Understanding Socialism: Concepts and Evolution

1. Socialism Thinking Skill: Demonstrate an understanding concepts

2. Socio-economic status • What socio-economic status do you believe you are? • Are you a have or a have not? • Do you think that class division is or has been a problem throughout history?

3. List negative conditions that workers faced during the IR. • What avenues did they have to solve those problems?

4. Three Types of Socialism • Utopian Socialism • Early 19th century • Marxist Socialism (Revolutionary) • “Communist Manifesto” (1848) • Revisionist Socialism (Democratic) • Late 19th century

5. Definition • State ownership of the means of production • State should control and plan the economy • Distribute wealth more equally

6. Competition Individual Production Cooperation Community Fair distribution of goods Compared to Capitalism

7. Causes • Desire to reorganize society to establish cooperation and a new sense of community • Increasing misery of workers • Liberal practices seemed to promote selfish individualism and fragmenting of society

8. Early French Socialists • Proposed a system of greater economic equality planned by the government • State control of private property

9. Marxism • Karl Marx • Friedrich Engels • The Communist Manifesto • Considered the bible of communism • Intended to replace utopian hopes and dreams with a brutal, militant blueprint for socialist working class success

10. History as a Struggle • “The history of all hiterto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

11. Marx’s Theory Based on Hegelian Philosophy • Dialectic - all things evolve • Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis • Synthesis becomes new Thesis • History unfolds through this inevitable process • Dialectical Materialism - economics replaces ideas in Hegel’s dialectic • The conflict is between classes over control of the means of production

12. Dialectical Materialism • The economic interpretation of history • The class struggle • Theory of Surplus Value • Socialism was inevitable • Violent revolution • Will create a “dictatorship of the proletariat” • Creation of a classless society • “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”

13. Marx’s View of History

14. The New Communist Order • Division of Wealth: Economic equality • From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs • No private Property • Classless society • Education: Free for All • Healthcare: free for all • Worldwide revolution - no countries • No religion - tool of the upper classes • State eventually withers away

15. Marx’s Advice to Workers • A state of war existed with the bourgeoisie • Govt., law, morality, religion are weapons of the bourgeoisie - don’t trust them! • To rise above the proletariat is betrayal • Never negotiate for concessions! • Class consciousness must develop

16. Problems and Reactions • People did not want war necessarily • Loyalty to religion & country still strong • Difficult to commit to an unseen future • Owners increased wages • Workingmen are given the right to vote • Proletariat worked within government and became reluctant to change it

17. Argument • If we could create a true “Socialist” state, life would be better for the majority of people.