socialist

Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the economic, political and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can be state/public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element. Different types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.

Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms. Non-market socialism substitutes factor markets and often money with integrated economic planning and engineering or technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing a different economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws and dynamics than those of capitalism. A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system in capitalism. By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of socially owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend. Anarchism and libertarian socialism oppose the use of the state as a means to establish socialism, favouring decentralisation above all, whether to establish non-market socialism or market socialism.

Socialist politics has been both internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and at other times independent and critical of them, and present in both industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, since the post-war period it has come to embrace a Keynesian mixed economy within a predominantly developed capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity that expands state intervention to include income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state. Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism, with more democratic control of companies, currencies, investments and natural resources.

The socialist political movement includes a set of political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production. By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century. Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, many socialists have also adopted the causes of other social movements such as feminism, environmentalism, and progressivism.

While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, several scholars posit that in practice, the model functioned as a form of state capitalism. See also Several academics, political commentators, and scholars have distinguished between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first representing the Eastern Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties such as Britain, France, Sweden, and Western countries in general, among others. However, following the end of the Cold War, many of these countries have moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world.

Etymology

For Andrew Vincent, " e word 'socialism' finds its root in the Latin , which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was . This latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen".

Initial use of ''socialism'' was claimed by Pierre Leroux, who alleged he first used the term in the Parisian journal in 1832. Leroux was a follower of Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled utopian socialism. Socialism contrasted with the liberal doctrine of individualism that emphasized the moral worth of the individual whilst stressing that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another. The original utopian socialists condemned this doctrine of individualism for failing to address social concerns during the Industrial Revolution, including poverty, oppression, and vast wealth inequality. They viewed their society as harming community life by basing society on competition. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the shared ownership of resources. Saint-Simon proposed economic planning, scientific administration and the application of scientific understanding to the organisation of society. By contrast, Robert Owen proposed to organise production and ownership via cooperatives. ''Socialism'' is also attributed in France to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud while in Britain it is attributed to Owen, who became one of the fathers of the cooperative movement.

The definition and usage of ''socialism'' settled by the 1860s, replacing ''associationist'', ''co-operative'', and ''mutualist'' that had been used as synonyms while ''communism'' fell out of use during this period. An early distinction between ''communism'' and ''socialism'' was that the latter aimed to only socialise production while the former aimed to socialise both production and consumption (in the form of free access to final goods). By 1888, Marxists employed ''socialism'' in place of ''communism'' as the latter had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for ''socialism''. It was not until after the Bolshevik Revolution that ''socialism'' was appropriated by Vladimir Lenin to mean a stage between capitalism and communism. He used it to defend the Bolshevik program from Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for communism. The distinction between ''communism'' and ''socialism'' became salient in 1918 after the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the All-Russian Communist Party, interpreting ''communism'' specifically to mean socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism and later that of Marxism–Leninism, although communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism. According to ''The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx'', "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death".

In Christian Europe, communists were believed to have adopted atheism. In Protestant England, ''communism'' was too close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence ''socialist'' was the preferred term. Engels wrote that in 1848, when '' The Communist Manifesto'' was published, socialism was respectable in Europe while communism was not. The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves ''communists''. This branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill discussed a form of economic socialism within a liberal context that would later be known as liberal socialism. In later editions of his '' Principles of Political Economy'' (1848), Mill posited that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies" and promoted substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives. While democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, Marxists denounced it as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the proletariat.

History

Early socialism

Socialist models and ideas espousing common or public ownership have existed since antiquity. The economy of the 3rd century BCE Mauryan Empire of India, an absolute monarchy, has been described by some scholars as "a socialized monarchy" and "a sort of state socialism" due to "nationalisation of industries". Other scholars have suggested that elements of socialist thought were present in the politics of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Mazdak the Younger (died c. 524 or 528 CE), a Persian communal proto-socialist, instituted communal possessions and advocated the public good. Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, a Companion of Muhammad, is credited by multiple authors as a principal antecedent of Islamic socialism. The teachings of Jesus are frequently described as socialist, especially by Christian socialists. records that in the early church in Jerusalem " one claimed that any of their possessions was their own", although the pattern soon disappears from church history except within monasticism. Christian socialism was one of the founding threads of the British Labour Party and is claimed to begin with the uprising of Wat Tyler and John Ball in the 14th century CE. After the French Revolution, activists and theorists such as François-Noël Babeuf, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, Philippe Buonarroti and Auguste Blanqui influenced the early French labour and socialist movements.Thomas Kurian (ed). ''The Encyclopedia of Political Science'' CQ Press. Washington D.c. 2011. p. 1555 In Britain, Thomas Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor in '' Agrarian Justice'' while Charles Hall wrote ''The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States'', denouncing capitalism's effects on the poor of his time. This work influenced the utopian schemes of Thomas Spence.

The first self-conscious socialist movements developed in the 1820s and 1830s. Groups such as the Fourierists, Owenites and Saint-Simonians provided a series of analyses and interpretations of society. Especially the Owenites overlapped with other working-class movements such as the Chartists in the United Kingdom. The Chartists gathered significant numbers around the People's Charter of 1838 which sought democratic reforms focused on the extension of suffrage to all male adults. Leaders in the movement called for a more equitable distribution of income and better living conditions for the working classes. The first trade unions and consumer cooperative societies followed the Chartist movement. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon proposed his philosophy of mutualism in which "everyone had an equal claim, either alone or as part of a small cooperative, to possess and use land and other resources as needed to make a living". Other currents inspired Christian socialism "often in Britain and then usually coming out of left liberal politics and a romantic anti-industrialism" which produced theorists such as Edward Bellamy, Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice.

The first advocates of socialism favoured social levelling in order to create a meritocratic or technocratic society based on individual talent. Henri de Saint-Simon was fascinated by the potential of science and technology and advocated a socialist society that would eliminate the disorderly aspects of capitalism based on equal opportunities. He sought a society in which each person was ranked according to his or her capacities and rewarded according to his or her work. His key focus was on administrative efficiency and industrialism and a belief that science was essential to progress. This was accompanied by a desire for a rationally organised economy based on planning and geared towards large-scale scientific and material progress.

West European social critics, including Louis Blanc, Charles Fourier, Charles Hall, Robert Owen, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Saint-Simon were the first modern socialists who criticised the poverty and inequality of the Industrial Revolution. They advocated reform, Owen advocating the transformation of society to small communities without private property. Owen's contribution to modern socialism was his claim that individual actions and characteristics were largely determined by their social environment. On the other hand, Fourier advocated Phalanstères (communities that respected individual desires, including sexual preferences), affinities and creativity and saw that work has to be made enjoyable for people. Owen and Fourier's ideas were practiced in intentional communities around Europe and North America in the mid-19th century.

Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a government that ruled Paris from 18 March (formally, from 28 March) to 28 May 1871. The Commune was the result of an uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. The Commune elections were held on 26 March. They elected a Commune council of 92 members, one member for each 20,000 residents.

Because the Commune was able to meet on fewer than 60 days in total, only a few decrees were actually implemented. These included the separation of church and state; the remission of rents owed for the period of the siege (during which payment had been suspended); the abolition of night work in the hundreds of Paris bakeries; the granting of pensions to the unmarried companions and children of National Guards killed on active service; and the free return of all workmen's tools and household items valued up to 20 francs that had been pledged during the siege.

First International

In 1864, the First International was founded in London. It united diverse revolutionary currents, including socialists such as the French followers of Proudhon, Blanquists, Philadelphes, English trade unionists and social democrats. In 1865 and 1866, it held a preliminary conference and had its first congress in Geneva, respectively. Due to their wide variety of philosophies, conflict immediately erupted. The first objections to Marx came from the mutualists who opposed state socialism. Shortly after Mikhail Bakunin and his followers joined in 1868, the First International became polarised into camps headed by Marx and Bakunin. The clearest differences between the groups emerged over their proposed strategies for achieving their visions. The First International became the first major international forum for the promulgation of socialist ideas.

Bakunin's followers were called collectivists and sought to collectivise ownership of the means of production while retaining payment proportional to the amount and kind of labour of each individual. Like Proudhonists, they asserted the right of each individual to the product of his labour and to be remunerated for his particular contribution to production. By contrast, anarcho-communists sought collective ownership of both the means and the products of labour. As Errico Malatesta put it, "instead of running the risk of making a confusion in trying to distinguish what you and I each do, let us all work and put everything in common. In this way each will give to society all that his strength permits until enough is produced for every one; and each will take all that he needs, limiting his needs only in those things of which there is not yet plenty for every one". Anarcho-communism as a coherent economic-political philosophy was first formulated in the Italian section of the First International by Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero, Emilio Covelli, Andrea Costa and other ex-Mazzinian republicans.Nunzio Pernicone, "Italian Anarchism 1864–1892", pp. 111–113, AK Press 2009. Out of respect for Bakunin, they did not make their differences with collectivist anarchism explicit until after his death.James Guillaume
"Michael Bakunin – A Biographical Sketch"
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Syndicalism emerged in France inspired in part by Proudhon and later by Pelloutier and Georges Sorel."Socialism"
at '' Encyclopedia Britannica''. It developed at the end of the 19th century out of the French trade-union movement (''syndicat'' is the French word for trade union). It was a significant force in Italy and Spain in the early 20th century until it was crushed by the fascist regimes in those countries. In the United States, syndicalism appeared in the guise of the Industrial Workers of the World, or "Wobblies", founded in 1905. Syndicalism is an economic system that organises industries into confederations (syndicates) and the economy is managed by negotiation between specialists and worker representatives of each field, comprising multiple non-competitive categorised units. Syndicalism is a form of communism and economic corporatism, but also refers to the political movement and tactics used to bring about this type of system. An influential anarchist movement based on syndicalist ideas is anarcho-syndicalism. The International Workers Association is an international anarcho-syndicalist federation of various labour unions.

The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation established to advance socialism via gradualist and reformist means. The society laid many foundations of the Labour Party and subsequently affected the policies of states emerging from the decolonisation of the British Empire, most notably India and Singapore. Originally, the Fabian Society was committed to the establishment of a socialist economy, alongside a commitment to British imperialism as a progressive and modernising force.''Discovering Imperialism: Social Democracy to World War I'', 25 November 2011. (p. 249): "the pro-imperialist majority, led by Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw, advanced an intellectual justification for central control by the British Empire, arguing that existing institutions should simply work more 'efficiently'." Later, the society functioned primarily as a think tank and is one of fifteen socialist societies affiliated with the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (the Australian Fabian Society), in Canada (the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and the now disbanded League for Social Reconstruction) and in New Zealand.

Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public". It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. Inspired by medieval guilds, theorists such as Samuel George Hobson and G. D. H. Cole advocated the public ownership of industries and their workforces' organisation into guilds, each of which under the democratic control of its trade union. Guild socialists were less inclined than Fabians to invest power in a state. At some point, like the American Knights of Labor, guild socialism wanted to abolish the wage system.

Second International

As the ideas of Marx and Engels gained acceptance, particularly in central Europe, socialists sought to unite in an international organisation. In 1889 (the centennial of the French Revolution), the Second International was founded, with 384 delegates from twenty countries representing about 300 labour and socialist organisations. Engels was elected honorary president at the third congress in 1893. Anarchists were banned, mainly due to pressure from Marxists. It has been argued that at some point the Second International turned "into a battleground over the issue of libertarian versus authoritarian socialism. Not only did they effectively present themselves as champions of minority rights; they also provoked the German Marxists into demonstrating a dictatorial intolerance which was a factor in preventing the British labour movement from following the Marxist direction indicated by such leaders as H. M. Hyndman".

Reformism arose as an alternative to revolution. Eduard Bernstein was a leading social democrat in Germany who proposed the concept of evolutionary socialism. Revolutionary socialists quickly targeted reformism: Rosa Luxemburg condemned Bernstein's '' Evolutionary Socialism'' in her 1900 essay ''Social Reform or Revolution?'' Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple social and political movements that may define "revolution" differently. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) became the largest and most powerful socialist party in Europe, despite working illegally until the anti-socialist laws were dropped in 1890. In the 1893 elections, it gained 1,787,000 votes, a quarter of the total votes cast, according to Engels. In 1895, the year of his death, Engels emphasised '' The Communist Manifesto'' emphasis on winning, as a first step, the "battle of democracy".

In South America, the Socialist Party of Argentina was established in the 1890s led by Juan B. Justo and Nicolás Repetto, among others. It was the first mass party in the country and in Latin America. The party affiliated itself with the Second International.

Early 20th century

For four months in 1904, Australian Labor Party leader Chris Watson was the Prime Minister of the country. Watson thus became the head of the world's first socialist or social democratic parliamentary government. Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey argues that the Labor Party was not socialist at all in the 1890s, and that socialist and collectivist elements only made their way in the party's platform in the early 20th century.

In 1909, the first Kibbutz was established in Palestine by Russian Jewish Immigrants. The Kibbutz Movement expanded through the 20th century following a doctrine of Zionist socialism. The British Labour Party first won seats in the House of Commons in 1902.

By 1917, the patriotism of World War I changed into political radicalism in Australia, most of Europe and the United States. Other socialist parties from around the world who were beginning to gain importance in their national politics in the early 20th century included the Italian Socialist Party, the French Section of the Workers' International, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and the Socialist Party in Argentina, the Socialist Workers' Party in Chile and the Socialist Party of America in the United States.

Russian Revolution

In February 1917, a revolution occurred in Russia. Workers, soldiers and peasants established soviets (councils), the monarchy fell and a provisional government convened pending the election of a constituent assembly. In April of that year, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik faction of socialists in Russia and known for his profound and controversial expansions of Marxism, was allowed to cross Germany to return from exile in Switzerland.

Lenin had published essays on his analysis of imperialism, the monopoly and globalisation phase of capitalism, as well as analyses on social conditions. He observed that as capitalism had further developed in Europe and America, the workers remained unable to gain class consciousness so long as they were too busy working to pay their expenses. He therefore proposed that the social revolution would require the leadership of a vanguard party of class-conscious revolutionaries from the educated and politically active part of the population.

Upon arriving in Petrograd, Lenin declared that the revolution in Russia had only begun, and that the next step was for the workers' soviets to take full authority. He issued a thesis outlining the Bolshevik programme, including rejection of any legitimacy in the provisional government and advocacy for state power to be administered through the soviets. The Bolsheviks became the most influential force. On 7 November, the capitol of the provisional government was stormed by Bolshevik Red Guards in what later was officially known in the Soviet Union as the Great October Socialist Revolution. The provisional government ended and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic—the world's first constitutionally socialist state—was established. On 25 January 1918, Lenin declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!" at the Petrograd Soviet and proposed an immediate armistice on all fronts and transferred the land of the landed proprietors, the crown and the monasteries to the peasant committees without compensation.

The day after assuming executive power on 25 January, Lenin wrote ''Draft Regulations on Workers' Control'', which granted workers control of businesses with more than five workers and office employees and access to all books, documents and stocks and whose decisions were to be "binding upon the owners of the enterprises". Governing through the elected soviets and in alliance with the peasant-based Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Bolshevik government began nationalising banks and industry; and disavowed the national debts of the deposed Romanov royal régime. It sued for peace, withdrawing from World War I and convoked a Constituent Assembly in which the peasant Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SR) won a majority.

The Constituent Assembly elected SR leader Victor Chernov President of a Russian republic, but rejected the Bolshevik proposal that it endorse the Soviet decrees on land, peace and workers' control and acknowledge the power of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The next day, the Bolsheviks declared that the assembly was elected on outdated party lists and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets dissolved it. In March 1919, world communist parties formed Comintern (also known as the Third International) at a meeting in Moscow.

In the period before World War II, Soviet Union experienced two major famines. The First famine occurred in 1921-1922 with death estimates varying between 1 and 10 million dead. It was caused by a combination of factors - severe drought and failed harvests, continuous war since 1914, forced collectivisation of farms and requisition of grain and seed from peasants (preventing the sowing of crops) by the Soviet authorities, and an economic blockade of the Soviet Union by the Allies. The experience with the famine led Lenin to replace war communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 to alleviate the extreme shortages. Under the NEP, private ownership was allowed for small and medium-sized enterprises. While large industry remained state-controlled.

A second major famine occurred in 1930-1933, resulting in millions of deaths.

The Soviet economy was the modern world's first centrally planned economy. It adopted state ownership of industry managed through Gosplan (the State Planning Commission), Gosbank (the State Bank) and the Gossnab (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply). Economic planning was conducted through serial Five-Year Plans. The emphasis was on development of heavy industry at expense of agriculture. Rapid industrialization served two purposes: to bring largely agrarian societies into the modern age, and to establish a politically loyal working class. Modernization brought about a general increase in the standard of living in the 1950s and 60's.

Third International and the revolutionary wave

The Bolshevik Russian Revolution of January 1918 launched Communist parties in many countries and a wave of revolutions until the mid-1920s. Few communists doubted that the Russian experience depended on successful, working-class socialist revolutions in developed capitalist countries. In 1919, Lenin and Leon Trotsky organised the world's Communist parties into an international association of workers—the Communist International (Comintern), also called the Third International.

The Russian Revolution influenced uprisings in other countries. The German Revolution of 1918–1919 replaced Germany's imperial government with a republic. The revolution lasted from November 1918 until the establishment of the Weimar Republic in August 1919. It included an episode known as the Bavarian Soviet Republic and the Spartacist uprising. A short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic was set up in Hungary March 21 to August 1, 1919. It was led by Béla Kun. It instituted a Red Terror. After the regime was put down, an even more brutal White Terror followed. Kun managed to escape to the Soviet Union, where he co-led murder of tens of thousands of White Russians. He was killed in the 1930 Soviet purges.

In Italy, the events known as the '' Biennio Rosso''Brunella Dalla Casa, ''Composizione di classe, rivendicazioni e professionalità nelle lotte del "biennio rosso" a Bologna'', in: AA. VV, ''Bologna 1920; le origini del fascismo'', a cura di Luciano Casali, Cappelli, Bologna 1982, p. 179. were characterised by mass strikes, worker demonstrations and self-management experiments through land and factory occupations. In Turin and Milan, workers' councils were formed and many factory occupations took place led by anarcho-syndicalists organised around the Unione Sindacale Italiana.

There was a short-lived Persian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1920–21. Patagonia Rebelde was a syndicalist-led revolution in Argentina lasting for a year and a half from in 1920–21. The anarchist-led Guangzhou City Commune in China lasted six years from 1921. In 1924, the Mongolian People's Republic was established and was ruled by the Mongolian People's Party. The Shinmin Prefecture in Manchuria lasted two years from 1929. Many of these revolutions initiated societies and economic models that have been described as socialist.

4th World Congress of the Communist International

In 1922, the fourth congress of the Communist International took up the policy of the united front. It urged communists to work with rank and file social democrats while remaining critical of their leaders. They criticised those leaders for betraying the working class by supporting the capitalists' war efforts. The social democrats pointed to the dislocation caused by revolution and later the growing authoritarianism of the communist parties. The Labour Party rejected the Communist Party of Great Britain's application to affiliate to them in 1920.

On seeing the Soviet State's growing coercive power in 1923, a dying Lenin said Russia had reverted to "a bourgeois tsarist machine ... barely varnished with socialism". After Lenin's death in January 1924, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—then increasingly under the control of Joseph Stalin—rejected the theory that socialism could not be built solely in the Soviet Union in favour of the concept of socialism in one country. Despite the marginalised Left Opposition's demand for the restoration of Soviet democracy, Stalin developed a bureaucratic, authoritarian government that was condemned by democratic socialists and anarchists for undermining the Revolution's ideals.

The Russian Revolution and its aftermath motivated national Communist parties elsewhere that gained political and social influence, in France, the United States, Italy, China, Mexico, the Brazil, Chile and Indonesia.

Left-wing groups which did not agree to the centralisation and abandonment of the soviets by the Bolshevik Party (see anti-Stalinist left) led left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks. Such groups included Socialist Revolutionaries,Carr, E.H. – The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923. W.W. Norton & Company 1985. Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists. Avrich, Paul. "Russian Anarchists and the Civil War", ''Russian Review'', Vol. 27, No. 3 (Jul. 1968), pp. 296–306. Blackwell Publishing Within this left-wing discontent, the most large-scale events were the Kronstadt rebellion and the Makhnovist movement.Noel-Schwartz, Heather
The Makhnovists & The Russian Revolution – Organization, Peasantry and Anarchism
Archived on Internet Archive. Accessed October 2010.

The Second International and the Two-and-a-Half International

The International Socialist Commission (ISC, also known as Berne International) was formed in February 1919 at a meeting in Bern by parties that wanted to resurrect the Second International. Centrist socialist parties which did not want to be a part of the resurrected Second International (ISC) or Comintern formed the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP, also known as Vienna International, Vienna Union, or Two-and-a-Half International) on 27 February 1921 at a conference in Vienna. The ISC and the IWUSP joined to form the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in May 1923 at a meeting in Hamburg.

From the Great Depression to the World War

The 1920s and 1930s were marked by an increasing divergence between democratic and reformists socialists (mainly affiliated with the Labour and Socialist International) and revolutionary socialists (mainly affiliated with the Communist International), but also by tension within the Communist movement between the dominant Stalinists and dissidents such as Trotsky's followers in the Left Opposition. Trotsky's Fourth International was established in France in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and thus incapable of leading the working class to power.

Spanish Civil War

In the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), socialists (including the democratic socialist Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and the Marxist Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) participated on the Republican side, loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, in alliance with anarchists of the communist and syndicalist variety and supported by the socialist Workers' General Union.

The Spanish Revolution of 1936 was a workers' social revolution during the war, that is often seen as a model of socialism from below. An anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain where they collectivised the land. The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began with the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organisational principles in some areas for two to three years, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia and parts of Levante. Much of Spain's economy came under worker control. In anarchist strongholds like Catalonia the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy Communist Party influence, which actively resisted attempts at collectivisation. Factories were run through worker committees, agrarian areas became collectivised and run as libertarian communes. Anarchist historian Sam Dolgoff estimated that about eight million people participated directly or indirectly in the Spanish Revolution.

Mid-20th century

Post-World War II

The rise of Nazism and the start of World War II led to the dissolution of the LSI in 1940. After the War, the Socialist International was formed in Frankfurt in July 1951 as its successor.

After World War II, social democratic governments introduced social reform and wealth redistribution via welfare and taxation. Social democratic parties dominated post-war politics in countries such as France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Norway. At one point, France claimed to be the world's most state-controlled capitalist country. It nationalised public utilities including Charbonnages de France (CDF), Électricité de France (EDF), Gaz de France (GDF), Air France, Banque de France and Régie Nationale des Usines Renault.

In 1945, the British Labour Party led by Clement Attlee was elected based on a radical socialist programme. The Labour government nationalised industries including mines, gas, coal, electricity, rail, iron, steel and the Bank of England. British Petroleum was officially nationalised in 1951. Anthony Crosland said that in 1956 25% of British industry was nationalised and that public employees, including those in nationalised industries, constituted a similar proportion of the country's workers. The Labour Governments of 1964–1970 and 1974–1979 intervened further. It re-nationalised British Steel (1967) after the Conservatives had denationalised it and nationalised British Leyland (1976). The National Health Service provided taxpayer-funded health care to everyone, free at the point of service. Working-class housing was provided in council housing estates and university education became available via a school grant system.

Nordic countries

During most of the post-war era, Sweden was governed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party largely in cooperation with trade unions and industry. The party held power from 1936 to 1976, 1982 to 1991, 1994 to 2006 and since 2014, most often in minority governments. Party leader Tage Erlander led the government from 1946 to 1969, the longest uninterrupted parliamentary government. These governments substantially expanded the welfare state. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme identified as a "democratic socialist" and was described as a "revolutionary reformist".

The Norwegian Labour Party was established in 1887 and was largely a trade union federation. The party did not proclaim a socialist agenda, elevating universal suffrage and dissolution of the union with Sweden as its top priorities. In 1899, the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions separated from the Labour Party. Around the time of the Russian Revolution, the Labour Party moved to the left and joined the Communist International from 1919 through 1923. Thereafter, the party still regarded itself as revolutionary, but the party's left-wing broke away and established the Communist Party of Norway while the Labour Party gradually adopted a reformist line around 1930. In 1935, Johan Nygaardsvold established a coalition that lasted until 1945.

From 1946 to 1962, the Norwegian Labour Party held an absolute majority in the parliament led by Einar Gerhardsen, who remained Prime Minister for seventeen years. Although the party abandoned most of its pre-war socialist ideas, the welfare state was expanded under Gerhardsen to ensure the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilise the economy.Esping-Andersen, G. (1991). ''The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. In the 1945 Norwegian parliamentary election, the Communist Party took 12% of the votes, but it largely vanished during the Cold War. In the 1950s, popular socialism emerged in Nordic countries. It placed itself between communism and social democracy. In the early 1960s, the Socialist Left Party challenged the Labour Party from the left. Also in the 1960s, Gerhardsen established a planning agency and tried to establish a planned economy. In the 1970s, a more radical socialist party, the Worker's Communist Party (AKP), broke from the Socialist Left Party and had notable influence in student associations and some trade unions. The AKP identified with Communist China and Albania rather than the Soviet Union.

In countries such as Sweden, the Rehn–Meidner model allowed capitalists owning productive and efficient firms to retain profits at the expense of the firms' workers, exacerbating inequality and causing workers to agitate for a share of the profits in the 1970s. At that time, women working in the state sector began to demand better wages. Rudolf Meidner established a study committee that came up with a 1976 proposal to transfer excess profits into worker-controlled investment funds, with the intention that firms would create jobs and pay higher wages rather than reward company owners and managers. Capitalists immediately labeled this proposal as socialism and launched an unprecedented opposition—including calling off the class compromise established in the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement. Social democratic parties are some of the oldest such parties and operate in all Nordic countries. Countries or political systems that have long been dominated by social democratic parties are often labelled social democratic. Those countries fit the social democratic type of "high socialism" which is described as favouring "a high level of decommodification and a low degree of stratification".

The Nordic model is a form of economic-political system common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). It has three main ingredients, namely peaceful, institutionalised negotiation between employers and trade unions; active, predictable and measured macroeconomic policy; and universal welfare and free education. The welfare system is governmental in Norway and Sweden whereas trade unions play a greater role in Denmark, Finland and Iceland. The Nordic model is often labelled social democratic and contrasted with the conservative continental model and the liberal Anglo-American model. Major reforms in the Nordic countries are the results of consensus and compromise across the political spectrum. Key reforms were implemented under social democratic cabinets in Denmark, Norway and Sweden while centre-right parties dominated during the implementation of the model in Finland and Iceland. Since World War II, Nordic countries have largely maintained a social democratic mixed economy, characterised by labour force participation, gender equality, egalitarian and universal benefits, redistribution of wealth and expansionary fiscal policy. In 2015, then- Prime Minister of Denmark Lars Løkke Rasmussen denied that Denmark is socialist, saying "I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy".

In Norway, the first mandatory social insurances were introduced by conservative cabinets in 1895 (Francis Hagerups's cabinet) and 1911 (Konow's Cabinet). During the 1930s, the Labour Party adopted the conservatives' welfare state project. After World War II, all political parties agreed that the welfare state should be expanded. Universal social security () was introduced by the conservative Borten's Cabinet. Norway's economy is open to the international or European market for most products and services, joining the European Union's internal market in 1994 through European Economic Area. Some of the mixed economy institutions from the post-war period were relaxed by the conservative cabinet of the 1980s and the finance market was deregulated. Within the ''Varieties of Capitalism''-framework, Finland, Norway and Sweden are identified as coordinated market economies.

Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

The Soviet era saw competition between the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and the United States-led Western Bloc. The Soviet system was seen as a rival of and a threat to Western capitalism for most of the 20th century.

The Eastern Bloc was the group of Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact, including Poland, the German Democratic Republic, the Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, and initially Yugoslavia. In the Informbiro period from 1948, Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito pursued a different, more decentralised form of state socialism than the rest of the Eastern Bloc, known as Socialist self-management.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the Communist government brutally suppressed by Soviet forces, and USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of the excesses of Stalin's regime during the Twentieth Communist Party Congress the same year produced disunity within Western European Communist parties, leading to the emergence of the New Left (see below). Over a decade later, Czechoslovakia under Alexander Dubček also attempted to pursue a more democratic model of state socialism, under the name "Socialism with a human face", during the Prague Spring; this was also brutally suppressed by the Soviet Union.

Asia, Africa, and Latin America

In the post-war years, socialism became increasingly influential in many then-developing countries. Embracing Third World socialism, countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America often nationalised industries. During India's freedom movement and fight for independence, many figures in the left-wing faction of the Indian National Congress organised themselves as the Congress Socialist Party. Their politics and those of the early and intermediate periods of Jayaprakash Narayan's career combined a commitment to the socialist transformation of society with a principled opposition to the one-party authoritarianism they perceived in the Stalinist model.

The Chinese Communist Revolution was the second stage in the Chinese Civil War, which ended with the establishment of the People's Republic of China led by the Chinese Communist Party. The then-Chinese Kuomintang Party in the 1920s incorporated Chinese socialism as part of its ideology. Between 1958 and 1962 during the Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic of China, some 30 million people starved to death and at least 45 million died overall.Dikötter, Frank. ''Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62''. Walker & Company, 2010. p. xii ("at least 45 million people died unnecessarily") p. xiii ("6 to 8 percent of the victims were tortured to death or summarily killed—amounting to at least 2.5 million people.") p. 333 ("a minimum of 45 million excess deaths"). .

The emergence of this new political entity in the frame of the Cold War was complex and painful. Several tentative efforts were made to organise newly independent states in order to establish a common front to limit the United States' and the Soviet Union's influence on them. This led to the Sino-Soviet split. The Non-Aligned Movement gathered around the figures of Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Sukarno of Indonesia, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. After the 1954 Geneva Conference which ended the French war in Vietnam, the 1955 Bandung Conference gathered Nasser, Nehru, Tito, Sukarno and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. As many African countries gained independence during the 1960s, some of them rejected capitalism in favour of African socialism as defined by Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Léopold Senghor of Senegal, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sékou Touré of Guinea.

The Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and its allies against the government of Fulgencio Batista. Castro's government eventually adopted communism, becoming the