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Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy,[1] and a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[2] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them.[3] They differ in the type of social ownership they advocate, the degree to which they rely on markets or planning, how management is to be organised within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism.[4]
A socialist economic system would consist of a system of production and distribution organized to directly satisfy economic demands and human needs, so that goods and services would be produced directly for use instead of for private profit[5] driven by the accumulation of capital. Accounting would be based on physical quantities, a common physical magnitude, or a direct measure of labour-time in place of financial calculation.[6][7] Distribution would be based on the principle to each according to his contribution.
Originally posted by MrSpad
Will people who have no idea what the word socialism means please stop using it. Explain to me how a gun ban some how leads to all the companies handing over control of and all sharing all their profits to the people? Maybe you mean a dictastorship or some other form of government. A simple idea of what socialism is the NFL. The teams have thing called profit sharing so the big market teams and small market teams all put their money in one big pot and spead it among the all the teams. Of course the idea of a true socialist economy does not seem possible, Just a true capitalist one does not. What we already have, as does most of the world, is a mixture of those and others. So please, stop using the word socialism like you know what it means.
Lenin argued that in an underdeveloped country such as Russia, the capitalist class would remain a threat even after a successful socialist revolution.[16] As a result, he advocated the repression of those elements of the capitalist class that took up arms against the new soviet government, writing that as long as classes existed, a state would need to exist to exercise the democratic rule of one class (in his view, the working class) over the other (the capitalist class).[16]
The use of violence, terror and rule of single communist party was criticised by Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Mikhail Bakunin. In response Lenin accused Kautsky of being a "renegade" and "liberal"[17] and these socialist movements that did not support the Bolshevik party line were condemned by the Communist International and called social fascism.
The Bolsheviks in 1917–1924 did not claim to have achieved a communist society; in contrast the preamble to the 1977 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the “Brezhnev Constitution”), stated that the 1917 Revolution established the dictatorship of the proletariat as “a society of true democracy”, and that “the supreme goal of the Soviet state is the building of a classless, communist society in which there will be public, communist self-government”.