From the Marxian standpoint, Socialism is the struggle of the working class, or proletariat, to free itself from the domination of capitalism, and establish a new classless society collectively controlled in the interest of the whole people. Marx nowhere formulates clearly either the nature of this new society or the de tailed steps by which it is to be approached. He is far more interested in the struggle than in the goal to which it tends; and any attempt to forecast in detail the structure of a Socialist com munity would have seemed to him mere Utopianism. The parties based on Marxism follow the master's lead, and tend to define their policy in terms rather of the class-struggle between capitalists and labourers than of the positive ends sought in the struggle. The non-Marxist British Socialists, for their part, have usually been more concerned with the early stages in a gradual evolution towards Socialism than with the completed process. Only the Guild Socialists, of modern Socialist groups, have attempted to forecast in detail the structure of the new society they are seek ing ; and even their attempt is confined, in the main, to an outline of the structure of industry under a system of "workers' control" or "industrial self-government." We have, then, in attempting to make more precise our defini tion of Socialism, to avoid relating it in our minds to any Utopian picture of the future. We can say that Socialists seek the common ownership and collective control of the means of production and exchange ; but we cannot say that this involves either the "nation alization" of all industries or some particular way of managing them. There are many possible forms of common ownership— nationally by the State, locally by municipalities or similar bodies, and, locally or nationally, by quasi-public trusts, guilds or corpora tions acting on behalf of the public. There are also many possible forms of administration—directly by State or municipal depart ments, by specially-constituted boards or commissions of experts, or by representative bodies of producers or consumers, or of both. All these forms of ownership and administration have had advo cates among Socialists, and many Socialist plans embody features from several of them, or allow for diversity of experiment in different cases. Nor can it even be assumed that Socialists wish all the means of production to be publicly owned. If the vital and basic industries and services were under public control, many Socialists would be ready to leave smaller enterprises largely in private hands.
It is, however, clear that, whatever might be the precise form of social organization desired, all Socialists would wish the vital aspects of the economic life of society to be brought under collec tive control. This applies to production and distribution alike. One aspect of Socialism is the collective control of the productive forces; another, certainly no less important, is the collective con trol of the distribution of the social income. For, fundamentally, the object of the control of production is the abolition of poverty, unemployment and social classes, and the sharing out of all the wealth that the community is able to produce on more equitable lines than capitalism allows.
All Socialists would agree that a more equitable distribution of the social income means a less unequal distribution. But, while some regard absolute equality of income as the only Socialist solution of the problem, others reject this view, and seek only to ensure an adequate minimum for all, and to limit within reason able bounds the degree of inequality above this minimum. "To each according to his needs" has been a frequent cry among Social ists as well as Anarchists, and many Socialists have regarded com plete "Communism," in the sense of unlimited free distribution, as desirable for as many goods as can be produced in the necessary abundance. William Morris's Socialist Utopia, News from No
where, is purely Communistic in this sense of the term. But the conception of distribution according to need has commonly, as a practical policy, been either re-stated as a conception of complete equality, on the ground that equality is, in face of the limitation of human resources, the nearest workable equivalent, or limited to a demand for an assured minimum standard of living. A desire to lessen inequality of incomes, and to use the State and taxation as the means of achieving this, is all that can be safely assumed as the common doctrine of all schools of Socialists.
The Socialist desire for a nearer approach to equality is not, however, confined to the region of incomes. It implies also the desire both for equality of political rights and for equality of economic and social status. Political democracy, Socialists often contend, can never be made a reality as long as gross inequalities of wealth and status are allowed to persist. Wealth, for example, gives its possessor the means of exerting an exceptional influence on political opinion, and often neutralizes the effects of formally democratic political institutions. Socialists, therefore, stand for political democracy completed and made workable by the abolition of class distinctions and of dangerous inequalities of wealth. This does not imply that they believe the means of transition to Social ism must conform to orthodox democratic ideas ; for the Commun ists, for example, repudiate existing political democracy as a sham, and insist that Socialism can be introduced only by a revolutionary "dictatorship of the proletariat." This view is repudiated by the majority of Socialists outside Russia; and the Socialist parties usually attempt to work towards Socialism by using the methods of parliamentary democracy. This, however, is a matter of expediency rather than of principle; whereas all Socialists, in cluding Communists, believe that Socialism, once securely estab lished, will organize its collective control of society on democratic lines. The "dictatorship" of the Communists is regarded only as a necessary instrument of the transition to a really democratic system.
The differences of view among Socialists, and the difficulty of formulating any precise definition of the policy of Socialism, do not mean that Socialism does not constitute a clearly recognizable movement and body of tendencies in economic and social policy. It is indeed sometimes difficult to say whether a particular organi zation can properly be described as Socialist or not. The British Labour Party, for example, founded originally in 19oo as the Labour Representation Committee, on the basis of an alliance between the Socialist societies and the trade unions, had at the outset no definite policy, and only adopted Socialist views grad ually. There was, in its early years, a dispute at the International Socialist Conference on the question whether its delegates ought to be admitted. Even to-day, though its policy is, in general, clearly Socialist, it is quite possible for non-Socialists who agree with its immediate programme to be actively associated with it. The Continental parties, having for the most part a definitely Marxian basis, are, in words, far more fully committed to Social ism ; but it does not appear that the verbal difference exerts any important influence on their policy. Broadly speaking, the political Labour movement is everywhere Socialist, in that its declared policy conforms with the definition given at the beginning of this article. Labour and the New Social Order, the famous manifesto issued by the British Labour Party in 1918, is perhaps the best and clearest short exposition of moderate and evolutionary Socialist policy that has yet been produced.