Questions tagged [socialism]

Questions related to the political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

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What are the main influences of the French "republican socialists" (Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Jean-Jaurès)?

What are the main influences of the French "republican socialists" (e.g. Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Jean-Jaurès)? In particular, can we trace back their ideology to Saint-Simon and Comte, ...
Starckman's user avatar
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9 votes
4 answers
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How is capital investment supposed to happen in an economy of workers co-ops?

Socialists have proposed that capitalist companies (organisations owned and controlled by shareholders) should be replaced by co-operatives (organisations owned and controlled by their workers). Where ...
Paul Johnson's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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What is the difference between left communism and anarcho-communism?

I was reading about the term tankie on Wikipedia and it lead me to other terms such as red fascism and left communism. The Wikipedia articles on Left Communism and Left Communists (Weimar Republic) ...
Jude Zambarakji's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
2k views

How did the long march through the institutions, as theorized by Dutschke and Gramsci, take place concretely?

How did the long march through the institutions, as theorized by Dutschke and Gramsci, take place concretely? A definition of this theory by Wikipedia: The long march through the institutions (German:...
Starckman's user avatar
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3 votes
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In Marxist view: does liberal democracy increase alienation of workers?

In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Marx writes: First, that the work is external to the worker, that it is not part of his nature; and that, consequently, he does not fulfill himself ...
Roger V.'s user avatar
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Which western communist parties use crypto for donations? [closed]

Being aware of Russia's political scene, I noticed that some Communist organizations (specifically Anarcho-Communists) use cryptocurrencies for donations. I noticed that a lot of Western Communist ...
Apoliticalboy's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
193 views

Was socialism popular on US college campuses around 1920?

I'm reading Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! It is well-known that he was a socialist, and of course, the notion of socialism is a strong theme in his writing. In Oil!, a young man is enrolled in a ...
nuggethead's user avatar
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2 answers
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We are individually striving for wealth to be independent from necessity to work. Why society as whole is unwilling to be independent from work? AI [closed]

My question is arising from recent ChatGTP & plugins developments which provides the great tools for automation of jobs. I can observe that people individually are striving to gain wealth and the ...
TomR's user avatar
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1 answer
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Has Charles Fourier's utopian socialism any relation with 19th century romanticism literary movement?

Has Charles Fourier's utopian socialism (and its 20th century heirs, if any) a relation with 19th century romanticism literary movement? His ideas recall me a lot of the writings of the ...
Starckman's user avatar
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8 answers
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Is this communist-like economic ideology already a thing?

Everyone knows what communism is, and generally in the real world it doesn’t work out for the people. Communism has many flaws and after a long while of thinking how these flaws can be fixed it became ...
HomegrownPotatoes's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
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Any successful example of democratic socialism in Latin America/South America that lasted at least twenty years?

Yes, I know there are versions of authoritarian socialism in South America that have been tried, but I want to know if there are any successful democratic socialist communities that lasted at least ...
Tyler Mc's user avatar
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6 votes
6 answers
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What are some criticisms of communism/socialism from a left wing perspective?

Typically, socialism and communism are criticized from a right wing perspective but I was curious on some left-wing critiques of socialism/communism. One source I found states Since the split of the ...
pillowcase99's user avatar
20 votes
3 answers
6k views

Would Marx consider salary workers to be members of the proleteriat?

I am struggling to map the concepts of "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" to modern life. They appear to be equivalent to "lower class" and "middle class", but ...
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7 votes
5 answers
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Are there conservative socialists in the US?

By "conservative" I mean those who have traditional views on gender roles and sexuality, stand against immigration and cultural/ethnic mixing, value cultural norms and traditions etc. By &...
Iam Cleaver's user avatar
10 votes
6 answers
5k views

Are there examples of grassroots-level corruption in the history of socialism/communism?

I have found an evidence of elite corruption: Finally, the project for socialism as the promise of plenty generated by the planning mechanisms of the all-people’s state terminated in elite corruption ...
tryingtobeastoic's user avatar
24 votes
11 answers
7k views

How is lowering taxes "socialist"?

In the current leadership contest for the position of leader of the UK's Conservative party, one of the differences between the two candidates is that Liz Truss is promising to lower taxes while Rishi ...
terdon's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
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Why was the Socialist Party of Ukraine excluded from the Socialist International (in 2011)?

The SPU was once a real player in Ukrainian politics, but it last had sets in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) in 2006. They were excluded from the Socialist International in 2011, but the ...
Dolphin 613 Motorboat's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
508 views

Has there been a reaction from the West's Left to Ukraine's suspending of some "socialist" political parties (for alleged ties to Russia)?

A few days ago Ukrainian government suspended 11 political parties with links to Russia(original order here), specifically: Opposition Platform - For Life, Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left ...
Roger V.'s user avatar
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2 answers
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Has there ever been a socialist economy where production was controlled democratically by workers directly without Capitalists or auth-left parties?

What would essentially be democratic socialism. where the means of production are owned by workers unlike in the soviet union where workers' councils only had nominal power and were driven by the ...
Ash Rivers's user avatar
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6 votes
8 answers
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Is (and why is) the original theory of socialism/communism of Karl Marx very unlikely to become the theoretical foundation of any democratic regime?

Nowadays it seems that many young people are embracing Marxism (or some sort of illusion of it. As Obie 2.0 commented below, many of them probably don't really know what the original Marxism really is)...
No One's user avatar
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46 votes
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Why do one-party states still have a party at all?

In single-party states like the former eastern bloc (Soviet Union, East Germany, ...), there is only one dominant party. One thing that has always bothered me is that this is a contradiction in itself:...
jdm's user avatar
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1 answer
241 views

Isn't Leninism left wing? [closed]

His administration defeated right and left-wing anti-Bolshevik armies in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin I thought socialism (or maybe Leninism) ...
Gary 2's user avatar
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38 votes
11 answers
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Why do some (North Americans) consider Europe socialist?

Recently I see more and more posts on social media (mainly FB) in which people advocate socialism (and sometimes communism) or are anti capitalist. When mentioning examples (after being asked or when ...
A.bakker's user avatar
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3 answers
510 views

Why there isn't a symbol that represents Socialism?

While Communism has a very well known and used symbol (hammer and sickle), Socialism doesn't. Even though Communism and Socialism are somewhat similar they aren't the same, so why doesn't Socialism ...
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20 votes
4 answers
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Confused about the term 'Bourgeoisie'!

Bourgeoisie is defined by, the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes As refer to Google define, Here, I see it actually means the ...
Sazzad Hissain Khan's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
484 views

Are the differences between capitalism's and socialism's analysis of resource distribution fairness fundamental?

I have always understood a (broadly speaking) capitalist, free market approach to economics to rest on the notion that a resource distribution is fair in light of how closely it correlates the ...
user10478's user avatar
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26 votes
10 answers
7k views

What is a "democratic dictatorship", and how is it not a a contradiction in terms?

I recently read that China's constitution refers to it as "a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.&...
dsollen's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
824 views

Why hasn't the UK government nationalised the rail service in England?

Four months after Wales nationalised their rail services, Scotland has announced that it will nationalise it's railways, obviously this has been an outcome of the slump in passenger numbers due to the ...
Mozibur Ullah's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
177 views

Is it possible to be socialist, liberal, and conservative like this candidate to president of Perú claims? [closed]

Candidate to president of Perú Hernando de Soto claims to be "socialist, liberal and conservative". I can't find a possible definition of the 3 terms for them to coexist together. To me, ...
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8 votes
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Why is Republican targeted messaging around socialism effective among immigrants from socialist or formerly socialist countries?

A major component of Republican political messaging in the last few election cycles has been trying to tie their opponents to socialism or communism, with their target audience particularly being ...
Obie 2.0's user avatar
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10 votes
4 answers
4k views

What differentiates Trotskyism from Marxism/Leninism?

I understand that the split originated in a power struggle, but I'm more interested in the modern theoretical differences. In the present day, there appears to be an ideological split between ...
Jones's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
113 views

Were there any elements of socialism in Nazism? [duplicate]

I know that the Nazis hated communism but it is a bit ironic that they themselves had the word socialism in their party's name (National Socialist German Workers' Party. Nationalsozialistische ...
Schwarz Kugelblitz's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
535 views

(How) did Trump's administration rebut the accusation that lowering drug prices via regulations is tantamount to socialism?

In an amusing perhaps reversal of the usual rhetoric from ads in the 2020 elections, Trump found himself being accused of advancing some kind of socialism, at least if AP's summary of the rhetoric ...
Dolphin 613 Motorboat's user avatar
21 votes
11 answers
11k views

How is North Korea democratic, if there's only one party with one ideology?

How is North Korea, which is officially called the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", democratic, if there's only one party with one ideology? Is this a moving box in a non-movable box?...
CSD's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
133 views

American's use of the word "socialism" [duplicate]

I have long been confused by many American's use of the word "socialism". AFAICT they appear to use it to mean communism... in which case, what word(s) would an American use to describe the ...
Mick's user avatar
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38 votes
12 answers
5k views

Alternatives to money and power as social incentive mechanisms

Capitalism does a pretty good job of incentivizing people to work on what's economically profitable, e.g., finance, law, tech, and what gives them power over others, e.g., becoming CEOs. Now let's ...
Eike P.'s user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
263 views

Why do US politicians insist on using the word "socialism" to describe their policies? [closed]

A common critique of socialist ideas is that a market-based economy is more efficient. This is used to criticize many in the USA who propose socialist reforms. But obviously everyone knows that not ...
user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
691 views

Is it possible to have a centrally planned economy with a democratic government?

Imagine a country with a centrally planned economy. Manufacturing, power generation, construction, industrial agriculture, transportation, Internet connection, cellular service, the entire healthcare ...
Steve's user avatar
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4 votes
3 answers
2k views

Are all the companies in communism ideology nationalized?

Is it true that in the ideology of communism, the government owns all the companies and the exploitable resources? Also, what about the socialist countries and socialism as an ideology and are there ...
Taher's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
64 views

What is the difference between Bukharin's version of socialism/ Stalinist socialism, and the national socialism created by Hitler? [duplicate]

We know that Stalin wanted to concentrate on Socialism in one country and not an international revolution, and the ideology used that time was a very nationalistic version of socialism called ...
Taher's user avatar
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1 vote
4 answers
314 views

Is "emergency socialism" a neologism, or does it have significant and deeper historical context?

With Trump and other politicians talking about a form of a stimulus package for every adult in America as a means to address a dire situation, a turn of phrase has been popping about news articles and ...
yuritsuki's user avatar
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0 votes
5 answers
1k views

In what ways is Marxism not (left-wing) populism?

On a certain level, Cas Mudde's definition of populism (the most accepted in academia today, it seems), namely an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous ...
Dolphin 613 Motorboat's user avatar
21 votes
5 answers
2k views

Why is the US so politically right-wing?

Bernie Sanders is called "radical socialist" or even "communist" in America but in Europe, as I understand it, he would be considered a center-left or even centrist politician. Europe also ...
Sergey Zolotarev's user avatar
14 votes
8 answers
6k views

What is a simple concise way to explain the difference between socialism and communism to others

I've seen many people refer to communism and socialism as if they are the same thing, when they clearly are not. I'm aware of the difference and know there are many sources that explain it, so I'm ...
dsollen's user avatar
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25 votes
10 answers
21k views

Can socialism and capitalism coexist in the same country?

I had a discussion with a friend because I would argue that Denmark is not a socialist country. We have a welfare state and therefore pay high taxes, however we have a free market and privately owned ...
Keinicke's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
734 views

Does any Islamist party have policies in other areas that would be considered left wing?

Some Islamist parties such as Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt seems to be conservative and aligned with right political wing. Are there any Islamist parties that are aligned with left political wing or ...
user avatar
5 votes
5 answers
741 views

Have any countries established socialist democracy specifically based on Marxism?

As far as I know, there are no countries calling themselves Communist that have stayed real democracies, even though Marx wrote that he wanted democracy in Communist society. However, there are quite ...
Stormblessed's user avatar
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-3 votes
3 answers
320 views

Would the following system be Socialist, or Capitalist?

Socialism is defined as "worker control of productive capital". Capitalism is defined as "private control of productive capital". The system I'm having trouble categorizing, turns everyone into a ...
Jurhas's user avatar
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19 votes
5 answers
5k views

Why aren't nationalizations in Russia described as socialist?

I read in a 2015 PIIE brief titled "Russia’s Economy under Putin: From Crony Capitalism to State Capitalism" that: After nationalizing Yukos, the Russian government started taking control of ...
Dolphin 613 Motorboat's user avatar
-1 votes
3 answers
441 views

Socialist elements in Venezuela

I know for a fact that Venezuela is or was socialist, but when ever I bring it up in a debate people just deny it and I can’t find any proof online that it was, they all just take it for granted. What ...
Aiden's user avatar
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