Proponents of different forms of socialism advocated for different combinations of public and private ownership of land, housing, public education, health care, primary transportation and socially necessary means of production.
During the early stages of industrialism, notions of socialism meant calls to end poverty and regulate private wealth. Socialism was an ideology that sought to do away with poverty and destitution by restricting or ending capitalist property relations while implementing a system of cooperatives and public ownership of means of production. The public ownership of means of production remains the essence of socialism.
In the past two centuries, various notions of socialism included feudal socialism, bourgeois socialism, utopian socialism, Christian (clerical) socialism, council communism, democratic socialism and petty bourgeois socialism. In Part III of the Communist Manifesto, these precursors of Marxist socialism are discussed. Public ownership, workers’ control of means of production (such as factories), cooperatives and many democratic-republican schemes were the essence of non-Marxist socialism.
Marxism replaced the utopian socialist vision and openly proclaimed the need for destruction of bourgeois property relations. Marx described the transition period between capitalism and communism as being socialism. The transitional system was to be primarily a system of production and distribution without capitalist property relations — a society without a mechanism that would allow means of production to pass into the hands of individuals and be converted into private property.
Find Marxist Glossary 3.0 on MARS website at Marxist Glossary for the 21st Century page.
Also available on the Marxist Glossary Discussion group Facebook page. It can be downloaded from the files.
