Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems, which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can be public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element, and is considered left-wing. Different types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.
The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848, the Manifesto remains one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to class struggle and criticizes capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, without attempting to predict communism's potential future forms.
Homero Rómulo Cristalli Frasnelli, better known under the pseudonym J. Posadas or sometimes Juan Posadas, was an Argentine Trotskyist whose personal vision is usually described as Posadism. Originally a collective pen name of the leadership of the Grupo Cuarta Internacional in Argentina in the 1940s, it was also used by Dante Minazzoli initially.
Alexander Theodore Callinicos is a Rhodesian-born British political theorist and activist. An adherent of Trotskyism, he is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and serves as its International Secretary. He is also editor of International Socialism, the SWP's theoretical journal, and has published a number of books.
The Fourth International Posadist is a Trotskyist international. It was founded in 1962 by J. Posadas, who had been the leader of the Latin America Bureau of the Fourth International in the 1950s, and of the Fourth International's section in Argentina. Between their split from the International Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1962 and Posadas' death in 1981, Posadists developed a strain of communism that included several fringe ideas, which brought them into conflict with more mainstream left-wing groups.
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist theory exists.
Third World socialism is a political philosophy and variant of socialism that has been proposed by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Buddhadasa, Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Juan Domingo Perón, Modibo Keïta, Walter Lini, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Sukarno, Ahmed Sékou Touré and other socialist leaders of the Third World who saw socialism as the answer to a strong and developed nation.
The Communist Party of Cuba is the sole ruling party of Cuba. It was founded on 3 October 1965 as the successor to the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which was in turn made up of the 26th of July Movement and Popular Socialist Party that seized power in Cuba after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The party governs Cuba as an authoritarian one-party state where dissidence and political opposition are prohibited and repressed. The Cuban constitution ascribes the role of the party to be the "leading force of society and of the state".
Chris Harman was a British journalist and political activist, and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was an editor of International Socialism and Socialist Worker.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries.
Agrarian socialism is a political ideology that promotes “the equal distribution of landed resources among collectivized peasant villages”. This socialist system places agriculture at the center of the economy instead of the industrialization efforts found in urban settings. Seen as more progressive in terms of social orientation, many agrarian socialist movements have tended to be rural, locally focused and traditional. The emphasis of agrarian socialists is therefore on social control, ownership and utilization of the means of production in a rural society. Additionally, principles like community, sharing and local ownership are emphasized under agrarian socialism. For instance, in rural communities in post-Soviet Russia “social organization of labor in the peasant household is based upon highly dense networks of mutual trust and interdependences” that diminished the need for manager-employee styles of labor. Nationalist ideology can also be seen coupled with agrarian socialist ideology, sometimes serving as the foundation for peasant-led revolutions. For instance, nationalist propaganda from the fledging Chinese communist party during the Sino-Japanese war era, “furthered the mobilization of the masses and helped determine the form this mobilization took”.
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West, specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
The International Socialist Tendency (IST) is an international grouping of unorthodox Trotskyist organisations espousing the ideas of Tony Cliff (1917–2000), founder of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain. It has sections across 27 countries; however, its strongest presence is in Europe, especially in Britain.
International Socialism is a British-based quarterly journal established in 1960 and published in London by the Socialist Workers Party which discusses socialist theory. It is currently edited by Joseph Choonara who replaced Alex Callinicos, who took over for ten years in November 2009 after Chris Harman died.
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
World communism, also known as global communism, is the ultimate form of communism which of necessity has a universal or global scope. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless, moneyless, and stateless, which may be achieved through an intermediate-term goal of either a voluntary association of sovereign states or a world government.
The history of socialism has its origins in the Age of Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution along with the changes that it brought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1847-48 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed scientific socialism. In the last third of the 19th century parties dedicated to Democratic socialism arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the world's first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899.
Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.
