To what extent has socialism been defined by its opposition to capitalism?

individual use and that overall the combined effect of everybody aiming to create wealth for themselves will result in overall greater prosperity for everybody. Socialist disagree with capitalism on numerous fronts. It places a huge emphasise on private ownership and property which socialists strongly disagree with as private property encourages engrained inequality due to hereditary nature of property ownership. Socialist would argue that their should be collective ownership of the means of production as this would result everybody benefiting from the production and abuse and license would be removed. They also disagree with the capitalist belief that individuals competing will produce the best results, they argue that this isn't efficient and creates waste and that it encourages a distortions in the humans natural nature which would be to co-operate and aid each other to create the best possible outcome. The key reason why socialists feel aggrieved with capitalism is it creates winners and loser out of a species where they believe there isn't such a distinction between each individual person, that justifies such inequality. Marx especially was damming of the capitalist system. He took a highly different analysis to how the system operates than how liberal theorists examine capitalism, he said that the history of capitalism has been a continual class struggle with the people who have power and wealth oppressing the majority and forcing their ideology onto the majority, This is achieved because the ruling class own the means of production and the workers who actually produce the finished product don't as such the ruling class can extract the “surplus value” that workers create by reforming inputs into more valuable outputs “Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer”.  As such this creates in the inequality which is unfair in human society, but this hasn't been overthrown by the majority because the capitalist system creates a “false conciousness” which means that any individual can see their life's slowly improving and can find people who are worse off than they are and as such they believe that their position within society is deserved and just, when in fact its the abuse of capitalism that means they don't have just rewards. Marx says that due to this inbuilt inequality and due to the need to consume and produce to create wealth the market will always over compensate which will result in boom and bust cycles which will always fall worst on the working class as they don't own the means of production, he believes that the only possible solution is to overthrow capitalism in revolution. Then form a new society on the bases not on wealth creation but on wealth equality “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”. His theory of socialist communism first stage did focus on the removal of capitalism but his ideology wasn't a one stage process, he believed that history was going through a pattern that would result in the overthrow of capitalist society as the inequalities would force the workers to revolt. This would result in a period where the proletariat would rule called the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and once equality was established the state he believed would wither away as it wasn't necessary and a communist utopia would exist.   However other socialists don't place such value on the removal of the capitalist state, they believe that reform and restrictions on the market would result in balance where the impracticalities of revolution are removed but its aims are largely achieved. These socialists value social justice, equality of opportunity and shared ownership of industry through the state more than the removal of the capitalist system. These socialists are known as evolutionary socialists as they do not wish for a revolution but believe in progressive change through legitimate democratic systems that are already in place. However these socialists still have a clear opposition to the normal working of an unregulated capitalists state and as such can still be considered hostile to the premise of capitalism and the inequality it makes.   Overall however socialism hasn't been defined by its opposition to capitalism as only parts of the socialist movement considers the removal of capitalism as a necessity. Instead the clear defining feature of socialism is its consistent view of human nature and the belief that humans are equal and therefore equality is the only way to be free. Obviously this means the majority strongly disapprove of capitalism but it is a second order ideas as if they can view a system whereby they can achieve equality without capitalism it would be seen as satisfactory it's due to the nature of capitalism that it stands in the way of the majority of socialists aims that they view it with hostility.