Types of Socialism

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Primitive socialism

  • The Diggers and Levellers
  • Part of Cromwell's republican army who set up a self governing society in 1640s
  • Wealth was shared in each community
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Utopianism

  • Thomas Moore's utopia (1516)
  • An island in which there was no money or private property
  • Goods were distributed in utopia according to need
  • Greed and competitiveness were eliminated
  • Fourier
  • Owens
  • Isreali Kibbutz
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Revolutionary Socialism

  • Marxist -committed to equality of outcome
  • Socialism is introduced by the revolutionary overthrow of the existing political capitalist system
  • State is an agent of class oppression
  • State acts in the interests of capital and labour

RUSSIA AND STALIN

  • Completely collectivised argiculture
  • Programme of rapid industrialisation via 3 five year plans
  • Great terror of the 1930s during which Stalin purged 'enemies of the people' resulting in execution of thousands and the exile of millions to Gulags
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Revisionist Socialism

  • Bernstein critiqued Marx in 1898 based on the fact that Marx's predictions of the overthrow of capitalism via revolution were wrong
  • Advocated reform of capitalism via nationalisation and trade unions
  • Emergence of trade unions and co op societies integrated the working class into industrial society
  • This caused the working class to be less of a revolutionary force
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Fabians

  • Parliamentary power rather than prepare for violent revolution
  • Education of politicians, scientists and academics was key to converting them and society
  • These elite groups would recognise socialisms moral superiority to capitalism
  • Gradualism believed that socialism would outgrow capitslidm via evolution rather than revolution
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Democratic Socialism

  • Capitalism is accepted as the only means of generating wealth
  • However it is morally defective, particularly when it comes to distributing wealth as it is associated with structural inequality and poverty
  • These defects are rectified by state intervention and redistribution of wealth
  • Social justice is the overriding principle
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Labour Gov 1945

  • Beveridge paved the way for Labour to implement the welfare state and apply Keynesian demand management to the economy
  • This was unchallenged in the post war years
  • This was successful in many ways
  • The NHS
  • Unemployment stayed low
  • Coal, steel, shipbuilding and railway industries were taken into public ownership
  • Social reforms were achieved
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Future of Socialism and Social Democracy

  • Pro profit - efficient with better living standards
  • Full employment which is as important as low inflation
  • Pro competition
  • Pro wealth creation- to contribute to progressive taxation and pay for welfare benefits
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Blair

  • Focused on community
  • world, nation, locality and family
  • Blairs rhetoric emphasises duties rather than rights
  • Stakeholder capitalism
  • One nation socialiasm - economic efficiency is married to fairness
  • Popular sovereignty
  • Benefit of the many rather than the few
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Third Way Policies

  • Hand ups not hand outs
  • Top down state intervention is dead
  • Acceptance of globalisation
  • Public spending redefined as public investment
  • Constitutional reform -
  • Devolution
  • House of Lords Act 1999
  • Constitutional Reform Act 2005
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