Socialism

Socialism is the idea that humans can live in justice, equality, and freedom in a world in which humanity collectively controls its own fate. Socialists see capitalism as a stage of the development of class society, which contains within it the potential and need to go farther and create a society where human lives are not determined by the whims of the powerful or the economic system. The terms socialism and communism were at one stage used interchangeably. They still are by some. However, the history of socialism in the broadest sense requires an understanding of the differences as well as the links between them.

The first use of the term socialism in English has been traced back to a cooperative magazine in 1827. Many accounts of the history of socialism, however, [Page 1458]claim to identify roots that go back to the ancient world. It is true that throughout history men and women have imagined different and better worlds. But these visions (e.g., Plato's Republic, Thomas Moore's Utopia) were usually backward looking and elitist. Their authors had nothing but contempt for peasants or slaves who raised the flag of rebellion and who asked, in the words attributed to the radical priest John Ball in the English Peasant Revolt of 1381, “When Adam wove and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”

Origins

Socialism as it is understood today was a product of the economic and political forces created by early capitalist development in Europe. Its political origins derive from the French Revolution. Although this was primarily a conflict for power between privileged groups, it unleashed massive political debate around the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The crowds of Paris and other towns, the artisans and sansculottes began to make an independent mark. This challenge from below was contained, but its legacy remained. The difficulty was to know how to build on it. Writers and activists like Babeuf, Buonarroti, and Blan-qui recognized the suffering of the people, but at this time, could only see the way forward in terms of small groups taking power from society's existing rulers and handing it to the people.

It was the Industrial Revolution that opened up new possibilities. Urbanization and industrialization created a social force—the working class—that early on began to forge its own organizations (from trade unions to political movements like Chartism in England) to demand rights for itself and to challenge the injustices and inequalities that the mass of workers faced.

The great achievement of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, from the 1840s, was to see the potential of this new movement. At the level of theory, they took what was a moral critique of capitalism and turned it into a scientific one by trying to unravel the ways in which alienation and exploitation occurred. What compromised capitalism were not the irrationalities of individuals—these were themselves a product of systemic irrationalities. If capitalism was the most dynamic system yet known, it was also driven by a mass of contradictions. Capitalist class rule and organization perpetuated injustice, inequality, and suffering as the price paid by the mass of men and women for the privileges of those who ruled over them.

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