Scientific socialism

Short description: Social-political-economic theory

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Socialism

Development

* Age of the Enlightenment
* French Revolution
* History of socialism
* Revolutions of 1848
* Socialist calculation debate
* Socialist economics

Ideas

* Calculation in kind
* Collective ownership
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* Commune (model of government)
* Economic democracy
* Economic planning
* Equal opportunity
* Free association
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* Industrial democracy
* Input–output model
* Internationalism
* Labor-time calculation
* Labour voucher
* Material balance planning
* Organizational self-management
* Peer‑to‑peer economics
* Production for use
* Sharing economy
* Social dividend
* Social ownership
* Socialism in one country
* Socialist mode of production
* To each according to his contribution/needs
* Workplace democracy

Models

* Communalism
* Participatory economics
* Democratic confederalism
* Market economy
* Market socialism
* Lange model
* Mutualism
* Socialist market economy
* Socialist-oriented market
* Planned economy
* Decentralized planning
* Inclusive Democracy
* OGAS
* Project Cybersyn
* Soviet-type
* Social ecology

Variants

* 21st-century
* African
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By country

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People

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Organizations

* First International
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Socialist International
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* World Federation of Democratic
Youth
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Youth
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Fourth International
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Related topics

* Anarchism
* Capitalism
* Communist society
* Criticism of capitalism
* Criticism of socialism
* Economic calculation problem
* Economic system
* French Left
* Left-libertarianism
* Libertarianism
* List of socialists
* List of socialist economists
* Marxist philosophy
* Nanosocialism
* Progressivism
* Socialism and LGBT rights
* Socialist calculation debate
* Socialist Party
* Socialist state
* Types of socialism

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Part of a series on

Marxism

Theoretical works

* Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844

* Theses on Feuerbach
* The German Ideology
* Wage Labour and Capital
* The Communist Manifesto
* The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Napoleon

* Grundrisse der Kritik
der Politischen Ökonomie

* A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy

* Das Kapital
* Critique of the Gotha Program
* Dialectics of Nature
* The State and Revolution

Philosophy

* Economic determinism
* Historical materialism
* Marx's dialectic
* Marx's method
* Philosophy of nature

Economics

* Capital (accumulation)
* Crisis theory
* Commodity
* Exploitation
* Factors of production
* Means of labor
* Means of production
* Mode of production
* Asiatic
* Capitalist
* Socialist
* Law of value
* Productive forces
* Scientific socialism
* Surplus product
* Surplus value
* Value-form
* Wage labor

Sociology

* Alienation
* Base and superstructure
* Bourgeoisie
* Class
* Class consciousness
* Class struggle
* Classless society
* Commodity fetishism
* Communist society
* Cultural hegemony
* Dictatorship of the proletariat
* Exploitation
* Free association
* General intellect
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* Ideology
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* Proletariat
* Private property
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* Reification
* State Theory
* Social metabolism
* Working class

History

* Anarchism and Marxism
* Philosophy in the Soviet Union
* Primitive accumulation
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Aspects

* Aesthetics
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Variants

* Analytical
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People

* Karl Marx
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* Debord
* Fanon
* Harvey
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* Sankara
* Žižek
* Varoufakis
* Ho

Related topics

* Critical theory
* Criticism of Marxism
* Communism
* History of communism
* Left-wing politics
* Old Left
* New Left
* Social anarchism
* Anarcho-communism
* Socialism
* Libertarian
* Revolutionary
* Utopian

Related categories

Category Karl Marx not found

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Scientific socialism in Marxism is the application of historical materialism to the development of socialism, as not just a practical and achievable outcome of historical processes, but the only possible outcome. It contrasts with utopian socialism by basing itself upon material conditions instead of concoctions and ideas, where "the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch."[1]

Fredrich Engels, who developed it alongside Karl Marx, described:

> To accomplish this act of universal emancipation [proletarian revolution and communism] is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.[1]

The term's modern meaning is based almost totally on Engels's book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

## Contents

* 1 Origins
* 2 Methodology
* 3 See also
* 4 References

## Origins

The term was originally coined in 1840 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book What is Property?[2] to mean a society ruled by a scientific government, i.e., one whose sovereignty rests upon reason, rather than sheer will:[3]

> Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government,—that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism.

In the 1844 book The Holy Family, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the writings of the socialist, communist writers Théodore Dézamy and Jules Gay as truly "scientific".[4] But the term "scientific socialism" took on its modern meaning by 1880 with the publishing of Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, where Engels used the term "scientific socialism" to describe Marx's social-political-economic theory of historical materialism.[1]

Although the term socialism has come to mean specifically a combination of political and economic science, it is also applicable to a broader area of science encompassing what is now considered sociology and the humanities. The distinction between Utopian and scientific socialism originated with Marx, who criticized the Utopian characteristics of French socialism and English and Scottish political economy. Engels later argued that Utopian socialists failed to recognize why it was that socialism arose in the historical context that it did, that it arose as a response to new social contradictions of a new mode of production, i.e. capitalism. In recognizing the nature of socialism as the resolution of this contradiction and applying a thorough scientific understanding of capitalism, Engels asserted that socialism had broken free from a primitive state and become a science.[1]

## Methodology

Scientific socialism is a method for understanding and predicting social, economic and material phenomena by examining their historical trends through the use of the scientific method in order to derive probable outcomes and probable future developments. It is in contrast to what later socialists referred to as utopian socialism—a method based on establishing seemingly rational propositions for organizing society and convincing others of their rationality and/or desirability. It also contrasts with classical liberal notions of natural law, which are grounded in metaphysical notions of morality rather than a dynamic materialist or physicalist conception of the world.[5]

Scientific socialists view social and political developments as being largely determined by economic conditions, in contrast to the ideas of Utopian socialists and classical liberals, and thus believe that social relations and notions of morality are context-based relative to their specific stage of economic development. They believe that as economic systems, socialism and capitalism are not social constructs that can be established at any time based on the subjective will and desires of the population, but instead are the products of social evolution. An example of this was the advent of agriculture which enabled human communities to produce a surplus—this change in material and economic development led to a change in the social relations and rendered the old form of social organization based on subsistence-living obsolete and a hindrance to further material progress. The changing economic conditions necessitated a change in social organization.[1]

In his collection of texts, In Defence of Marxism, Leon Trotsky defended the dialectical method of scientific socialism during the factional schisms within the American Trotskyist movement during 1939–40. Trotsky viewed dialectics as an essential method of analysis to discern the class nature of the Soviet Union. Specifically, he described scientific socialism as the "conscious expression of the unconscious historical process; namely, the instinctive and elemental drive of the proletariat to reconstruct society on communist beginnings".[6]

## See also

* Anti-Dühring
* Finance:Evolutionary economics - Subject inspired by evolutionary biology
* GOELRO, an early Soviet national plan for economic recovery which emphasised the importance of electrification
* Philosophy:Historical materialism - Marxist historiography
* Project Cybersyn, a decentralized form of cybernetic planning in Chile that was operational from 1971 until 1973.
* OGAS, a proposed national computer network for economic planning in the Soviet Union.
* Social science, one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies.
* Socialism with Chinese characteristics, the official ideology of the Chinese Communist Party
* Scientific Outlook on Development, a socio-economic concept of the Chinese Communist Party
* Scientific communism, the Soviet Union curriculum requirements for understanding Soviet orthodoxy on the subject.
* Science and technology in the Soviet Union
* Siad Barre, who called his mixture of Marxism-Leninism and Islam "scientific socialism".
* Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
* Socialist mode of production
* "Why Socialism?" - an article written by Albert Einstein which presented a critique of modern capitalism and advocated for a planned economy.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Engels, Friedrich (1880). Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
2. ↑ Peddle, Francis K.; Peirce, William S. (2022-01-15) (in en). The Annotated Works of Henry George: The Science of Political Economy. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 269. ISBN 978-1-68393-339-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=QkZOEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA269. Retrieved 2022-01-16.
3. ↑ Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1994) (in en). Proudhon: What is Property?. Cambridge University Press. pp. 208. ISBN 9780521405560. https://books.google.com/books?id=ELTq6WIulyEC. Retrieved 2021-12-04.
4. ↑ Marx, K.; Engels, F. (1845). "Critical Battle Against French Materialism". The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism. Chapter VI 3). http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_d.htm.
5. ↑ Ferri, Enrico (1912). Socialism and Modern Science. From "Evolution and Socialism" (p. 79): "Upon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute conflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic laws governing the production and distribution of wealth which it has established are natural laws ... not in the sense that they are laws naturally determined by the condition of the social organism (which would be correct), but that they are absolute laws, that is to say, that they apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, though they may be subject to modification in details. Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established by classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are laws peculiar to the present period in the history of civilized humanity, and that they are, consequently, laws essentially relative to the period of their analysis and discovery".
6. ↑ Trotsky, Leon (25 March 2019) (in en). In Defence of Marxism. Wellred Publications. pp. 31,68–70,138. ISBN 978-1-913026-03-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=r52JwwEACAAJ. Retrieved 2023-12-22.

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Socialism

Schools of thought|

* 21st century
* Agrarian
* Communist
* Democratic
* Ethical
* Feminist
* Green
* Guild
* Labourism
* Syndicalism
* Liberal
* Market
* Marxian
* Nationalist
* Reformist
* Revolutionary
* Scientific
* Social democracy
* Utopian
* Fourierism
* Icarianism
* Owenism
* Saint-Simonianism
* Technocracy

| Libertarian
(From below)|

* Anarchism
* Collectivist
* Communist
* Free-market
* Left-wing laissez-faire
* Left-wing market
* Green
* Individualist
* Insurrectionary
* Magonism
* Mutualism
* Neozapatismo
* Participism
* Platformism
* Social
* Syndicalist
* Left-libertarianism
* Libertarian Marxism
* Left communism
* Council communism
* Luxemburgism
* Mao-Spontex
* Third camp

|

Authoritarian
(From above)|

* Barracks
* Nechayevism
* Blanquism
* Bolshevism
* Leninism
* Marxism–Leninism
* Brezhnevism
* Castroism
* Ceaușism
* Guevarism
* Ho Chi Minh Thought
* Hoxhaism
* Husakism
* Juche
* Kadarism
* Khrushchevism
* Maoism
* Dengism
* Maoism–Third Worldism
* Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
* Marxism–Leninism–Maoism–Gonzalo Thought
* Marxism–Leninism–Maoism–Prachanda Path
* Xi Jinping Thought
* Stalinism
* Neo-Stalinism
* Tkachevism
* Trotskyism
* Neo-Trotskyism
* Pabloism
* Posadism
* Orthodox Trotskyism
* State
* Lassallism

Religious|

* Buddhist
* Christian
* Islamic
* Jewish

Regional variants|

* African
* African-Caribbean
* Arab
* Bolivarian
* Chinese
* Communist
* Nationalist
* European
* Eurocommunism
* Israeli
* Indonesian
* Melanesian
* Mexican
* Soviet
* In one country
* Real
* Sri Lankan
* Third World
* Yugoslav

Key topics and issues|

* Anarchist economics
* Anti-revisionism
* Criticism of capitalism
* Criticism of socialism
* Class struggle
* Democracy
* Dictatorship of the proletariat
* Egalitarianism
* Equality of outcome
* History of anarchism
* History of communism
* History of socialism
* Impossibilism
* "The Internationale"
* Internationalism
* State-owned enterprise
* Land reform
* Left-wing politics
* Mixed economy
* Mode of production
* Nanosocialism
* Nationalization
* Planned economy
* Post-capitalism
* Proletarian revolution
* Reformism
* Revisionism
* Socialisation of production
* Socialist economics
* Socialist market economy
* Socialist state
* State capitalism
* Trade union
* Welfare state

Concepts|

* Adhocracy
* Anarchist economics
* Basic income
* Calculation in kind
* Commune
* Common ownership
* Cooperative ownership
* Decentralized planning
* Direct democracy
* Economic democracy
* Economic planning
* Equal opportunity
* Free association
* Industrial democracy
* Labor-time calculation
* Labour voucher
* Organizational self-management
* Production for use
* Public ownership
* Social dividend
* Socialist mode of production
* Technocracy
* Workplace democracy

People|

| 16th c.|

* Tommaso Campanella
* Thomas More

|

18th c.|

* Gracchus Babeuf
* Victor d'Hupay
* Gabriel Bonnot de Mably
* Sylvain Maréchal
* Étienne-Gabriel Morelly

19th c.|

* Stephen Pearl Andrews
* Mikhail Bakunin
* John Goodwyn Barmby
* Enrico Barone
* August Bebel
* Edward Bellamy
* Eduard Bernstein
* Louis Blanc
* Louis Auguste Blanqui
* Philippe Buchez
* Georg Büchner
* Philippe Buonarroti
* Étienne Cabet
* Edward Carpenter
* Nikolay Chernyshevsky
* James Connolly
* Victor Prosper Considerant
* Claire Démar
* Théodore Dézamy
* W. E. B. Du Bois
* Prosper Enfantin
* Friedrich Engels
* Charles Fourier
* Emma Goldman
* William Batchelder Greene
* Charles Hall
* Alexander Herzen
* Thomas Hodgskin
* Jean Jaurès
* Mother Jones
* Karl Kautsky
* Peter Kropotkin
* Paul Lafargue
* Albert Laponneraye
* Ferdinand Lassalle
* Pyotr Lavrov
* Alexandre Ledru-Rollin
* Pierre Leroux
* Helen Macfarlane
* Errico Malatesta
* Karl Marx
* Louise Michel
* Nikolay Mikhaylovsky
* William Morris
* Robert Owen
* Antonie Pannekoek
* Giovanni Pascoli
* Constantin Pecqueur
* Georgi Plekhanov
* Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
* Luis Emilio Recabarren
* Henri de Saint-Simon
* Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
* George Sand
* Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz
* Eugène Sue
* Lysander Spooner
* Fred M. Taylor
* William Thompson
* Pyotr Tkachev
* Benjamin Tucker
* Suzanne Voilquin
* Alfred Russel Wallace
* Josiah Warren
* Wilhelm Weitling
* Oscar Wilde

20th c.|

* Tariq Ali
* Salvador Allende
* Louis Aragon
* Clement Attlee
* Henri Barbusse
* Zygmunt Bauman
* Simone de Beauvoir
* Walter Benjamin
* Tony Benn
* Léon Blum
* Grace Lee Boggs
* Murray Bookchin
* Bertolt Brecht
* Aristide Briand
* Nikolai Bukharin
* Cornelius Castoriadis
* Hugo Chávez
* Noam Chomsky
* G. D. H. Cole
* Jeremy Corbyn
* Bob Crow
* Guy Debord
* Eugene V. Debs
* John Dewey
* Alexander Dubček
* Albert Einstein
* Einar Gerhardsen
* Mikhail Gorbachev
* Maxim Gorky
* Antonio Gramsci
* Chris Hedges
* Eric Hobsbawm
* Dolores Ibárruri
* Pablo Iglesias Posse
* Elfriede Jelinek
* Martin Luther King Jr.
* Alexandra Kollontai
* Jack Layton
* Henri Lefebvre
* Claude Lefort
* Vladimir Lenin
* Ken Livingstone
* György Lukács
* Rosa Luxemburg
* Nestor Makhno
* Nelson Mandela
* Mao Dun
* Vladimir Mayakovsky
* Maurice Merleau-Ponty
* China Miéville
* François Mitterrand
* Evo Morales
* Imre Nagy
* Gamal Abdel Nasser
* Otto Neurath
* Paul Nizan
* Abdullah Öcalan
* Seán O'Casey
* George Orwell
* Sylvia Pankhurst
* Fred Paterson
* Pier Paolo Pasolini
* Karl Polanyi
* Bertrand Russell
* Gaetano Salvemini
* Bernie Sanders
* Jean-Paul Sartre
* Arthur Scargill
* Léopold Sédar Senghor
* George Bernard Shaw
* R. H. Tawney
* E. P. Thompson
* Ernst Toller
* Leon Trotsky
* Yanis Varoufakis
* H. G. Wells
* Cornel West
* Richard D. Wolff
* Clara Zetkin
* Howard Zinn
* Slavoj Žižek

Organizations|

* Communist International
* Fifth International
* Foro de São Paulo
* Fourth International
* International League of Peoples' Struggle
* International League of Religious Socialists
* International Marxist Tendency
* International Union of Socialist Youth
* International Workingmen's Association
* Second International
* Socialist International
* World Federation of Democratic Youth
* World Socialist Movement

See also|

* Anarchism
* Criticism of socialism
* Communism
* Economic calculation problem
* Marxist philosophy
* New Left
* Old Left
* Socialist calculation debate

* Politics portal
* Socialism portal

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