The socialist
political movement includes political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the
social problems that socialists associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of
Karl Marx and his collaborator
Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify
anti-capitalism and advocacy for a
post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production. By the early 1920s,
communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century. Many socialists also adopted the causes of other social movements, such as
feminism,
environmentalism, and
progressivism. (Full article...)
Leninism is the political theory for the organization of a revolutionary
vanguard party and the achievement of a
dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of
socialism. Developed by and named for the Russian revolutionary
Vladimir Lenin, Leninism comprises socialist political and economic theories, developed from
Marxism, and Lenin's interpretations of Marxist theories, for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the
Russian Empire of the early 20th century.
Robert Owen (/ˈoʊɪn/; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a
Welsh textile manufacturer,
philanthropist and
social reformer, and a founder of
utopian socialism and the
co-operative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental
socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child-rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a
textile mill at
New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a
draper in
Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to
Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at
New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his
Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other
Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the
working class, lead in developing
co-operatives and the
trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools. (Full article...)
Image 25The celebration of the election of the Commune on 28 March 1871—the
Paris Commune was a major early implementation of socialist ideas. (from Socialism)
Image 36The first anarchist journal to use the term libertarian was Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social, published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French
libertarian communistJoseph Déjacque, the first recorded person to describe himself as libertarian. (from Socialism)
Image 39Russian anarchist
Mikhail Bakunin opposed the
Marxist aim of dictatorship of the proletariat in favour of universal rebellion and allied himself with the federalists in the First International before his expulsion by the Marxists (from History of socialism)
In this conflict it is not merely a question of the national
secular State in opposition to the universal
ecclesiastical State; wherever we meet universalism there anti-nationalism and anti-individualism are its necessary correlatives. Nor does it need to be conscious universalism, it is sufficient that an idea aims at something absolute, something limitless. Thus, for example, all consistently reasoned
Socialism leads to the absolute State. To call Socialists point-blank “a party dangerous to the State,“ as is usually done, is only to give rise to one of those confusions of which our age is so fond. Certainly Socialism signifies a danger to the individual national States, as it does, on the whole, to the principle of
individualism, but it is no danger to the idea of the State. It honestly admits its
internationalism; its character is revealed, however, not in disintegration, but in a wonderfully developed organisation, copied, as it were, from a machine. In both points it betrays its affinity to Rome. In fact, it represents the same
Catholic idea as the
Church, although it grasps it by the other end. For that reason, too, there is no room in its system for individual freedom and diversity, for personal originality.
Ce qui lie tous les socialistes, c'est la haine de la liberté, ... as
Flaubert says. * He who tears down the outward barriers, puts up inner ones. Socialism is
imperialism in disguise; it will hardly be realisable without hierarchy and Primacy; in the Catholic Church it finds a pattern of socialistic, anti-individualistic organisation.