opinions.
The section you are removing does not state that the philosophy of neoliberalism is compromised. It states that socialists think it is compromised, along with the governments and institutions which socialists consider to be carrying out neo-liberal policies.
What you are objecting to is that the article explains socialists think about something, and I think you are wrong to object to this.
I will try to make this even more explicit if I can. Andysoh 18:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
A government that intereferes with free trade is not considered to be carring out neoliberal policies. Neoliberalism by definition is a philosophy of free trade and free markets. If a socialist attributes government intereference with free trade to neoliberalism, he's simply uneducated. He he doesn't know what neoliberalism is. If this article is going to say that part of neoliberalism is restrictions on trade or even that a socialist has claimed this then it should be referenced. Because it's absurd. Rocket Socket 18:39, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
No one is saying that neoliberalism *is* restrictions on free trade. But the article does say that socialists believe that governments which are, in the terminology prefered by the left more than the right, neo-liberal, do restrict free trade if it benefits them, while preaching neo-liberal free trade to the world.
You are perhaps not aware of common use in the UK and Europe. That's not your fault. We must make sure that article clarifies this (I did put 'mainly in Europe', but I can expand on this)
But you will find that Socialists call the governments of the UK and the US 'neoliberal' not because they don't know what it is, but because many commentators of all kinds do the same over here. It is a common terminology in the UK and Europe, but it is less common in the united states, where the term 'Neo-con' tends to predominate.
The governments of Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were termed "neo-liberal", and since the Blair government continued those trends, his government was termed neoliberal too.
Here's a reference. In the UK, the Guardian newspaper is a long established UK newspaper with a "left-ish" image these days (previously, I believe, associated with the liberals)
The Guardian, Seumas Milne, Thursday July 12, 2007
The article's headline and sub head are:
Brown will need to change more than the mood music
If Labour is to be re-elected, there will have to be pressure to shift it from its unpopular neoliberal course
And it begins:
"Throughout the years of their simmering rivalry, the political differences between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were always wildly exaggerated by their camp followers. The idea that Brown was a closet radical held in check by Blair's untamed Thatcherism was never more than wishful thinking or paranoid fantasy: both were architects of New Labour and its embrace of neoliberal Atlanticism..."
Nevertheless, the term is not unfamiliar to academics in the USA. Here is a paper presented from Queens College, City University of New York at http://www.net4dem.org/mayglobal/Papers/WilliamTabb.pdf
"Mr. Bush and Neoliberalism
William K. Tabb
Queens College
City University of New York
While the United States has been a central actor in creating the trade, debt and investment regimes of neoliberalism, less attention has been given to the relation of neoliberalism to America’s muscular foreign policy under George W. Bush and its neoconservative premises..."
Let's be a little bit more precise. Socialists call governments neoliberal that carry out many of the policies of neoliberalism as outlined by Militon Freidman, etc, including insisting that foriegn governments cut government subsidies on everything from basic foods and fuels to farm products, etc, so that they can penetrate their markets, but socialists argue that these same governments are hypocritical because they continue to subsidise their own big businesses in various ways.
Here is what one of our left leaning trade union leaders said about the UK and EU government policies: "The constitution will institutionalise privatisation and the neo-liberal economics that have helped wreck industries in Britain and turned the EU into one of the world's low growth regions." - Bob Crow
Check out what Britain's leading philosopher says about "Blair's embrace of neo-liberal economic policies": [12]
Here is the left view in Latin America: [13]
"I am convinced that only with the strength of the people and the unity of the people will we end the colonial model, the neo-liberal model," [Bolivian President] Mr Morales told the assembled crowds, all dressed in indigenous costume.
The "colonial" and "neo-liberal" models are embodied by the US, which the new president has repeatedly referred to as the "imperial power".
Finally, I am sure you are familiar with Joseph Stiglitz. Here is a hostile review of one of his books from the Conservative UK newspaper The Telegraph at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/10/12/bosti12.xml
"Capitalist complaints
"For those who believe that American capitalism is deeply flawed, and that attempts to impose it on the rest of the world should be resisted, Joseph Stiglitz has become something of an iconic figure.
"Two years ago, in Globalisation and its Discontents, this Nobel Prize-winning American economist argued that a pernicious doctrine he calls "market fundamentalism", driven by Washington, had forced developing countries to adopt free-market policies which were entirely unsuitable to their situation, with disastrous economic and social consequences.
"While some of the criticisms in that book were valid, it was marred by exaggeration and personal abuse reflecting Stiglitz's visceral dislike of Wall Street and all its works.
"The same tone, and the same bias, are evident in The Roaring Nineties, which deals with the US and is partly based on Stiglitz's experience as chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. According to Stiglitz, the Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberal ideology - a commitment to deregulation, minimalist government and a free rein for the financial markets - was not only responsible for America's boom-and-bust at the end of the 1990s (and the corporate scandals which accompanied it), but also gravely damaged the social fabric of the nation. The culprit, once again, is "market fundamentalism". "
Hope this helps. Andysoh 23:18, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, if we check the Neoliberalism article, it shows that Neoliberalism characteristically supports certain kinds of government subsidies:

  • "the selected removal of trade barriers"
  • "governments would selectively refrain from policies that would alter market prices"
  • "intervention designed to promote exports"
  • "Privatization, which means the transfer of previously-public-owned enterprises, goods, and services to the private sector" (who decides? in practice this has meant handouts for favored companies).

These form "a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained consensus approval among the Washington-based international economic organizations (like the IMF and World Bank)" so it is fair to consider their intervention with free trade to be neoliberal intervention with free trade. The article doesn't mention IP, but that's another clear case where many neoliberals call for increased government intervention with free trade. Jacob Haller 00:24, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

How are you going to have free trade in intellectual property without IP? To have trade at all you have to have protection of private property. Proection of private property is not considered government "intervention." Neoliberalism is against central economic planning, whether it's in the form of tarrifs, subsides, price controls, or whatever. Rocket Socket 01:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
"Neoliberalism" is simply shorthand for neoclassical liberalism. It's pro-free trade and free markets. Rocket Socket 01:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
It's hypocrisy. It's free markets when markets benefit the capitalist and state intervention when markets benefit the workers or competitors.
Free trade in IP is an oxymoron. IP involves state-backed monopolies. It is no different than free trade in licensing, free trade in state subsidies, etc. The "protection" of "private property" necessarily involves supporting of one set of property claims against another set of property claims, and often means imposing of the claims of the ruling class against the claims of the rest of the people, e.g. supporting latifundia. Jacob Haller 05:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
There may be hypocrisy going on but that doesn't change the definition of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a philosophy of free trade and free markets. If a government doens't subscribe to those policies then they're not neoliberal. They don't call themselves neoliberal. If you call them neoliberal then you're just not using the term correctly.
IP is the fruits of someone's labor. To protect the fruits of labor as private property is the essence of liberalism. Yes you're right that protecting private property involves supporting one set of propery claims against another. That's the whole point. You can't have trade if people are violently fighting over what belongs to who. There has to be law and order to establish what belongs to whom so these things can be traded in a voluntary market. Rocket Socket 05:51, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

1st paragraph again

The POV tag got removed without the issues being resolved. The opening currently states:

Socialism refers to a broad array of ideologies and movements which aim to improve society through collective and egalitarian action; and to a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community.[43][dubious – discuss][neutrality is disputed] This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state or worker ownership of the means of production.

I still think that "subject to control by the community" is too vague. It could be interpreted to include any human society, or to exclude, for example, syndicalism. Different "socialisms" have involved any of, or combinations of, ownership by the community or the state, ownership by certain associations, such as cooperatives and unions, and ownership by individuals, so long as the range of individual ownership and access to groip ownership are together fairly egalitarian.

The second sentence doesn't mention, for example, union control, particularly with multiple unions. The third looks good, imho. Jacob Haller 15:51, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

All you can do is use sourced definitions. You can't make up your own definition of socialism in an attempt to include everything you think is socialist, because that would be in violation of the original research rule. Rocket Socket 19:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
In other words, you prioritize tertiary sources way above primary ones; scholarly practice prioritizes primary sources way above tertiary ones. If someone said s/he's a socialist, in his/her works, and other socialists generally recognized that s/he's a socialist, in their works or org. practices, e.g. if s/he was a member of the international, then s/he was a socialist. If someone was a socialist, and the def says s/he wasn't, or vice-versa, then the def's wrong. The current def only avoids that because it is so vague nobody can tell who it includes or excludes. Jacob Haller 20:24, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Tertiary sources have done the research to determine the consensus definition of the term. I'm not saying there are no heterodox definitions. I'm just saying you have to have a source for them and you can't present them as the consensus definition but as heterodox definitions that are not commonly accepted. Rocket Socket 20:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
In this case, the tertiary sources contradict various primary sources. Jacob Haller 17:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm saying you can't fabricate your own definition. It simply has to be sourced. Rocket Socket 20:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
If you don't understand the original research rule see WP:OR. Rocket Socket 20:41, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
The Encyclopedia Britannica has "subject to social control", but I'm not sure if this suits Jacob any better. If it does, let's change it.
I think the term 'property' in the definition is bound to be misunderstood (as indicating theft of personal possessions) but the reader will have to suspend their judgment - unless we find another authorative source to replace what we have. I have to agree with Rocket Socket about wiki policy, and I have found it hard to understand the justification for the POV. Andysoh 01:21, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I can't see any difference between the two "definitions;" they are both hopelessly vague; they can both include every human society that has ever existed. They also imply that more social control implies more socialism, which ignores various forms of socialism and creates the bias issues.
In this case, the primary and some secondary literature describes certain people as socialists and certain movements as socialist. WP:RS assumes the secondary/tertiary literature is consistent with the primary/secondary literature. If the secondary/tertiary literature contradicts the primary/secondary literature, e.g. by providing definitions which exclude known socialists, or include known non-socialists, then it is not in fact reliable, and WP:RS breaks down. Jacob Haller 17:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
But then how do we proceed? You know I opposed your alternative introductory paragraph as WP:OR. As you know I tried (above) an historical approach, but I felt it was not sufficient, and no one disagreed! Do we have an which fulfils both the criteria of WP:OR and performs the task of presenting an authoritive (whether primary, secondary or tertiary) summary? If you are saying that these don't exist because society is capitalist, and that the dominant ideas of the this society are the ideas of its ruling class, then, however true that may be, I don't think it would carry sufficient weight in wiki for the continued presence of the POV tag, and we stick with the Encyclopedia Britannica's opening summary. Andysoh 21:55, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't know. I hardly have access to any secondary sources on this subject, one reason I so often return to primary sources. Jacob Haller 22:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Many political movements keep their foundational works available, both in print and online, while outside commentaries disappear. It's easy to find and check What is Property?, The Communist Manifesto, and so on. The Wikipedia policy favoring secondary sources was, afaik, written around scientific articles where secondary literature is more easily available than primary sources, and where secondary literature does not introduce its own bias issues. The opposite applies in political, religious, etc. topics. Some secondary sources are harder to find than the primary sources, and some secondary/tertiary sources, e.g. the often-used Catholic Encyclopedia strongly assert one POV and interpret everything through this. Many academic works are concerned with various questions, e.g. calculational problems in centrally-planned economies, and may neglect other issues, e.g. non-centrally-planned socialist economies. Jacob Haller 22:28, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

How about using more than one definition? We could offer four or five definitions encompassing:

  • One particularly suited to the cooperative movement,
  • One particularly suited to democratic socialism (including Marxism),
  • One particularly suited to libertarian socialism,
  • Its special definition in Marxist theory, in the transition before communism,
  • Its use by certain economists and critics of socialism.

I can't immediately offer suitable definitions for each group, but would be happy to help. The first three definitions would probably overlap, but this would save the effort of finding one definition to cover everything. Jacob Haller 00:14, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure wiki favours secondary sources. I can't think of a specific place where wiki says that, whereas I can think of places where wiki gives guidance which certainly does not rule out primary sources. My understanding is that it depends. Some primary sources have been interpreted different ways and can be used only if one clearly identifies the interpreter, and one presents other interpretations as well - not suitable for intros. Some sources have become, to use the much abused term, "iconic" and are part of the world's treasure, where a good quote will enhance the article - suitable, surely, for intros. I have seen many instances where quotes from good but less well known primary sources are nevertheless highly authorative where they are uncontroversial and used appropriately, but it is more difficult to judge these and perhaps here editors should take care to follow others' guidance - not suitable for intros I'd have thought.
Related to this, I'm guessing that the replacement third para of the introduction which we discussed was overweighty with its use of a quote which was itself quoted by Capital. More appropriate in the body, if at all.
My views, anyway. I don't know if this helps at all. Andysoh 20:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I took some serious criticism for using primary sources while working on the definition of anarchism. Jacob Haller 23:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Remarkably little of the primary literature defines "socialism."
For #2, Bonar, in the Encyclopedia Brittanica (1911) is an extreme and partisan example; the author dismisses the cooperative and anarchist movements as "ancient and medieval":

Socialism is that policy or theory which aims at securing by the action of the central democratic authority a better distribution, and in due subordination thereunto a better production, of wealth than now entails.

For #3, Tucker's definition from Armies that Overlap, which presupposes progress:

Socialism is the belief that the next important step in progress is a change in man's environment of an economic character that shall include the abolition of every privilege whereby the holder of wealth acquires an anti-social power to compel tribute.

Or more generally that:

Socialism is a battle with usury

For #3 again, Chomsky, in The Soviet Union versus Socialism offers another partisan example, this time for libertarian instead of democratic-centralist models:

Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.

Tucker, in State Socialism and Anarchism refers to the "bottom claim of Socialism that labor should be put in possession of its own" which more-or-less unites #2 and #3. Jacob Haller 23:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. I found this, which I had not seen before: Primary_source. I also looked up the shorter OED, but its definition matched the Encyclopedia Britannica one. I read the anarchism talk you refered to, but it only confirmed my feelings expressed above: inappropriate use of sources in various ways, irrespective of their primary, secondary or tertiary levels, and the need to begin with the simple "common" definition, with all its faults, which can be effectively continually re-defined throughout the article if the article is well written. You certainly pick the hardest tasks! Andysoh 22:06, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Present Intro

The present intro reads:

Socialism

refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community [44] for the purposes of maximizing social and economic equality and cooperation. This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state or community ownership of the means of production.

The modern socialist movement had its origin largely in the working class movement of the late-19th century. In this period, the term "socialism" was first used in connection with European social critics who criticized capitalism and private property. For Karl Marx, who helped establish and define the modern socialist movement, socialism implied the abolition of money, markets, capital, and labor as a commodity.

A diverse array of doctrines and movements have been referred to as "socialist." Since the 19th century, socialists have not agreed on a common doctrine or program. The various adherents of socialist movements are split into differing and sometimes opposing branches, particularly between reformist socialists and communists.

Since the 19th century, socialists have differed in their vision of socialism as a system of economic organization. Some socialists have championed the complete nationalization of the means of production, while social democrats have proposed selective nationalization of key industries within the framework of mixed economies. Some Marxists, including those inspired by the Soviet model of economic development, have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Communists in Yugoslavia and Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese Communists since the reform era, and some Western economists, have proposed various forms of market socialism, attempting to reconcile the presumed advantages of cooperative or state ownership of the means of production with letting market forces, rather than central planners, guide production and exchange.[45] Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the U.S. New Left favor decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. Others may advocate different arrangements.

The Socialist International, the affiliate body for most of the world's social democratic parties, such as the Socialist Party of France, describes socialism as "an international movement for freedom, social justice and solidarity"[46]

I think we can work out some general improvements. Jacob Haller 00:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The first sentences of paragraphs 1 and 3 say more-or-less the same thing. I suggest moving "Since the 19th century..." directly after "criticized capitalism and private property," saving "For Karl Marx, who..." for one sub-definition, and cutting "A diverse array..." as redundant. I would introduce different definitions, suitable for each school, directly after paragraph 3. Alternatively, we can add sections on the major schools of thought and include these definitions in their sections. Jacob Haller 00:38, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

"For Karl Marx, who..." could also go after "...as a system of economic organization."

"Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the U.S. New Left..." is just not very clear. The boundaries between anarcho-syndicalism and other union-oriented anarchisms are not clearly defined, and the contrast between communist, collectivist and mutualist-individualist anarchism is probably more relevant than that between syndicalist and non-syndicalist tactics. The term "libertarian socialism" came under attack, but "many libertarian socialists" still strikes me as the best description. Jacob Haller 00:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll not be able to contribute much due to holidays and other projects.
I think the sentence on what socialism implies for Marx is inappropriate as discussed above, and could be open to challenge by marxist scholars. I prefer something like the following for the third para:
"The modern socialist movement had its origin largely in the working class movement of the 19th century. In this period, the term "socialism" was first used in connection with European social critics who criticized capitalism and the ownership of private property by industrialists in the industrial revolution. Socialists criticized the 'factory system' and the disparity, suffering and injustices resulting from the concentration of property in the hands of the capitalist class."
It is also arguable that the various economic systems attributed to socialists in the following paras would be better set in the appropriate place in the body as they arose historically, making the intro shorter and easier to understand, less 'cluttered'.
Just some thoughts Andysoh 12:46, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Present Intro

I have a bit of contention over the very first statement. "Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community..." My problem with this is that Socialism is by definition a system in which the means of production are controlled by the workers, not necessarily the community. If it is controlled by the community it seems to be Collectivism, a subcategory of Socialism. The broad spectrum of Socialism agrees on one main thing and that is the means of production are controlled by the workers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.234.163.10 (talk) 16:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. There are lots of varieties of socialism. Some argue for workers control; others for state control; others for other forms of control. "control by the community" seems to me to encompass all these definitions. Collectivism is not in my view a subcategory of socialism, but perhaps an overlapping concept. BobFromBrockley 14:46, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Control of the means of production by the workers that doesn't mean each business is a private entity owned by a different group of workers. It means workers own/control all the means of production in common. Rocket Socket 15:45, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, each worker owning his own means of production, individually, or in small private groups, is a minority position within socialism, but it's not unknown, and it's not unimportant. Even Engels wrote (Preface to The Housing Question):

Secondly, however, Proudhon played much too significant a role in the history of the European working class movement for him to fall into oblivion without more ado. Refuted theoretically and discarded practically, he still retains his historical interest. Whoever occupies himself in any detail with modern socialism must also acquaint himself with the “vanquished standpoints” of the movement. Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy appeared several years before Proudhon put forward his practical proposals for social reform. In this work Marx was able to do no more than discover and criticise the germ of Proudhon’s exchange bank. From this angle, therefore, this work of mine supplements, unfortunately imperfectly enough, Marx’s work. Marx would have accomplished all this much better and more convincingly.

Preface to the First German Edition of the Poverty of Philosophy:

The present work was produced in the winter of 1846-47, at a time when Marx had cleared up for himself the basic features of his new historical and economic outlook. Proudhon's Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la misère, which had just appeared, gave him the opportunity to develop these basic features, setting them against the views of a man who, from then on, was to occupy the most important place among living French socialists. Since the time in Paris when the two of them had often spent whole nights discussing economic questions, their paths had increasingly diverged: Proudhon's book proved that there was already an unbridgeable gulf between them. To ignore it was at that time impossible, and so Marx put on record the irreparable rupture in this reply of his.

It seems that Marx's economics and proposals, develop in response to Proudhon's, and other similar economics and proposals. Jacob Haller 17:20, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Workers owning means of production privately, that is individually or in groups, is capitalism. There are many worker owned companies in the U.S., that is they don't sell stock to the general public and each employee gets stock, but I don't think anyone would call them socialist. And there are many individually owned business in the U.S. In fact I think most businesses in the U.S. are sole propreitorships and have no employees. But no one would call them socialist. So I wonder what your definition of socialism is. Rocket Socket 00:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I find Tucker's second definition from Armies that Overlap seems about right:

Socialism is the belief that the next important step in progress is a change in man's environment of an economic character that shall include the abolition of every privilege whereby the holder of wealth acquires an anti-social power to compel tribute.

I can't see why any system which meets that definition of socialism should be considered capitalism.My own definition is that socialism = workerism = workers' liberation. Jacob Haller 01:22, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that different people/movements that have called themselves socialism have defined socialism in different ways. The job of wikipedia is surely not to prescribe our own views of what real socialism is, but rather to give an account of the phenomenon as it has existed in the world. Thus, most British Labour Party members (at least until recently) would have called themselves socialist, but more revolutionary socialists might have considered them capitalist. We need a definition in the lede that is broad enough to encompass both. BobFromBrockley 09:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
first sorry for my english, but that most BLP members called themselves socialist is not important, this a enciclopedia, is important if most of scientist in political call socialst BLP members and i don't think so is true--Francomemoria 13:48, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
You are right that the scholarly consensus is important, but I think self-definition is also important. But a brief google scholar search on socialist "labour party" shows that lots of political scientists think that the BLP is or has been socialist, even though it never really advocated workers control of the whole economy. BobFromBrockley 10:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
for "has been" i'm agree but "is" is the problem --Francomemoria 10:14, 8 September 2007 (UTC) and if i remember there are more party called labour party (also almost one called socialist labour party)--Francomemoria 10:16, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
All due respect Jacob, but I can't see how Tucker's definition defines anything. Obviously, if I believe that the private ownership of shares of enterprise equity isn't anti-social, I won't refer to money made by such owners as tribute. Nor will I refer to the wealth received as dividends or capital gains by such owners as "compelled." If Tucker wants to use those terms, that is fine, but using weighted terms advances the cause of understanding not at all. --Christofurio 02:58, 28 September 2007 (UTC)





I think that the little tidbit on the Socialist International in the intro section should either be deleted or moved as it is irrelevant to that section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.197.82.49 (talk) 20:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason it's in that section is because it is another definition of socialism, but I agree it looks slightly odd there. BobFromBrockley 11:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The heart of socialism--production or distribution?

The first paragraph:

"Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community for the purposes of increasing social and economic equality and cooperation. This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state or community ownership of the means of production."

Am I the only person who finds this absolutely mistaken?

The heart of socialism has *always* been the collective ownership and operation of the MoP; yet this paragraph claims that this merely "often characterizes" socialism.

Conversely, whether distribution should guided by the market or by social planning is a question with which socialists have concerned themselves, yet, as market socialist experiments in East Eur have shown, social planning of the distributive process is not essential to the definition of socialism (these market socialist economies were still socialist). Yet this paragraph implies that it *is* part of the definition of socialism.

In short, it's reversed. Contra this paragraph, you CAN'T have socialism without social ownership and operation of the MoP, but you CAN have socialism without social planning dictating the distribution of material goods. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.108.6.90 (talk) 05:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Your statement that "The heart of socialism has *always* been the collective ownership and operation of the MoP." isn't true. Jacob Haller 05:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
The family of doctrines that have been called or called themselves socialistic is so wide and the resemblances so small that little can be said here without qualification. Certainly, there have been some thinkers who have considered themselves socialist, who have been willing to leave the ownership of the means of production in private hands, while collectivizing the distribution of wealth. That was precisely the positon of John Stuart Mill. It is roughly the position of the present government of the People's Republic of China. Odd to conjoin. Personally, I have no objection to the sentences 71.108 quotes. I'm not in love with them, but tinkering will likely make them worse. --Christofurio 00:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Collectivizing the distrubution of wealth is not compatible with private ownership of the means of production because a collective (a government of some sort) has to control the means of production in order to do that. A collective taking the income from an owner of a means of production and collectiving it is essentially taking ownership of his means of production. If the means of production are privately controlled/owned then distribution of wealth is necessarily distributed by private decision. Kiss the razor's edge 05:50, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
By extension, your argumen contends that taxation is state ownership of the means of production and hence socialism. This is not true. Further, socialists such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and John Stuart Mill were opposed to collectivisation of the MoP. ~ Switch (✉✍☺☒) 12:02, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
If 10% is taken by taxation it's not socialism, but if 90% is is taken then that certainly is socialism. The more taxes that are taken, the less private ownership there is. If a collective, such as a government, takes that fruits of a businesses' production, that's socialism. A person doesn't really own his means of production if what he produces with it is is taken by force and collectivized. The assumption of the expropriators is that they have a right to what is produced by that means of production. To have a right to what is produced by a means of production is to own the means of production. Kiss the razor's edge 13:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Well I can see I'm somewhat outnumbered on this one. I agree with what Kiss The Razor's Edge said, however, and I was going to reply similarly. Collective ownership of the MoP is the absolute minimal definition of socialism. It is a necessary prerequisite of collective decision-making re:distribution. At the same time, it does not necessitate egalitarian distribution--for instance, a worker's council could vote against welfare for the homeless/unemployed if its members so wished. (As a sidenote, I was mistaken in my original comment to say that you could have collective ownership and operation of the MoP without collective planning re:distribution; what I should have said is that there is no definitional requirement for this collective planning to be egalitarian).
Thanks for the replies.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.108.6.90 (talk) 19:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

SI definition

I've removed following text from introduction: The Socialist International, the affiliate body for most of the world's social democratic parties, such as the Socialist Party of France, describes socialism as "an international movement for freedom, social justice and solidarity." I did that because Socialist International describes democratic socialism in such way, and not whole socialist movement (source is here). So that text is suitable for Democratic socialism article, and not this one. -- Vision Thing -- 17:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

In as much as this article deals with all socialisms, and as the SI is the preponderent socialist movement on the planet at the moment, it is certainly not giving undue weight to cite their definition in the lead. This is especially so as the lead of this article concentrates on the diversity of definitions of socialism. --Red Deathy 06:46, 3 October 2007 (UTC) p.s. just looking at the Democratic socialism page, I have serious doubts about the worth of it's independent existence (especially as all socalsims claim to be democratic)...--Red Deathy 06:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
It is not undue weight to mention Socialist International in the lead, but it is factually incorrect to ascribe their definition of democratic socialism (one specific current of socialism) to socialism in general. -- Vision Thing -- 18:30, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Gotta say, Vision Thing is right... ~ Switch (✉✍☺☒) 02:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

If the article covers different definitions, the SI definition might be one of them, but right now, any one tendency's definition is out of the question. 02:39, 4 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob Haller (talk • contribs)

Definitions of socialism - possible spinoff article

Different definitions of socialism affect several articles. For instance, Criticisms of socialism involves criticisms of some definitions, but states conclusions about all definitions, which poses problems.

I suggest creating an article on definitions of socialism (1) to discuss the issue without cluttering the main socialism article and (2) for reference to avoid edit wars elsewhere. Jacob Haller 21:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms of socialism

I removed large chunk of text beginning with: However Socialists have long argued that capitalism has an inherent tendency to turn into a dictatorship... That text is attack on capitalism and "neo-colonialism", and I don't see what that has to do with criticisms toward socialism. -- Vision Thing -- 11:43, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, if you look carefully, you will see the removed material is a statement informing the reader of what Socialists think about capitalism in response to the legitimate and oft quoted, if somewhat extreme, criticisms used against socialists.
For instance, on the one hand, Sir Winston Churchill could be quoted for the prosecution, when he said that the incoming 1945 Labour government would raise a “Gestapo” against the people of Britain. This is information which is entirely legitimate in an article on socialism.
But then what were the opinions expressed by the socialists in relation to this? This is legitimate information for the article, and omitting it would unbalance the article.
The article explicitly referenced the propaganda of the Labour Party prior to its victory in 1945. (It would be different, of course, if the opinions of non-socialists – radicals and anti-capitalists of various kinds – were being excised against capitalism here.)
As this section of the Socialism article stood it was unbalanced, since it raised a criticism of socialism while omitting the viewpoint of socialists.
It seems to me that your edit unintentionally removed a legitimate reference to socialist thought from the socialism article.
To clarify the matter, I’ve copy edited and added referenced material back to both sides of this argument.
I have left out the remaining part you cut out, although the debate it encapsulates raised a lot of interest at the time. And even here, if I remember rightly, there was considerable talk on the talk page explaining that this part also discusses, with references, the position of socialists in relation to their critics, and its omission could also be seen as weakening the article.
Can I add a comment on the too long tag? I think if one looks at the body text, the only admissible part of the article in relation to length, you will see that it is not too long, especially if you consider the importance of the subject. Perhaps it would be better to discuss this in the talk page than add a tag in the first instance. Andysoh 20:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Your addition is fine, except for the last sentence which I removed because it is unsupported by evidence. As for too long tag, Wikipedia has a guideline about article length. If they are important enough, certain sections can be split into independent articles. -- Vision Thing -- 18:22, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to say that now "looking backwards, we can see that because of the wage ("we must create jobs") it forced most people to work at "evil" jobs making harmful products (cars, weapons, lumber, military, small buildings, etc) whereas now we can see we should have built only massive 100-story Tower cities connected to maglev Trains to save lives (no car crashes or pollution), save the earth (not many roads that cause global warming & kill 1 million animals a day), & eliminate the work, especially dangerous harmful work, including past & present 'child labor' slavery"? Eliminating those harmful "jobs" (which are most jobs) in people's minds will help them see the errors of capitalism. Sundiii (talk) 17:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

  1. ^ For more information on the cooperative economy, see Jaroslav Vanek, The Participatory Economy (Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press, 1971).
  2. ^ For more information on participatory economics, see Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, The Political Economy of Participatory Economics (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
  3. ^ For more information on the cooperative economy, see Jaroslav Vanek, The Participatory Economy (Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press, 1971).
  4. ^ For more information on participatory economics, see Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, The Political Economy of Participatory Economics (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
  5. ^ For instance, in the biography of the the 1945 Labour Party Prime Minister Clem Attlee, Beckett states "the government... wanted what would become known as a mixed economy". Beckett, Francis, Clem Attlee, (2007) Politico's. Beckett also makes the point that "Everyone called the 1945 government 'socialist'."
  6. ^ In the UK, British Aerospace was a combination of major aircraft companies British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley and others. British Shipbuilders was a combination of the major shipbuilding companies including Cammell Laird, Govan Shipbuilders, Swan Hunter, and Yarrow Shipbuilders
  7. ^ Socialist Party of Great Britain (1985). The Strike Weapon: Lessons of the Miners’ Strike (PDF). London. Retrieved 2007-04-28. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Hardcastle, Edgar (1947). "The Nationalisation of the Railways". Socialist Standard. 43 (1). Socialist Party of Great Britain. Retrieved 2007-04-28.
  9. ^ Mattick, Paul. "Marx and Keynes : the limits of the mixed economy" (HTML). Retrieved 2007-04-28.
  10. ^ Peter Davies and Dereck Lynch. Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right. Routledge 2003. pp. 103, 101.
  11. ^ "Socialism" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  12. ^ Oxford University Press Political dictionary
  13. ^ "Market socialism," Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press 2002; and "Market socialism" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003. See also Joseph Stiglitz, "Whither Socialism?" Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995 for a recent analysis of the market socialism model of mid-20th century economists Oskar R. Lange, Abba P. Lerner, and Fred M. Taylor.
  14. ^ Commenting on the death of milliner Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years old, who died after working uninterruptedly for 26 1/2 hours, the respectable Morning Star, 23 June 1863, said, 'Our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.' Quoted in Marx, Karl, Capital, p365, Pelican, 1976 [14]
  15. ^ P Spicker, 2006, Liberty, equality fraternity, Bristol: Policy Press
  16. ^ R Owen, 1816, A new view of society
  17. ^ "Socialism" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  18. ^ http://www.socialistinternational.org/4Principles/dofpeng2.html
  19. ^ R Owen, 1813, A New View of society
  20. ^ www.fabian-society.org.uk/About/history.asp
  21. ^ R Owen, 1813, A New View o society
  22. ^ "Socialism" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  23. ^ J S Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 2nd edition 1849
  24. ^ C A R Crosland, 1956, The future of socialism, Cape
  25. ^ "Individualism and socialism" (1834)
  26. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, Socialism, etymology
  27. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, Saint Simon
  28. ^ "Socialism" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  29. ^ Engels, 1895 Introduction to Marx, Class Struggles in France 1848-1850
  30. ^ Labour Party constitution 1918-1995, Clause Four, Part Four.
  31. ^ "Socialism is what the Labour government does" - Herbert Morrison MP
  32. ^ Leroux called socialism “the doctrine which would not give up any of the principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” of the French Revolution of 1789. "Individualism and socialism" (1834)
  33. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, etymology of socialism
  34. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘’Saint Simon’’
  35. ^ There would be "equal means of subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for every child, boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in adulthood to create his own well-being by his own labor." Revolutionary Catechism, Mikhail Bakunin, 1866
  36. ^ "Market socialism," Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press 2002; and "Market socialism" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003. See also Joseph Stiglitz, "Whither Socialism?" Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995 for a recent analysis of the market socialism model of mid-20th century economists Oskar R. Lange, Abba P. Lerner, and Fred M. Taylor.
  37. ^ Bevan, Aneurin, ’’In Place of Fear’’, p50, MacGibbon and Kee, (1961).
  38. ^ Anthony Crossland stated: "to the question ’Is this still capitalism?’ I would answer ‘No’." In The Future of Socialism p46. Constable (2006)
  39. ^ Since 1995 the UK Labour Party aims are: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect"
  40. ^ R Goodin and P Pettit (eds), A companion to contemporary political philosophy entry on Socialism, states: "The rallying cry of the French Revolution - equality, liberty and fraternity - now constitute essential socialist values."
  41. ^ "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." [15]
  42. ^ Principles of the SI
  43. ^ "Socialism" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  44. ^ "Socialism" Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  45. ^ "Market socialism," Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press 2002; and "Market socialism" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003. See also Joseph Stiglitz, "Whither Socialism?" Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995 for a recent analysis of the market socialism model of mid-20th century economists Oskar R. Lange, Abba P. Lerner, and Fred M. Taylor.
  46. ^ Socialist International. "Declaration of principles" (HTML). Socialist International. Retrieved 2007-07-05.
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