Spec and notes
The Edexcel specification runs down the left, our notes sit on the right, and every numbered point has a comment box.
1 Core ideas and principles
Collective human effort and the common good come before individual self-striving.
Humans are social and achieve more together. Seen in nationalisation, trade unions, the co-operative movement and welfare. The strands split: revolutionary socialism wants full common ownership, social democracy a mixed economy, the Third Way is largely individualist.
People are naturally social, co-operative and shaped by society, not fixed at birth.
Nurture over nature: a good society makes good people. Marx's species-being. The Third Way leans more towards communitarianism than common humanity.
The central socialist goal; inequality comes from society, not nature.
Revolutionary socialism wants absolute equality of outcome; social democracy relative equality of outcome through redistribution (Crosland); the Third Way equality of opportunity (Giddens).
Society is structured by class, rooted in the economy.
Historical materialism: the economic base shapes class. Revolutionary socialists want to abolish class; social democrats reduce class inequality; the Third Way plays class down in favour of social inclusion.
Workers should have a say over the production they carry out.
Through common ownership, co-operatives or, for evolutionary socialists, the state. Strongest in revolutionary socialism; weakest in the Third Way.
Wealth is produced collectively, so it should be owned collectively.
Forms: nationalisation, workers' co-operatives, syndicalism. Labour's Clause IV (1918) committed it to common ownership; Blair rewrote Clause IV in 1995, signalling the Third Way.
The bonds of comradeship between human beings.
Underpins co-operation and collectivism: people seen as comrades, brothers and sisters.
Working collectively to achieve mutual benefits.
Socialists argue co-operation is more productive and humane than competition (Webb).
An economic system, organised by the market, where goods are produced for profit and wealth is privately owned.
The system socialists respond to: revolutionary socialism abolishes it, social democracy humanises and manages it, the Third Way uses it.
The common ownership of the means of production so that all are able to benefit from the wealth of society and to participate in its running.
The classic socialist economy; central to revolutionary socialism and, historically, to Labour through Clause IV.
The communal organisation of social existence based on the common ownership of wealth.
Marx's end goal: a classless, stateless society reached after the state withers away.
2 Differing views and tensions within socialism
Socialism can be brought about only by the overthrow of the existing political and societal structures.
Marxism: capitalism and liberal democracy cannot be reformed, so overthrow them. Common ownership and equality of outcome. Thinkers: Marx and Engels, Luxemburg.
An ideological view that wishes to humanise capitalism in the interests of social justice.
Revisionist and evolutionary: a mixed economy, Keynesian management and a welfare state, delivering relative equality of outcome. Thinkers: Webb, Crosland.
A middle-ground alternative route to socialism and free-market capitalism.
Neo-revisionist: embrace the market, aim for social inclusion and equality of opportunity, and mend welfare rather than end it. Thinker: Giddens.
A parliamentary route, which would deliver a long-term, radical transformation in a gradual, piecemeal way through legal and peaceful means, via the state.
Webb's inevitability of gradualness: vote for socialism through Parliament rather than seize it by revolution.
An ideological system, within socialism, that drew on the writings of Marx and Engels and has at its core a philosophy of history that explains why it is inevitable that capitalism will be replaced by communism.
Historical materialism, class conflict, revolution and a brief dictatorship of the proletariat, then communism.
A move to re-define socialism that involves a less radical view of capitalism and a reformed view of socialism.
Capitalism can be reformed, not abolished (Crosland's managerialism). Luxemburg rejected revisionism as impossible while capitalism exploits workers.
A distribution of wealth that is morally justifiable and implies a desire to limit inequality.
The moral core of social democracy; Crosland gave four justifications for greater equality.
3 Socialist thinkers and their ideas
- The centrality of social class - the ideas of historical materialism, dialectic change and revolutionary class consciousness.
- Humans as social beings - how nature is socially determined and how true common humanity can be expressed only under communism.
Revolutionary. Capitalism alienates and exploits workers (surplus value); the proletariat overthrows the bourgeoisie; the state then withers away. 'Workers of the world unite.'
- 'The inevitability of gradualness' - the gradualist parliamentary strategy for achieving evolutionary socialism.
- The expansion of the state - that this, and not the overthrow of the state, is critical in delivering socialism.
Fabian. Permeate the institutions of the state; an early architect of the welfare state and a blueprint for the NHS; co-author of Clause IV; the national minimum.
- Evolutionary socialism and revisionism - this is not possible as capitalism is based on an economic relationship of exploitation.
- Struggle by the proletariat for reform and democracy - this creates the class consciousness necessary for the overthrow of the capitalist society and state.
Revolutionary but libertarian and democratic: 'no socialism without democracy.' Mass action and grassroots class consciousness; firmly anti-revisionist.
- The inherent contradictions in capitalism - does not drive social change and managed capitalism can deliver social justice and equality.
- State-managed capitalism - includes the mixed economy, full employment and universal social benefits.
Social democracy and managerialism. The Future of Socialism (1956): nationalisation is not the point; deliver relative equality of outcome through the welfare state and state schooling.
- The rejection of state intervention - acceptance of the free market in the economy, emphasis on equality of opportunity over equality, responsibility and community over class conflict.
- The role of the state - is social investment in infrastructure and education not economic and social engineering.
The Third Way. Structuration; welfare mended not ended, a hand-up not a hand-out; stakeholding; equality of opportunity over equality of outcome.
The self-understanding of social class that is a historical phenomenon, created out of collective struggle.
For Marx, the proletariat must become aware of its shared position to overthrow capitalism; Luxemburg argued it is built through struggle.
Marxist theory that the economic base (the economic system) forms the superstructure (culture, politics, law, ideology, religion, art and social consciousness).
The economy shapes everything built on top of it; change the base and you change society.
A process of development that occurs through the conflict between two opposing forces. In Marxism, class conflict creates internal contradictions within society, which drives historical change.
Bourgeoisie against proletariat: the engine that drives history towards communism.
Government intervention can stabilise the economy and aims to deliver full employment and price stability.
Underpins social democracy's managed capitalism (Crosland): demand management within a mixed economy.