socialism

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socialism summary

socialism

Q: What is socialism?

Socialism is a social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members.

Q: Should the United States become socialist?

Whether the United States should become socialist has been widely debated. Some argue that it should because the American public already supports many socialist policies that work fine within free-market structures and which undo the harm done by unfettered capitalism. Others argue that the United States already has too many costly and unpopular socialist entitlement programs and that the government should be promoting equal opportunity and not promising socialism's equal results. For more on the debate over whether the U.S. should become socialist. visit ProCon.org .

Written by Terence Ball, Richard DaggerSee All

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Dec 26, 2023 • Article History

Henri de Saint-Simon

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Category: Money

Key People:: Jawaharlal Nehru; George Orwell; William Morris; Robert Owen; Muammar al-Qaddafi

Related Topics:: African socialism; democratic socialism; Christian Socialism; utopian socialism; scientific socialism

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What is socialism?

Should the United States become socialist?

socialism, social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members. (Read George Bernard Shaw’s 1926 Britannica essay on socialism.) This conviction puts ...(100 of 7650 words)

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