Socialism and communism

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Overview

Socialism is a family of ideas and movements that seek collective or public control of the economy and a fairer distribution of wealth. Communism, in its Marxist sense, aims at a classless society, and in the twentieth century the word also named one-party states led by Communist parties. The tradition inspired trade unions, welfare states and anti-colonial movements. It also produced dictatorships responsible for mass repression and famine. Judging it requires separating democratic socialism from the Soviet and Chinese models.

Context

Socialism arose in the early nineteenth century in response to industrial poverty and the claims of the French Revolution. Thinkers such as Robert Owen and Henri de Saint-Simon proposed cooperative reform. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels gave the movement its dominant theory in the mid-century. After 1917 the Russian Revolution made communism a state power and divided the left.