Portal:Socialism

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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...)

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The World Socialist Movement (WSM) is an international organisation of socialist parties created in 1904 with the founding of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The member parties share a common classical Marxist worldview and an adherence to socialism defined as a distinct economic system from capitalism. As a result, the parties of the World Socialist Movement are held in sharp contrast to social democratic political parties and Marxist–Leninist movements. In contrast to social democratic parties, the World Socialist parties do not pursue social and economic reforms to capitalism, nor do they seek political office in electoral politics, and they do not focus on "progressive" causes, believing such actions to be irrelevant to their fundamental goal of socialism. In contrast to Marxist–Leninist Communist parties, they do not subscribe to the theories of imperialism, vanguardism and democratic centralism, believing such practices to be antithetical to the realisation of socialism.

The World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) defines socialism as a moneyless society based on common ownership of the means of production, production for use, and social relations based on cooperative and democratic associations as opposed to bureaucratic hierarchies. Additionally, the WSPUS includes statelessness, classlessness and the abolition of wage labor as characteristics of a socialist society—characteristics that are usually reserved to describe a communist society.

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Chávez in 2011

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (/ˈtʃɑːvɛz/; Spanish: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as] ^ⓘ; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician, revolutionary, and military officer who served as the 52nd president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period of forty-seven hours in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he led until 2012.

Born into a middle-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer. After becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system based on the Puntofijo Pact, he founded the clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s. Chávez led the MBR-200 in its unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Pardoned from prison two years later, he founded the Fifth Republic Movement political party, and then receiving 56.2% of the vote, was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He was reelected in the 2000 Venezuelan general election with 59.8% of the vote and again in the 2006 Venezuelan presidential election, with 62.8% of the vote. After winning his fourth term as president in the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election with 55.1% of the vote, he was to be sworn in on 10 January 2013. However, the inauguration was cancelled due to his cancer treatment, and on 5 March at age 58, he died in Caracas. (Full article...)

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General images

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

Image 1Socialists in Union Square, New York City on May Day 1912 (from Socialism)
Image 2Barricades Boulevard Voltaire, Paris during the uprising known as the Paris Commune (from History of socialism)
Image 3Leonid Brezhnev (from History of socialism)
Image 4Alexis 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 5World Map of Socialist countries in 1985 (from History of socialism)
Image 6The writings of Karl Marx provided the basis for the development of Marxist political theory and Marxian economics. (from Socialism)
Image 7The 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 8Man, Controller of the Universe produced by Mexican artist Diego Rivera (from Socialism)
Image 9Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana and theorist of African socialism, on a Soviet Union commemorative postage stamp (from History of socialism)
Image 10Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist Vladimir Lenin in 1920 (from Socialism)
Image 11New Harmony, a utopian attempt as proposed by Robert Owen (from History of socialism)
Image 12Pierre Leroux founder of the Parisian newspaper Le Globe in which the term socialism first appeared (from History of socialism)
Image 13Arabic letters "Lam" and "Alif" reading "Lā" (Arabic for "No!") are a symbol of Islamic Socialism in Turkey. (from Socialism)
Image 14Project Cybersyn was an early form of computational economic planning (from Socialism)
Image 15The 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 16Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, early French socialist (from Socialism)
Image 17Edward 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 18Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, main theorist of mutualism and influential French socialist thinker (from Socialism)
Image 19Albert Einstein advocated for a socialist planned economy with his 1949 article "Why Socialism?" (from Socialism)
Image 20Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of French socialism (from History of socialism)
Image 21Presidents 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 22The 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 23Russian 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 24Socialist feminist Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in 1910 (from Socialism)
Image 25R. H. Tawney, founder of ethical socialism (from Socialism)
Image 26Albert Einstein advocated for a socialist planned economy with his 1949 article "Why Socialism?" (from History of socialism)
Image 27Mikhail Bakunin speaking to members of the IWA at the Basel Congress in 1869 (from History of socialism)
Image 28Noam Chomsky, an American libertarian socialist (from History of socialism)
Image 29Encounter between Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Che Guevara in Cuba, three radical icons of the 1960s (from History of socialism)
Image 30Statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in Alexanderplatz, Berlin (from History of socialism)
Image 31Eduard Bernstein
Image 32New Harmony, a utopian attempt as proposed by Robert Owen (from Socialism)

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Bill Shearer, a leader of the segregationist George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign, also advocated for ballot access for the Socialist Workers Party?
... that Julia Dawson's first Clarion Van was named for Scottish socialist Caroline Martyn?
... that Marie-Thérèse Eyquem served in the government of Vichy France, and was later appointed a national secretary of the French Socialist Party?
... that Marcela Revollo's pragmatic approach to legislating led her to cooperate with both neoliberal and socialist governments on women's rights legislation?
... that in its 1962 election campaign, the Socialist Party of India demanded that twice-yearly inter-caste dining be made a mandatory criterion for government employment?
... that in 1968, actor Ludovic Antal recited a Romanian nationalist poem in front of tourists from Soviet Moldavia, causing them to flee for their bus for fear of a "provocation"?
... that Martine Froger was elected to the National Assembly of France without the support of the national leadership of her party?

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“

Marxian morality is likewise of English origin. Marxism reveals in every sentence that the thought processes from which it sprang were theological and not political. Its economic theory is the outgrowth of a fundamental moral attitude, and the materialistic view of history is simply the final chapter of a philosophy with roots in the English Revolution, whose biblical moods have remained dominant in English thought.

That is why Marx’s basic concepts are felt to be moral alternatives. The words "socialism" and "capitalism" are terms for the good and evil of this irreligious religion. The "bourgeois" is the devil, the wage earner is the angel of a new mythology, and one need only sample the vulgar paths of the Communist Manifesto to recognize behind the literary mask the Christianity of the Independents. Social evolution is "the will of God." The "final goal," in an earlier age, was eternal salvation; the "collapse of bourgeois civilization" used to be called the Last Judgment.

”

— Oswald Spengler, "Prussianism And Socialism", 1919

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