Reply #49: You two have an idiosyncratic definition of socialism. [View All]

[High Plains]

Here's what Wikipedia says (and I agree):

Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that society should exist in which popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production.

In Marxist theory, it also refers to the society that would succeed or supplant capitalism, and would later develop further into communism, as the necessity for the socialist structure would wither away. Marxism and communism are both branches of socialism.

The word dates back at least to the early nineteenth century. It was first used, self-referentially, in the English language in 1827 to refer to followers of Robert Owen. In France, again self-referentially, it was used in 1832 to refer to followers of the doctrines of Saint-Simon and thereafter by Pierre Leroux and J. Regnaud in l'Encyclopédie nouvelle. Use of the word spread widely and has been used differently in different times and places, both by various individuals and groups that consider themselves socialist and by their opponents. While there is wide variation between socialist groups, nearly all would agree that they are bound together by a common history rooted originally in nineteenth and twentieth-century struggles by industrial and agricultural workers, operating according to principles of solidarity and advocating an egalitarian society, with an economics that would, in their view, serve the broad populace rather than a favored few.