History of Socialism

The history of socialism has its origins in the French Revolution of 1789 and the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed 'scientific socialism'. In the last third of the 19th century in Europe social democratic parties arose in Europe drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the world's first elected socialist party when the party won the 1899 Queensland state election.

In the first half of the twentieth century the Soviet Union and the Communist parties of the Third International around the world mainly came to represent socialism in terms of the Soviet model of economic development, the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production, although other Trends condemned what they saw as the lack of a democracy. In 1946 Eurasian Socialist Parties in power were considerably socialist. In the UK Herbert Morrison said "Socialism is what the Labour government does", whereas Aneurin Bevan argued that socialism requires that the "main streams of economic activity are brought under public direction", with an economic plan and workers' democracy. Some argued that capitalism had been abolished. Socialist governments established the 'mixed economy' with partial nationalisations and social welfare.

By 1968 the prolonged Vietnam War (1959–1975), gave rise to the New Left, socialists who tended to be critical of the Soviet Union and social democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left and others favored decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. At the turn of the 21st century, in Latin America Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez championed what he termed 'Socialism of the 21st Century', which included a policy of nationalisation of national assets such as oil, anti-imperialism, and termed himself a Trotskyist supporting 'permanent revolution'.