Origin of the Name.—The words Socialism and Socialist ap pear to have come into use at nearly the same time in both Eng land and France about 183o. They were employed to describe, in Great Britain, the teachings and the followers of Robert Owen, with his "social system," and, in France, those of Fourier and Saint Simon. Thereafter, the words remained in use, but were often very loosely applied. Survivals of their loose application are to be seen in the names of certain modern political parties, such as the Christian Socialists in Austria and the Socialist-Radi cals in France. Neither of these parties is Socialist at all in the modern sense of the word as defined above.
The name acquired a more precise denotation with the growth of Socialist parties in various countries. But the movements out of which these parties grew were more often called "Communist" in their earlier stages. The "Communist Manifesto," drafted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for the Communist League and issued in the "year of revolutions," 1848, is generally regarded as the starting point of modern Socialism. Its second stage is marked by the creation of the International Working Men's Association in 1864, under Marx's leadership (see INTERNATIONAL) ; but the name "Socialism" was not generally applied until Socialist and Social Democratic parties were organized in France, Germany and elsewhere on a permanent basis (German Social Democratic La bour Party 1869—reformed 1875). The International Socialist Bureau, linking up these parties, was not founded until 1900, though a number of international Labour and Socialist Congresses had been held at earlier dates.
The denotation of the Socialist movement thus gradually be came plain during the last quarter of the 19th century. The con notation of the word socialism began to be more clearly defined at the same time. Though Marxism never commanded the alleg iance of all who called themselves "Socialists," it was above all Marx who first gave Socialism as a body of economic and political doctrine a definite form. This process, begun in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, was carried on in Marx's later writings and manifestoes, and above all in the first volume of Das Kapital (1867). Marx and his followers distinguished their doctrines, as "Scientific Socialism," from the Utopian Socialism which had gone before. Owen, Fourier, Saint Simon and other Socialist f ore runners they regarded as unscientific Utopia-builders, whereas Marxism professed to base itself on a scientific explanation of the movements of history. The materialist conception of history, working itself out in a succession of class struggles, became the scientific basis of the new Socialist movement which arose under Marxian inspiration. The programmes and policies of the new
Socialist parties of the '7os and '8os were conceived in Marxist terms ; and for a time it seemed as if Marxism and Socialism could be regarded as practically identical. (For an account of Marx's doctrines and activities, see the article MARX, KARL.) Practically, the most important outcome of Marxian Socialism was the close identification of Socialism with the working-class movement. Basing his theory of Socialism upon the class struggle, Marx necessarily regarded the working-class, or proletariat, as the instrument by which Socialism would be created. The task of the Socialists was, therefore, the political and economic organiza tion of the working-class, and its education in class-consciousness and collective action. The close connection between Socialism and such working-class movements as trade unionism, regarded as the instrument of the class struggle in the industrial field, arises naturally out of the Marxist view of Socialism. Modern Socialist propaganda has been, above all, an attempt to bring the organized workers over to a faith in Socialism, to permeate the trade unions and other working-class bodies with Socialist ideas, and to create Labour parties, as in Great Britain, on a Socialist basis and with a Socialist policy. Modern Socialism is more than a working-class movement, and many are Socialists who are not "proletarians," or workers in the ordinary sense of the word. But everywhere the Socialist movement is predominantly working-class, and acts in close conjunction with trade unions and other working-class bodies.
Early History.—Although the words Socialism and Socialist came into use only in the first half of the 19th century, many of the ideas now associated with Socialism have a far longer history, and many earlier writers and reformers are nowadays often called Socialists. Socialist elements, for example, are discerned in the Mosaic law and in the writings of Amos, Hosea and Isaiah, as well as in the so-called "Socialism of the gospels," on which many mediaeval Communist doctrines were explicitly based. The ordered and stratified social system of Plato's Republic is often called "Socialist," and clearly is so if Socialism is only the antithesis of individualism and laissez-faire. The idea of an ordered society based on community of goods appears again and again in the history of political and religious speculation, from the days of the ancient Greeks through Roman and mediaeval times to the modern world. It is possible to trace many communistic elements in the social institutions of primitive peoples, and there have been theories which represented the rise of individualism and private property as a fall of man from an ideal primitive communism.