Describe the arrival of socialism in Europe in mid 18th century?
(answer in 150 to 200 words)
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Social democracy is a political, social and economic philosophy that supports economicand social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a mixed economy, be the goal a social revolution moving away from capitalism to a post-capitalist economy such as socialism, a peaceful revolution as in evolutionary socialism, or the simple establishment of a welfare state. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest and social welfare provisions.[1][2][3] In this way, social democracy aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes.[4] Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in the Nordic countries, European socialism has become associated with social democracy and social democracy with the Nordic model within policy circles in the late 20th century.[5]
Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism.[6] In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model then current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternative path to socialism or to a compromise between capitalism and socialism.[7] In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionismand the welfare state while abandoning the prior goal of replacing the capitalist system (factor markets, private property and wage labour)[4] with a qualitatively different socialist economic system.[8][9][10] With the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Rightby the 1980s,[11] many social democratic parties incorporated the Third Wayideology,[12] aiming to fuse liberal economicswith social democratic welfare policies.[13][14]By the 2010s, the Third Way had generally fallen out of favour.[15]
Modern social democracy is characterised by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups and poverty,[16] including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, education, health care and workers' compensation.[17]The social democratic movement often has strong connections with the labour movementand trade unions which are supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders.[18]
The history of socialism has its origins in the 1789 French Revolution and the changes which it brought, 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, social democratic parties arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the world's first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899.
In the first half of the 20th century, the Soviet Unionand the communist parties of the Third Internationalaround the world mainly came to represent socialism in terms of the Soviet model of economic development and 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 democracy. In the United Kingdom, Herbert Morrison said that "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 favoured decentralised collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. At the turn of the 21st century in Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávezchampioned 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.