Socialism
Socialism, liberals will say, is an economic system with state ownership or control of the all the major means of production and distribution of goods and services[4]. Because some businesses still are privately owned, ipso facto, the United States is not a socialistic government. "That definition is confuted by the earliest theoretical writings on socialism. In France, Henri de Saint-Simon, in the first decades of the 1800s, and his pupil and colleague Auguste Comte, in the 1820s and 30s, along with Robert Owen contemporaneously in England, stated that the essential feature of what Owen called socialism is government regulation of the means of production and distribution." [5]
When the government controls the volume of money and its economic applications, it has the economy in a stranglehold. When government controls education so that nothing other than secular socialism may be taught, as Saint-Simon advocated, it controls the future destiny of a nation.
Not until the birth of the Soviet Union after the Communist Revolution did the idea become generally accepted that socialism meant government seizing ownership of the economy. Experience in 19th and 20th century France, England, and Germany, however, made it clear that regulatory control by government bureaucrats is sufficient to implement socialism. [6]
In Communism (the primary variant of socialism) the central goal is to establish a "worker's paradise"-an ideal state with perfect equality.
In practice the socialist government owns the banks, railroads, farmlands, factories, and stores, and is the only employer, or at least controls the regulation of production and distribution. The central goal is to destroy the "evils of capitalism" by government ownership or control of the means of production, usually with one party controlling the government on behalf of the working class.
The socialist system never manages to establish this "paradise" because management for the benefit of the employees leads to featherbedding and lack of investment or economic growth, at the expense of consumers. Collective farming (operating farms like factories) sharply reduced the food supply. The most thoroughgoing efforts by Communist regimes turned into authoritarian dictatorships. The government controls all investments, production, distribution, income, and prices, as well as all organizations, schools, news media and formerly private societies. Churches and labor unions are suppressed or controlled by the government. Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism, because it opposes private ownership of capital or land, and rejects the free market in favor of central planning. It also rejects "civil society" and makes sure that all organizations are controlled by the government.
Theoretically, socialist regimes can have multiple parties. In practice there is only one political party, and it controls the government. The leaders of the party choose the government officials and set all policies for the nation and for cities and localities. Opposition parties are not allowed access to the media or to meeting halls or to funding, and their leaders are often arrested as "enemies of the people."
As a political ideology based on the redistribution of wealth, socialism stresses the privileges of the many over the rights of the few, but in practice when socialist economic principles are forced onto a nation by a totalitarian government a new Upper Class appears which is much better off than the Lower Class.
| “ | Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. - Winston Churchill [7] | ” |