SOCIALISM SOCIALISM. - CLAS Users

1 Difficulty of defining SOCIALISM is ap-parent to anyone who attempts to study this protean doctrine,not least because what SOCIALISM is or is not is usually a mat-ter of contentious debate. However, there is a general consen-sus that the various schools of SOCIALISM share some commonfeatures that can be summarized as follows. SOCIALISM is aboveall concerned with the relationship between the individual,state, and society. For the socialist, the individual is never aloneand thus must always define himself or herself in relation toothers. Socialists believe that a well-ordered society cannot ex-ist without a state apparatus, not least because the state is seenas the most effective vehicle for coordinating and administer-ing to the needs of views on human nature distinguish them fromtheir principal political rivals, the liberals and the latter two groups tend to hold that all humans areinherently self-interested and materialistic, socialists contendthat these traits are products of social conditioning under capi-talism.

2 On this view, individuals act selfishly and competitively,not because it is in their nature do so, but rather because theyare encouraged and rewarded for such behavior. Socialists holdthat the values and beliefs promoted in a socialist society wouldenhance our capacity for acting cooperatively and collectively inpursuit of mutually reinforcing material and spiritual they see material circumstances as being key to thewell-being of individuals, socialists stress the importance of theeconomic system that operates in every society. It was theirobservations of the deleterious effects of industrial capitalismthat caused socialist reformers to call for the development ofnew economic structures based on a completely different setof moral principles. The question of how the transition fromcapitalism to SOCIALISM would occur has been answered in dif-ferent ways by different socialist theorists.

3 Robert Owen(1771 1858), Charles Fourier (1772 1837), and other earlysocialist thinkers saw the need to reform rather than destroycapitalism, while followers of Karl Marx (1818 1883) andFriedrich Engels (1820 1895) insisted that capitalism had tobe completely overturned in order for society to advance to astate of SOCIALISM . Contemporary socialists do not envisage thetransition from capitalism to SOCIALISM as a sharp break, but asa process of economic reforms that takes into account the roleof market far as is known the terms socialistand socialismfirst ap-peared in print in Italian in 1803, but in a sense were entirelyunconnected with any of their later meanings. No trace of theword socialistappears again until 1827, when it was used inthe Owenite Co-operative Magazineto designate the followersof Robert Owen s cooperative doctrines.

4 Across the EnglishChannel, socialismewas adopted by the Saint-Simonians followers of the French philosopher and social scientist Claude-Henri de Rouvroy (1760 1825), comte de Saint-Simon during the 1830s to describe their theory, and there-after it was increasingly used to refer to those groups aimingat some kind of new social order resting on an economic andsocial conception of human these senses, SOCIALISM was used to distinguish the atti-tudes of those who laid stress on the social elements in humanrelations from those who emphasized the claims of the indi-vidual. In fact, to be a socialist was to be someone who pro-moted a social system in direct opposition to the highlyindividualistic order being advocated by the proponents of lais-sez faire Revolution and the Rise of SocialismAs a political ideology, SOCIALISM arose largely in response tothe economic and social consequences of the Industrial Revo-lution.

5 There is an abundance of literature that attests to thedramatic way in which the industrialization of Europe affectedthe daily lives of individuals, particularly the working reformist trend in British politics during the 1830sbrought some of these harsh realities to the public s 1832, for example, a parliamentary investigation into theconditions in the textile factories later known as the SadlerCommittee s Report revealed the appalling toll on humanlife that had resulted from unregulated industrial growth. And,even if we discount certain embellishments or exaggerations,these accounts of the general working conditions in the facto-ries were nonetheless all too illustrative of a social climate inwhich practices of the most callous inhumanity were acceptedas a natural order of events and, most important, were at firstnot thought to be the general public s deserves mention here that, in addition to the horrorswrought by an unregulated factory system, workers were alsosubjected to the changes brought on by the machine age.

6 Theintroduction of new technologies in the workplace invariablymeant the displacement of laborers. No less important was thefact that many of the changes wrought by rapid technologicaladvances and the consequent restructuring of the workplace( , the factory system) had an alienating effect on the the minds of some, however, these evils of industrializa-tion were not inevitable outcomes. Such was the case with theso-called Utopian socialists who emerged in England and onthe Continent around this Socialists: Owen, Saint-Simon, FourierIn the beginning there were basically three groups of social-ists, although there were lesser groups representing broadlysimilar tendencies. The three principal groups were the Fouri-erists and Saint-Simonians in France and the Owenites inGreat Britain.

7 There were obvious similarities between them:(1) they regarded the social question as by far the most im-portant of all; (2) insisted that it was the duty of all good mento promote the general happiness and welfare of everyone insociety; (3) regarded this task as incompatible with the con-tinuance of a social order that was maintained strictly on thebasis of a competitive struggle between individuals for themeans of living; and (4) were deeply distrustful of politics andpoliticians, believing that the future control of social affairsought to lie not with parliaments or ministers or kings andqueens but with the producers. They held that, if the eco-nomic and social aspects of men s lives could be properly or-dered, the traditional forms of government and politicalorganization based on conflict and competitiveness would soonbe superseded by a new world order of international peace Dictionary of the History of 10/17/04 12:05 PM Page 2227On the other hand, there were wide diversities separatingthese three groups.

8 The Fourierists and Owenites werecommunity-makers. They set out to establish a network of ex-perimental communities based on their ideas that would be-come the foundation stones of a new social order. TheSaint-Simonians differed from these two groups in that theywere strong believers in the virtues of large-scale organizationsand scientific planning. Their principal aim was to transformnations into great productive corporations dominated by a sortof technocracy composed of scientists and technicians. Un-like the Fourierists and Owenites, who eschewed political ac-tivity, the Saint-Simonians were not opposed to using theexisting political channels as a means to bring about the trans-formations they were , at this juncture in its historical development, social-ism meant collective regulation of the affairs of people on acooperative basis, with the happiness and welfare of all as theultimate goal, and with the main emphasis not on politics per se but on the production and distribution of wealth.

9 En-emies of individualism, the socialists sought to strengthen thesocializing influences that brought people together in a har-monious whole. They therefore emphasized education as aninstrument for conditioning patterns of behavior, social atti-tudes, and deserves mention that in this description of SOCIALISM noth-ing is said about the proletariat or the class struggle between itand the capitalist class. This is because the members of the afore-mentioned socialist schools did not think in these terms. Theydid not see capitalists and workers as rival classes, nor did theybelieve that a revolutionary struggle between the proletariat andbourgeoisie was necessary to put their social plans into effect. Scientific SOCIALISM In following the historical analysis of SOCIALISM offered by KarlMarx and Friedrich Engels, the modern socialist movementdates from the publication of their Communist Manifestoin1848.

10 The term communism,which came into common usagein this same period, was often used in connection with theidea of SOCIALISM , though the former tended to have a moremilitant connotation. This is most likely why it was used bythe Communist League, the group that commissioned Marxand Engels to write the Communist Engels laterexplained, the word communismcarried with it the idea ofcommon ownership, and, above all, it helped to distinguishthe ideas of Marx and Engels from those of the so-calledutopian socialists in that it lent itself better to association withthe idea of the class struggle and with the materialistic con-ception of publication of the Communist Manifestocoincided withthe revolutionary tide that swept through Europe between 1848and 1849. Marx and Engels were still correcting the proofs oftheir soon-to-be famous pamphlet when the first barricades of1848 were being erected in Paris.