What do you consider to be the defining elements of a socialist outlook?

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What Do You Consider to be the Defining Elements of a Socialist Outlook?

As an ideology, socialism has many elements to it.  However, not many of these can be considered defining elements to a socialist outlook.  Socialism contains multiple different schools of thought: state socialism, social democracy and the third way; many elements of socialism will not apply to certain strands of the ideology.  One could argue that to be seen as ‘defining’ an element has to be relevant to all major strands of socialism, as it has to represent the ideology as a whole.   

 

 

 

Socialism is a broad ideology that encompasses many varied independent political strands; however, despite this there are several elements that can be identified as being central, or even defining, to a socialist outlook.  A defining element can be seen as being a shared belief or value, common to all strands of socialism, which represents the ideology and can also be used to separate it from others.  Elements of socialism can be seen to include: a belief in equality, community, opposition to capitalism, common ownership and democracy.  As socialism is comprised of multiple strands, these elements will have different weighting in each strand; helping to determine if they are the defining elements of a socialist outlook.  However they are also interlinked, a belief in one element can determine belief in another.  In the end, it can be seen that a socialist outlook has many key characteristics, but only one defining element, equality.  A belief in equality is shared by all socialists; equality is also important because the desire for greater social equality by many socialists is debatably what best distinguishes the ideology, or parts of it, from other schools of political thought such as liberalism.  This belief in equality also influences many other key beliefs of socialism; for example one could argue that socialists only oppose capitalism because of the detrimental effect it has on levels of equality.

 

Firstly, the opposition to capitalism can be seen to be an important element of a socialist outlook.  Capitalism is an economic system used across almost the entire world, it emphasises limited or moderate state intervention in the economy and the selling of goods and services for individual profit.  Socialists, to varying degrees, dislike capitalism because in the words of Vincent Geoghegan, they see it as ‘fundamentally unequal… concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a minority and condemning the minority to absolute, or relative poverty’.[1]  Different strands of socialism oppose capitalism to differing degrees.  Marxists believe that capitalism, along with the entire bourgeois political system, is pre-determined to be overthrown by the proletariat; it will for a short time be replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat, and after that a stateless post-capitalist socialist society will emerge.  Social democrats on the other hand, just wish to substantially reform or ‘humanise’ capitalism, often using instruments such as Keynesian economic policy, regulation and progressive taxation.  They believe that capitalism is efficient at generating wealth, it is just unable to effective distribute that wealth.  Finally third way socialists support the free market and have generally not undone neo-liberal reforms, such as direct tax cuts and deregulation in the 1980s; despite this third way governments typically still use more public spending than economically liberal ones.  Most other ideologies do not oppose capitalism.  For example, classical liberals strongly endorse free market capitalism; Adam Smith’s concept of the ‘invisible hand’ portrays a lack of state economic intervention as preferable, market forces are self regulating and allocate resources in an optimum distribution, this strongly differs with a social democratic outlook.  However, deep ecologists also reject the capitalist economic system on principle, believing is anthropocentric and have resulted in environmental degradation.  Taking all factors into account, opposition to capitalism can be seen as an important element of socialism; however, it can be seen as not an ideal element to represent the ideology as the belief is not really shared by the third way, but is by deep ecologists.

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The belief in equality can also been seen as a defining element of a socialist outlook.  Firstly, all strands of socialism believe in equality of opportunity.  This is where individuals are treated in an equal manner, despite differences in areas such as race, class, gender or religion; all people start on a level playing field.  Secondly, communist state socialism advocates absolute social equality; where there are very little or no economic differences between individuals, therefore leading to a very equal standard of living.  Social democrats on the other hand, reject absolute social equality.  One of the reasons behind ...

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