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Arguments for Capitalism and Socialism

Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Social and Political Philosophy Wordcount: 993

Editor’s Note: This essay is the second in a two-part series authored by Tom on the topic of capitalism and socialism. The first essay, on defining capitalism and socialism, is available here .

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Suppose I had a magic wand that allowed one to produce 500 donuts per hour. I say to you, “Let’s make a deal. You use this wand to produce donuts, and then sell those donuts for $500 and give me the proceeds. I’ll give you $10 for every hour you spend doing this. I’ll spend that time playing video games.”

My activity—playing video games—seems pretty easy. Your job requires much more effort. And I might end up with a lot more money than $10 for every hour you work. How is that fair?

In the story, the magic wand is analogous to capital goods : assets (typically machinery and buildings, such as robots, sewing machines, computers, and factories) that make labor, or providing goods and services, more productive. Standard definitions of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ indicate that, in general, capitalist systems permit people to privately own and control capital goods, whereas socialist systems do not. And capitalist systems tend to contain widespread wage labor, absentee ownership, and property income; socialist systems generally don’t. [1]

Capital goods are morally interesting. As in the case of the magic wand, ownership of capital goods can allow one to make lots of money without working. In contrast, other people have to work for a living. This might be unfair or harmful. This essay surveys and explains the main arguments in this debate. [2]

1. Capitalism

Arguments for capitalism tend to hold that it’s beneficial to society for there to be incentives to produce, own, and use capital goods like the magic wand, or that it’s wrong to forcibly prevent people from doing so. Here are four arguments for capitalism, stated briefly:

(1) Competition: ‘When individuals compete with each other for profits, this benefits the consumer.’ [3]

Critique : Competition also may encourage selfish and predatory behavior. Competition can also occur in some socialist systems. [4]

(2) Freedom: ‘Preventing people from owning capital restricts their freedom. Seizing their income in the form of taxes may constitute theft.’ [5]

Critiques : Maybe owning property, itself, restricts freedom, by excluding others from using it. [6] If I announce that I own something, I may be thereby announcing that I will force you not to use it. And maybe “freedom” requires the ability to pursue one’s own goals, which in turn requires some amount of wealth. [7] Further, if people must choose between work and starvation, then their choice to work may not be really “free” anyway. [8] And the general distribution of wealth is arguably the result of a morally arbitrary “natural lottery,” [9] which may not actually confer strict property-rights over one’s holdings. [10] I didn’t choose where I was born, nor my parents’ wealth, nor my natural talents, which allow me to acquire wealth. So perhaps it’s not a violation of my rights to take some of that property from me.

(3) Public Goods: [11] ‘When objects, including capital, must be shared with others, then no one is strongly motivated to produce them. In turn, society is poorer and labor is more difficult because production is inefficient.’ [12]

Critique : People might be motivated to produce capital for altruistic reasons, [13] or may be coerced in some socialist systems to do so. Some putatively socialist systems allow for profitable production of capital goods. [14]

  (4) Tragedy of the Commons: ‘When capital, natural resources, or the environment are publicly controlled, no one is strongly motivated to protect them.’ [15]

Critique : As before, people might be motivated by altruism. [16] Some systems with partially-private control of capital may nevertheless qualify as socialist. [17]

2. Socialism

Arguments for socialism tend to hold that it’s unfair or harmful to have a system like in the story of the magic wand, a system with widespread wage labor and property income. Here are four arguments for socialism, stated briefly:

(1) Fairness: ‘It’s unfair to make money just by owning capital, as is possible only in a capitalist system.’ [18]

Critique : Perhaps fairness isn’t as morally important as consent, freedom, property rights, or beneficial consequences. And perhaps wage laborers consent to work, and capital owners have property rights over their capital. [19]

(2) Inequality: ‘When people can privately own capital, they can use it to get even richer relative to the poor, and the wage laborers are left poorer and poorer relative to the rich, thereby worsening the inequality that already exists between capital-owners and wage-laborers.’ [20]

Critiques : This is a disputable empirical claim. [21] And perhaps the ability to privately own capital encourages people to invest in building capital goods, thereby making goods and services cheaper. Further, perhaps monopolies commonly granted by social control over capital are “captured” by wealthy special-interests, [22] which harm the poor by enacting regressive laws. [23]

(3) Labor: ‘Wage laborers are alienated from their labor, exploited, and unfree because they must obey their bosses’ orders.’ [24]

Critiques : If this alienation and exploitation are net-harmful to workers, then why do workers consent to work? If the answer is ‘because they’ll suffer severe hardship otherwise,’ then strictly speaking, this is a critique of allowing poverty, not a critique of allowing wage labor.

(4) Selfishness: ‘When people can privately own capital, they selfishly pursue profit above all else, which leads to further inequality, environmental degradation, non-productive industries, economic instability, colonialism, mass murder, and slavery.’

Critique : These are also disputable empirical claims. Maybe when people are given control over socially -owned capital, they selfishly extract personal wealth from it. [25] Maybe when the environment is socially controlled, everyone is individually motivated to over-harvest and pollute. [26] State intervention in the economy may be a major cause of the existence of non-productive industry, pollution, and economic instability. [27] Last, some of the worst perpetrators of historical evils are governments, not private corporations. [28]

  3. Conclusion

It is difficult to justifiably draw general conclusions about what a pure capitalism or socialism would be like in practice. [29] But an examination of the merits and demerits of each system gives us some guidance about whether we should move a society in either direction.

[1] See my Defining Capitalism and Socialism for an explanation of how to define these systems.

[2] For much-more-extensive surveys, see Gilabert and O’Neill n.d. and Arnold n.d.

[3] By analogy, different people might try to construct even better magic wands, or use them for better purposes. Typically the benefits are thought to include lower prices, increased equality, innovation, and more options. See Smith 2003 [1776]: bk. 1, ch. 2 and Friedman and Friedman 1979: ch. 1.

[4] Schweickart 2011 presents an outline of a market socialism comprising much competition.

[5] By analogy, if I legitimately own the magic wand, then what gives you the right to threaten violence against me if I don’t give it to you? Nozick 1974: ch. 7 presents a general discussion of how socialism might restrict freedom and how taxation may be akin to theft or forced labor.

[6] Spencer 1995 [1871]: 103-4 and Zwolinski 2015 discuss how property might require coercion. See also Scott 2011: 32-33. Indeed, property in general may essentially be theft (Proudhon 1994 [1840]).

[7] See Rawls (1999: 176-7) for this sort of argument. See John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ by Ben Davies for an introduction.

[8] See e.g. Burawoy 1979 for a discussion of whether workers consent to work. See also Marx 2004 (1867): vol. IV, ch. VII.

[9] Rawls 1999: 62 ff.

[10] Relatedly, while one may currently hold capital, one may greatly owe the existence of that product to many other people or to society in general. See e.g. Kropotkin 2015 [1913]: chs. 1-3 and Murphy and Nagel 2002.

[11] A public good is a good that is non-excludable (roughly, it is expensive to prevent people from using it) and non-rivalrously consumed (roughly, preventing people from using it causes harm without benefiting anyone) (Cowen 2008).

[12] By analogy, why bother building magic wands at all if someone else is immediately going to take it from me and start using it? Standard economic theory holds that public goods (non-excludable and non-rivalrous goods) will, on the free market, be underproduced. This is normally taken to be an argument for government to produce public goods. See e.g. Gaus 2008: 84 ff.

[13] For example, according to Marxist communism, the ideal socialist society would comprise production for use, not for profit. See e.g. Marx 2004 [1867]: vol. 1 ch. 7. See also Kropotkin 1902, which is a defense of the general claim that humans will tend to be altruistic, at least in anarcho-communist systems.

[14] In a market-socialist system (cf. Schweickart 2011), it is possible to make capital goods and sell them at a profit that gets distributed to the laborers.

[15] By analogy, if I know that anyone in the neighborhood can use the magic wand, I might not invest my own time and money to maintain it. But if it’s mine alone, I care a lot more about maintaining it. This is the basis of the well-known ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ alleged problem. See, e.g., Hardin 1968.

[16] Kropotkin 1902.

[17] As before, in Schweickart’s (2011) system, firms will be motivated to protect capital if they must pay for capital’s deprecation, even though the capital is owned by society.

[18] By analogy, as noted, the wand-owner might make lots of money for basically doing no work. Sherman 1995: 130; Schweickart 2011: § 3.2.

[19] See e.g. Friedman 2002 for a collection of consequentialist arguments for capitalism, and Nozick 1974: chs. 3 and 7 for some arguments concerning freedom and capitalist systems.

[20] By analogy, the wand-owner might accumulate so much money as to start buying other magic wands and renting those out as well. See e.g. Piketty 2014.

[21] Taking the world as a whole, wealth in absolute terms has been increasing greatly, and global poverty has been decreasing steeply, including in countries that have moved in mostly capitalist directions. See e.g. World Bank Group 2016: 3. Friedman 1989: ch. 5 argues that capitalism is responsible for the improved position of the poor today compared to the past.

[22] See e.g. Friedman 1989: ch. 7 for a discussion of regulatory capture.

[23] Friedman 2002: chs. IV and IX; Friedman 1989: ch. 4.

[24] By analogy, the person I’ve hired to use the wand might need to obey my orders, because they don’t have a wand of their own to rent out, and they might starve without the job I’ve offered them. Marx 2009 [1932] introduces and develops this concept of alienation. See Dan Lowe’s 2015 Karl Marx’s Conception of Alienation for an overview. See also Anderson 2015 for an argument that private corporations coercively violate their workers’ freedom.

[25] See n. 21 above. This result is most-obvious in countries in which dictators enrich themselves, but there is nothing in principle preventing rulers of ostensibly democratic countries from doing so as well. Presumably this worry explains the presence of the Emoluments Clause in the U. S. Constitution.

[26] See n. 14.

[27] See e.g. Friedman 2002: chs. III and V and the example of compliance costs for regulations.

[28] See Huemer 2013: ch. 6 ff.

[29] All or nearly all large-scale economies have been mixed economies. In contrast, a pure capitalism would be an anarcho-capitalism (see e.g. Gaus 2010: 75 ff. and Huemer 2013), and a pure socialism wouldn’t permit people to privately own scissors. See also the entry “Defining Capitalism and Socialism.”

Anderson, Elizabeth. 2015. Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It) . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Arnold, Samuel. N. d. “Socialism.” In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed.), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , URL = < https://www.iep.utm.edu/socialis/ >

Burawoy, Michael. 1979. Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism . Chicago, IL and London, UK: The University of Chicago Press.

Cohen, G. A. 2009. Why Not Socialism? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Cowen, Tyler. 2008. “Public Goods.” In David R. Henderson (ed.), The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics . Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Dagger, Richard and Terence Ball. 2019. “Socialism.” In Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (ed.), E ncyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/socialism

Dahl, Robert A. 1993. “Why All Democratic Countries have Mixed Economies.” Nomos 35: 259-82.

Dictionary.com. N.d. “Capitalism.” URL = < https://www.dictionary.com/browse/capitalism >

Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. 2019. “Henri de Saint-Simon.” In Encyclopædia Britannica , Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-de-Saint-Simon

Friedman, David D. 1989. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism , Second Edition. La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company.

Friedman, Milton. 2002. Capitalism and Freedom . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Friedman, Milton and Rose Friedman. 1979. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement . New York, NY: Harcourt Brace.

Gaus, Gerald. 2010. “The Idea and Ideal of Capitalism.” In George G. Brenkert and Tom L. Beauchamp (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Gaus, Gerald. 2008. On Philosophy, Politics, and Economics . Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Gilabert, Pablo and Martin O’Neill. 2019. “Socialism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socialism/ .

Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162(3859): 1243-48.

Herzog, Lisa. 2019. “Markets.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Spring 2019 Edition, URL =https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/markets/

Huemer, Michael. 2013. The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey . Houndmills, UK and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Investopedia. 2019. “Mixed Economic System.” Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mixed-economic-system.asp

Kropotkin, P. 1902. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution . New York, NY: McClure Phillips & Co.

Kropotkin, Peter. 2015 [1913]. The Conquest of Bread. London, UK: Penguin Classics.

Lowe, Dan. 2015. “Karl Marx’s Conception of Alienation.” 1000-Word Philosophy . Retrieved from https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2015/05/13/karl-marxs-conception-of-alienation/.

Marx, Karl. 2009 [1932]. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto , tr. Martin Milligan (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), pp. 13-202.

Marx, Karl. 2004 [1867]. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One . New York, NY: Penguin Classics.

Merriam-Webster. N.d. “Capitalism.” URL = < https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism >

Mill, John Stuart. 1965 [1848]. Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, Volume I: The Principles of Political Economy I , ed. J. M. Robson. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Murphy, Liam and Thomas Nagel. 2002. The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Oxford English Dictionary, N.d. a. “Capital.” Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/27450

Oxford English Dictionary. N.d. b. “Capitalism.” Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/27454

Oxford English Dictionary. N.d. c. “Mixed Economy.” Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/120348

Oxford English Dictionary. N.d. d. “Socialism.” Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/183741

Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century , tr. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. 1994 [1840]. What is Property? Ed. Donald R. Kelley and Bonnie G. Smith. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Schweickart, David. 2011. After Capitalism , Second Edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Scott, Bruce R. 2011. Capitalism: Its Origins and Evolution as a System of Governance . New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media.

Sherman, Howard J. 1995. Reinventing Marxism . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Smith, Adam. 2003 [1776]. The Wealth of Nations . New York, NY: Bantam Dell.

Wikipedia. N.d. “Capitalism.” URL =

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World Bank Group. 2016. Global Monitoring Report 2015/2016: Development Goals in an Era of Demographic Change. Washington, DC: World Bank Group and The International Monetary Fund.

Zwolinski, Matt. 2015. “Property Rights, Coercion, and the Welfare State: The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income for All.” The Independent Review 19(4): 515-29

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About the Author

Tom Metcalf is an associate professor at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He specializes in ethics, metaethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Tom has two cats whose names are Hesperus and Phosphorus. shc.academia.edu/ThomasMetcalf

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Socialism: A short primer

Subscribe to governance weekly, e.j. dionne, jr. and e.j. dionne, jr. w. averell harriman chair and senior fellow - governance studies @ejdionne william a. galston william a. galston ezra k. zilkha chair and senior fellow - governance studies.

May 13, 2019

• 21 min read

In this essay, E.J. Dionne, Jr. and Bill Galston give a primer on socialism in three parts: its definition, the age gap in perceptions of socialism among Americans, and how socialism evolved to social-democratic systems in the U.K. and Germany.

Something new is happening in American politics. Although most Americans continue to oppose socialism, it has reentered electoral politics and is enjoying an upsurge in public support unseen since the days of Eugene V. Debs . The three questions we will be focusing on are: Why has this happened? What does today’s “democratic socialism” mean in contrast with past versions? And what are the political implications?

It’s worth recalling how important socialism once was at the ballot box to understand that this tradition has deeper roots in our history than many imagine. In the 1912 presidential election, Debs secured six percent of the popular vote, and Socialists held 1,200 offices in 340 cities, their ranks including 79 mayors. Socialism declined after this peak and faced repression during World War I because of the party’s opposition to the war. (Debs secured almost a million votes in the 1920 presidential election, running from a jail cell). After the war ended, the Communist seizure of power in what became the Soviet Union contributed to a “red scare” that further weakened America’s indigenous socialist tradition.

Socialism never lost its intellectual influence, however. The New Deal drew on proposals pioneered by socialists, and it was a young socialist named Michael Harrington whose book The Other America helped launch the war on poverty. But when it came to electoral politics, socialism was largely shunned or irrelevant.

Until now. The crash of 2008, rising inequality, and an intensifying critique of how contemporary capitalism works has brought socialism back into the mainstream—in some ways even more powerfully than in Debs’ time, since those who use the label have become an influential force in the Democratic Party. Running as a democratic socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders received 45 percent of the Democratic primary vote in 2016, and in the 2018 mid-term elections, members of Democratic Socialists of America were among the prominent Democratic victors. Their ranks included Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who quickly became one of the country’s best-known politicians. One measure of her influence: As of early May, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer had 1.7 million Twitter followers; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had 2.5 million; Ocasio-Cortez had 4 million.

The generational divide

Although President Donald Trump declared war on socialism in his 2019 State of the Union address, its champions felt no pressure to back down. It is not hard to see why.

During the heyday of the industrial era, growth was rapid, its fruits were broadly shared across income and wage classes, and upward mobility was widespread. Capitalism was popular. Socialism was not. In recent decades, however, growth has been episodic and slow, wages have stagnated for working-class and many middle-class families, mobility has slowed, and inequality has soared. The economic and financial collapse of 2008-2009 undermined the claim that the economy had entered a new era of stability and moderation. Experts who had preached the virtues of self-regulation were forced to recant. The slow recovery from the Great Recession left many Americans wondering whether they would ever regain the income and wealth they had lost.

The Great Recession especially shaped the outlook of young adults. The younger working class entered a job market that provided far fewer stable opportunities than their parents had enjoyed. And as revenues fell, many state governments slashed public support for higher education, forcing public colleges and universities to raise tuition sharply. Students had to abandon college hopes or take out larger loans that that consumed a substantial portion of their incomes. And particularly in the years immediately after the crash, many of them had trouble finding the jobs their degrees once promised. As the profits and share prices of large corporations recovered from their recessionary lows, enriching executives and investors, many young adults began wondering whether they would ever share the fruits of 21 st century capitalism. They became increasingly open to the idea that the system was rigged against them and that incremental reform was not enough. Only transformational systemic change could get the job done, many concluded, and socialism was the available alternative to the failed “neo-liberal” model of contemporary capitalism.

The generational effect is dramatic. A 2018 YouGov survey found that 35 percent of young adults under 30 were very or somewhat favorably inclined toward socialism, while just 26 percent registered unfavorable sentiments. (40 percent were not sure.) By contrast, only 25 percent of voters 65 and older had favorable views of socialism, while 56 percent were unfavorable.

Table 1: The impact of age on attitudes toward socialism

(Source: YouGov, August 2018)

Competing definitions of socialism

The growing popularity of socialism reflects a change in its image. Viewed in the past under the dark shadow of the Soviet system, it is now seen in light of the achievements of social democratic governments in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe.

In 2018, the Public Religion Research Institute offered respondents two definitions of socialism. One described it as “a system of government that provides citizens with health insurance, retirement support, and access to free higher education.” The other characterized it as “a system where the government controls key parts of the economy, such as utilities, transportation and communications industries.” The first definition effectively refers to the Scandinavian model—and the ideas popularized by Sanders. Most proponents of social democracy see it as a way of smoothing capitalism’s rough edges, making it more humane, egalitarian, and protective, rather than replacing the market outright. The second definition corresponds to the classic understanding of socialism that dominated public consciousness after World War II, when the challenge from the Soviet Union was at its peak.

As one might expect, young adults, for whom Cold War memories are dim to non-existent, were strongly inclined to define socialism as social democracy rather than public ownership of key industries. Fifty-eight percent of them picked the social-democratic option, and just 38 percent the dominant post-war understanding. By contrast, Americans 65 and older, whose views of socialism reflected the post-war conflict with communism, were somewhat more inclined to focus on government control of the economy, although even the oldest Americans now tilt toward the social-democratic definition, too.

Other survey research confirms this shift. In 1949, the Gallup Organization probed Americans’ understanding of the term “socialism.” More Americans picked government ownership or control as socialism’s defining feature than all the other options combined. Almost seven decades later in 2018, Gallup posed the same question, with very different results. The share of respondents who focused on government control fell by half, to just 17 percent. By contrast, the share who emphasized egalitarianism and generous public services rose from 14 percent in 1949 to 33 percent in 2018.

Table 2: Changes over time in Americans’ understanding of socialism

(Source: Gallup organization, 1949, 2018. Because of rounding, the items total to more than 100%.)

In the post-war period, Americans viewed socialism through the prism of Soviet communism. Today, they view it through the prism of the welfare state.

In the post-war period, Americans viewed socialism through the prism of Soviet communism. Today, they view it through the prism of the welfare state, the system that Western democracies developed to make market economies more broadly acceptable and to blunt the appeal of communism, which had powerful support throughout Europe in the post-war decades. The Soviet Union threatened liberty. Norway, Sweden and Denmark do not.

There was an important distinction, however, between Soviet-style communism and the system that socialist parties advocated after World War II. The Soviet system was undemocratic and totalitarian. The state (that is, the Communist party) controlled not only the entire economy but also civil society. As a “vanguard” party, the CPSU claimed to represent, infallibly, the “real interests” of the working class, even though average citizens of the Soviet Union might well disagree with the party’s “line” at any given moment.

By contrast, the program of Western socialist parties was both democratic and non-totalitarian. Western socialists acknowledged the importance of the individual liberties that Communists dismissed as “bourgeois.” These parties distinguished between the parts of the economy that needed to be brought under public control and those that did not. In the main, they did not seek government control of civil society, and they were willing to submit to the electorate’s democratic verdict on an ongoing basis.

From socialism to social democracy

The post-war British Labour Party offers a vivid example of democratic socialism in action—and also of the transition from state ownership to greater equality as socialism’s core goal. As World War II neared its end in the summer of 1945, the United Kingdom held its first general election in nearly a decade. The Labour Party campaigned on a bold program of economic and social change. “The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it,” declared its election manifesto. “Its ultimate purpose . . . is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.”

The manifesto was serious, even literal, in its choice of the noun “commonwealth.” The key assumption was that everything in the U.K.—not just land and natural resources, but also productive facilities and wealth—should be seen as jointly owned by the people as a whole and could be directed to purposes determined by the people through democratic processes.

Not content with ringing generalities, the manifesto spelled out its socialist program in considerable detail. It called for public ownership of the fuel and power industries, the iron and steel industries, and all modes of domestic transportation (rail, road, air, and canal). Other key provisions included the nationalization of the Bank of England, eventual nationalization of land holdings, a National Investment Board to plan and shape public and private investment, and a government-funded and operated National Health Service.

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One other theme suffuses the manifesto—the proposition that building socialism is akin to the wartime mobilization that directed all the nation’s energies toward a single overriding goal. “The nation and its post-war Governments will be called upon to put the nation above any sectional interest, above any free enterprise,” the manifesto asserts. “The problems and pressures of the post-war world threaten our security and progress as sure as—though less dramatically than—the Germans threatened them in 1940. We need the spirit of Dunkirk and of the Blitz sustained over a period of years.”

This said, the Labour Party’s version of socialism was entirely consistent with the British system of individual liberty and parliamentary democracy. The manifesto goes out of its way to underscore Labour’s commitment to freedom of worship, speech, and the press. It rejected the proposition that wartime restrictions on individual liberties should carry over into peacetime. The Labour Party won power peacefully and democratically in the 1945 parliamentary election and when Labour lost the subsequent election, it yielded power to the victorious conservatives.

In many respects, the Labour Party’s postwar program represented a high-water mark for democratic socialism.

In many respects, the Labour Party’s postwar program represented a high-water mark for democratic socialism. Beginning in the 1950s, after they lost power, Labour leaders deemphasized, without formally repudiating, the aspects of their program that focused on nationalization of key industries. The 13 years of Conservative government between 1951 and 1964 saw the rise of Labor’s “revisionists,” who moved the party away from the nationalization of industry as a central goal. In his seminal book, “The Future of Socialism,” Anthony Crosland, a major figure in the party, argued that a focus on nationalization confused means and ends and that the purpose of socialism was greater equality, not government ownership of industry. The party’s leader in the period, Hugh Gaitskell, was a revisionist who regularly battled with the party’s left. And when Harold Wilson led Labor back to power in 1964, he stressed the power of technological change to transform society and the promise of the “white heat” of the “scientific revolution.” It was a long way from taking over the coal mines.

In Germany, the transformation of democratic socialism was formal and explicit. As late as the mid-1950s, Germany’s Socialist Party (the SPD) continued to espouse classic socialist ideology. A key SPD leader declared that the crucial point of the party’s agenda was “the abolition of capitalist exploitation and the transfer of the means of production from the control of the big proprietors to social ownership.” But after a series of electoral defeats at the hands of a center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that itself supported a significant welfare state, the SPD came to understand that its post-war program had been outrun by events. Rapid economic growth based on private property and regulated markets during the 1950s had sparked the emergence of a new middle class and rendered obsolete an economic program centered on nationalization of key industries. The Soviet Union was a threat to social and political freedom, not an economic model to be emulated.

The SPD’s famous Bad Godesberg Program, adopted in November 1959, represented a fundamental change of course. It castigated Soviet Communism and repudiated Marxism. The proletariat was no longer the sole engine of progress; the SPD had changed from being a “party of the working class” to a “party of the people.” Henceforth, democracy, freedom, equality, and the fullest possible development of each individual would be the guiding principles.

The Program defined the social function of the state as “provid[ing] social security for its citizens to enable everyone to be responsible for shaping his own life freely and to further the development of a free society.” While achieving this aim would require substantial government regulation, it would not necessitate government ownership except in the rare cases in which “sound economic power relationships” could not be guaranteed by any other means.

The new economic vision rested on freedom—“free choice of consumer goods, free choice of working place, freedom for employers to exercise their initiative as well as free competition.” Where excessive concentration restricted competition, government must intervene to restore competition. The task of a freedom-based economic policy was to contain the power of big business, not to replace the private sector. In some instances, they suggested that what we would now call a “public option” could be used to broaden choices for consumers and diminish corporate power. But in a remarkable break with socialist orthodoxy, the Program stressed that “every concentration of economic power, even in the hands of the state, harbors dangers.” Widespread government ownership of the means of production is not always the solution; it may be part of the problem.

The Program focused, not on government taking control of the economy, but on using government to improve the lives of all citizens.

The Program focused, not on government taking control of the economy, but on using government to improve the lives of all citizens. Key planks included full employment, generous wages and shorter working days, a redistributive system of taxation, secure retirement with a state-guaranteed minimum pension, universal access to health care, and decent and affordable housing. These are among the building blocks of the system of “social democracy” that developed and spread throughout the West as the alternative to both socialism and unregulated capitalism. As scholar Sheri Berman puts it, “Capitalism remained, but it was a capitalism of a very different type—one tempered and limited by political power and often made subservient to the needs of society rather than the other way around.”

From social democracy to the Third Way

Although social democracy came to represent the dominant political program in most democracies, its triumph was short-lived. Starting in the late 1970s, conservative leaders who challenged key tenets of social democracy scored electoral victories in the U.K., U.S., Germany, and elsewhere. They argued that excessive government intervention and spending had slowed economic growth, impeded innovation, and promoted inflation. Moreover, excessive deference to organized labor had reduced private sector profits and investments, while the pursuit of equal outcomes had deprived the “job creators” of needed incentives to take risks. Government was not the solution for the problems of capitalism, the new conservative wisdom held, but rather the principal obstacle to the success of a market economy. Industries had to be deregulated; spending on programs of social protections had to be curtailed; taxes had to be slashed; and unions needed to be brought to heel.

The political success of conservative policies persuaded many center-left leaders that their social democratic programs needed to adjust to new circumstances. As this movement gathered strength, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union transformed the political situation. It seemed that every alternative to capitalism had faded. The future lay in a dynamic and increasingly global market economy with the fewest possible fetters on the free flow of capital, goods, services, workers, and information. Appropriate fiscal, trade, investment, immigration, and education policies would enable Western democracies to seize the commanding heights of the new economy. The future for workers lay in lifetime education and training, not in organized labor’s efforts to thwart needed change. Regulations that impeded efficiency in key sectors such as banking needed to be swept away. Competition would promote “self-regulation” as an alternative to the heavy hand of the state. Programs to promote economic and retirement security were acceptable—as long as they did not break the bank, raise interest rates, and squeeze out private investment.

Led by key figures such as Bill Clinton in the United States, Tony Blair in the U.K., and Gerhardt Schroeder in Germany, this new economic vision—dubbed the Third Way by its friends and neo-liberalism by its foes—guided changes in center-left parties. As long as the new economy delivered ample jobs and broad-based income gains, center-left parties enjoyed political success. But the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing severe global recession undermined public confidence in the institutions and policies that permitted the disaster. On the Right, populist forces began to stir. (In retrospect, the Tea Party was a harbinger of things to come.) On the Left, the failure of post-Cold War globalized capitalism opened the door to critics of the status quo. Occupy Wall Street targeted the “1 percent”—the wealthy elites whose greed and myopia, they said, triggered the crisis and left those of lesser means to suffer the losses and pay the costs.

By 2016, right-wing populism had taken over the previously center-right Republican Party in the U.S., while Sanders gave Hillary Clinton, the establishment center-left candidate, a surprisingly tough race. Throughout Europe, traditional center-left and center-right parties suffered heavy losses while both right-wing populists and far-left parties gained support. In the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere, insurgents have rejected what they see as the Third Way’s objectionable and ineffective compromises with conservative principles and programs. It is against this historical backdrop that young adults in America embraced programs that promised more than incremental change—and that they were not afraid to call themselves socialists.

What’s in a word?

Medicare and Social Security are, in a sense, socialist, and so are our public schools and universities, our community colleges, our water supplies and sewers, and our mass transit systems.

There has always been a gap between rhetoric and reality in discussions of (and, especially, attacks on) socialism. Not one economically advanced society can be described as purely capitalist; every one of them is a mixed economy that includes some elements of socialism. Medicare and Social Security are, in a sense, socialist, and so are our public schools and universities, our community colleges, our water supplies and sewers, and our mass transit systems. Municipally owned and built sports stadiums are forms of socialism. North Dakota still has a publicly-owned bank, created during the years when agrarian populism and socialism overlapped. The Tennessee Valley Authority is a form of socialism, as conservatives never tire of pointing out.

Ideas rooted in socialism have often been deployed to save capitalism from its excesses—usually in the face of opposition from capitalists themselves. The political scientist Mason Williams points to a comment from New Deal lawyer Jerome Frank as capturing this history nicely. “We socialists are trying to save capitalism,” Frank said, “and the damned capitalists won’t let us.”

And from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama, conservatives have made it a point to charge their Democratic foes with being socialists, no matter how many speeches they made in praise of the market. In attacking the program of his erstwhile friend FDR, Al Smith declared: “There can be only one national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner or the Internationale.” In the 1950 mid-term elections, Republicans briefly used the slogan “Liberty versus socialism.” (It turned out not to test very well.) Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater that made The Gipper a hero to conservatives argued that Goldwater’s victory over Lyndon Johnson was necessary to stop the advance of socialism. And, of course, Barack Obama’s health care plan, which was a very long way from a single payer system, was regularly denounced as socialist.

For the most part, Democratic politicians have regularly denied they were socialists—and even in this campaign cycle, marked by socialism’s resurgence, most Democrats earnestly pronounce themselves capitalists. The ranks of proud capitalists include Elizabeth Warren, who is by most measures as progressive as Sanders and has issued even more comprehensive proposals than he has to restructure contemporary capitalism. The fact that Sanders calls himself a socialist and Warren does not suggests that socialist/capitalist divide tells us less about policy than we might think and more about the valence assigned to the labels by different parts of the electorate.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the term socialism has lost its once-automatic linkage to the United States’ mortal enemy. The embrace of socialism no longer incurs the taint of treason, and proposals advanced by avowed socialists have expanded the perimeter of acceptable debate. As recent comments on the imperiled future of capitalism by Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates suggest, the sharper critiques of capitalism are gaining attention from capitalists themselves. In the past—from the New Deal years through the 1960s—fears for the system’s future have led important voices within the business world to embrace social reform as necessary to saving the system. Socialists might once again be the forerunners of capitalist reform.

There are three bottom lines here. The first is that attitudes toward socialism now divide the two parties. In a 2018 YouGov survey, 46 percent of Democrats had a somewhat or very favorable view of socialism, while only 25 percent held an unfavorable view. Among Republicans, only 11 percent viewed socialism favorably, while 71 percent viewed it unfavorably—including 61 percent who had a “very” unfavorable view. Tellingly, the breakdown among Independents was 19 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable. Among Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton, 53 percent of had a favorable opinion of socialism, a view held by just 7 percent of Trump voters.

Second, sympathy for socialism is still a minority view. In the YouGov survey, overall, socialism was viewed favorably by only 26 percent of American adults and unfavorably by 46 percent. Among registered voters, the breakdown was 30 percent favorable, 50 percent unfavorable. As Warren’s self-labeling shows, most politicians trying to win national elections will continue to resist the S-word. If socialism is more popular than ever, it is still, on net, a troublesome word for a large share of the electorate. But whatever it is called, the impulse to use public power to smooth the market economy’s rough edges and to enhance opportunity and security for all Americans is a powerful current in today’s post-Great Recession politics.

Table 3: Partisanship and attitudes toward socialism

Third, decades of rising inequality and the shock of the 2008 crash have led large numbers of Americans —whether they call themselves socialists or not— to call the fundamentals of our economic system into question. The resurgence of socialism is a warning sign for those who want to preserve this system and an opportunity for those who would reform it. And, as has happened before, their two causes may come to overlap.

The authors want to thank Amber Herrle for her contributions to this piece.

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Liberal socialism now

As the crisis of democracy deepens, we must return to liberalism’s revolutionary and egalitarian roots.

by Matthew McManus   + BIO

Very few of us expected liberalism to have such a rocky 21st century. At the turn of the 20th, liberal ideology and liberal democratic political institutions seemed more legitimate and secure than ever before. Liberals had defeated their great geopolitical rivals on the fascist Right and the communist Left. How things change.

Over the past few decades, discontent and disdain for liberalism have spread across huge swathes of the globe, led by a resurgent Right-wing populism that denounced its materialism, universalism and libertine decadence. Wannabe strongmen like Victor Orban declared they were constructing new kinds of ‘illiberal democracy’ – a half truth, since the regimes would be illiberal, but not particularly democratic. Books flooded the market with alarmist or triumphalist titles such as Why Liberalism Failed (2018) or A World After Liberalism (2021), all of which diagnosed its failures with relish or fear. Theories about what had gone wrong multiplied. Liberalism was too atomistic, too alienating, too antidemocratic, too democratic for its own good, too beholden to the ignorant masses, too elitist, even too boring and politically correct for its own good.

What was often lost in the discourse around liberalism in the 21st century was whether it could simultaneously be worth saving while also having deserved the ignominy into which it was falling. From the 1970s onwards, many liberal politicians and theorists had backed away from the more progressive and transformative propensities of the tradition. The era of big liberal dreams about establishing a ‘great’ or ‘just’ society was over.

Internalising a host of conservative arguments, liberals like Isaiah Berlin or Friedrich Hayek argued that big dreams were dangerous and contrary to liberalism, its revolutionary past aside. The best one could hope for was a competitive and highly inequitable neoliberal society defined by ordered liberty and at most a minimal welfare state. That such a consciously deflated vision became associated with technocratic aloofness, a lack of principled conviction and a wariness of democratic accountability came as a surprise only to neoliberals c 2016. More thoughtful commentators followed Samuel Moyn’s claim in Liberalism Against Itself (2023) that if liberals couldn’t rediscover how to not just fearmonger, but inspire, they were unlikely to see their doctrine survive much longer and, ‘anyway, survival is not good enough.’

Moyn is right that, if liberals trade off presenting an inspiring vision of the future for mere survival, they are unlikely to get either. The existential woes of 21st-century liberalism require we do more than return to the forms of neoliberal governance that generated discontent in the first place. It requires retrieving the revolutionary emancipatory and egalitarian ethos that defined liberalism at its revolutionary best to offer a new deal to citizens of liberal states. The strand of liberal political theory that offers the richest guidance on what form this new deal should take is liberal socialism.

T he idea of ‘liberal socialism’ might appear odd and even oxymoronic. This is especially true for those on the Right and the Left who regard liberalism as the philosophy of market capitalism. Of course, there are many classical and neoliberal thinkers for whom that is true. From John Locke ’s emphatic defence of life, liberty and property to Hayek’s declaration that state planning in the economy was the road to serfdom, liberal defences of the ethics of capitalism are easy to find. The economist Ludwig von Mises no doubt spoke for many (including plenty on the Left) when, in his polemical tract Liberalism (1927), he proudly declared that:

[The] programme of liberalism … if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property , that is, private ownership of the means of production … All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

Adam Smith , artist unknown, painted posthumously c 1795. Courtesy the National Gallery of Scotland

But this would be to ignore the reality that many great liberal thinkers have historically been wary (to downright critical) of capitalism. This goes far back. Adam Smith may have been an enthusiast for free trade and market liberties, but in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) he also decried how:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

This was reiterated in Smith’s polemics against monopolisation and the alienating effects of the division of labour in The Wealth of Nations (1776) . By the industrial era, some of the greatest liberal thinkers expressed sympathy and even came to align themselves with socialism. John Stuart Mill , the greatest liberal philosopher of the 19th century, openly declared himself a socialist in his Autobiography (1873) and stressed in Socialism (1879) how ‘great poverty, and that poverty very little connected with desert – are the first grand failure of the existing arrangements of society.’

Mill was hardly alone in sympathising with such a fusion of liberalism and socialism. In his essay collection Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (1973), the political theorist C B Macpherson coined the term ‘retrieval’ to refer to getting ‘clear of the disabling central defect of current liberal-democratic theory, while holding on to, or recovering, the humanistic values which liberal democracy has always claimed.’ We must now make an effort to retrieve the political theory of liberal socialism and make the case for its salience in the 21st century (a project I continue in my forthcoming book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism ).

L iberal socialism is a political ideology that combines support for many liberal political institutions and rights with a socialist desire to establish far more equitable and democratic economic arrangements. The latter point is put plainly by Michael Walzer in his book The Struggle for a Decent Politics (2023), in which he writes that, while ‘liberal socialists are not “egalitarianist”, they are serious about equality – more so, generally, than liberal democrats.’ This deeper concern for equality relative to classical liberals becomes apparent when we look at when liberal socialism emerged and how its major figures defended its core arguments.

There is extensive debate over periodising classical liberal theory. Many date its origins to the 17th century and the writings of Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Hugo Grotius among others. Whether or not these thinkers can be correctly labelled ‘liberals’ full stop, they undoubtedly developed or systematised a lot of the theoretical architecture that later liberals would rely on. By contrast, in Liberalism (2nd ed, 2014) Edmund Fawcett insists that mature liberal political philosophy only really appeared on the scene in the 19th century, when the term itself became popularised, and self-described ‘liberal’ parties and movements began to appear.

Whoever you agree with, there’s no doubt that liberal socialism emerged later than classical liberalism, extending the latter’s antipathy to the hierarchical ancien régimes of Europe to demand more radical changes still. While mature forms of liberal socialist political theory didn’t appear until the mid-19th century, there were important precursor figures. Two of the most influential predecessors to liberal socialism were Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft .

Thomas Paine insists that property is an eminently social phenomenon

Paine remains most famous for his stirring rhetorical defences of the American and French revolutions and his acidic polemics against Edmund Burke and conservatism in the Rights of Man (1791) . Until recently, Paine was largely viewed as an extraordinary pamphleteer for the classical liberal and republican viewpoint, while not being an especially original thinker or theorist. That appraisal has since undergone a major shift, with Robert Lamb in 2015 stressing Paine’s importance as a theorist whose ‘every instinct’ was egalitarian.

Thomas Paine ( c 1806-07) by John Wesley Jarvis. Courtesy the NGA, Washington

Paine is an important precursor to liberal socialism because he embraced the importance of individual flourishing and rights, while becoming increasingly sceptical that this could be achieved without a major redistribution of wealth and privilege. In the pamphlet ‘Agrarian Justice’ (1797), he rejects the methodological individualism of classical liberal approaches to property rights, and insists that property is an eminently social phenomenon:

Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property.

He goes on to suggest that, since many wealthy people monopolise productive land and capital without giving anything back, they owe a major debt to the poor as a matter of right. In the second part of the Rights of Man and in ‘Agrarian Justice’, Paine develops these arguments into a call for redistribution, sketching out an early scheme for the welfare state. This includes providing money for education, guaranteed employment for those who want it, a stipend for every child born, and a prototype of an old-age pension.

Mary Wollstonecraft ( c 1797) by John Opie. Courtesy the National Portrait Gallery, London

Wollstonecraft was less policy-minded than her contemporary Paine, but even more scathing in her contempt for the corrosive effect of the inequities of property that defined aristocratic and early capitalist societies. In her classic A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft insisted that:

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. For it is in the most polished society that noisome reptiles and venomous serpents lurk under the rank herbage; and there is voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air, which relaxes every good disposition before it ripens into virtue. One class presses on another; for all are aiming to procure respect on account of their property: and property, once gained, will procure the respect due only to talents and virtue.

In her later Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), she lambasts the nouveaux riches as a ‘fungus’ with the criticism that:

An ostentatious display of wealth without elegance, and a greedy enjoyment of pleasure without sentiment, embrutes them till they term all virtue of a heroic cast, romantic attempts at something above our nature, and anxiety about the welfare of others, a search after misery in which we have no concern.

Wollstonecraft believed in private property, arguing it was a just reward for labour. But even this had a radical connotation, as she was critical of those who lived in luxury or defended privilege while ignoring the ‘women who gained a livelihood by selling vegetables or fish, who never had had any advantages of education…’ Her critique of the idle or undeserving rich both echoes Locke’s condemnation of aristocracy and anticipates later Ricardian socialist and Marxist condemnations of the parasitic wealthy.

Much like Paine, Wollstonecraft had an unfailingly egalitarian instinct (including, of course, on gender relations) insisting there ‘must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground…’ In her ideal society there would be neither rich nor poor, and the competitive race to accumulate private property would be a far less significant social priority than the relatively equal development of human intellectual, artistic and moral powers. It’s this solidaristic emphasis on the development of human powers in a society of equals that makes Wollstonecraft such an important figure in the movement towards liberal socialism.

L iberal socialism reached its maturity in the 19th century with John Stuart Mill, its most articulate and well-known spokesman. Early in his career, Mill had been a more conventional supporter of the free market. But, later in life, mostly under the influence of the utopian socialist St Simonians, he shifted his views markedly. In his Autobiography , Mill declared that his ‘ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists.’ While being critical of statist forms of socialism and expressing a wariness of the threat they posed to liberty, he claimed to look ‘forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all.’

This shift towards socialism was reflected in later editions of the Principles of Political Economy (1848) . Mill defended extensive experiments with workplace democracy and cooperatives, arguing that they would potentially be less domineering, more economically efficient, and more conducive to the flourishing of workers. As Helen McCabe traces in her excellent book John Stuart Mill: Socialist (2021), he also came to advocate for wealth redistribution through:

state ownership of railways and roads, and municipal ownership (and provision) of utilities such as gas and water. He also at least suggested it would be permissible for the government to provide public hospitals; national banks; a postal service; ‘manufactories’; and a corps of civil engineers, so long as the government did not maintain a monopoly on these professions or services.

Mill’s flavour of liberal socialism based around cooperatives and a generous welfare state anticipated many contemporary forms of market socialism, as well as being a direct inspiration to important ethical and Christian socialists such as R H Tawney.

‘Socialism … is liberalism in action; it means that liberty comes into the life of poor people’

In the early to mid-20th century, an impressive array of authors came to endorse liberal socialism. In a 1939 interview with The New Statesman and Nation , John Maynard Keynes proposed:

[A move out of the] 19th-century laissez-faire state into an era of liberal socialism … where we can act as an organised community for common purposes and to promote economic and social justice, whilst respecting and protecting the individual – his freedom of choice, his faith, his mind and its expression, his enterprise and his property.

A variety of European democratic socialists such as Eduard Bernstein and Carlo Rosselli worked to theorise closer connections between liberalism and socialism, echoing Mill’s claim that socialists were the more ‘far-sighted successors’ of liberalism. Bernstein’s classic The Preconditions of Socialism (1899) offered a sustained critique of orthodox Marxist revolutionary theory and proposed a conciliation with liberalism. He insisted that ‘with respect to liberalism as a historical movement, socialism is its legitimate heir, not only chronologically, but also intellectually’, and stressed that there is ‘no liberal thought that is not also part of the intellectual equipment of socialism.’ Rosselli made similar claims in his book Liberal Socialism (1930), holding that:

Socialism is nothing more than the logical development, taken to its extreme consequences, of the principle of liberty. Socialism, when understood in its fundamental sense and judged by its results – as the concrete movement for the emancipation of the proletariat – is liberalism in action; it means that liberty comes into the life of poor people.

While he never identified with the label, I’d argue that Macpherson can also be correctly characterised as a liberal socialist, given his lifelong effort to ‘retrieve’ a radical democratic and egalitarian core to the liberal tradition.

Finally, in the United States John Dewey worked hard to extend American conceptions of democracy beyond the horizon of the state. His most famous contributions were of course in education, where Dewey insisted on the pedagogical superiority a more egalitarian classroom where students actively participated in their learning, rather than being regarded as passive recipients of knowledge delivered by an intellectual superior. But Dewey was also keen to extend democratic principles to the workplace, becoming president of the League for Industrial Democracy in 1939 and advocating for the labour movement.

I n the postwar era, there have been several prominent figures aligned with liberal socialism, including Irving Howe, Michael Walzer and Chantal Mouffe. But by far the most significant figure to express sympathy for liberal socialism was John Rawls . For a long time, Rawls’s brick-like Theory of Justice (1971) was taken as an apologia for the welfare state system that, tragically, began to decline right about when the book was published. But this understates Rawls’s radicalism. In his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (2000), Rawls described Karl Marx as ‘heroic’ and praised his ‘marvellous’ intellectual gifts. By the time of his swan song Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001), Rawls insisted that welfarism did not do a good enough job of realising liberal principles of justice. Only a property-owning democracy or ‘liberal socialism’ would be sufficient. While Rawls himself wrote more about property-owning democracy, Edmundson’s book John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (2017) makes a powerful case for why the most rigorous interpretation of justice as fairness would require liberal socialism instead.

As history shows, liberal socialists are not a monolith. They disagree on many core points. Some of these are theoretical: is the strongest basis for liberal socialism some kind of utilitarianism, deontology or pragmatism? Other divides are over practical questions such as the relationship between statist welfarism and bottom-up democratisation of the economy; Mill famously vested his hopes in worker co-ops where many modern liberal socialists focus on social programmes. Nevertheless, all liberal socialists are committed to three central principles, which I’ve arranged from the more abstract to the more concrete.

First, liberal socialists are committed to methodological collectivism and normative individualism. They believe that the wellbeing and free development of individual persons (and, for a growing number, nonhuman animals) is the highest moral priority. However, they disagree with many classical liberals’ insular and competitive conception of human nature and their individualist approach to conceiving social relations. Liberal socialists hold that, to properly think through how individuals will best thrive, one must recognise their embeddedness in society, and how it can improve or disrupt their capacity to lead a good life.

Taking seriously commitments to liberty, equality and solidarity requires going beyond the social hierarchies established under capitalism

Secondly, liberal socialists are committed to each person having as equal an opportunity to lead as good a life as possible through the provision of shared resources for the development and expression of their human powers. To put it another way, liberal socialists focus on the free development of human powers or capabilities along a wide array of metrics. What Macpherson calls this developmental ethic can be contrasted with the extractive and possessive ethic characteristic of classical liberalism and hedonistic forms of utilitarianism. Where the extractive/possessive ethic holds that the good life comes from production and consumption, the developmental ethic of liberal socialism emphasises the equal development and application of each individual’s powers as a condition for their flourishing.

Thirdly, liberal socialists are committed to instituting a basic social structure characterised by highly participatory liberal-democratic political institutions and protections for liberal rights concurrent with the extension of liberal democratic principles into the economy and family to establish more egalitarian economic arrangements free of domination and exploitation. This also means that liberal socialists do not ascribe the same weight of private property rights to the means of production that many classical liberals do. While all liberal socialists believe in rights to personal property, this doesn’t extend to rights to acquire forms of property that would enable forms of workplace domination or political plutocracy to develop. In these instances, what impacts all should, in part, be decided upon by all.

Liberal socialist authors will defend and articulate these principles in various idioms, and emphasise one or another to various degrees. This testifies to the internal diversity of the tradition, if nothing else. Macpherson was very critical of atomistic ‘possessive individualism’ but supported a liberal humanist ethic of developing people’s capacities or powers. Nevertheless, he had comparatively little to say about what kind of social structure could realise this ethic. In The Socialist Decision (1933), Paul Tillich offers a theological defence of liberal democratic socialism, which obviously runs counter to the secular approaches of Mill and Rawls. Mouffe’s agonistic liberal socialism foregrounds the importance of political contestation far more than Rawls’s temperate insistence that a pluralistic society needs to unite around an ‘overlapping consensus’. Charles Mill’s ‘black radical liberalism’ rightly takes many Left-liberals to task for ignoring, or even supporting, imperialism and racism. But behind this variety is a core conviction that taking seriously commitments to liberty, equality and solidarity requires going beyond the social hierarchies established under capitalism.

Given the eminence of many of the figures attracted to liberal socialism, it is somewhat perplexing that the term can seem oxymoronic. The explanation probably has more to do with politics than philosophy, especially in the US. As Moyn points out in Liberalism Against Itself , throughout the mid-20th century, many prominent ‘Cold War’ liberals turned against the more progressive and egalitarian elements in the tradition. This led to the banishing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G W F Hegel and Marx to the fringes, and the dilution of the more radical arguments of prominent liberals like Mill. By the time liberal egalitarians began to marshal formidable theoretical arguments for welfarism and social democracy in the 1970s, the time to realise such an agenda had passed. Neoliberalism had taken hold across much of the world, further squeezing out progressive forms of liberalism and liberal socialism.

Nevertheless, the future for liberal socialist political theory is bright. While not everyone listed below would identify with the label (and some might reject it), a considerable number of prominent and up-and-coming theorists have been working to bring out the affinities between the two traditions and canonise (or re-canonise) the major figures. These include Helen McCabe, Michael Walzer, James Crotty, Chantal Mouffe, Igor Shoikhedbrod, Lillian Cicerchia, Samuel Moyn, Daniel Chandler, William Edmundson, Elizabeth Anderson, Tony Smith, Rodney Peffer and many more.

It isn’t hard to see why the prospect of liberal socialism would be appealing today. Liberalism remains in or near crisis, and vast numbers express discontent with the neoliberal status quo. At the same time, there are very good reasons to reject revisiting forms of authoritarian ‘real existing socialism’ and communism. Liberal socialism offers the prospect of combining respect for liberal rights, checks and balances on state power, and participatory democracy with socialist concerns for the equal flourishing of all in a sustainable environment, the extension of democratic concerns into the workplace and ‘private government’, and pushing back on plutocratic rule. It also philosophically aligns well with concrete democratic socialist and radical movements appearing in the US, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere that want radical economic change but align with liberal values. Whether liberal socialism can transition from being a theoretical tradition and become a popular political ideology is a hard question. But, in a world defined by growing anger at inequality and plutocracy, liberal socialism is worthy of our loyalty.

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Socialism: Foundations and Key Concepts

What is the political, philosophic, and economic system known as socialism? Some starting points for further study.

Depending on whom you ask, socialism might be described as historically inevitable, evil incarnate, a utopian fantasy, or a scientific method. Most fundamentally, socialism is a political, philosophic, and economic system in which the means of production—that is, everything that goes into making goods for use—are collectively controlled, rather than owned by private corporations as they are under capitalism, or by aristocrats under feudalism.

In seeking to make the case for socialism—and to understand impediments to a world governed by people’s needs rather than corporate profits—thinkers in the socialist tradition have grappled with topics as varied as colonialism, gender, race, art, sex, psychology, economics, medicine, ecology, and countless other issues. As such, this Reading List makes no claim of being exhaustive; rather, it seeks to achieve two modest goals: to acquaint readers with a handful of key socialist preoccupations, and to demonstrate how the core concepts of socialist thought have been articulated at different historical moments and taken up by women and people of color.

Eugene W. Schulkind, “ The Activity of Popular Organizations during the Paris Commune of 1871. ” French Historical Studies , (1960)

What kind of society do socialists want? Many unfamiliar with the socialist tradition assume the Soviet Union or other putatively communist states represent socialist ideals come to fruition. But for many socialists throughout history, the most generative and compelling model is the seventy-two-day social experiment known as the Paris Commune. During their brief time ruling Paris, the communards eliminated the army, secularized education, equalized pay, and implemented numerous feminist initiatives, including establishing child care centers and abolishing the distinction between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” children.

Rosa Luxemburg,  “Reform or Revolution” (1900) Socialists uniformly believe that different social arrangements are needed to address social problems, but how might those transformations most effectively come to fruition? One of the major questions that has animated socialist debates throughout the centuries is whether it is possible to achieve socialism through progressive reforms, or whether reforms would only serve to strengthen capitalism. Here the revolutionary presents her thoughts.

Clara Zetkin,  1914 Preface to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1887) in Utopian Studies , 2016 Karl Marx was famously opposed to rigidly outlining what future socialist societies should look like, claiming that this would be like writing “recipes for the kitchens of the future.” Despite his reticence, many artists, frustrated by the constraints of capitalism and captivated by the promises of socialist futures, have contributed to imagining alternative worlds. Edward Bellamy’s early science fiction novel Looking Backward presents one attempt at envisioning a socialist society of the future—free from war, poverty, advertisements, and other unpleasantries. Here, Clara Zetkin, a prominent socialist and feminist activist of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (best known for her efforts to establish International Women’s Day ), introduces the novel.

Eric Foner,  “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?” History Workshop , 1984 One of the country’s best living historians examines questions that have preoccupied generations: How does the political and economic exceptionalism of the United States shape its historical relationship to socialism? Why does the U.S. working class appear less inclined toward socialist class consciousness than in other “advanced” capitalist countries?

Cedric Robinson,  “C.L.R. James and the Black Radical Tradition.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center ), 1983 Telling the story of C.L.R. James, one of the most important socialist intellectuals of the twentieth century, Cedric Robinson (an intellectual giant in his own right) traces the history of socialism as it crosses continents and oceans. Centering Black radicals, not as a homogenous group but as members of a multifaceted tradition who write as seamlessly about cricket, anticolonial struggles, and class formation, Robinson takes the reader through issues at the heart of socialism.

Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” (1978) in Women’s Studies Quarterly , 2014  “Identity politics” has become a controversial and often derided topic in recent years. In this groundbreaking text, the Combahee River Collective—a group of Black feminist socialists named for the location from which Harriet Tubman launched one of her major military missions—underscores the necessity of rooting anti-capitalist projects in people’s lived experiences: “We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity.”

Sarah Leonard,  “What is Socialist Feminism?” Teen Vogue , 2020 Teen Vogue may have once evoked adolescent frivolity, but in recent years the magazine has repositioned itself as a serious contributor to the rising popularity of leftist politics among bright young people, thanks to its rigorous and accessible political analysis. Here, socialist feminist writer Sarah Leonard draws from bell hooks , Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the 1970s feminist collective Wages for Housework to outline a few key socialist feminist insights . For those interested in pursuing the topic further, Leonard encourages readers to connect with the extensive resources generated by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)’s Socialist Feminist working group.

Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster,  “Marx’s Ecology in the 21st Century.” World Review of Political Economy , 2010 Marx may have written in the nineteenth century, but his insights are still used by contemporary thinkers to understand many of today’s most pressing issues. Here Clark and Foster draw from central concepts in Marx’s oeuvre to understand how capitalism has led to climate catastrophe and, eventually, might inspire ecosocialism. In their words, “The power of Marx’s ecology is that it provides a rigorous approach for studying the interchange between society and nature, while taking into consideration the specific ecological conditions of an ecosystem (and the larger web of nature), as well as the particular social interactions as shaped by the capitalist mode of production.”

Michael Lowy and Penelope Duggan,  “Marxism and Romanticism in the Work of Jose Carlos Mariategui.” Latin American Perspectives , 1998 A compelling introduction to Mariategui, the Peruvian socialist philosopher who merged precolonial history, romanticism, and a trenchant analysis of capitalism. In contrast to the austere world many antisocialists imagine, “[s]ocialism according to Mariategui lay at the heart of an attempt at the reenchantment of the world through revolutionary action.”

Red Nation,  “Communism Is the Horizon”  (2020) In their recent pamphlet, the Indigenous collective Red Nation expounds upon the centrality of queer, Indigenous feminism to their understanding of socialism and their struggle toward a communist horizon.

Editor’s Note: This list has been updated to include journal titles.

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• > The Politics of Socialism
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• Frontmatter
• Analytical table of contents
• 1 Socialism as political theory
• 2 Democratic socialism as a political practice
• 3 ‘True Socialism’?

1 - Socialism as political theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

What political theory attempts to grasp is, as Charles Taylor puts it, ‘what is going on, what is really happening in society’. This essay is concerned with the political theory of socialism: with what has really been happening in the emergence, the protracted advance and the recent faltering of socialist politics. It considers this question principally in relation to the experience of the wealthier and more advanced capitalist countries of Europe, America, the Antipodes and the Far East, assuming, with Marx, that the superiority of socialist civilization, if it is to be established at all, must be so by its greater capacity to resolve the practical problems of those societies which are materially the most advanced.

There are three demands which it is reasonable to make of a political theory: the first is that it should capture what political structures, political institutions and political relations are actually like at present – what they consist in, what they prevent and what they bring about (the simplest understanding of Taylor's formula). The second is that it should capture our sense of how we might coherently and justifiably desire any human society to be. The third is that it should tell us what is to be done to realize in practice as intrinsically desirable a social and political condition as can in fact be realized and sustained in the historical circumstances in which we find ourselves.

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• Socialism as political theory
• Book: The Politics of Socialism
• Online publication: 05 June 2012
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621963.003

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Socialism is a rich tradition of political thought and practice, the history of which contains a vast number of views and theories, often differing in many of their conceptual, empirical, and normative commitments. Going back a century, Angelo Rappoport in his 1924 Dictionary of Socialism canvassed no fewer than forty definitions of socialism, telling his readers in the book’s preface that “there are many mansions in the House of Socialism” (Rappoport 1924: v, 34–41). To take even a relatively restricted subset of socialist thought, Leszek Kołakowski could fill over 1,300 pages in his magisterial survey of Main Currents of Marxism (Kołakowski 1978 [2008]). Our aim is of necessity more modest. In what follows, we are concerned to present the main features of socialism, both as a critique of capitalism, and as a proposal for its replacement. Our focus is predominantly on literature written within a philosophical idiom, focusing in particular on philosophical writing on socialism produced during the past forty-or-so years. Furthermore, our discussion concentrates on the normative contrast between socialism and capitalism as economic systems. Both socialism and capitalism grant workers legal control of their labor power, but socialism, unlike capitalism, requires that the bulk of the means of production workers use to yield goods and services be under the effective control of workers themselves, rather than in the hands of the members of a different, capitalist class under whose direction they must toil. As we will explain below, this contrast has been articulated further in different ways, and socialists have not only made distinctive claims regarding economic organization but also regarding the processes of transformation fulfilling them and the principles and ideals orienting their justification (including, as we will see, certain understandings of freedom, equality, solidarity, and democracy). [ 1 ]

1. Socialism and Capitalism

2. three dimensions of socialist views, 3.1 socialist principles, 3.2.1 exploitation, 3.2.2 interference and domination, 3.2.3 alienation, 3.2.4 inefficiency, 3.2.5 liberal egalitarianism and inequality in capitalism, 4.1 central and participatory planning, 4.2 market socialism, 4.3 less comprehensive, piecemeal reforms, 5. socialist transformation (dimension diii), other internet resources, related entries.

Socialism is best defined in contrast with capitalism, as socialism has arisen both as a critical challenge to capitalism, and as a proposal for overcoming and replacing it. In the classical, Marxist definition (G.A. Cohen 2000a: ch. 3; Fraser 2014: 57–9), capitalism involves certain relations of production . These comprise certain forms of control over the productive forces —the labor power that workers deploy in production and the means of production such as natural resources, tools, and spaces they employ to yield goods and services—and certain social patterns of economic interaction that typically correlate with that control. Capitalism displays the following constitutive features:

(i) The bulk of the means of production is privately owned and controlled . (ii) People legally own their labor power. (Here capitalism differs from slavery and feudalism, under which systems some individuals are entitled to control, whether completely or partially, the labor power of others). (iii) Markets are the main mechanism allocating inputs and outputs of production and determining how societies’ productive surplus is used, including whether and how it is consumed or invested.

An additional feature that is typically present wherever (i)–(iii) hold, is that:

(iv) There is a class division between capitalists and workers, involving specific relations (e.g., whether of bargaining, conflict, or subordination) between those classes, and shaping the labor market, the firm, and the broader political process.

The existence of wage labor is often seen by socialists as a necessary condition for a society to be counted as capitalist (Schweickart 2002 [2011: 23]). Typically, workers (unlike capitalists) must sell their labor power to make a living. They sell it to capitalists, who (unlike the workers) control the means of production. Capitalists typically subordinate workers in the production process, as capitalists have asymmetric decision-making power over what gets produced and how it gets produced. Capitalists also own the output of production and sell it in the market, and they control the predominant bulk of the flow of investment within the economy. The relation between capitalists and workers can involve cooperation, but also relations of conflict (e.g., regarding wages and working conditions). This more-or-less antagonistic power relationship between capitalists and workers plays out in a number of areas, within production itself, and in the broader political process, as in both the economic and political domains decisions are made about who does what, and who gets what.

There are possible economic systems that would present exceptions, in which (iv) does not hold even if (i), (ii) and (iii) all obtain. Examples here are a society of independent commodity producers or a property-owning democracy (in which individuals or groups of workers own firms). There is debate, however, as to how feasible—accessible and stable—these are in a modern economic environment (O’Neill 2012).

Another feature that is also typically seen as arising where (i)–(iii) hold is this:

(v) Production is primarily oriented to capital accumulation (i.e., economic production is primarily oriented to profit rather than to the satisfaction of human needs). (G.A. Cohen 2000a; Roemer 2017).

In contrast to capitalism, socialism can be defined as a type of society in which, at a minimum, (i) is turned into (i*):

(i*) The bulk of the means of production is under social, democratic control.

Changes with regard to features (ii), (iii), and (v) are hotly debated amongst socialists. Regarding (ii), socialists retain the view that workers should control their labor power, but many do not affirm the kind of absolute, libertarian property rights in labor power that would, e.g., prevent taxation or other forms of mandatory contribution to cater for the basic needs of others (G.A. Cohen 1995). Regarding (iii), there is a recent burgeoning literature on “market socialism”, which we discuss below, where proposals are advanced to create an economy that is socialist but nevertheless features extensive markets. Finally, regarding (v), although most socialists agree that, due to competitive pressures, capitalists are bound to seek profit maximization, some puzzle over whether when they do this, it is “greed and fear” and not the generation of resources to make others besides themselves better-off that is the dominant, more basic drive and hence the degree to which profit-maximization should be seen as a normatively troubling phenomenon. (See Steiner 2014, in contrast with G.A. Cohen 2009, discussing the case of capitalists amassing capital to give it away through charity.) Furthermore, some socialists argue that the search for profits in a market socialist economy is not inherently suspicious (Schweickart 2002 [2011]). Most socialists, however, tend to find the profit motive problematic.

An important point about this definition of socialism is that socialism is not equivalent to, and is arguably in conflict with, statism. (i*) involves expansion of social power—power based on the capacity to mobilize voluntary cooperation and collective action—as distinct from state power—power based on the control of rule-making and rule enforcing over a territory—as well of economic power—power based on the control of material resources (Wright 2010). If a state controls the economy but is not in turn democratically controlled by the individuals engaged in economic life, what we have is some form of statism, not socialism (see also Arnold in Other Internet Resources (OIR) , 2022; Dardot & Laval 2014).

When characterizing socialist views, it is useful to distinguish between three dimensions of a conception of a social justice (Gilabert 2017a; Gilabert 2023a: ch. 4). We identify these three dimensions as:

(DI) the core ideals and principles animating that conception of justice; (DII) the social institutions and practices implementing the ideals specified at DI; (DIII) the processes of transformation leading agents and their society from where they are currently, to the social outcome specified in DII.

The characterization of capitalism and socialism in the previous section focuses on the social institutions and practices constituting each form of society (i.e., on DII). We step back from this institutional dimension in section 3, below, to consider the central normative commitments of socialism (DI) and to survey their deployment in the socialist critique of capitalism. We then, in section 4 , engage in a more detailed discussion of accounts of the institutional shape of socialism (DII), exploring the various proposed implementations of socialist ideals and principles outlined under DI. We turn to accounts of the transition to socialism (DIII) in section 5 .

3. Socialist Critiques of Capitalism and their Grounds (Dimension DI)

Socialists have condemned capitalism by alleging that it typically features exploitation, domination, alienation, and inefficiency. Before surveying these criticisms, it is important to note that they rely on various ideals and principles at DI. We first mention these grounds briefly, and then elaborate on them as we discuss their engagement in socialists’ critical arguments. We set aside the debate, conducted mostly during the 1980s and largely centered on the interpretation of Marx’s writings, as to whether the condemnation of capitalism and the advocacy for socialism relies (or should rely), on moral grounds (Geras 1985; Lukes 1985; Peffer 1990). Whereas some Marxist socialists take the view that criticism of capitalism can be conducted without making use—either explicitly or implicitly—of arguments with a moral foundation, our focus is on arguments that do rely on such grounds.

Socialists have deployed ideals and principles of equality, democracy, individual freedom, self-realization, and community or solidarity. Regarding equality , they have proposed strong versions of the principle of equality of opportunity according to which everyone should have “broadly equal access to the necessary material and social means to live flourishing lives” (Wright 2010: 12; Roemer 1994a: 11–4; Nielsen 1985). Some, but by no means all, socialists construe equality of opportunity in a luck-egalitarian way, as requiring the neutralization of inequalities of access to advantage that result from people’s circumstances rather than their choices (G.A. Cohen 2009: 17–9). Socialists also embrace the ideal of democracy , requiring that people have “broadly equal access to the necessary means to participate meaningfully in decisions” affecting their lives (Wright 2010: 12; Arnold n.d. [OIR] : sect. 4; Love 2020). Many socialists say that democratic participation should be available not only at the level of governmental institutions, but also in various economic arenas (such as within the firm). Third, socialists are committed to the importance of individual freedom . This commitment includes versions of the standard ideas of negative liberty and non-domination (requiring security from inappropriate interference by others). But it also typically includes a more demanding, positive form of self-determination, as the “real freedom” of being able to develop one’s own projects and bring them to fruition (Elster 1985: 205; Gould 1988: ch. 1; Van Parijs 1995: ch. 1; Castoriadis 1979). An ideal of self-realization through autonomously chosen activities featuring people’s development and exercise of their creative and productive capacities in cooperation with others sometimes informs socialists’ positive views of freedom and equality—as in the view that there should be a requirement of access to the conditions of self-realization at work (Elster 1986: ch. 3; Gilabert 2023a: ch. 3; Kandiyali 2020). Finally, and relatedly, socialists often affirm an idea of community or solidarity , according to which people should organize their economic life so that they treat the freedom and well-being of others as intrinsically significant. People should recognize positive duties to support other people, or, as Einstein (1949) put it, a “sense of responsibility for [their] fellow men”. Or, as Cohen put it, people should “care about, and, where necessary and possible, care for, one another, and, too, care that they care about one another” (G.A. Cohen 2009: 34–5; see also Arnold 2020). Community is sometimes presented as a moral ideal which is not itself a demand of justice but can be used to temper problematic results permitted by some demands of justice (such as the inequalities of outcome permitted by a luck-egalitarian principle of equality of opportunity (G.A. Cohen 2009)). However, community is sometimes presented within socialist views as a demand of justice itself (Gilabert 2012). Some socialists also take solidarity as partly shaping a desirable form of “social freedom” in which people are able not only to advance their own good but also to act with and for others (Honneth 2015 [2017: ch. I]).

Given the diversity of fundamental principles to which socialists commonly appeal, it is perhaps unsurprising that few attempts have been made to link these principles under a unified framework. A suggested strategy has been to articulate some aspects of them as requirements flowing from what we might call the Abilities / Needs Principle , following Marx’s famous dictum, in The Critique of the Gotha Program , that a communist society should be organized so as to realize the goals of producing and distributing “From each according to [their] abilities, to each according to [their] needs”. This principle, presented with brevity and in the absence of much elaboration by Marx (Marx 1875 [1978b: 531]) has been interpreted in different ways. One, descriptive interpretation simply takes it to be a prediction of how people will feel motivated to act in a socialist society. Another, straightforwardly normative interpretation construes the Marxian dictum as stating duties to contribute to, and claims to benefit from, the social product—addressing the allocation of both the burdens and benefits of social cooperation. Its fulfillment would, in an egalitarian and solidaristic fashion, empower people to live flourishing lives (Carens 2003, Gilabert 2015, 2023a: ch. 3). The normative principle itself has also been interpreted as an articulation of the broader, and more basic, idea of human dignity. Aiming at solidaristic empowerment , this idea could be understood as requiring that we support people in the pursuit of a flourishing life by not blocking, and by enabling, the development and exercise of their valuable capacities, which are at the basis of their moral status as agents with dignity (Gilabert 2017b; Gilabert 2023a: chs. 1 and 3).

3.2 Socialist Charges against Capitalism

The first typical charge leveled by socialists is that capitalism features the exploitation of wage workers by their capitalist employers. Exploitation has been characterized in two ways. First, in the so-called “technical” Marxist characterization, workers are exploited by capitalists when the value embodied in the goods they can purchase with their wages is inferior to the value embodied in the goods they produce—with the capitalists appropriating the difference. To maximize the profit resulting from the sale of what the workers produce, capitalists have an incentive to keep wages low. This descriptive characterization, which focuses on the flow of surplus labor from workers to capitalists, differs from another common, normative characterization of exploitation, according to which exploitation involves taking unfair, wrongful, or unjust advantage of the productive efforts of others. An obvious question is when, if ever, incidents of exploitation in the technical sense involve exploitation in the normative sense. When is the transfer of surplus labor from workers to capitalists such that it involves wrongful advantage taking of the former by the latter? Socialists have provided at least four answers to this question. (For critical surveys see Arnsperger and Van Parijs 2003: ch. III; Vrousalis 2018; Wolff 1999).

The first answer is offered by the unequal exchange account , according to which A exploits B if and only if in their exchange A gets more than B does. This account effectively collapses the normative sense of exploitation into the technical one. But critics have argued that this account fails to provide sufficient conditions for exploitation in the normative sense. Not every unequal exchange is wrongful: it would not be wrong to transfer resources from workers to people who (perhaps through no choice or fault of their own) are unable to work.

A second proposal is to say that A exploits B if and only if A gets surplus labor from B in a way that is coerced or forced. This labor entitlement account (Holmstrom 1977; Reiman 1987) relies on the view that workers are entitled to the product of their labor, and that capitalists wrongly deprive them of it. In a capitalist economy, workers are compelled to transfer surplus labor to capitalists on pain of severe poverty. This is a result of the coercively enforced system of private property rights in the means of production. Since they do not control means of production to secure their own subsistence, workers have no reasonable alternative to selling their labor power to capitalists and to toil on the terms favored by the latter. Critics of this approach have argued that it, like the previous account, fails to provide sufficient conditions for wrongful exploitation because it would (counterintuitively) have to condemn transfers from workers to destitute people unable to work. Furthermore, it has been argued that the account fails to provide necessary conditions for the occurrence of exploitation. Problematic transfers of surplus labor can occur without coercion. For example, A may have sophisticated means of production, not obtained from others through coercion, and hire B to work on them at a perhaps unfairly low wage, which B voluntarily accepts despite having acceptable, although less advantageous, alternatives (Roemer 1994b: ch. 4).

The third, unfair distribution of productive endowments account suggests that the core problem with capitalist exploitation (and with other forms of exploitation in class-divided social systems) is that it proceeds against a background distribution of initial access to productive assets that is inegalitarian. A is an exploiter, and B is exploited, if and only if A gains from B ’s labor and A would be worse off, and B better off, in an alternative hypothetical economic environment in which the initial distribution of assets was equal (with everything else remaining constant) (Roemer 1994b: 110). This account relies on a luck-egalitarian principle of equality of opportunity. (According to luck-egalitarianism, no one should be made worse-off than others due to circumstances beyond their control.) Critics have argued that, because of that, it fails to provide necessary conditions for wrongful exploitation. If A finds B stuck in a pit, it would be wrong for A to offer B rescue only if B signs a sweatshop contract with A —even if B happened to have fallen into the pit after voluntarily taking the risk to go hiking in an area well known to be dotted with such perilous obstacles (Vrousalis 2013, 2018). Other critics worry that this account neglects the centrality of relations of power or dominance between exploiters and exploited (Veneziani 2013).

A fourth approach directly focuses on the fact that exploitation typically arises when there is a significant power asymmetry between the parties involved. The more powerful instrumentalize and take advantage of the vulnerability of the less powerful to benefit from this asymmetry in positions (Goodin 1987). A specific version of this view, the domination for self-enrichment account (Vrousalis 2013, 2018, 2022), says that A exploits B if A benefits from a transaction in which A dominates B . (On this account, domination involves a disrespectful use of A ’s power over B .) Capitalist property rights, with the resulting unequal access to the means of production, put propertyless workers at the mercy of capitalists, who use their superior power over them to extract surplus labor. A worry about this approach is that it does not explain when the more powerful party is taking too much from the less powerful party. For example, take a situation where A and B start with equal assets, but A chooses to work hard while B chooses to spend more time at leisure, so that at a later time A controls the means of production, while B has only their own labor power. We imagine that A offers B employment, and then ask, in light of their ex ante equal position, at what level of wage for B and profit for A would the transaction involve wrongful exploitation? To come to a settled view on this question, it might be necessary to combine reliance on a principle of freedom as non-domination with appeal to additional socialist principles addressing just distribution—such as some version of the principles of equality and solidarity mentioned above in section 3.1 (Gilabert 2023a: ch. 5).

Capitalism is often defended by saying that it maximally extends people’s freedom, understood as the absence of interference. Socialism would allegedly depress that freedom by prohibiting or limiting capitalist activities such as setting up a private firm, hiring wage workers, and keeping, investing, or spending profits. Socialists generally acknowledge that a socialist economy would severely constrain some such freedoms. But they point out that capitalist property rights also involve interference. They remind us that “private property by one person presupposes non-ownership on the part of other persons” (Marx 1991: 812) and warn that often, although

liberals and libertarians see the freedom which is intrinsic to capitalism, they overlook the unfreedom which necessarily accompanies capitalist freedom. (G.A. Cohen 2011: 150)

Workers could and would be coercively interfered with if they tried to use means of production possessed by capitalists, to walk away with the products of their labor in capitalist firms, or to access consumption goods they do not have enough money to buy. In fact, every economic system opens some zones of non-interference while closing others. Hence the appropriate question is not whether capitalism or socialism involve interference—they both do—but whether either of them involves more net interference, or more troubling forms of interference, than the other. And the answer to that question is far from obvious. It could very well be that most agents in a socialist society face less (troublesome) interference as they pursue their projects of production and consumption than agents in a capitalist society (G.A. Cohen 2011: chs. 7–8).

Capitalist economic relations are often defended by saying that they are the result of free choices by consenting adults. Wage workers are not slaves or serfs—they have the legal right to refuse to work for capitalists. But socialists reply that the relationship between capitalists and workers actually involves domination. Workers are inappropriately subject to the will of capitalists in the shaping of the terms on which they work (both in the spheres of exchange and production, and within the broader political process). Workers’ consent to their exploitation is given in circumstances of deep vulnerability and asymmetry of power. According to Marx, two conditions help explain workers’ apparently free choice to enter into a nevertheless exploitative contract: (1) in capitalism (unlike in feudalism or slave societies) workers own their labor power, but (2) they do not own means of production. Because of their deprivation (2), workers have no reasonable alternative to using their entitlement (1) to sell their labor power to the capitalists—who do own the means of production (Marx 1867 [1990: 272–3]). Through labor-saving technical innovations spurred by competition, capitalism also constantly produces unemployment, which weakens the bargaining power of individual workers further. Thus, Marx says that although workers voluntarily enter into exploitative contracts, they are “compelled [to do so] by social conditions”.

The silent compulsion of economic relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker…. [The worker’s] dependence on capital … springs from the conditions of production themselves, and is guaranteed in perpetuity by them. (Marx 1867 [1990: 382, 899])

Because of the deep background inequality of power resulting from their structural position within a capitalist economy, workers accept a pattern of economic transaction in which they submit to the direction of capitalists during the activities of production, and surrender to those same capitalists a disproportional share of the fruits of their labor. Although some individual workers might be able to escape their vulnerable condition by saving and starting a firm of their own, most would find this extremely difficult, and they could not all do it simultaneously within capitalism (Elster 1985: 208–16; G.A. Cohen 1988: ch. 13).

Socialists sometimes say that capitalism flouts an ideal of non-domination as freedom from being subject to rules one has systematically less power to shape than others (Gourevitch 2013; Arnold 2017; O’Shea 2020; Cicerchia 2022; Gilabert 2017b: 566–7—on which this and the previous paragraph draw). Capitalist relations of production involve domination and the dependence of workers on the discretion of capitalists’ choices at three critical junctures. The first, mentioned above, concerns the labor contract. Due to their lack of control of the means of production, workers must largely submit, on pain of starvation or severe poverty, to the terms capitalists offer them. The second concerns interactions in the workplace. Capitalists and their managers rule the activities of workers by unilaterally deciding what and how the latter produce. Although in the sphere of circulation workers and capitalists might look (misleadingly, given the first point) like equally free contractors striking fair deals, once we enter the “hidden abode” of production it is clear to all sides that what exists is relationships of intense subjection of some to the will of others (Marx 1867 [1990: 279–80]). Workers effectively spend many of their waking hours doing what others dictate them to do. Third, and finally, capitalists have a disproportionate impact on the legal and political process shaping the institutional structure of the society in which they exploit workers, with capitalist interests dominating the political processes which in turn set the contours of property and labor law. Even if workers manage to obtain the legal right to vote and create their own trade unions and parties (which labor movements achieved in some countries after much struggle), capitalists exert disproportionate influence via greater access to mass media, the funding of political parties, the threat of disinvestment and capital flight if governments reduce their profit margin, and the past and prospective recruitment of state officials in lucrative jobs in their firms and lobbying agencies (Wright 2010: 81–4). At the spheres of exchange, production, and in the broader political process, workers and capitalist have asymmetric structural power. Consequently, the former are significantly subject to the will of the latter in the shaping of the terms on which they work (see further Wright 2000 [2015]). This inequality of structural power, some socialists claim, is an affront to workers’ dignity as self-determining, self-mastering agents (Gilabert 2023a: ch. 7).

The third point about domination mentioned above is also deployed by socialists to say that capitalism conflicts with democracy (Wright 2010: 81–4; Arnold n.d. [OIR] : sect. 4; Bowles and Gintis 1986; Meiksins Wood 1995). Democracy requires that people have roughly equal power to affect the political process that structures their social life—or at least that inequalities do not reflect morally irrelevant features such as race, gender, and class. Socialists have made three points regarding the conflict between capitalism and democracy. The first concerns political democracy of the kind that is familiar today. Even in the presence of multi-party electoral systems, members of the capitalist class—despite being a minority of the population—have significantly more influence than members of the working class. Governments have a tendency to adapt their agendas to the wishes of capitalists because they depend on their investment decisions to raise the taxes to fund public policies, as well as for the variety of other reasons outlined above. Even if socialist parties win elections, as long as they do not change the fundamentals of the economic system, they must be congenial to the wishes of capitalists. Thus, socialists have argued that deep changes in the economic structure of society are needed to make electoral democracy fulfill its promise. Political power cannot be insulated from economic power. They also, secondly, think that such changes may be directly significant. Indeed, as radical democrats, socialists have argued that reducing inequality of decision-making power within the economic sphere itself is not only instrumentally significant (to reduce inequality within the governmental sphere), but also intrinsically significant to increase people’s self-determination in their daily lives as economic agents. Therefore, most democratic socialists call for a solution to the problem of the conflict between democracy and capitalism by extending democratic principles into the economy (Fleurbaey 2006). Exploring the parallel between the political and economic systems, socialists have argued that democratic principles should apply in the economic arena as they do in the political domain, as economic decisions, like political decisions, have dramatic consequences for the freedom and well-being of people. Returning to the issue of the relations between the two arenas, socialists have also argued that fostering workers’ self-determination in the economy (notably in the workplace) enhances democratic participation at the political level (Coutrot 2018: ch. 9; Arnold 2012; see survey on workplace democracy in Frega et al. 2019). A third strand of argument, finally, has explored the importance of socialist reforms for fulfilling the ideal of a deliberative democracy in which people participate as free and equal reasoners seeking to make decisions that actually cater for the common good of all (J. Cohen 1989).

As mentioned above, socialists have included, in their affirmation of individual freedom, a specific concern with real or effective freedom to lead flourishing lives. This freedom is often linked with a positive ideal of self-realization , which in turn motivates a critique of capitalism as generating alienation. This perspective informs Marx’s views on the strong contrast between productive activity under socialism and under capitalism (Marx 1844 [1978a]; 1844 [2000]; see also Kandiyali 2000; Brixel, forthcoming). In socialism, the “realm of necessity” and the correspondingly necessary, but typically unsavory, labor required to secure basic subsistence would be reduced so that people also gain increasing access to a “realm of freedom” in which a desirable form of work involving creativity, cultivation of talents, and meaningful cooperation with others is available. This realm of freedom would unleash “the development of human energy which is an end in itself” (Marx 1991: 957–9). This work, allowing for and facilitating individuals’ self-realization, would enable the “all-round development of the individual”, and would in fact become a “prime want” (Marx 1875 [1978b: 531]). The socialist society would feature “the development of the rich individuality which is all-sided in its production as in its consumption” (Marx 1857–8 [1973: 325]); it would constitute a “higher form of society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle” (Marx 1867 [1990: 739]). By contrast, capitalism denies the majority of the population access to self-realization at work. Workers typically toil in tasks which are uninteresting and even stunting. They do not control how production unfolds or what is done with the outputs of production. And their relations with others are often not ones of fellowship, but rather of domination (under their bosses) and of competition (against their fellow workers). When alienated,

labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his essential being; … in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. … It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. (Marx 1844 [1978a: 74])

Recent scholarship has developed these ideas further. Elster has provided the most detailed discussion and development of the Marxian ideal of self-realization. The idea is defined as “the full and free actualization and externalization of the powers and the abilities of the individual” (Elster 1986: 43; 1989: 131). Self-actualization involves a two-step process in which individuals develop their powers (e.g., learn the principles and techniques of civil engineering) and then actualize those powers (e.g., design and participate in the construction of a bridge). Self-externalization, in turn, features a process in which individuals’ powers become visible to others with the potential beneficial outcome of social recognition and the accompanying boost in self-respect and self-esteem. However, Elster says that this Marxian ideal must be reformulated to make it more realistic. No one can develop all their powers fully, and no feasible economy would enable everyone always to get exactly their first-choice jobs and conduct them only in the ways they would most like. Furthermore, self-realization for and with others (and thus also the combination of self-realization with community) may not always work smoothly, as producers entangled in large and complex societies may not feel strongly moved by the needs of distant others, and significant forms of division of labor will likely persist. Still, Elster thinks the socialist ideal of self-realization remains worth pursuing, for example through the generation of opportunities to produce in worker cooperatives.

Others have construed the demand for real options to produce in ways that involve self-realization and solidarity as significant for the implementation of the Abilities / Needs Principle (Gilabert 2015: 207–12; Gilabert 2023a: 105-15), and defended a right to opportunities for meaningful work against the charges that political views oriented by an ideal of self-realization violate a liberal constraint of neutrality about conceptions of the good, rest on problematic assumptions about human nature, or are prone to supporting paternalistic impositions (Gilabert 2023a: 51–3, 92–5, 103–5, 224–37)

Kandiyali meanwhile has defended a reciprocal social interpretation of the Marxian ideas of self-realisation and non-alienation according to which unalienated production would involve workers’ achieving self-realisation precisely through helping to provide each other with the goods and services that those others need for their self-realisation (Kandiyali 2020). On this view, there is an internal relationship between the preconditions for one’s own self-development and the requirement that one stand in a relationship of mutual care and support with others. In other recent work on alienation, Maguire has advanced the view that efficient markets are unavoidably sources of alienation, insofar as they inhibit the ability of market participants to manifest relations of care with their fellow market participants; hence on this view market efficiency always carries an opportunity cost in terms of its undermining the manifestation of mutual care, and thereby alienates individual agents from valuable opportunities to realise a broader range of important values in the course of their productive activity (Maguire 2022).

Further scholarship explores recent changes in the organization of production. Boltanski and Chiapello argue that since the 1980s capitalism has partly absorbed (what they dub) the “artistic critique” against de-skilled and heteronomous work by generating schemes of economic activity in which workers operate in teams and have significant decision-making powers. However, these new forms of work, although common especially in certain knowledge-intensive sectors, are not available to all workers, and they still operate under the ultimate control of capital owners and their profit maximizing strategies. They also operate in tandem with the elimination of the social security policies typical of the (increasingly eroded) welfare state. Thus, the “artistic” strand in the socialist critique of capitalism as hampering people’s authenticity, creativity, and autonomy has not been fully absorbed and should be renewed. It should also be combined with the other, “social critique” strand which challenges inequality, insecurity, and selfishness (Boltanski and Chiapello 2018: Introduction, sect. 2). Other authors find in these new forms of work the seeds of future forms of economic organization—arguing that they provide evidence that workers can plan and control sophisticated processes of production on their own and that capitalists and their managers are largely redundant (Negri 2008).

The critique of alienation has also been recently developed further by Forst (2017) by exploring the relation between alienation and domination. On this account, the central problem with alienation is that it involves the denial of people’s autonomy—their ability and right to shape their social life on terms they could justify to themselves and to each other as free and equal co-legislators. (For further discussion on alienation and self-realization, see Jaeggi 2014: ch. 10. See also the general analysis of the concept of alienation in Leopold 2022a.)

A traditional criticism of capitalism (especially amongst Marxists) is that it is inefficient. Capitalism is prone to cyclic crises in which wealth and human potential is destroyed and squandered. For example, to cut costs and maximize profits, firms choose work-saving technologies and lay off workers. But at the aggregate level, this erodes the demand for their products, which forces firms to cut costs further (by laying off even more workers or halting production). Socialism would, it has been argued, not be so prone to crises, as the rationale for production would not be profit maximization but need satisfaction. Although important, this line of criticism is less widespread amongst contemporary socialists. Historically, capitalism has proved quite resilient, resurrecting itself after crises and expanding its productivity dramatically over time. In might very well be that capitalism is the best feasible regime if the only standard of assessment were productivity.

Still, socialists point out that capitalism involves some significant inefficiencies. Examples are the underproduction of public goods (such as public transportation and education), the underpricing and overconsumption of natural resources (such as fossil fuels and fishing stocks), negative externalities (such as pollution), the costs of monitoring and enforcing market contracts and private property (given that the exploited may not be so keen to work as hard as their profit-maximizing bosses require, and that the marginalized may be moved by desperation to steal), and certain defects of intellectual property rights (such as blocking the diffusion of innovation, and alienating those who engage in creative activities because of their intrinsic appeal and because of the will to serve the public rather than maximize monetary reward) (Wright 2010: 55–65). Really existing capitalist societies have introduced regulations to counter some of these problems, at least to some extent. Examples are taxes and constraints to limit economic activities with negative externalities, and public funding and subsidies to sustain activities with positive externalities which are not sufficiently supported by the market. But, socialists insist, such mechanisms are external to capitalism, as they limit property rights and the scope for profit maximization as the primary orientation in the organization of the economy. The regulations involve the hybridization of the economic system by introducing some non-capitalist, and even socialist elements.

There is also an important issue of whether efficiency should only be understood in terms of maximizing production of material consumption goods. If the metric, or the utility space, that is taken into account when engaging in maximization assessments includes more than these goods, then capitalism can also be criticized as inefficient on account of its tendency to depress the availability of leisure time (as well as to distribute it quite unequally). This carries limitation of people’s access to the various goods that leisure enables—such as the cultivation of friendships, family, and community or political participation. Technological innovations create the opportunity to choose between retaining the previous level of production while using fewer inputs (such as labor time) or maintaining the level of inputs while producing more. John Maynard Keynes famously held that it would be reasonable to tend towards the prior option, and expected societies to take this path as the technological frontier advanced (Keynes 1930/31 [2010]; Pecchi and Piga 2010). Nevertheless, in large part because of the profit maximization motive, capitalism displays an inherent bias in favor of the second, arguably inferior, option. Capitalism thereby narrows the realistic options of its constituent economic agents—both firms and individuals. Firms would lose their competitive edge and risk bankruptcy if they did not pursue profits ahead of the broader interests of their workers (as their products would likely be more expensive). And it is typically hard for workers to find jobs that pay reasonable salaries for fewer hours of work. Socialists concerned with expanding leisure time—and also with environmental risks—find this bias quite alarming (see, e.g., G.A. Cohen 2000a: ch. XI). If a conflict between further increase in the production of material objects for consumption and the expansion of leisure time (and environmental protection) is unavoidable, then it is not clear, all things considered, that the former should be prioritized, especially when an economy has already reached a high level of material productivity.

Capitalism has also been challenged on liberal egalitarian grounds, and in ways that lend themselves to support for socialism. (Rawls 2001; Barry 2005; Piketty 2014; O’Neill 2008a, 2012, 2017, 2020, 2021; Ronzoni 2018). While many of John Rawls’s readers long took him to be a proponent of an egalitarian form of a capitalist welfare state, or as one might put it “a slightly imaginary Sweden”, in fact Rawls rejected such institutional arrangements as inadequate to the task of realizing principles of political liberty or equality of opportunity, or of keeping material inequalities within sufficiently tight bounds. His own avowed view of the institutions that would be needed to realize liberal egalitarian principles of justice was officially neutral as between a form of “property-owning democracy”, which would combine private property in the means of production with its egalitarian distribution, and hence the abolition of the separate classes of capitalists and workers; and a form of liberal democratic socialism that would see public ownership of the preponderance of the means of production, with devolved control of particular firms (Rawls 2001: 135–40; O’Neill and Williamson 2012). While Rawls’s version of liberal democratic socialism was insufficiently developed in his own writings, he stands as an interesting case of a theorist whose defense of a form of democratic socialism is based on normative foundations that are not themselves distinctively socialist, but concerned with the core liberal democratic values of justice and equality (see also Edmundson 2017; Ypi 2018; O’Neill 2020).

In a similar vein to Rawls, another instance of a theorist who defends at least partially socialist institutional arrangements on liberal egalitarian grounds was the Nobel Prize winning economist James Meade. Giving a central place to decidedly liberal values of freedom, security and independence, Meade argued that the likely levels of socioeconomic inequality under capitalism were such that a capitalist economy would need to be extensively tempered by socialist elements, such as the development of a citizens’ sovereign wealth fund, if the economic system were to be justifiable to those living under it (Meade 1964; O’Neill 2015 [OIR] , 2017; O’Neill and White 2019). Looking back before Meade, J. S. Mill can also be seen as a theorist who traveled along what we might describe as “the liberal road to socialism”, with Mill in his Autobiography describing his own view as the acceptance of a “qualified socialism” (Mill 1873 [2018]), and arguing for a range of measures to create a more egalitarian economy, including making the case for a steady-state rather than a growth-oriented economy, arguing for workers’ collective ownership and self-management of firms in preference to the hierarchical structures characteristic of most firms under capitalism, and endorsing steep taxation of inheritance and unearned income (Mill 2008; see also Ten 1998; O’Neill 2008b, Pateman 1970). The recent scholarship of Helen McCabe has both provided a clearer picture of the depth and centrality of J. S. Mill’s socialist thinking, and provided a clearer account of the ways in which Mill’s position can be viewed as work jointly authored with Harriet Taylor Mill, whose influence seems to have radicalised Mill’s political thinking (McCabe 2021, 2023)

Within recent liberal egalitarian political philosophy, the argument has been advanced that as capitalist economies tend towards higher levels of inequality, and in particular with the rapid velocity at which the incomes and wealth of the very rich in society is increasing, many of those who had seen their normative commitments as requiring only the mild reform of capitalist economies might need to come to see the need to endorse more radical socialist institutional proposals (O’Neill 2020; Ronzoni 2018). Other philosophers have begun to put some pressure on mainstream liberal egalitarian assumptions about freedom of occupational choice. For example, the argument has been advanced that traditional liberal occupational freedoms, when viewed against the background of significant economic inequalities, can to the under-provision of vital public services to those in certain deprived areas. The absolute protection of freedom of occupational choice could also to an unjust distribution of effective freedom, whereby those with access to income from capital can live free of the demands of the labour market, while those from less privileged backgrounds find themselves forced to take whatever jobs the market pushes them towards. Lucas Stanczyk has argued that there are therefore compelling liberal grounds both for condemning existing ways of organising the division of labour (Stanczyk 2022) and for accepting some degree of “labour conscription” on grounds of social justice (Stanczyk 2012; see also Walzer 1984; Nielsen 1985; Gomberg 2007; Kandiyali 2023; by contrast, for the canonical liberal rejection of “the central direction of labour” see Rawls 1999, §42; see also Cohen 2008, p. 186, where he states that on this issue his own “inclinations are more liberal” in contrast to “Old-style Stalinistically inclined egalitarians” who would allow coercive imposition of occupational roles).

Meanwhile another significant strand in recent liberal egalitarian thinking has emphasised the degree to which mainstream liberal egalitarianism has unjustifably neglected the role of the value of community (or solidarity). Cohen’s emphasis in Why Not Socialism? (Cohen 2009) on the need to endorse parallel normative commitments to both equality and community can be seen as a response to the shortcomings of a trend in luck egalitarian and related views that had emphasised the first value too often at the expense of the latter (e.g. Arneson 1989; Dworkin 2000). More recent work on the place of community within liberal egalitarianism has explored the ways in which social and economic institutions may need to be reimagined and redesigned so as to avoid “pitting people against each other” (Hussain 2020; see also Gilabert 2023b). These concerns with the value of community align more closely with the traditional socialist value of solidarity, as compared to the rather different approach taken in earlier ‘communitarian’ critiques of mainstream liberal egalitarianism (for guides to those earlier debates, see Mulhall & Swift 1996; Kymlicka 2002, Ch 5).

Alongside this return to considerations of solidarity within liberal egalitarian thought (on which see also Kolers 2016; Sangiovanni 2023; Sangiovanni and Viehoff 2023, 2024) there has also been a move towards more careful consideration of the institutional preconditions for nurturing and developing citizens’ shared sense of commitment to the collective project of creating just institutions, seen as potentially necessitating support for a range of institutions designed either to bring collective deliberation into market processes or to give citizens spaces to encounter each other outside the market (Hussain 2012; O’Neill 2020). Hussain has also recently made the case that, in order for free market economies to be rendered consistent with the value of human freedom, there is a need to embed deliberative “intermediary institutions” within markets, as with Nordic or Rhenish forms of industrial codetermination. On Hussain’s view, even a freedom-based defence of free markets should, when pursued seriously, lead us towards a range of more collective economic institutions that have more often been associated with forms of social democracy or democratic socialism (Hussain 2023).

4. Socialist Institutional Designs (Dimension DII)

The foregoing discussion focused on socialist critiques of capitalism. These critiques make the case that capitalism fails to fulfill principles, or to realize values, to which socialists are committed. But what would an alternative economic system look like which would fulfill those principles, or realize those values—or at least honor them to a larger extent? This brings us to dimension DII of socialism. We will consider several proposed models. We will address here critical concerns about both the feasibility and the desirability of these models. Arguments comparing ideal socialist designs with actual capitalist societies are unsatisfactory; we must compare like with like (Nove 1991; Rawls 2001; Brennan 2014; Corneo 2017). Thus, we should compare ideal forms of socialism with ideal forms of capitalism, and actual versions of capitalism with actual versions of socialism. Most importantly, we should entertain comparisons between the best feasible incarnations of these systems (Gilabert 2023a: ch.8). This requires formulating feasible forms of socialism. Feasibility assessments can play out in two ways: they may regard the (degree of) workability and stability of a proposed socialist system once introduced, or they may regard its (degree of) accessibility from current conditions when it is not yet in place. We address the former concerns in this section, leaving the latter for section 5 when we turn to dimension DIII of socialism and the questions of socialist transition or transformation.

Would socialism do better than capitalism regarding the ideals of equality, democracy, individual freedom, self-realization, and solidarity? This depends on the availability of workable versions of socialism that fulfill these ideals (or do so at least to a greater extent than workable forms of capitalism). A first set of proposals envision an economic system that does away with both private property in the means of production and with markets. The first version of this model is central planning . This can be understood within a top-down, hierarchical model. A central authority gathers information about the technical potential in the economy and about consumers’ needs and formulates a set of production objectives which seek an optimal match between the former and the latter. These objectives are articulated into a plan that is passed down to intermediate agencies and eventually to local firms, which must produce according to the plan handed down. If it works, this proposal would secure the highest feasible levels of equal access to consumption goods for everyone. However, critics have argued that the model faces serious feasibility hurdles (Corneo 2017: ch. 5: Roemer 1994a: ch. 5). It is very hard for a central authority to gather the relevant information from producers and consumers. Second, even if it could gather enough information, the computation of an optimal plan would require enormously complex calculations which may be beyond the capacity of planners (even with access to the most sophisticated technological assistance). Finally, there may be significant incentive deficits. For example, firms might tend to exaggerate the resources they need to produce and mislead about how much they can produce. Without facing strong sticks and carrots (such as the prospects for either bankruptcy and profit offered by a competitive market), firms might well display low levels of innovation. As a result, a planned economy would likely lag behind surrounding capitalist economies, and their members would tend to lose faith in it. High levels of cooperation (and willingness to innovate) could still exist if sufficiently many individuals in this society possessed a strong sense of duty. But critics find this unlikely to materialize, warning that “a system that only works with exceptional individuals only works in exceptional cases” (Corneo 2017: 127).

Actual experiments in centrally planned economies have only partially approximated the best version of it. Thus, in addition to the problems mentioned above (which affect even that best version), they have displayed additional defects. For example, the system introduced in the Soviet Union featured intense concentration of political and economic power in the hands of an elite controlling a single party which, in turn, controlled a non-democratic state apparatus. Despite its successes in industrializing the country (making it capable of mobilizing in a war effort to defeat Nazi Germany), the model failed to generate sufficient technical innovation and intensive growth to deliver differentiated consumer goods of the kind available within advanced capitalist economies. Furthermore, it trampled upon civil and political liberties that many socialists would themselves hold dear.

Responding to such widespread disempowerment, a second model for socialist planning has recommended that planning be done in a different, more democratic way. Thus, the participatory planning (or participatory economy, “Parecon”) model proposes the following institutional features (Albert 2003, 2016 [OIR] ). First, the means of production would be socially owned. Second, production would take place in firms controlled by workers (thus fostering democracy within the workplace). Third, balanced “job complexes” are put in place in which workers can both engage in intellectual and manual labor (thus fostering and generalizing self-realization). Fourth, in a fair and solidaristic fashion, remuneration of workers would track their effort, sacrifice, and special needs (and not their relative power or output—which would likely reflect differences in native abilities for which they are not morally responsible). Finally, and crucially, economic coordination would be based on comprehensive participatory planning. This would involve a complex system of nested worker councils, consumer councils, and an Iteration Facilitation Board. Various rounds of deliberation within, and between, worker and consumer councils, facilitated by this board, would be undertaken until matches between supply and demands schedules are found—with recourse to voting procedures only when no full agreement exists but several promising arrangements arise. This would turn the economy into an arena of deliberative democracy.

This proposal seems to cater for the full palette of socialist values stated in section 4.1 . Importantly, it overcomes the deficits regarding freedom displayed by central planning. Critics have warned, however, that Parecon faces serious feasibility obstacles. In particular, the iterative planning constituting the fifth institutional dimension of the Parecon proposal would require immense information complexity (Wright 2010: 260–5). It is unlikely that participants in the operations of this board, even with the help of sophisticated computers, would manage it sufficiently well to generate a production plan that satisfactorily caters to the diversity of individuals’ needs. A defense of Parecon would retort that beyond initial stages, the process of economic decision-making would not be too cumbersome. Furthermore, it might turn out to involve no more paperwork and time devoted to planning and to assessment behind computer terminals than is found in existing capitalist societies (with their myriad individual and corporate budgeting exercises, and their various accounting and legal epicycles). And, in any case, even if it is more cumbersome and less efficient in terms of productivity, Parecon might still be preferable overall as an economic system, given its superior performance regarding the values of freedom, equality, self-realization, solidarity, and democracy (Arnold n.d. [OIR] : sect. 8.b).

Some of the above-mentioned problems of central planning, regarding inefficiency and concentration of power, have motivated some socialists to explore alternative economic systems in which markets are given a central role. Markets generate problems of their own (especially when they involve monopolies, negative externalities, and asymmetric information). But if regulations are introduced to counter these “market failures”, markets can be the best feasible mechanism for generating matches between demand and supply in large, complex societies (as higher prices signal high demand, with supply rushing to cover it, while lower prices signal low demand, leading supply to concentrate on other products). Market socialism affirms the traditional socialist desideratum of preventing a division of society between a class of capitalists who do not need to work to make a living and a class of laborers having to work for them, but it retains from capitalism the utilization of markets to guide production. There has been a lively debate on this approach, with several specific systems being proposed.

One version is the economic democracy model (Schweickart 2002 [2011], 2016 [OIR] ). It has three basic features. First, production is undertaken in firms managed by workers. Worker self-managed enterprises would gain temporary control of some means of production (which would be leased out by the state). Workers determine what gets produced and how it is produced, and determine compensation schemes. Second, there is a market for goods and services. The profit motive persists and some inequalities within and between firms are possible, but likely much smaller than in capitalism (as there would be no separate capitalist class, and workers will not democratically select income schemes that involve significant inequality within their firms). Finally, investment flows are socially controlled through democratically accountable public investment banks, which determine funding for enterprises on the basis of socially relevant criteria (such as efficiency and environmental sustainability). The revenues for these banks come from a capital assets tax. This system would (through its second feature) mobilize the efficiency of markets while also (through its other features) attending to socialist ideals of self-determination, self-realization, and equal opportunity. To address some potential difficulties, the model has been extended to include further features, such as a commitment of the government as an employer of last resort, the creation of socialist savings and loans associations, the accommodation of an entrepreneurial-capitalist sector for particularly innovative small firms, and some forms of protectionism regarding foreign trade.

Self-management market socialism has been defended as feasible by pointing at the experience of cooperatives (such as the Mondragón Corporation in the Basque Country in Spain, often described as the world’s largest cooperative, which has (as of 2015) over 70,000 worker-owners participating in a network of cooperative businesses (see O’Neill and Etxeberria 2019 [OIR])). But it has also been criticized on five counts (Corneo 2017: ch. 6). First, it would generate unfair distributions, as workers doing the same work in different enterprises would end up with unequal income if the enterprises are not equally successful in the market. Second, workers would face high levels of financial risk, as their resources would be concentrated in their firm rather than spread more widely. Third, it could generate inefficient responses to market prices, as self-managed enterprises reduce hiring if prices for their products are high—so that members keep more of the profit—and hire more if the prices are low—to cover for fixed costs of production. Given the previous point, the system could also generate high unemployment. Having the government require firms to hire more would lead to lower productivity. However, the further features in the model discussed above might address this problem by allowing for small private enterprises to be formed, and by having in the background the government play a role as an employer of last resort (although this might also limit overall productivity). Finally, although some of the problems of efficiency could be handled through the banks controlling investment, it is not clear that the enormous power of such banks could be made sufficiently accountable to a democratic process so as to avoid the potential problem of cooptation by elites. (See, however, Malleson 2014 on democratic control of investment.)

Another market socialist model, proposed by Carens (1981, 2003), does not impose worker self-management. The Carensian model mirrors the current capitalist system in most respects while introducing two key innovative features. First, there would be direct governmental provision regarding certain individually differentiated needs (via a public health care system, for example). Second, to access other consumption goods, everyone working full time would get the same post tax income. Pre-tax salaries would vary, signaling levels of demand in the market. People would choose jobs not only on the basis of their self-regarding preferences, but also out of a sense of social duty to use their capacities to support others in society. Thus, honoring the Abilities / Needs Principle , they would apply for jobs (within their competencies) in which the pre-tax income is relatively high. If it worked, this model would recruit the efficiency of markets, but it would not involve the selfish motives and inegalitarian outcomes typically linked to them in capitalism.

One worry about the Carensian model is that it might be unrealistic to expect an economic system to work well when it relies so heavily on a sense of duty to motivate people to make cooperative contributions. This worry could be assuaged by presenting this model as the long-term target of a socialist transformation which would progressively develop a social ethos supporting it (Gilabert 2011, 2017a), by noting empirical findings about the significant traction of non-egoistic motives in economic behavior (Bowles and Gintis 2011) and the feasibility of “moral incentives” (Guevara 1977, Lizárraga 2011), and by exploring strategies to mobilize simultaneously various motivational mechanisms to sustain the proposed scheme. Two additional worries are the following (Gilabert 2023a: 117-22). First, the model makes no explicit provision regarding real opportunities for work that fosters self-realization and proceeds in self-managed firms. (Shoikhedbrod 2021 specifically criticizes the Carensian model for failing to give centrality to the socialist demand that firms be democratically run by workers.) To cater more fully for ideals of self-realization and self-determination, a requirement could be added that the government promote such opportunities for those willing to take them. Second, the model is not sufficiently sensitive to different individual preferences regarding leisure and consumption (requiring simply that everyone work full time and wind up with the same consumption and leisure bundles). More flexible schedules could be introduced so that people who want to consume more could work longer hours and have higher salaries, while people who want to enjoy more free time could work fewer hours and have lower salaries. Considerations of reciprocity and equality could still be honored by equalizing the incomes of those working the same number of hours.

Many forms of market socialism allow for some hierarchy at the point of production. These managerial forms are usually defended on grounds of greater efficiency. But they face the question of how to incentivize managers to behave in ways that foster innovation and productivity. One way to do this is to set up a stock market that would help to measure the performance of the firms they manage and to push them to make optimal decisions. An example of this approach (there are others—Corneo 2017: ch. 8) is coupon market socialism . In Roemer’s (1994a) version, this economic system operates with two kinds of money: dollars (euros, pesos, etc.) and coupons. Dollars are used to purchase commodities for consumption and production, and coupons are used in a stock market to purchase shares in corporations. The two kinds of money are not convertible (with an exception to be outlined below). Each person, when reaching adulthood, is provided with an equal set of coupons. They can use them in a state-regulated stock market (directly or through mutual investment funds) to purchase shares in corporations at market price. They receive the dividends from their investments in dollars, but they cannot cash the coupons themselves. When they die, people’s coupons and shares go back to the state for distribution to new generations—no inherited wealth is allowed—and coupons cannot be transferred as gifts. Thus, there is no separate class of capital owners in this economy. But there will be income inequality resulting from people’s different fortunes with their investments (dividends) as well as from the income they gain in the jobs they take through the labor market (in managerial and non-managerial positions). Coupons can however be converted into dollars by corporations; they can cash their shares to pay for capital investments. The exchange is regulated by a public central bank. Further, public banks or public investment funds, operating with relative independence from the government, would steer enterprises receiving coupons so that they maximize profit in the competitive markets for the goods and services they produce (so that they maximize the returns on the coupons invested). Part of that profit is also taxed for direct welfare provisions by the state.

This model caters for ideals of equality of opportunity (given equal distribution of coupons) and democracy (given the elimination of capitalist dynasties that have the ability to transform massive economic power into political influence). It also gives people freedom to choose how to use their resources and includes solidaristic schemes of public provision to meet needs regarding education and health care. Via the competitive markets in consumption goods and shares, it also promises high levels of innovation and productivity. (In some versions of the model this is enhanced by allowing limited forms of private ownership of firms to facilitate the input of highly innovative entrepreneurial individuals—Corneo 2017: 192–7). The model departs from traditional forms of socialism by not exactly instituting social property in means of production (but rather the equal dispersal of coupons across individuals in each generation). But defenders of this model say that socialists should not fetishize any property scheme; they should instead see such schemes instrumentally in terms of how well they fare in the implementation of core normative principles (such as equality of opportunity) (Roemer 1994a: 23–4, 124–5). Critics have worries, however, that the model does not go far enough in honoring socialist principles. For example, they have argued that a managerial (by contrast to a self-management) form of market socialism is deficient in terms of self-determination and self-realization at the workplace (Satz 1996), and that the levels of inequalities in income, and the competitive attitudes in the market that it would generate, violate ideals of community (G.A. Cohen 2009). In response, a defender of coupon market socialism can emphasize that the model is meant to be applied in the short-term, and that further institutional and cultural arrangements more fully in line with socialist principles can be introduced later on, as they become more feasible (Roemer 1994a: 25–7, 118). A worry, however, is that the model may entrench institutional and cultural configurations which may diminish rather than enhance the prospects for deeper changes in the future (Brighouse 1996; Gilabert 2011).

The models discussed above envision comprehensive “system change” in which the class division between capitalists and wage laborers disappears. Socialists have also explored piecemeal reforms that stop short of that structural change. An important historical example is the combination of a market economy and the welfare state . In this model, although property in the means of production remains private, and markets allocate most inputs and outputs of production, a robust governmental framework is put in place to limit the power of capitalists over workers and to improve the life-prospects of the latter. Thus, social insurance addresses the risks associated with illness, unemployment, disability, and old age. Tax-funded, state provision of many of those goods that markets typically fail to deliver for all is introduced (such as high-quality education, public transportation, and health care). And collective bargaining gives unions and other instruments of workers’ power some sway on the determination of their working conditions, as well as providing an important foundation for the political agency of the working class (O’Neill and White 2018).

This welfare state model was developed with great success during the three decades after World War II, especially in Northern Europe, but also, in weaker but significant forms, in other countries (including some in the Global South). However, since the 1980s, this model has been in significant retreat, or even in crisis. Wealth and income inequality have been increasing dramatically during this time (Piketty 2014; O’Neill 2017). The financial sector has become extremely powerful and able largely to escape governmental regulation as globalization allows capital to flow across borders. A “race to the bottom” features states competing with each other to attract investment by lowering tax rates and other regulations, thus undermining states’ ability to implement welfare policies (see, e.g., Dietsch 2015, 2018). Some socialists have seen this crisis as a reason to abandon the welfare state and pursue more comprehensive changes of the kind discussed above. Others, however, have argued that the model should be defended given that it has been proven to work quite well while the alternatives have uncertain prospects.

One example of the approach of extending or retrenching the mixed economy and welfare state proposes a combination of two moves (Corneo 2017: ch. 10, Epilogue, Appendix). The first move is to revamp the welfare state by introducing mechanisms of greater accountability of politicians to citizens (such as regulation of the dealings of politicians with private companies, and more instances of direct democracy in order to empower citizens), an improvement of the quality of public services delivered by the welfare state (introducing exacting audits and evaluations and fostering the training and recruitment of excellent civil servants), and international coordination of tax policies to prevent tax competition and tax evasion. The second move in this proposal is to run controlled experiments of market socialism to present it as a credible threat to the powerful actors seeking to undermine the welfare state. This threat would help stabilize the welfare state as the menace of communist revolution did after 1945. Specifically, welfare states could create new institutions that would be relatively independent from governments and be run by highly competent and democratically accountable civil servants. “Sovereign Wealth Funds” would invest public money in well-functioning enterprises, to yield an equal “social dividend” for citizens (on Sovereign Wealth Funds, see also Cummine 2016, O’Neill and White 2019). The second institution, a “Federal Shareholder”, would go further by using some of these funds to buy 51% of the shares of selected enterprises and take the lead within their boards of directors or supervisory boards. The objective would be to show that these enterprises (which would include significant participation of workers in their management, and ethical guidelines regarding environmental impacts and other concerns) maximize profits and thus offer a desirable and feasible alternative to the standard capitalist enterprise. Effectively, this strategy would run controlled experiments of shareholder market socialism. The working population would learn about the feasibility of market socialism, and capitalist opponents of welfare entitlements would be disciplined by fear of the generalization of such experiments to settle again for the welfare state.

Another strategy is to introduce various experiments seeking to expand the impact of social power (as different from state and economic power) within society (as defined in sect. 1). (See survey in Wright 2010: chs. 6–7). A set of mechanisms would target the deepening of democracy. Forms of direct democracy could foster citizens’ deliberative engagement in decision-making, as exemplified by the introduction of municipal participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil (which features citizens’ assemblies identifying priorities for public policy). The quality of representative democracy can be enhanced (and its subservience to the power of capitalists decreased) by introducing egalitarian funding of electoral campaigns (e.g., by giving citizens a sum of money to allocate to the parties they favor, while forcing parties to choose between getting funding from that source and any other source—such as corporations), and by creating random citizen assemblies to generate policy options which can then be subject to society-wide referenda (as in the attempt to change the electoral system in British Columbia in Canada). Finally, forms of associational democracy can be introduced that feature deliberation or bargaining between government, labor, business, and civil society groups when devising national economic policies or when introducing regional or local (e.g., environmental) regulations. A second set of mechanisms would foster social empowerment more directly in the economy. Examples are the promotion of the social economy sector featuring economic activity involving self-management and production oriented to use value (as displayed, e.g., by Wikipedia and child care units in Quebec), an unconditional basic income strengthening people’s ability to engage in economic activities they find intrinsically valuable, and the expansion of the cooperative sector. None of these mechanisms on its own would make a society socialist rather than capitalist. But if we see societies as complex “ecologies” rather than as homogeneous “organisms”, we can notice that they are hybrids including diverse institutional logics. An increase in the incidence of social empowerment may significantly extend the socialist aspects of a society, and even eventually make them dominant (a point to which we return in the next section).

We can also mention the vision of socialism offered by Piketty (2020: ch. 17; see also O’Neill 2021). Although Piketty’s “participatory socialism” does not recommend the complete elimination of private property in the means of production, it proposes significant reforms that would make property significantly more “social” and “temporary”. Thus, large firms would include schemes of codetermination that give workers a say on how production proceeds. Capital would be dispersed through progressive taxation on property, inheritance, and income, with the proceeds being used to fund a capital grant for young people, a secure basic income for all, and the public services of a social sate (such as education and health care). Piketty also envisions changes to the structure of democratic politics to reduce inequalities of influence among citizens, and proposes new international institutions that restrict capital flight.

A final point worth mentioning as we close our discussion of dimension DII of socialism concerns the growing interest in addressing not only the economic arena, but also the political and personal-private ones. Some scholars argue that classical socialists neglected the increasing “functional differentiation” of modern society into these three “spheres”, concentrating in an unduly narrow way on the economic one (Honneth 2015 [2017]). Thus, recent socialist work has increasingly explored how to extend socialist principles to the organization of relatively autonomous governmental institutions and practices and to the shaping of intimate relationships among family members, friends, and lovers, as well as to the relations between these diverse social arenas (see also Fraser 2009, 2014, 2022; Albert 2017). There is, of course, also a long-standing tradition of feminist socialism that has pushed for a wide scope in the application of socialist ideals and a broader understanding of labor that covers productive and reproductive activities beyond the formal workplace (see, e.g., Arruzza 2013, 2016; Dalla Costa and James 1972; Federici 2012; Ehrenreich 1976 [2018]; Gould 1973–4; Rowbotham et al 1979; Rowbotham 1998).

We turn now to the last dimension of socialism (DIII), which concerns the transformation of capitalist societies into socialist ones. The discussion on this dimension is difficult in at least two respects which call for philosophical exploration (Gilabert 2017a: 113–23, 2015: 216–20; 2023a: 157-68, 122-31). The first issue concerns feasibility. The question is whether socialist systems are accessible from where we are now—whether there is a path from here to there. But what does feasibility mean here? It cannot just mean logical or physical possibility, as these would rule out very few social systems. The relevant feasibility parameters seem instead to involve matters of technical development, economic organization, political mobilization, and moral culture. (For some discussion on these parameters see Wright 2010: ch. 8; Chibber 2017.) But such parameters are comparatively “soft”, in that they indicate probability prospects rather than pose strict limits of possibility, and can be significantly changed over time. When something is not feasible to do right now, we could have dynamic duties to make it feasible to do later by developing our relevant capacities in the meantime. The feasibility judgments must then be scalar rather than binary and allow for diachronic variation. These features make them somewhat murky, and not straightforwardly amenable to the hard-edged use of impossibility claims to debunk normative requirements (via contraposition on the principle that ought implies can).

A second difficulty concerns the articulation of all things considered appropriate strategies that combine feasibility considerations with the normative desiderata provided by socialist principles. The question here is: what is the most reasonable path of transformation to pursue for socialists given their understanding of the principles animating their political project, viewed against the background of what seems more or less feasible to achieve at different moments, and within different historical contexts? Complex judgments have to be formed about the precise social systems at which it would be right to aim at different stages of the sequence of transformation, and about the specific modes of political action to deploy in such processes. These judgments would combine feasibility and desirability to assess short-term and long-term goals, their intrinsic costs and benefits, and the promise of the former to enhance the achievement of the latter. The difficulty of forming such judgments is compounded by the uncertainty about the prospects of large societal changes (but also about the long-term consequences of settling for the status quo).

Marx (1875 [1978b]) himself seemed to address some of these issues in his short text “The Critique of the Gotha Program” of 1875. Marx here envisioned the process of socialist transformation as including two phases. The final phase would fully implement the Abilities / Needs Principle . But he did not take that scenario to be immediately accessible. An intermediate step should be pursued, in which the economy would be ruled by a Contribution Principle requiring that (after some provisions are put aside to fulfill basic needs regarding health care, education, and support for those unable to work) people gain access to consumption goods in proportion to how much they contribute. This lower phase of socialist transformation would be reasonable because it would enhance the prospects of transitioning away from capitalism and of generating the conditions for the full realization of socialism. The implementation of the Contribution Principle would fulfill the promise systematically broken by capitalism that people would benefit according to their labor input (as in capitalism capitalists get much more, and workers much less, than they give). It would also incentivize people to increase production to the level necessary for the introduction of socialism proper. Once such level of development is in place, the social ethos could move away from the mantra of the “exchange of equivalents” and instead adopt a different outlook in which people produce according to their diverse abilities, and consume according to their diverse needs. This sequential picture of transformation features diachronic judgments about changes in feasibility parameters (such as the expansion of technical capacity and a change in patterns of motivation). Marx also envisioned political dimensions of this process, including a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (which would not, as some popular interpretations hold, involve violation of civil and political rights, but a change in the political constitution and majoritarian policies that secure the elimination of capitalist property rights (Elster 1985: 447–9)). In time, the state (understood as an apparatus of class rule rather than, more generally, as an administrative device) would “wither away”.

History has not moved smoothly in the direction many socialists predicted. It has not been obvious that the following steps in the expected pattern materialized or are likely to do so: capitalism generating a large, destitute, and homogeneous working class; this class responding to some of the cyclical crises capitalism is prone to by creating a coherent and powerful political movement; this movement gaining control of government and resolutely and successfully implementing a socialist economic system (G.A. Cohen 2000b: ch. 6; Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Given the fact that this process did not materialize, and seems unlikely to do so, it turns out that it would be both self-defeating and irresponsible to fail to address difficult questions about the relative feasibility and moral desirability of different strategies of potential socialist transformation. For example, if the process of transformation involves two or more stages (be they the two mentioned above, or some sequence going, say, from the welfare state to shareholder or coupon market socialism and then to a version of the Carensian model), it might be asked who is to evaluate and decide upon what is to be done at each stage of the process, on what grounds can it be expected that earlier stages will enhance the likelihood of the success of later stages rather than undermine them (e.g., by enshrining institutions or values that will make it hard to move further along the path), what transitional costs can be accepted in earlier stages, and whether the costs expected are outweighed by the desirability and the increased probability of attaining the later stages. Such questions do not want for difficulty.

Addressing questions such as these dilemmas of transitional strategy, socialists have envisaged different approaches to social and political transformation. Four significant examples (extensively discussed in Wright 2010: Part III, 2015b, 2016—which we follow here) are articulated by considering two dimensions of analysis regarding (a) the primary goal of the strategy (either (i) transcending the structures of capitalism, or (ii) neutralizing the worst harms of it) and (b) the primary target of the strategy (either (i) the state and other institutions at the macro-level of the system, or (ii) the economic activities of individuals, organizations, and communities). (See Wright 2019: 38-53 for a slightly more complex framework, and its discussion in Leopold 2022: sect. 5.4.)

The first strategy, smashing capitalism , picks out the combination of possibilities (a.i) and (b.i). A political organization (e.g., a revolutionary party) takes advantage of some of the crises generated by capitalism to seize state power, proceeding to use that power to counter opposition to the revolution and to build a socialist society. This is the strategy favored by revolutionary socialists and many Marxists, and pursued in the twentieth century in countries such as Russia and China. If we look at the historical evidence, we see that although this strategy succeeded in some cases in transitioning out of previously existing capitalist or proto-capitalist economic systems, it failed in terms of building socialism. It led instead to a form of authoritarian statism. There is debate about the causes of these failures. Some factors may have been the economically backward and politically hostile circumstances in which the strategy was implemented, the leaders’ deficits (in terms of their tactics or motives), and the hierarchical frameworks used to suppress opposition after the revolution which remained in place for the long-term to subvert revolutionaries’ aims. Large system changes normally have to face a “transitional trough” after their onset, in which the material interests of many people are temporarily set back (Przeworski 1985). A political dilemma arises, in that, if liberal democratic politics is retained (with a free press, liberty of association, and multiparty elections) the revolutionaries may be unseated due to citizens’ political response to the “valley of transition”, while if liberal democratic politics are supplanted, then authoritarian statism may be the consequence, eradicating the possibility of a socialist outcome to which it would be worthwhile to seek to transition.

A second strategy, picking out the combination of possibilities (a.ii) and (b.i), has been taming capitalism . It mobilizes the population (sometimes in sharp political struggles) to elect governments and implement policies that respond to the worst harms generated by capitalism, with the aim of neutralizing them. New policies include social insurance responding to risks faced by the population (e.g., illness and unemployment), tax funded, state provision of public goods which markets tend to fail to provide (e.g., education, public transportation, research and development, etc.), and regulation of negative externalities produced in markets (e.g., regarding pollution, product and workplace hazards, predatory market behavior, etc.). The strategy, implemented by social-democratic parties, worked quite well during the three decades of the “Golden Age” or Trente Glorieuses following World War II. However, progress was halted and partly rolled back since the retreat of social democracy and the introduction of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Possible explanatory factors are the financialization of capitalism, and the effects of globalization, as discussed above in section 4.3 . There is a debate as to whether capitalism is really tameable—it may be that the Golden Age was only a historical anomaly, borne out of a very particular set of political and economic circumstances.

The third strategy, escaping capitalism , picks out the combination of possibilities (a.ii) and (b.ii). Capitalism might be too strong to destroy. But people could avoid its worst harms by insulating themselves from its dynamics. They could focus on family and friendships, become self-subsistence farmers, create intentional communities, and explore modes of life involving “voluntary simplicity”. However, this strategy seems available mostly to relatively well-off people who can fund their escape with wealth they have amassed or received from capitalist activities. The working poor may not be so lucky.

The final strategy, eroding capitalism , picks out the combination of (a.i) and (b.ii). Economic systems are here seen as hybrids. People can introduce new, socialist forms of collective activity (such as worker cooperatives) and progressively expand them, eventually turning them from marginal to dominant. Recently this kind of strategy of the erosion of capitalism through institutional transformation rather than piecemeal changes within existing economic structures, has been referred to as “the institutional turn” in leftist political economy (see Guinan and O’Neill 2018, 2019). Wright (2015b, 2016) suggests the analogy of a lake ecosystem, with the introduction of a new species of fish that at first thrives in one location, and then spreads out, eventually becoming a dominant species. Historically, the transformation from feudalism to capitalism in some parts of Europe has come about in this way, with pockets of commercial, financial, and manufacturing activity taking place in cities and expanding over time. Some anarchists seem to hold a version of this strategy today. It offers hope for change even when the state seems uncongenial, and likely to remain so. But critics find it far-fetched, as it seems unlikely to go sufficiently far given the enormous economic and political power of large capitalist corporations and the tendency of the state to repress serious threats to its rules. To go further, the power of the state has to be at least partially recruited. The fourth strategy then, according to Wright, is only plausible when combined with the second.

As discussed by Wright, this combined strategy would have two elements (we could see Corneo’s proposal discussed in section 4.3 as another version of this approach). First, it would address some important, problematic junctures to expand state action in ways that even capitalists would have to accept. And second, the solutions to the crises introduced by state action would be selected in such a way that they would enhance long-term prospects for socialist change. One critical juncture is global warming, and the social and political problems of the Anthropocene era (Löwy 2005; Purdy 2015; Wark 2016; Forrester and Smith 2018; Lawrence and Laybourn-Langton 2021; Saito 2017, 2023, 2024). Responding to its effects would require massive generation of state-provided public goods, which could remove neoliberal compunctions about state activism. A second critical juncture concerns the large levels of long-term unemployment, precariousness, and marginalization generated by new trends in automation and information technology. This involves threats to social peace, and insufficient demand for the products corporations need to sell on the consumption market. Such threats could be averted by introducing an unconditional basic income policy (Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017), or by the significant expansion of public services, or by some other mechanism that secures for everybody a minimally dignified economic condition independent of their position within the labor market. Now, these state policies could foster the growth of social power and the prospects for socialist change in the future. Workers would have more power in the labor market when they came to be less reliant upon it. They could also be more successful in forming cooperatives. The social economy sector could flourish under such conditions. People could also devote more time to political activism. Together, these trends from below, combined with state activism from above, could expand knowledge about the workability of egalitarian, democratic, and solidaristic forms of economic activity, and strengthen the motivation to extend their scope. Although some critics find this strategy naïve (Riley 2016), proponents think that something like it must be tried if the aim is democratic socialism rather than authoritarian statism. (For specific worries about the political feasibility of a robust universal basic income policy as a precursor to rather than as a result of socialism, see Gourevitch and Stanczyk 2018; see also Gourevitch 2022).

Other significant issues regarding dimension DIII of socialism are the identification of appropriate political agents of change and their prospects of success in the context of contemporary globalization. On the first point, socialists increasingly explore the significance not only of workers’ movements, but also their intersection with the efforts of activists focused on overcoming gender- and race-based oppression (Davis 1981; Albert 2017). On many views, forms of gender-based injustice and racial injustice are ineradicably linked to the explanation of what is wrong with capitalism, and these connections also hold with regard to the forms of political agency that would be needed in order to overcome and replace capitalism (Basevich 2020; Gomberg 2007, 2024; Fraser 2022; Laurence 2021; Mills 2017). Some argue that the primary addressee of socialist politics should not be any specific class or movement, but the more inclusive, and politically equal group of citizens of a democratic community. For example, Honneth (2015 [2017: ch. IV]), following in part John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas, argues that the primary addressee and agent of change for socialism should be the citizens assembled in the democratic public sphere. Although normatively appealing, this proposal may face serious feasibility difficulties, as existing democratic arenas are intensely contaminated and disabled by the inequalities socialists criticize and seek to overcome. The second issue is also relevant here. There is a traditional question whether socialism is to be pursued in one country or internationally. The tendency to embrace an internationalist horizon of political change is characteristic among socialists as they typically see their ideals of freedom, equality, and solidarity as having global scope, while they also note that, as a matter of feasibility, the increasing porousness of borders for capitalist economic activity make it the case that socialist politics may not go very far in any country without reshaping the broader international context. A difficulty here is that despite the existence of international social movements (including workers’ movements, international NGOs, human rights institutions and associations, and other actors), institutional agency beyond borders that can seriously contest capitalist frameworks is not currently very strong. In addressing these difficulties, action and research on socialist justice must interact with ongoing work in the related areas of gender, race, democracy, human rights, and global justice. [ 2 ]

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• Albert, Michael, 2016, “What’s Next? Parecon, or Participatory Economics”. [ Albert 2016 available online ]
• Arnold, Samuel, n.d., “Socialism”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Accessed 20 June 2019. [ Arnold n.d. available online ]
• O’Neill, Martin, 2015, “James Meade and Predistribution: 50 Years Before his Time”, Policy Network: Classics of Social Democratic Thought , 28 May 2015. [ O’Neill 2015 available online ]
• O’Neill, Martin and Ander Etxeberria, 2019, “On Mondragon - Solidarity, Democracy, and the Value of Work: an Interview with Ander Etxeberria”, Renewal - A Journal of Social Democracy , 19 July 2019. [ O’Neill and Etxebrria 2019 available online ]
• Schweickart, David, 2016, “Economic Democracy: An Ethically Desirable Socialism That Is Economically Viable”, The Next System Project , October. URL = < https://thenextsystem.org/economic-democracy >
• Marxists Internet Archive , (primary texts from various Marxist thinkers)
• Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (German), includes much of Marx’s and Engels’s correspondence
• New Left Review
• Marx bibliography , maintained by Andrew Chitty (University of Sussex)

alienation | common good | critical theory | democracy | domination | economics [normative] and economic justice | egalitarianism | equality | exploitation | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on class and work | justice | justice: distributive | liberty: positive and negative | markets | Marx, Karl | Marxism, analytical | Mill, John Stuart | Mill, John Stuart: moral and political philosophy | property and ownership | revolution

Acknowledgments

For helpful discussion, comments and suggestions we thank the Editors and two referees, Samuel Arnold, Elvira Basevich, Christopher Brooke, Lee Churchman, Michaela Collord, Chiara Cordelli, Katrina Forrester, Roberto Gargarella, Carol Gould, Alex Gourevitch, Alex Guerrero, Daniel J. Hill, Brendan Hogan, Juan Iosa, Jan Kandiyali, Bruno Leipold, Su Lin Lewis, Fernando Lizárraga, Barry Maguire, Tom O’Shea, Romina Rekers, Indrajit Roy, Sagar Sanyal, Igor Shoikhedbrod, Claire Smith, Lucas Stanczyk, Roberto Veneziani, Nicholas Vrousalis, Stuart White, Jonathan Wolff, Gabriel Wollner, and Lea Ypi.

Copyright © 2024 by Pablo Gilabert < pablo . gilabert @ concordia . ca > Martin O’Neill < martin . oneill @ york . ac . uk >

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the 9 key capitalism vs socialism differences, explained.

General Education

Capitalism vs socialism is often framed as the major political face-off of our time. People often think of capitalism vs socialism as two totally opposite political ideologies. But are they really completely different systems? And should we compare capitalism and socialism at all? 

Here’s the facts: it does make sense to compare capitalism and socialism because they’re the main economic systems used in developed countries today. But to truly understand the differences between capitalism and socialism, we have to look to unbiased sources . These terms refer to complex philosophies that can’t be summed up by a meme, stereotype, or hot take! 

Capitalism vs socialism can be a complex topic, which is why we’re here to help you gain an objective understanding of capitalism vs socialism. In this article, we’ll provide a full guide to capitalism vs socialism that includes the following: 

• A deep dive into socialism, and a deep dive into capitalism
• A guide to the differences between democratic socialism vs capitalism
• A socialism vs capitalism chart with side-by-side comparisons
• A brief comparison of these concepts and other political theories, particularly capitalism vs socialism vs communism

Let’s get started!

Featured Image: Expert364/ Wikimedia

Capitalism vs Socialism: What’s the Difference?

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are under private ownership, rather than government control. The means of production generally refers to entrepreneurship, capital goods, natural resources, and labor. Capitalism depends on a free market economy driven by supply and demand. 

In simplest terms, socialism is an umbrella term for types of economic systems that aim to eradicate inequality through shared ownership. To socialists, wealth should belong to the  workers who make the products, rather than groups of private owners. In practice, this means that the means of production are run and controlled by the government, which represents the will of the people.

As such, socialism is ultimately designed to increase social justice and equality regardless of class, race, or other socioeconomic factors . 

As models for economic systems, the primary difference between capitalism and socialism is the extent to which the government controls the economy. Capitalists believe that private enterprise, or privately owned business, is better at using economic resources. Asa result, capitalism argues that private business is what facilitates equitable distribution of wealth through a free market. In contrast, socialists believe that income inequality is most effectively managed through tight control of businesses and redistribution of wealth through social programs that are run by the government, such as free healthcare, education, and housing.

At first glance, capitalism and socialism might seem entirely incompatible. The truth is, most developed countries today implement some combination of capitalist and socialist practices in their economic structure and domestic policy. To help you understand how capitalism and socialism can be integrated in practice, we’ll do a deep dive into both socialism and capitalism, starting with socialism, next. 

What Is Socialism?

We’ve covered the core differences between capitalism vs socialism, so let’s take a closer look at socialism next. Below, we’ll give you a more comprehensive definition of socialism, go over the history of the term, explain democratic socialism vs capitalism, and provide some examples of socialist governments today . 

Because socialism and communism are often easily confused, we’ll also touch on capitalism vs socialism vs communism.

Socialism: Overview and Definition

Socialism is a social, economic, and political doctrine that calls for collective ownership of a society’s means of production. The main goal of socialism is to eliminate socioeconomic classes by ensuring equal distribution of wealth among the people. To accomplish this, a socialist government--which is elected by the people--has control over the country’s economy, including major businesses and industries and the labor market. At its core, socialism is designed to eliminate inequality through government regulation.

The word “socialism” comes from the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. But the modern term “socialism” didn’t appear until the 19th century. French philosopher and revolutionary Henri de Saint-Simon coined the term in his writings about the  abuses of the capitalist system and the  Industrial Revolution. 

The thing to keep in mind about socialism is that it’s a blanket term that covers a wide variety of socialist ideas, practices, and theories. In his 1924 encyclopedia of socialism, historian Angelo Rappoport identified forty different definitions of socialism. This is why it’s tough to pin down a universal definition of socialism today. 

As an economic system and political theory, socialism has been applied in many different countries in many different ways . For example, communism is at its heart a form of socialism because it argues that everything in a society should be collectively owned and distributed to each according to their needs. But democratic socialism--which can combine capitalist and socialist ideologies--is also a type of socialism! 

Having said that, socialism is almost always employed as a critique of some aspect of capitalism . In some cases, socialism is also employed to replace capitalism. In most cases, though, socialism and capitalism are used together so that each ideology can make up for the other’s shortcomings. 

History of Socialism

Socialism was first used to criticize capitalist systems at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Henri de Saint-Simon and other prominent French philosophers were the first to critique the poverty and inequality of industrialized capitalism, and socialist thinkers advocated the transformation of society into small communities without private property. 

Socialism gained international recognition at the end of the 19th century. It was during this time that the movement became more oriented toward revolutionary thinking . This strain of socialist thought is largely attributed to the work of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote and dispersed a pamphlet called The Communist Manifesto detailing their ideas about socialism . 

According to the Communist Manifesto, socialism must eventually evolve into a more advanced system: communism . In the communist form of socialism as described by Marx and Engels (called Marxism), there would be no state, no money, and no social classes. Essentially, communism argues that private enterprise shouldn’t exist, and that the public (through the government) should own all the means of production in a society. 

This means that when socialism evolves into communism, it is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism . That’s because communism argues everything should be owned by the people and managed by government, whereas capitalism believes that economies should be run on private enterprise, which is controlled by individuals and not the government.This is why capitalism vs socialism vs communism can often be confusing. Just remember: the key difference between socialism and communism is that communism seeks to eliminate capitalism. But communism is just one type of socialism, and many other forms of socialism can be integrated into a capitalist economy. 

Marx and Engels helped popularize socialism, and in the 20th century, the first socialist governments appeared . The first mass party in Latin America, the Socialist Party of Argentina, was established in the 1890s, and in 1902, the British Labour Party won its first seats in Parliament. These elections of socialist politicians ushered in a new era of political legitimacy for the socialist movement. 

More radical forms of socialism emerged following World War I . In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution occurred in Russia, led by philosopher Vladimir Lenin . Lenin and the Bolshevik faction of socialists overthrew the Russian monarchy and installed the first ever constitutionally socialist state, known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Socialists who embrace Lenin’s methods today are most often referred to as communists.

By the 1920s, socialism in various forms had become the dominant secular movement on a global scale. That’s not to say that most governments were “socialist,” but they had definitely begun incorporating socialist ideas into their political policies. As socialism became more accepted, new forms of socialism continued to emerge, including the most common forms of socialism today: social democracy and democratic socialism. 

Bernie Sanders is the most well-known proponent of democratic socialism in the United States. (Secret-Name101/WikiMedia) 

Democratic Socialism vs Capitalism

Democratic socialism brings three core concepts together: democracy , socialism, and capitalism. Generally speaking, democratic socialism co mbines the safety net of a socialist economy with the wealth creation of capitalism within a democratic system of government. 

Here’s what that means. First things first: the organizational structure of the government is a democracy. Every citizen of a country can vote in a free and fair election to elect officials to represent them in government. These officials then represent the will of the people that elected them. You can learn more about democracies (vs republics and other types of government) in this article. 

Democratic socialism also combines aspects of socialism and capitalism in terms of its political ideologies and economic systems. Under democratic socialism , the elements of society that provide for basic human needs--like healthcare, labor protections, and childcare--are owned collectively and run by the government. 

However, democratic socialism also embraces aspects of capitalism--usually in terms of economic structure. Democratic socialism recognizes the importance of private enterprise, especially in terms of building national wealth. When the two are combined, though, capitalism is more tightly regulated by the government. 

Examples of Socialist Governments Today

There are many different ways that a country can implement socialism today . Socialism is a broad category that encompasses multiple types of economic systems. It’s also compatible with various government systems. 

While there aren’t any purely socialist countries in the world today, there are nations that are categorized as communist by virtue of how much power the government has over social and economic systems. Those countries are: 

• China, or the People’s Republic of China
• Cuba, or Republic of Cuba
• Laos, or Lao People’s Democratic Republic
• Vietnam, or Socialist Republic of Vietnam
• North Korea, or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Most countries implement aspects of socialism that are compatible with their form of government and economy in order to create equality for all people. These countries tend to have prominent socialist or democratic socialist political parties. Having a socialist political party does not necessarily mean that a country “is socialist.” Most of the time, it just means that some aspects of a country’s domestic agenda are influenced by socialism. 

Some of the countries with very influential socialist parties include the following: 

• Denmark 
• Poland 
• South Korea
• United Kingdom
• Venezuela 

Because democratic socialism is such a popular topic today, let’s look more closely at one country that implements democratic socialism: Sweden.

Sweden adheres to the Nordic Model , which refers to the economic and social policies common to the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The Nordic Model in Sweden fits the description of democratic socialism for two main reasons: it supports a universalist welfare state to promote social mobility, but it remains committed  to a market-based economy that’s partially fueled by private enterprise.

Sweden’s democratic government provides free health care, education, and lifetime retirement income. As a result, their Swedish citizens pay some of the highest taxes in the world. A high percentage of Sweden’s workers belong to a labor union, and the country is ranked high for protection of workers’ rights because of its strong social partnership between employers, trade unions, and the government.

At the same time, Sweden has a mixed-market capitalist economic system and high degrees of private ownership. To regulate its capitalist economy, Sweden allows free trade combined with collective risk sharing. These measures provide a form of protection against the risks associated with economic openness.

In other words: the country combines socialism and capitalism! in order to ’s political ideology is socialist, but its economy is capitalist. 

Because the government meets most of their needs, the Swedish people aren’t very concerned with accumulating wealth. As of 2020, Sweden also ranks high on the Global Peace Index and is ranked in the top 10 on the World Happiness Report.

Many people associate capitalism with making money. That's because capitalism believes that privately owned businesses should be the bedrock of a national economy.

What Is Capitalism?

Now that we’ve covered socialism, let’s tackle capitalism next . Below, we’ll give you a comprehensive definition and history of capitalism, and we’ll provide some examples of capitalist governments today . 

Capitalism: Overview and Definition

Capitalism is an economic system in which the private sector owns most of the means of production . In a capitalist economy, the government plays a lesser role. The main goal of capitalism is to employ the means of production to make a profit and generate capital. To accomplish this, capitalism usually has a free market economy , which is based on supply and demand and limited government control. At its core, capitalism is designed to enable private entities, which are often corporations, to make a profit . 

The term capitalism is derived from the word “capital,” which evolved from the late Latin word capitale . Capitale is based on the Latin word caput , which means "head" and connotes something of value, such as money, property, or livestock. Capitale emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries to refer to funds, stocks of merchandise, sum of money, or money carrying interest. By 1283, it was used to describe the capital assets of a trading firm . By this time, capital was often used interchangeably with other words, including wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, and property.

In English language usage, the term “capitalism” first appears in author William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1854 novel, The Newcomes. In Thackeray’s novel, “capitalism” refers to “having ownership of capital.” Other initial usage of capitalism in the modern period employs the term to describe a new type of economy. In this economy, capital, or the source of income, doesn’t belong to the workers who generate it through labor. Instead, it belongs to the people who own the businesses and companies that pay for the labor. 

Also keep in mind that just like socialism, capitalism exists on a spectrum . But whereas types of socialism are often categorized by how much power a centralized government has, types of capitalism are usually defined by how free and unregulated the economy is. 

History of Capitalism

Capitalism developed out of systems of feudalism and mercantilism in Europe during the Renaissance. In these systems, capital existed in the form of simple commodity exchange and production. 

At the end of the 16th century, the economic foundations of the agricultural feudal system began to break down in England. Land and resources became concentrated in the hands of a few private owners, and the labor market became more competitive. The expanding system put pressure on owners and workers to increase productivity to make greater profits. By the early 17th century, feudalism was effectively replaced by a new centralized state and economic market in England.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries in England, an economic doctrine of mercantilism prevailed. Merchant traders explored foreign lands and engaged in trade for profit. Under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, merchants were granted state support. Through subsidies and other economic incentives, merchants expanded commerce and trade and made profits by buying and selling goods. 

The continued growth of capitalism required specific technologies for mass production, which early feudalist societies and individual merchants didn’t have. These technologies became widely available during the Industrial Revolution, and those who owned them were called industrialists. Industrialists facilitated the development of factory systems and manufacturing . These systems required a complex division of labor and established the modern concept of the capitalist mode of production. 

The Industrial Revolution established the dominance of capitalism as an economic system in the western world. By the 19th century, capitalism had spread globally . And by the end of the 19th century, goods and information were able to circulate around the world at a whole new pace. This was due to technologies such as the telegraph, the steamship, and railway. But this growth also hinged on a large--and cheap--labor force. 

When the Great Depression had a global impact in the 1930s, socialist practices first entered into the capitalist economies of the world. By the end of World War II, governments began  regulating these open, capitalist markets. Welfare states emerged in capitalist countries during this time as well. Since then, there hasn’t been a purely capitalist system in the world. Today, most capitalist economies incorporate some form of socialist practice. 

Many countries embrace capitalism...even if they also implement socialist policies. One good example of this is the United Kingdom, which has strong social programs but still allows for a robust private sector.

Examples of Capitalism Governments Today

There are many types of capitalism in existence today. Different countries’ implementation of capitalism may feature different economic policies and institutional structures. However, at their core, all capitalist countries share a common element: they are primarily based on private ownership of the means of production, generating profit through production, market-based control of resources, and accumulation of capital. 

Today, there are over 100 countries that have a capitalist economy . Here are a few examples of countries have some form of a capitalist economy:

• Austria 
• Chile 
• Ireland 
• Japan 
• Mauritius 
• Netherlands 
• United States of America

It’s important to recognize that none of these countries implement pure capitalism . Instead, they implement a form of capitalism that may be combined with other types of economic markets or political ideologies, including socialism. Let’s look at an example of a capitalist economy to understand what capitalism looks like in practice next.

The United States has a democratic capitalist political-economic system . The U.S. economy is also referred to as a mixed market economy. This means that it has characteristics of both capitalism and socialism that are combined with a democratic system of government. 

In the form of capitalism implemented by the U.S., the means of production are based on private ownership and for-profit business. In other words: most businesses and services are privately owned, and those companies’ primary goal is to make money. But because the economy has regulations, taxation, and some subsidization, the U.S. can’t be considered a purely capitalist economy. 

Prior to World War II, the U.S. more closely resembled a truly free market . However, the government has always had some role in controlling the U.S. economy. Today, the U.S. government has partial control over education, physical infrastructure, healthcare, and postal deliveries. The government also provides subsidies to oil and financial companies and agricultural producers. While private businesses have a high degree of autonomy in the U.S., they are required to register with government agencies.

Some critics argue that the U.S. capitalist system serves the interests of a small percentage of the population, known as the one percent. Because of income inequality and intensifying class divisions in the U.S., many critics of capitalism advocate for the adoption of more socialist policies as a means to bridge that class divide . Two well-known advocates of increasing socialist policy in the U.S. are senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. 

Socialism vs Capitalism: Chart Comparison

We’ve covered a lot of info concerning capitalism vs socialism, so let’s condense things down to the core differences between capitalism and socialism next. 

Keep reading for a side by side comparison of capitalism and socialism in our chart below.

Fascism, Communism, and Marxism: A Quick Comparison 

Now that we’ve covered the differences between capitalism and socialism, let’s explain how they compare to other systems that they’re sometimes confused with. We’ll briefly clarify the differences between the socialist and capitalist systems and communism and fascism. 

Fascism vs Capitalism and Socialism

Fascism is a political ideology that supports authoritarianism and ultra-nationalism. Fascist states are ruled under dictatorships. They also suppress opposition by force and tightly control society and the economy. 

But how does fascism compare to socialism and capitalism? Socialism is generally considered incompatible with fascism. Socialism is liberally-minded and progressive, and it’s a relatively flexible ideology, whereas fascism is none of these things. In fact, because it is a far-right ideology, fascism opposes socialism. 

The relationship between capitalism and fascism is a little more complicated. Historically, fascism has sought to do away with capitalism because of its emphasis on autonomy and limited state control. However, fascism supports private ownership, wealth accumulation among private individuals, and a market economy. This means that fascism can support a very specific kind of capitalism, but capitalist economies are rarely fascist.

Communism vs Capitalism and Socialism

Let’s talk now about capitalism and socialism in relation to communism. Communism proposes a socioeconomic structure and political system that completely replaces a capitalist system with public ownership and communal control of the means of production. In communism, everything is collectively owned and private enterprise is eliminated. Because it seeks to eliminate money and social classes, communism is ultimately incompatible with capitalism.

However, socialism and communism are more closely related. In simplest terms, communism is a more revolutionary form of socialism , based on the ideology of Karl Marx. Socialism and communism share a core goal of placing power over the means of production in the hands of workers. Unlike communism, though, socialism is widely compatible with other forms of government. Forms of socialism can also be integrated into other economic systems, such as capitalism. 

Marxism vs Capitalism And Socialism 

You may also be wondering how Marxism relates to socialism and capitalism . Marxism is the political and economic theory proposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist theory was adapted by followers of Marx and Engels to articulate a specific approach to communism. This means that Marxism is a type of communism that incorporates socialist principles. Ultimately, socialism is a much broader concept than Marxism.

Marxism also addresses capitalism, though. In his book, Das Kapital, Karl Marx describes a capitalist mode of production. He is often credited as defining the modern concept of capitalism through his harsh critiques of it . He ultimately believed that capitalism would eventually stagnate, and socialism would take its place. 

What’s Next? 

If you want to learn more about how different governments work , check out our article on democracies versus republics.

The U.S. government is set up in three parts where no one section of the government has more power than the other . We’ll teach you everything you need to know about this checks and balances system.

If all of these topics are fascinating to you, then you might be interested in majoring in political science. Our experts will teach you everything you need to know about a political science degree , including what types of careers are available for poli-sci grads.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Critical Sociology and Authoritarian State Socialism

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• Andrew Arato  

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Jürgen Habermas has demonstrated the possibility in the West of a process of democratisation that shows the limits of technocratic rationalisation of polity and economy. Moreover, he has done this (however tentatively) while presenting advanced capitalism as a framework of political and cultural instabilities, potentially crisis- and conflict-laden. It is thus that he has reconstructed Marxism as a critical sociology. However, he has not systematically addressed the problem of the relationship of a Marxist critical sociology to those societies that use a version of Marxism as their ‘ideology’ of legitimation. While it is not necessarily his task or that of his co-workers to produce a theory of the so-called socialist societies, it is nevertheless fair to ask if those approaches and concepts of his that have universal aspiration contribute to such a critical theory. For today most inherited Marxist theory, from Engels and Plekhanov to Lenin and Trotsky (and even Lukács, Gramsci and Sartre), is either powerless in the face of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, or worse even contributes to their legitimation. In this essay I shall attempt to investigate the possible uses of Starnberg critical sociology for the study of these societies.

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Notes and references.

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K. Eder, ‘Zum Problem der logischen Periodisierung von Produktionsweisen’, in Theorien des Historischen Materialismus , ed. U. Jaeggi and H. Honneth (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977) pp. 511, 520.

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Arato, A. (1982). Critical Sociology and Authoritarian State Socialism. In: Thompson, J.B., Held, D. (eds) Habermas. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16763-0_12

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(page 1) p. 1 Introduction

• Published: September 2020
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What is socialism? The Introduction outlines the beliefs socialists have in common, including their opposition to gaps in wealth and equality and commitment to the creation of an egalitarian society. Socialism, capitalism, and liberalism are products of a post-19th-century age in which people see themselves as having the agency to effect change. Socialism’s detractors focus on its negative manifestations, such as Stalinism. Socialism has been interpreted differently around the world, inspiring distinct types of communism in Russia and China. Cuba has one of the best-known socialist political systems. Smaller socialist experiments include the kibbutz movement and post-colonial Arab and African efforts to combine socialism with existing traditions.

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Socialism & Democracy: Fundamental Believes and Concepts Compare & Contrast Essay

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Introduction

Differences in socialism and democracy, basic believes and concepts of socialism and democracy, karl max and aristotle, reference list.

The clear understanding of the various forms of both political and the economic systems is of paramount importance in effective governance of countries and their most critical institutions and industries. The understanding of these political and economic systems will help significantly in making good use of the philosophical issues in formulating the guiding policies to run these organization for the common good of all citizens of given countries.

Different countries of the world usually practice different approaches in providing various services to their people and this in most cases depends on the nature and the cultural practices of given parts of the world. It should be noted that some systems of governance may work so well in a given country, but this does not guarantee the effective operation in other countries if it is adopted.

In the recent time, the various countries are trying to adopt partially some aspects of governance and incorporating them in their systems to see if they can work productively and thus this has led to mixed systems of governance. For example, a governance system, which advocates for the market which is controlled by forces of demand, and can also implement some price controls on goods and services, which are so critical to its citizens. Thus, it can protect its people from exploitation from business people, who want to maximize their profits at the expense of their fellow citizens.

In this case, we are going to look at some differences between socialism and democracy and compare and contrast the fundamental believes and concepts (Morris, 2008, p. 1). We will also look at the key people who helped with the ideas which led to both socialism and democracy and also look at the countries where they are practiced. Finally, we will address the philosophical issues and how they support policy development in various countries and, also, in organizations.

The most distinct difference between the socialism and democracy is that in socialism we are mostly focusing our energies on the governance of the economic activities and the economic systems of a given country while in the democracy we are concentrating on the political governance of people and the various organizations in given counties of the world.

In socialism, we have the economic and the political activities concentrating on the ownership of the ways of production and sharing of the resources which are based on the collective property by the community as a whole. In these cases, the economic systems emphasize the running of corporative societies at the public level.

Here the production is done by people as a community at large in organized public associations and the benefits which accrue from these civic associations are shared on individual merits and also depending on the number of efforts a given member has rendered in such organization. In this case, democracy will only be focusing its efforts to ensure that these public associations involved in the production of essential goods and services are managed by under democratic terms.

This implies that the leadership which is governing these public corporations will have to be chosen by the majority and also the decisions be considered on majority basis since in democracy the guiding principle is the common presumption that majority is always right and their decisions rule those of minority (Viklund, 2006, p. 1).

This is clear evidence that the power to govern is derived by seeking a mandate from the people either directly from the people themselves or indirectly from their trusted representatives who have been given such mandate to choose on their behalf by the people themselves.

In the socialism there is excellent emphasizes on the adoption of the most recent and effective technological advancement to ensure that the different organizations are run by applications of scientific principles to make sure that economic activities are doing well. This will effectively counter check the adverse effects of capitalism from finding the entrance in a socialism community or nation in which a few business people take advantage over the others to enrich themselves.

It is also well known that the emergence of socialism was a result of efforts of people trying to curb the effects of industrialization and continued ownership of crucial sectors of the economy by private sectors. Some socialist advocates for the ways of production of goods and services and also their distribution to be put under state control and ownership while the others concentrate on putting the modes of production under the hands of the cooperative workers.

In the other side, democrats advocate or approve nationalization of the organizations, which offer some essential services and goods selectively. This means that it is only the organizations which are involved in providing the most necessary and critical products and services are supposed to be owned and controlled by the state or other wards the public as a whole (Sarup, 2006, p. 1).

It is also obvious that in socialism we have what can be described as a command economy. This is because the prices are pre-determined by use of try and error method by the responsible board which is in charge of fixing the prices of consumer goods and because the political system controls most of the production of essential products and services and also their distribution. This is quite different from democratic systems because of their political organizations which advocate for individual ownership of assets and, also, the private acquisition of business organizations (DuRand, 1997, p. 1).

The socialists believe in collective ownership of goods and services, and thus they are always ready and willing to sacrifice to higher magnitudes for the sake of betterment of the communities at large and not their well being alone. Their economic and political organizations are usually structured in a way in which they can promote the common good of all people.

Here community and public efforts are highly appreciated other than the individual efforts. Here the concept of planned economy is of great concern in the economic systems and also the political organizations in the sense that the number of goods and services to be produced and also to be distributed together with the recommended prices are usually pre-determined by the responsible departments in both the political organizations and, also, in the economic systems. In one way or the other democrats may tend to agree with socialist by trying to incorporate some of the socialism practices in their political organizations and the economic systems (Morris, 2008, p. 1).

For the democrats may decide to put measures to control the production and prices of some essential good to respond to the wishes of the majority who may not be in a position to afford some of the most basic and crucial goods and services. This will comply with the common belief of democracy that the wishes and decisions of the majority will always dominate under all situations.

Even though democrats can sometimes change their systems of governance to reflect on the wishes of the majority they firmly believe in the free market whereby the forces of demand and supply determine the prices of various goods and services.

Karl max came up with what is recently called Marxism in which he tried to explain how socialism came about. He argued that conscious of the people who work very hard to earn a living in terms of salaries and wages made fell like slaves and creating the desire for them to seek freedom from such slavery and drop the passion for being capitalists and go for collective ownership (Crespo, 2003, p. 1). He also reasoned that it is the social well being which influences the consciousness which is very vital for the existence of humanity and thus promotion of socialism.

Socialism is practiced in countries like the Republic of China whereby the socialist and centrally planned economies are practiced, and it is worth to note that here the cooperative workers are highly regarded. On the other hand, the Aristotle has worked very hard to explain the democratic forms of organizations.

In this case, Aristotle contrasted the governance by many people, governance by a few people and governance by a single person. Here he suggested that the most essential principle of democracy is freedom and liberty. He also said that the decision made by the majority of the people should be taken to form justice (Baron, 2008, p. 1).

Democracy is mostly practiced in most parts of the world because it is widely acceptable by people even though it is not friendly with some parts of the world and especially in African, even though it is highly embraced in the United States of America.

It is evident that the philosophical issues and how they support the formation of the various policies in both socialism and democracy are of paramount importance in multiple governments. This is because it will help in evaluating the various political and economic organizations in a given country. It will be for well good of all governments to adopt forms of governance which will promote the continued existence of humankind.

Here we have looked at differences between socialism and democracy, their most common believes and concepts and also the people who led to the ideas of socialism and democracy and the countries where are practiced. We have also incorporated the philosophical issues and how they support the policies mentioned.

Baron, D. (2008). The Difference Between Socialism and Communism. Web.

Crespo, P. (2003). Democracy & free markets vs. socialism. Web.

Durand. C. (1997). The Idea of Democracy and the Idea of Socialism . Web.

Morris, D. (2008). Socialism VS Democracy Obama VS McCain. Web.

Sarup, K. (2006). Democracy vs. Communism: Lessons from history . Web.

Viklund, A. (2006). Democracy and Socialism . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2018, May 10). Socialism & Democracy: Fundamental Believes and Concepts. https://ivypanda.com/essays/socialism-vs-democracy/

"Socialism & Democracy: Fundamental Believes and Concepts." IvyPanda , 10 May 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/socialism-vs-democracy/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Socialism & Democracy: Fundamental Believes and Concepts'. 10 May.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Socialism & Democracy: Fundamental Believes and Concepts." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/socialism-vs-democracy/.

1. IvyPanda . "Socialism & Democracy: Fundamental Believes and Concepts." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/socialism-vs-democracy/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Socialism & Democracy: Fundamental Believes and Concepts." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/socialism-vs-democracy/.

Home — Essay Samples — Economics — Capitalism — Socialism and Capitalism

Socialism and Capitalism

• Categories: Capitalism Socialism

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Words: 606 |

Published: Jan 31, 2024

Words: 606 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

1. economic systems, 2. ownership of resources, 3. impact on society, 4. criticisms and counterarguments, 5. conclusion, definition and characteristics of socialism, definition and characteristics of capitalism, comparison of economic systems, private ownership in capitalism, public ownership in socialism, social equality and mobility in socialism, economic growth and entrepreneurial spirit in capitalism, critiques of socialism.

• Lack of incentive and innovation
• Centralized control and bureaucracy
• Economic inefficiency and resource misallocation

Critiques of capitalism

• Widening income inequality
• Market failures and externalities
• Exploitation of labor
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/socialism
• https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capitalism.asp
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172670/

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George Bernard Shaw on socialism

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This forceful, almost hortatory essay by George Bernard Shaw first appeared in the 13th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1926), the same year Shaw received the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty.” (Shaw, by the way, was proud to point out that in his youth he had read the ninth edition [1875] in its entirety, excepting only the scientific articles.) Shaw wrote superbly, and he was critical of capitalism but also of leftist institutions such as trade unionism . Though his essay concludes on a hopeful note, his analysis is mostly pessimistic: while modern society and civilization itself have fallen prey to unfettered capitalism, the “loss of popular faith in it,” Shaw lamented, “has gone much further than the gain of any widespread or intelligent faith in socialism.” Shaw’s article is nearly as interesting read between the lines, for there is much suggested about the general state of the world in the 1920s. This text, written in an age when the socialist movement was “alive and militant,” may, in view of socialism’s current state of disarray, offer insights different than those originally envisioned by Shaw.

Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property, and the division of the resultant public income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population. Thus it reverses the policy of Capitalism , which means establishing private or “real” property to the utmost physically possible extent, and then leaving distribution of income to take care of itself. The change involves a complete moral volte-face . In Socialism private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

I. Socialism never arises in the earlier phases of capitalism, as, for instance, among the pioneers of civilisation in a country where there is plenty of land available for private appropriation by the last comer. The distribution which results under such circumstances presents no wider departures from a rough equality than those made morally plausible by their association with exceptional energy and ability at the one extreme, and with obvious defects of mind and character or accidental hard luck, at the other. This phase, however, does not last long under modern conditions. All the more favourable sites are soon privately appropriated; and the later comers (provided by immigration or the natural growth of the population), finding no eligible land to appropriate, are obliged to live by hiring it at a rent from its owners, transforming the latter into a rentier class enjoying unearned incomes which increase continually with the growth of the population until the landed class becomes a money -lending or capitalist class also, capital being the name given to spare money. The resource of hiring land and spare money is open to those only who are sufficiently educated to keep accounts and manage businesses, most of whom spring from the proprietary class as younger sons. The rest have to live by being hired as labourers and artisans at weekly or daily wages; so that a rough division of society into an upper or proprietary class, a middle or employing and managing class, and a wage proletariat is produced. In this division the proprietary class is purely parasitic, consuming without producing. As the inexorable operation of the economic law of rent makes this class richer and richer as the population increases, its demand for domestic servants and for luxuries of all kinds creates parasitic enterprise and employment for the middle class and the proletariat, not only withdrawing masses of them from productive industry, but also fortifying itself politically by a great body of workers and employers who vote with the owners because they are as dependent on the owners’ unearned incomes as the owners themselves.

Meanwhile the competition of employers for custom, which leads to the production of a dozen articles to satisfy the demand for one, leads to disastrous crises of feverish overproduction alternated with periods of bad trade (“booms” and “slumps”), making continuous employment of the proletariat impossible. When wages fall to a point at which saving also is impossible, the unemployed have no means of subsistence except public relief during the slumps.

It is in this phase of capitalistic development, attained in Great Britain in the 19th century, that socialism arises as a revolt against a distribution of wealth that has lost all its moral plausibility. Colossal wealth is associated with unproductiveness, and sometimes with conspicuous worthlessness of character; and lifetimes of excessive toil beginning in early childhood leave the toiler so miserably poor that the only refuge left for old age is a general workhouse , purposely made repulsive to deter proletarians from resorting to it as long as they have strength enough left for the most poorly paid job in the labour market. The inequalities become monstrous: hardworking men get four or five shillings a day (post-War rates) in full view of persons who get several thousands a day without any obligation to work at all, and even consider industrial work degrading. Such variations in income defy all attempts to relate them to variations in personal merit. Governments are forced to intervene and readjust distribution to some extent by confiscating larger and larger percentages of incomes derived from property ( income tax , supertax , and estate duties) and applying the proceeds to unemployment insurance and extensions of communal services, besides protecting the proletariat against the worst extremities of oppression by an elaborate factory code which takes the control of workshops and factories largely out of the hands of their proprietors, and makes it impossible for them to exact grossly excessive hours of labour from their employees or to neglect their health, physical safety, and moral welfare with complete selfishness.

This confiscation of private property incomes for public purposes without any pretence of compensation, which is now proceeding on a scale inconceivable by Victorian ministers, has destroyed the integrity of private property and inheritance; and the success with which the confiscated capital has been applied to communal industries by the municipalities and the central Government, contrasted with the many failures and comparative costliness of capitalist industrial adventure, has shaken superstition that private commercial management is always more effective and less corrupt than public management. In particular, the British attempt to depend on private industry for munitions during the War of 1914–8 nearly led to defeat; and the substitution of national factories was so sensationally successful, and the post-War resumption of private enterprise, after a brief burst of illusory prosperity, was followed by so distressing a slump, that the reversal of the relative efficiency prestige of socialism and capitalism was vigorously accelerated, leaving capitalism unpopular and on the defensive, whilst confiscation of private capital, communal enterprise, and nationalisation of the big industries, grew steadily in popularity in and out of Parliament .

This change in public opinion had already deeply penetrated the middle class, because of the change for the worse in the position of the ordinary employer. He, in the 19th century, was admittedly master of the industrial, and, after the Reform of 1832, of the political situation. He dealt directly and even domineeringly with the proprietary class, from which he hired his land and capital either directly or through agents who were his servants and not his masters. But the sums required to set on foot and develop modern industrial schemes grew until they were out of reach of ordinary employers. The collection of money to be used as capital became a special business, conducted by professional promoters and financiers . These experts, though they had no direct contact with industry, became so indispensable to it that they are now virtually the masters of the ordinary routine employers. Meanwhile the growth of joint-stock enterprise was substituting the employee-manager for the employer, and thus converting the old independent middle class into a proletariat, and pressing it politically to the left.

With every increase in the magnitude of the capital sums required for starting or extending large industrial concerns comes the need for an increase in the ability demanded by their management; and this the financiers cannot supply: indeed they bleed industry of middle class ability by attracting it into their own profession. Matters reach a point at which industrial management by the old-fashioned tradesman must be replaced by a professionally trained and educated bureaucracy ; and as Capitalism does not provide such a bureaucracy, the industries tend to get into difficulties as they grow by combination (amalgamation), and thus outgrow the capacity of the managers who were able to handle them as separate units. This difficulty is increased by the hereditary element in business.

An employer may bequeath the control of an industry involving the subsistence of thousands of workers, and requiring from its chief either great natural ability and energy or considerable scientific and political culture, to his eldest son without being challenged to prove his son’s qualifications, whilst if he proposes to make his second son a doctor or a naval officer he is peremptorily informed by the Government that only by undergoing an elaborate and prolonged training, and obtaining official certificates of qualification, can his son be permitted to assume such responsibilities. Under these circumstances, much of the management and control of industry gets divided between routine employers who do not really understand their own businesses, and financiers, who, having never entered a factory nor descended a mine shaft, do not understand any business except the business of collecting money to be used as capital, and forcing it into industrial adventures at all hazards, the result being too often reckless and senseless over-capitalisation, leading to bankruptcies (disguised as reconstructions) which reveal the most astonishing technical ignorance and economic blindness on the part of men in high repute as directors of huge industrial combinations, who draw large fees as the remuneration of a mystical ability which exists only in the imagination of the shareholders.

II. All this steadily saps the moral plausibility of capitalism . The loss of popular faith in it has gone much further than the gain of any widespread or intelligent faith in socialism. Consequently the end of the first quarter of the 20th century finds the political situation in Europe confused and threatening: all the political parties diagnosing dangerous social disease, and most of them proposing disastrous remedies. National governments, no matter what ancient party slogans they raise, find themselves controlled by financiers who follow the slot of gigantic international usuries without any public aims, and without any technical qualifications except their familiarity with a rule-of-thumb city routine quite inapplicable to public affairs, because it deals exclusively with stock exchange and banking categories of capital and credit. These, though valid in the money market when conducting exchanges of future incomes for spare ready money by the small minority of persons who have these luxuries to deal in, would vanish under pressure of any general political measure like—to take a perilously popular and plausible example—a levy on capital. Such a levy would produce a money market in which there were all sellers and no buyers, sending the Bank Rate up to infinity, breaking the banks, and bringing industry to a standstill by the transfer of all the cash available for wages to the national treasury. Unfortunately the parliamentary proletarian parties understand this as little as their capitalist opponents. They clamour for taxation of capital; and the capitalists, instead of frankly admitting that capital as they reckon it is a phantom, and that the assumption that a person with an income of £5 a year represents to the state an immediately available asset of £100 ready money, though it may work well enough as between a handful of investors and spendthrifts in a stockbroker’s office, is pure fiction when applied to a whole nation, ignorantly defend their imaginary resources as if they really existed, and thus confirm the proletariat in its delusion instead of educating it.

The financiers have their own ignis fatuus , which is that they can double the capital of the country, and thus give an immense stimulus to industrial development and production, by inflating the currency until prices rise to a point at which goods formerly marked £50 are marked £100, a measure which does nothing nationally but enable every debtor to cheat his creditor, and every insurance company and pension fund to reduce by half the provision for which it has been paid. The history of inflation in Europe since the War of 1914–8, and the resultant impoverishment of pensioners and officials with small fixed incomes, forces the middle classes to realise the appalling consequences of abandoning finance and industry direction to the unskilled, politically ignorant, unpatriotic “practical business men.”

Meanwhile, the nobility of capital leads to struggles for the possession of exploitable foreign territories (“places in the sun”) produces war on a scale which threatens not only civilisation but human existence; for the old field combats between bodies of soldiers, from which women were shielded, are now replaced by attacks from the air on the civil population, in which women and men are slaughtered indiscriminately, making replacement of the killed impossible. The emotional reaction after such wars takes the form of acute disillusion, which further accelerates the moral revolt against capitalism, without unfortunately, producing any workable conception of an alternative. The proletarians are cynically sulky, no longer believing in the disinterestedness of those who appeal to them to make additional efforts and sacrifices to repair the waste of war. The moral mainspring of the private property system is broken; and it is the confiscations of unearned income, the extensions of municipal and national communism, above all, the new subsidies in aid of wages extorted from governments by threats of nationally disastrous lock-outs and strikes , which induce the proletariat to continue operating the capitalist system now that the old compulsion to work by imposing starvation as the alternative, fundamental in capitalism, has had to be discarded in its primitive ruthlessness. The worker who refuses to work can now quarter himself on public relief (which means finally on confiscated property income) to an extent formerly impossible.

Democracy , or votes for everybody, does not produce constructive solutions of social problems; nor does compulsory schooling help much. Unbounded hopes were based on each successive extension of the electoral franchise, culminating in the enfranchisement of women. These hopes have been disappointed, because the voters, male and female, being politically untrained and uneducated, have ( a ) no grasp of constructive measures, ( b ) loathe taxation as such, ( c ) dislike being governed at all, and ( d ) dread and resent any extension of official interference as an encroachment on their personal liberty. Compulsory schooling, far from enlightening them, inculcates the sacredness of private property, and stigmatises a distributive state as criminal and disastrous, thereby continually renewing the old public opinion against socialism, and making impossible a national education dogmatically inculcating as first principles the iniquity of private property, the paramount social importance of equality of income and the criminality of idleness.

Consequently, in spite of disillusion with capitalism, and the growing menace of failing trade and falling currencies, our democratic parliamentary Oppositions, faced with the fact that the only real remedy involves increased taxation , compulsory reorganisation or frank nationalisation of the bankrupt industries, and compulsory national service in civil as in military life for all classes, dare not confront their constituents with such proposals, knowing that on increased taxation alone they would lose their seats. To escape responsibility, they look to the suppression of parliamentary institutions by coups d’état and dictatorships, as in Italy, Spain and Russia. This despair of parliamentary institutions is a striking novelty in the present century; but it has failed to awaken the democratic electorates to the fact that, having after a long struggle gained the power to govern, they have neither the knowledge nor the will to exercise it, and are in fact using their votes to keep Government parochial when civilisation is bursting the dikes of nationality in all directions.

A more effective resistance to property arises from the organisation of the proletariat in trade unions to resist the effect of increase of population in cheapening labour and increasing its duration and severity. But trade unionism is itself a phase of capitalism, inasmuch as it applies to labour as a commodity that principle of selling in the dearest market, and giving as little as possible for the price, which was formerly applied only to land, capital and merchandise. Its method is that of a civil war between labour and capital in which the decisive battles are lock-outs and strikes, with intervals of minor adjustment by industrial diplomacy. Trade unionism now maintains a Labour party in the British Parliament. The most popular members and leaders are socialists in theory; so that there is always a paper programme of nationalisation of industries and of banking, taxation of unearned incomes to extinction, and other incidentals of a transition to socialism; but the trade union driving force aims at nothing more than capitalism with labour taking the lion’s share, and energetically repudiates compulsory national service , which would deprive it of its power to strike. In this it is heartily seconded by the proprietary parties, which, though willing enough to make strikes illegal and proletarian labour compulsory, will not pay the price of surrendering its own power to idle. Compulsory national service being essential in socialism, it is thus deadlocked equally by organised labour and by capitalism.

It is a historic fact, recurrent enough to be called an economic law, that capitalism , which builds up great civilisations, also wrecks them if persisted in beyond a certain point. It is easy to demonstrate on paper that civilisation can be saved and immensely developed by, at the right moment, discarding capitalism and changing the private property profiteering state into the common property distributive state. But though the moment for the change has come again and again it has never been effected, because capitalism has never produced the necessary enlightenment among the masses, nor admitted to a controlling share in public affairs the order of intellect and character outside which Socialism, or indeed politics, as distinguished from mere party electioneering, is incomprehensible. Not until the two main tenets of socialism: abolition of private property (which must not be confused with personal property), and equality of income , have taken hold of the people as religious dogmas, as to which no controversy is regarded as sane, will a stable socialist state be possible. It should be observed, however, that of the two tenets, the need for equality of income is not the more difficult to demonstrate, because no other method of distribution is or ever has been possible. Omitting the few conspicuous instances in which actual earners of money make extraordinary fortunes by exceptional personal gifts or strokes of luck, the existing differences of income among workers are not individual but corporate differences. Within the corporation no discrimination between individuals is possible; all common labourers, like all upper division civil servants, are equally paid. The argument for equalising the class incomes are that unequal distribution of purchasing power upsets the proper order of economic production, causing luxuries to be produced on an extravagant scale whilst the primitive vital needs of the people are left unsatisfied; that its effect on marriage, by limiting and corrupting sexual selection, is highly dysgenic; that it reduces religion, legislation, education and the administration of justice to absurdity as between rich and poor; and that it creates an idolatry of riches and idleness which inverts all sane social morality.

Unfortunately, these are essentially public considerations. The private individual, with the odds overwhelmingly against him as a social climber, dreams even in the deepest poverty of some bequest or freak of fortune by which he may become a capitalist, and dreads that the little he has may be snatched from him by that terrible and unintelligible thing, state policy. Thus the private person’s vote is the vote of Ananias and Sapphira; and democracy becomes a more effective bar to socialism than the pliant and bewildered conservatism of the plutocracy. Under such conditions the future is unpredictable. Empires end in ruins: commonwealths have hitherto been beyond the civic capacity of mankind. But there is always the possibility that mankind will this time weather the cape on which all the old civilisations have been wrecked. It is this possibility that gives intense interest to the present historic moment, and keeps the Socialist movement alive and militant.

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Essay on Socialism: Definition, Nature and Classification

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After reading this article you will learn about Socialism:- 1. Definition and Origin of Socialism 2. Nature of Socialism 3. Classification 4. Transitional Character.

Definition and Origin of Socialism:

Maurice Cornforth defines socialism in the following words:

“Socialism is the social ownership of means of production and their utilization to satisfy the material and cultural requirements of the whole of society. Socialism is necessary because only by such a radical transformation of economic basis of society can the evils resulting from capitalism be done away with and new powerful techniques be fully utilized”.

This definition provides certain basic features of socialism of which Marx and Engels thought a lot. One is, the forces of production will be placed under the control of society which will ensure their proper utilization.

Socialism envisages a radical change or transformation of the economic basis of society. Third is, this radical transformation will cure the evils created by capitalism. Fourth is, capitalism may have some good effects. But these so-called good effects of capitalism are for the benefit of the capitalist class which is powerful almost in all respects.

Scientific socialism has been viewed as the “science about the proletarian class struggle and the socialist revolution, about the socio-political laws behind the building of socialism and communism and about the world revolutionary process as a whole”.

As a science, socialism has its own laws and categories, reflecting the basic aspects of revolutionary transformation of capitalist into communist society. The laws relate to the socialist revolution, establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition from capitalism to socialism and then to communism. How the working class will conduct a class struggle scientific socialism relates that.

So it provides guidance for revolutionary struggle. It contains the principles, laws and techniques of a new society classless society. Scientific socialism is not a conceptual matter; it is an operative aspect of historical transition from capitalism to communism.

Scientific socialism (henceforth S. S.) deals with the various stages of revolutionary struggle and nature of socialist society. The evils of capitalism created large scale discontent in the minds of men and they were in search of a way out.

People well aware to the evil effects of capitalism believed that only a socialist society could save the working class people and common men from all types of exploitation and oppression. How is socialism indebted to capitalism for its emergence that is to be briefly investigated?

Engels has said:

“Modern socialism, in its essence, is the direct product of the recognition of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists, and wage workers, of the anarchy existing in production. But in its theoretical form modern socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the nineteenth century.”

What Engels emphasizes is that socialism is the logical consequence of historical development of society which is materialist interpretation of history. Elaborating Engels’s view Kolakowski writes, Capitalism creates the precondi­tion of the new society not only by revolutionizing technology and evolving new forms of cooperation joint stock companies in which property and management are separate, and likewise cooperative factories are to be regarded as transitional forms or instances of the abandonment of the capitalist mode of production within the system itself.

In this sense socialism is not simply the negation of capitalism but also a continuation of it and of the socializing process based on the technological development of the present age”. Capitalism creates the necessary preconditions of socialism.

The growth of capitalism has always been accompanied by unprecedented increase in wealth the major share of which goes to the hands of few. The toiling masses are plunged into unbound impoverishment. The growth of technology and harnessing of the natural resources have hardly come to the benefit of working people.

All these evil aspects of capitalism have worked as potential source of discontent. People in general have formed the firm conviction that the continuation of capitalism cannot materialize the hope of emancipation.

Capitalists will never direct science and technology to the overall progress of society. The only way to get rid of capitalism is to overthrow it.

Summarizing the evils of capitalism Maurice Cornforth says “The great capitalist monopolies of today subjugate everything to their drive for maximum profits, to secure which they step up the exploitation, annex other countries and plunder their resources, militaries the national economy and prepare for and wage wars.”

Nature of Socialism:

We are now in a position to form the conclusion that its advent is inevitable, specially if we accept the materialist interpretation of history with the help of dialectic. Marx and Engels were sure that nobody desired the advent of capitalism.

In the same way socialism must come. Capitalism calls for a certain versatility in the working class and thus creates conditions for an upheaval.

“The growth of capitalism reaches a stage which the capitalists cannot control. There is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property, on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered…….. they bring disorder into the whole bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them” (Manifesto).

The crisis of capitalism in this way appears and it clears the way of socialism. In support of this view we quote few words from Kolakowski “Socialism reaps the harvest of capitalism and without the latter it could only be an empty dream. The new society will arise out of the catastrophe towards which capitalism is swiftly yet unconsciously tending.”

The weapons with which bour­geoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. The weapons are not proletarians’ own.

There is a common notion that socialism means the abolition of poverty or luxurious consumption of bourgeoisie. In socialism there exists neither poverty of many nor luxury of few. But it is more than this.

It promises the growth of all and abolition of all inequalities. The characteristic feature of socialism is it abolishes human alienation. In capitalism labourer is alienated from the productive system.

He is also alienated from nature, from himself that is, from his own activity, and also from other men. Socialism does not imply the redistribution of wealth or income, while the old system will continue to exist. The old economic will be overthrown in socialism.

Socialism abolishes the wage labour system of capitalism. That is, there shall be no sale of labour power. The whole material production is devoted to use value. The scale and character of production in all branches will be governed purely by social needs and not by the desire or profit making.

Socialism means that the vast resources of modern technique are developed and utilized to meet the needs of the people. The productive forces being released from private control will be used for the general welfare of the society.

Socialism promises increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour. They both augment the mass of articles produced in a given time. By suppressing the capitalist mode of production the length of the working day could be reduced to the necessary labour time.

Again, in socialism the distinction between necessary and surplus labour will lose its importance and meaning. The surplus value derived from surplus labour will be abolished in socialism. Worker will get enough time for their own recreation. They will devote time to the cultural activities and finer pursuits.

Socialism not only assertively talks about the full satisfaction of material needs, but all-round development of human personality. Socialism promises to liberate human power from bondage.

Capitalist system of production imposes manifold barriers through division of labour and many other ways. Marx, that is why, wanted to bring an end of the division of labour which was crippling workers both physically and spiritually.

Socialism does not mean that human development and creativity cease to exist, but that there are no longer any social restrictions upon them. In socialism the realm of freedom will be considerably expanded. Being released from physical necessity human beings will invest energy for greater and nobler purposes.

Classification of Socialism:

Manifesto contains a precise but useful classification of socialism. According to this classification socialism is of three type’s Feudalistic socialism; Bourgeois socialism and Utopian socialism. Before the Industrial Revolution the feudal lords and the aristo­crats were combined together and formed a class which was the basic class.

After industrialization the emergence of bourgeoisie cornered the aristocracy and it became the basic class whereas the aristocrats were relegated to the non-basic class. This was not possible for the aristocracy to swallow.

The aristocrats and landlords revolted against the bourgeois domination and in order to arouse the sympathy of the workers and peasants they indicated the bourgeoisie. The aristocrats were able to relieve their feelings by penning lampoons against their new masters and by uttering sinister prophesy of impending doom. Such was the origin of feudalistic socialism.

The feudalists pointed out that the capitalists were exploiters, but they forgot that they were also exploiters. The aristocrats inspired educated people to write pamphlets exposing the nature and extent of bourgeois exploitation.

The second type of socialism is petty-bourgeois socialism. Petty-bourgeoisie is a class that stands between proletariat and bourgeoisie and is perpetually consti­tuted as a supplementary component of bourgeois society.

The members of the petty-bourgeois class have made a shrewd analysis of capitalist system and have exposed the contradiction; it blames capitalism for all evils. Petty-bourgeoisie further condemns the capitalism for introduction of machinery and division of labour.

It emphasizes the wretchedness of proletariat, anarchy of production, gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial wars the nations wage for mutual extermination, and the breakup of the old family ties. But in practice the petty-bourgeois socialism wants to re-establish the old methods of production and these with old property relations.

Let us deal with German socialism. In France there developed a system of socialist thought. The German philosophers borrowed the basic principles of French philosophical thought and adopted it to the soil of Germany. But the socio-political conditions of two countries were not identical and as a result of it the key concepts of French socialism were considerably distorted.

The German socialists demanded political movement for realization of socialist goals, such as abolition of repressive measures of government and bourgeois law, establishment of liberty and equality, protection of the freedom of press. But unfortunately the German socialists failed to champion the interests of proletarians.

The capitalist class is very clever. Sometimes this class takes measures to remove some grievances of people. But one should not think that this class does this out of benevolence, but simply to safeguard the interests.

Economists, philanthropists, humanitarians and welfare workers fall within the category of bourgeois or conservative socialism. They want prevention of cruelty to animals and various types of reforms.

They tacitly admit the evils of bourgeois society. But they think that class struggle is not the solution of grievances. Compromises, adjustments and reforms are the best ways of alleviating the miseries.

They want the extant society without its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They want the bourgeoisie without the proletariat. Of Utopian socialists the prominent figures were Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen.

They felt the miserable conditions of the working class and were also aware of the reasons of pathetic conditions. But unfortunately they failed to suggest any way out. Marx and Engels agreed with some of the views of the Utopian socialists but disagreed with their suggestions.

Transitional Character of Socialism:

There is a confusion even among the serious students of Marxism that socialism and communism are one and same thing. It can be used interchangeably. But a deep study of Marxian literature reveals that two are separate concepts and separate stages of social development. Maurice Cornforth in his illuminating work points out certain transitional features of socialism.

An analysis of these features is necessary in order to grasp the transition from socialism to communism. One such feature is, socialism abolishes all classes and class exploitation and also exploitation by man. Cornforth’s interpretation is that abolition of classes and class antagonisms does not mean that classes will be completely abolished. The remnants of reactionary or bourgeois classes will remain in a socialist society.

Even there may not be classes; there may be agents of classes. Holders of big private property will be forcibly expropriated, but the same method cannot be applied to small property holders.

The small and middle peasants very often act as agents of capitalists and their extermination takes time.

Engels said:

“In effecting transition from private enter­prise and private possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose”.

The second transitional feature is socialism institutes a social ownership of the means of production and makes man the master of machine. But this ambitious objective cannot be achieved overnight. This is a long process.

“It involves a thoroughgoing re-training of labour to educate and train all-around people” . The process of removal of subordination of labourer to the division of labour begins in socialism and the process continues until communism arrives. To remove the sub-ordination is the goal of socialism but it is not fully achieved in socialism. Because of this there is the question of transition.

Socialism aims that every requirement of man shall be satisfied. This objective cannot be realized immediately because of certain constraints from which socialism suffers. Particularly the satisfaction of the requirement wants immense advance of production and all-round development of the economy. Socialism coming out of the womb of capitalism cannot perform miracles.

In socialism individuals receive a share of social product not according to the need of each, but according to the quantity and quality of work each has contributed. When all sorts of commodities are produced abundantly there will be a flood of commodities and people will get what they require. There may be difference in quality and quantity of labour, but needs will never remain unfulfilled.

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• Difference between Marxian Socialism and Utopian Socialism
• Essay on Socialist Society: Meaning, Nature and Political Organisation
• Democratic Socialism: Definition, Nature, Methods and Tenets

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Socialism essay: essay on socialism and it’s main characteristics.

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Socialism Essay: Essay on Socialism and it’s Main Characteristics!

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (1994), ‘an economic and political system based on collective or state ownership of the means of production and distribution is known as socialism’. This approach has its roots in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. These thinkers were disturbed by the exploitation of the working class as it emerged during the industrial revolution. In their view, capitalism forced large numbers of people to exchange their labour for wages.

The owners of an industry pay workers less than the value of the goods they produced. They pocket the difference between the value of the labour and the value of the product—surplus value as Marx called it. Marx was struck by the inequalities the capitalist system creates.

A socialist economic system represents an attempt to eliminate such economic inequalities and exploitation. The goals of socialist system include destroying the class system and thereby ending the exploitation, oppression and alienation of workers, replacing greed and the profit motive with concern for collective well-being.

Socialism differs from capitalism in a sense that the means of production and distribution in a society are collectively rather than privately owned. The basic objective of the socialist system is to meet people’s needs rather than to maximize profits.

Socialism also differs from capitalism in that it is not controlled by the market—it has a planned economy. The government controls what will be produced and consumed. It sets prices for goods, decides what goods the society needs, and what would be the luxuries.

Thus, there is no free market. Socialists reject the laissez-faire philosophy that free competition benefits the general public. As a result, social life would be regulated democrati­cally in ways that put human needs first and make more efficient and effective use of human and other resources.

Socialist societies also differ from capitalist ones in their commitment to social service programmes. Contrary to capitalist societies, socialist societies typically offer government financed medical care, housing, education and other key services for all citizens.

In practice, however, like capitalism, the socialism takes many and diverse forms. It has worked quite differently. Authoritarianism rather than democracy has been the predominant form of political power, inefficient central planning has generally failed to meet the needs of the people, a privi­leged class of bureaucrats has perpetuated the class system, and chronic (until recently) conflict and competition with wealthier and more powerful capitalist nations have drained both attention and resources. In fact, no socialist society has met Marx’s main preconditions for successful socialism.

Main Characteristics of Socialism/Socialist Societies :

While there are various strands of socialist thought, most socialists identify the following as the important characteristics of socialist societies:

1. There is a common ownership of the means of production and distri­bution. It is collectively owned system of production.

2. Economic activities are planned by the state and the market plays little or no role in the allocation of resources.

3. There is no place for exploitation, oppression and alienation in a socialist society.

4. With the disappearance of private property, economic classes also disappear and hence the state has an administrative rather than repressive function.

5. The structural changes will also vanish the ideology, especially religious.

6. Socialism emphasizes the abolition of markets, capital, and labour as a commodity.

7. The socialist state or government of each nation will eventually ‘wither away’ as will inequality and class differentiation.

8. In a communistic state (a brand of socialistic state found in the erstwhile Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) most of the industry and agriculture was owned by the state—only a few businesses were in private sector.

Socialist thought, emerged as a powerful and credible alternative to capitalism in USSR, Eastern Europe, Asia (China) and Africa, faded away with the collapse of Soviet communism in 1989. Some commentators believe European socialism is dead and buried.

Communist parties in West and East have given themselves new names and distanced themselves from the heavy-handed, state communism of the past. However, the concerns that have been addressed by those who espoused or eschewed the cause still remain.

The dichotomies of freedom and equality, individual and collective rights all remain very much to the fore. Liberal capitalism fails to see the uneven and unequal impact that globalized economy has. As written earlier that socialism emerged in response to and as a challenge to the inequalities of capitalism.

Since capitalism has now been globalized, there is always a potential for this challenge to re-emerge, but perhaps via a different sort of language and organization, perhaps based on ecology, gender, anti-consumerist movements, and so on.

Thus, capitalism and socialism serve as ideal types of economic systems. In reality, the economy of each industrial society (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union including India) includes certain elements of both capitalism and socialism.

All industrial societies rely chiefly on mechanization in the production of goods and services. In almost all countries, some property is private and some is owned by the state. In India, before the introduction of liberal economy in 1990, there was mixed economy—railways, airways and many other industrial units like BHEL were owned by the state but now the wind is changing towards privatization of these units also. Before adopting the liberal model of development, Indian model, based on socialist ideology, was known as ‘democratic collectivistic model’.

Related Articles:

• Merits and Demerits of Socialism in India
• Socialism in India: 8 Important Characteristics of Socialism in India

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