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Socialists were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social ills of the time.
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Socialists were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social ills of the time.
Individuals owned the property that gave employment but the
propertied were concerned only with personal gain and not with the welfare of
those who made the property productive. So if society as a whole rather than
individuals controlled property, more attention would be paid to collective
social interests. Socialists wanted this change and campaigned for it.
How could a society without property
operate? What would be the basis of socialist society?
Socialists had different visions of
the future. Some believed in the idea of cooperatives.
Robert Owen , a leading English manufacturer, sought to build a
cooperative community called New Harmony in Indiana (USA). Other socialists
felt that cooperatives could not be built on a wide scale only through
individual initiative: they demanded that governments encourage cooperatives.
In France, for instance, Louis Blanc wanted the government
to encourage cooperatives and replace capitalist enterprises. These cooperatives
were to be associations of people who produced goods together and divided the
profits according to the work done by members.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels added other ideas to this body of arguments. Marx argued that industrial society was ‘capitalist’. Capitalists owned the capital invested in factories, and the profit of capitalists was produced by workers. The conditions of workers could not improve as long as this profit was accumulated by private capitalists. Workers had to overthrow capitalism and the rule of private property. Marx believed that to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers had to construct a radically socialist society where all property was socially controlled. This would be a communist society. He was convinced that workers would triumph in their conflict with capitalists. A communist society was the natural society of the future.
Support for Socialism:
By the 1870s, socialist ideas spread
through Europe. To coordinate their efforts, socialists formed an international
body . namely, the Second International. By the 1870s, socialist ideas spread
through Europe. To coordinate their efforts, socialists formed an international
body namely, the Second International.
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