Portal:Socialism

The Socialism portal

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is the standard left-wing ideology in most countries. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.

The socialist political movement includes political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that socialists associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify anti-capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production. By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century. Many socialists also adopted the causes of other social movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, and progressivism. (Full article...)

Selected article

Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative, or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy. Market socialism differs from non-market socialism in that the market mechanism is utilized for the allocation of capital goods and the means of production. Depending on the specific model of market socialism, profits generated by socially owned firms (i.e. net revenue not reinvested into expanding the firm) may variously be used to directly remunerate employees, accrue to society at large as the source of public finance, or be distributed among the population in a social dividend. Market socialism is distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy, because unlike the mixed economy, models of market socialism are complete and self-regulating systems. Market socialism also contrasts with social democratic policies implemented within capitalist market economies: while social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies and social welfare programs, market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.

Although economic proposals involving social ownership with factor markets have existed since the early 19th century, the term "market socialism" only emerged in the 1920s during the socialist calculation debate. Contemporary market socialism emerged from the debate on socialist calculation during the early-to-mid 20th century among socialist economists who believed that a socialist economy could neither function on the basis of calculation in natural units nor through solving a system of simultaneous equations for economic coordination, and that capital markets would be required in a socialist economy.

Early models of market socialism trace their roots to the work of Adam Smith and the theories of classical economics, which consisted of proposals for cooperative enterprises operating in a free-market economy. The aim of such proposals was to eliminate exploitation by allowing individuals to receive the full product of their labor while removing the market-distorting effects of concentrating ownership and wealth in the hands of a small class of private owners. Among early advocates of market socialism were the Ricardian socialist economists and mutualist philosophers. In the early 20th century, Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner outlined a neoclassical model of socialism which included a role for a central planning board (CPB) in setting prices equal marginal cost to achieve Pareto efficiency. Even though these early models did not rely on genuine markets, they were labeled "market socialist" for their utilization of financial prices and calculation. In more recent models proposed by American neoclassical economists, public ownership of the means of production is achieved through public ownership of equity and social control of investment.

More selected articles

Read more...

Selected biography -

Macron in 2025

Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He served as Minister of Economics and Finance under President François Hollande from 2014 to 2016. He has been a member of Renaissance since founding the party in 2016.

Born in Amiens, Macron studied philosophy at Paris Nanterre University. He completed a master's degree in public affairs at Sciences Po and graduated from the École nationale d'administration in 2004. He worked as a senior civil servant at the General Inspectorate of Finance and as an investment banker at Rothschild & Co. Macron was a senior adviser to President Hollande, being appointed as Élysée deputy secretary-general by Hollande after the 2012 presidential election. He was later appointed as Economics Minister in 2014 in the second Valls government, and led several business-friendly reforms. He resigned in 2016 to launch his 2017 presidential campaign. A member of the Socialist Party between 2006 and 2009, he ran in the election under the banner of En Marche !, a centrist and pro-European political movement which he founded in 2016. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies

General images

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

Image 1Noam Chomsky, an American libertarian socialist (from History of socialism)
Image 2Project Cybersyn was an early form of computational economic planning (from Socialism)
Image 3Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana and theorist of African socialism, on a Soviet Union commemorative postage stamp (from History of socialism)
Image 4Man, Controller of the Universe produced by Mexican artist Diego Rivera (from Socialism)
Image 5Arabic letters "Lam" and "Alif" reading "Lā" (Arabic for "No!") are a symbol of Islamic Socialism in Turkey. (from Socialism)
Image 6Soviet stamp showing the orbit of Sputnik 1 (from Socialism)
Image 7Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist Vladimir Lenin in 1920 (from Socialism)
Image 8Encounter between Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Che Guevara in Cuba, three radical icons of the 1960s (from History of socialism)
Image 9R. H. Tawney, founder of ethical socialism (from Socialism)
Image 10Presidents Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in World Social Forum for Latin America (from History of socialism)
Image 11The fist and rose, a common symbol of democratic socialism and social democracy (from Socialism)
Image 12Socialist Alternative holding a mass anti-war protest, 2007 (from Socialism)
Image 13Barricades Boulevard Voltaire, Paris during the uprising known as the Paris Commune (from History of socialism)
Image 14"Is The World Turning Socialist?" An article by Allen D. Albert published in The Rotarian commenting on the rising popularity of socialism in the postwar era, January 1918 (from History of socialism)
Image 15The writings of Karl Marx provided the basis for the development of Marxist political theory and Marxian economics. (from Socialism)
Image 16New Harmony, a utopian attempt as proposed by Robert Owen (from History of socialism)
Image 17Socialist feminist Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in 1910 (from Socialism)
Image 18Albert Einstein advocated for a socialist planned economy with his 1949 article "Why Socialism?" (from History of socialism)
Image 19    States that had communist governments
  States that the Soviet Union believed at one point to be moving toward socialism

  Other states allied with the Soviet Union at some point
(from Socialism)
Image 20Map showing socialism in Latin America, the pink tide (Foro de São Paulo members) in 2023:
Socialist government

Member not in government
(from Socialism)
Image 21Albert Einstein advocated for a socialist planned economy with his 1949 article "Why Socialism?" (from Socialism)
Image 22World Map of Socialist countries in 1985 (from History of socialism)
Image 23The capital letter A surrounded by a circle is a common symbol of anarchism. (from Socialism)
Image 24Statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in Alexanderplatz, Berlin (from History of socialism)
Image 25Leonid Brezhnev (from History of socialism)
Image 26Edward Carpenter, philosopher and activist who was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party as well as in the early LGBTI western movements (from Socialism)
Image 27This map shows the 35 countries that adopted some form of socialism on the African continent from the 1950s to the 1980s. (from Socialism)
Image 28Soviet national income 1928–1987 growth in % based on estimates of the official statistical agency of the Soviet Union, the CIA and revised estimates by Grigorii Khanin (from Socialism)
Image 29The first anarchist journal to use the term libertarian was Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social, published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque, the first recorded person to describe himself as libertarian. (from Socialism)
Image 30Pierre Leroux founder of the Parisian newspaper Le Globe in which the term socialism first appeared (from History of socialism)
Image 31The Soviet of Workers' Deputies of St. Petersburg in 1905, Trotsky in the center. The soviets were an early example of a workers council. (from Socialism)
Image 32Socialists in Union Square, New York City on May Day 1912 (from Socialism)
Image 33Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, main theorist of mutualism and influential French socialist thinker (from Socialism)
Image 34Mikhail Bakunin speaking to members of the IWA at the Basel Congress in 1869 (from History of socialism)
Image 35Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of French socialism (from History of socialism)
Image 36The Soviet of Workers' Deputies of St. Petersburg in 1905, Trotsky in the center. The soviets were an early example of a workers council. (from History of socialism)
Image 37Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin opposed the Marxist aim of dictatorship of the proletariat in favour of universal rebellion and allied himself with the federalists in the First International before his expulsion by the Marxists (from History of socialism)
Image 38Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, early French socialist (from Socialism)
Image 39Alexis Tsipras, socialist Prime Minister of Greece who led the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) through a victory in the January 2015 Greek legislative election (from History of socialism)
Image 40New Harmony, a utopian attempt as proposed by Robert Owen (from Socialism)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

... that Voltaire Molesworth spent part of his early childhood in a utopian socialist colony in Paraguay?
... that although the 1950 Mexican film Un día de vida (pamphlet pictured) bombed with domestic audiences, it became a classic in Yugoslavia?
... that Martine Froger was elected to the National Assembly of France without the support of the national leadership of her party?
... that an essay of jailed Socialist Revolutionary politician Alexander Helfgot was smuggled out of Russia and published in Berlin in 1922?
... that the final novel by Catherine Helen Spence remained unpublished for over a century after being labelled "socialistic" and "dangerous"?
... that Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech "The Other America" is thought to have been influenced by a post-Keynesian economist and a democratic socialist?
... that a socialist youth organization held an anti-NATO music festival attended by 20,000 people in 1982 West Berlin?

Related portals

Topics

Subcategories

Want to find an article related to socialism? Try browsing through any of the main categories below:

Select [►] to view subcategories

Socialism

Socialist states

Socialists

Socialism by continent

Socialism by country

Types of socialism

Socialism stubs

Socialism templates

Socialism-related lists

Works about socialism

Banned socialist parties

Socialist calculation

Criticism of socialism

Economic planning

Socialist education

Formerly banned socialist parties

History of socialism

Imperialism studies

Socialist law

Socialism and LGBTQ topics

Marxian economics

Marxism

Nasserist states

Socialist organizations

Socialist planned cities

Proletariat

Recovered factories

State ownership

Socialist symbols

Selected quotation

“

I know that many of my Anglo-Saxon friends have sometimes been shocked by the semi-Fascist view they would occasionally hear expressed by German refugees, whose genuinely socialist convictions could not be doubted. But while these observers put this down to the others' being Germans, the true explanation is that they were socialists whose experience had carried them several stages beyond that yet reached by socialists in England and America. It is true, of course, that German socialists have found much support in their country from certain features of the Prussian tradition; and this kinship which in Germany both sides gloried, gives additional support to our main contention. But it would be a mistake to believe that the specific German rather than the socialist element produced totalitarianism. It was the prevalence of socialist views and not Prussianism that Germany had in common with Italy and Russia-and it was from the masses and not from the classes stepped in the Prussian tradition, and favored by it, that National Socialism arose.

”

— Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944

...Archive

Participate!

Everyone is welcome to participate in WikiProject Socialism, where editors collaborate to improve all aspects related to socialism on Wikipedia.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Commons
Free media repository
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals
Wikidata
Free knowledge base
Wikinews
Free-content news
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations
Wikisource
Free-content library
Wikiversity
Free learning tools
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus

Discover Wikipedia using portals