Talk:Socialism

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Socialism article.
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Socialism and Communism mean the same in the past? That's incorrect[change source]

My english is very, very bad. Exscuse me. Today the most people think that socialism is the same like the communism, but in the past there were more workermovements then just communism. There were the anarchosyndicalism, the leftwing social-democrats (the modern socialdemocrats are mostly liberal) and many other. So this sentence should probably deleted by someone. Just my humble opinion. --62.47.180.115 22:30, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Completely Inaccurate and Very Biased[change source]

This article has been written through a extreme conservative filter. Firstly, Socialism and Communism are completely different political and economic ideologies. Socialism is not simply the hoarding of resources by a government, as the first sentence of this article suggests. Socialism is a complex and structured system that is centered around the people.

Being a social democrat, I cannot speak against the biased language and inaccuracies of this article enough. I am offended and find this article to be another attempt by right-winged conservatives to skew the advantages of Socialist economics, and to equate Socialism with autocratic tyranny.

If I had the time to rewrite this, I would. I intend to in the future.

Neutral point of view[change source]

Someone needs to overview this article. There are many things wrong. Socialism isn't just a economic idea. And if Nationalsocialism is socialism, then would Hitler be a socialist and I think Hitler is more famous than Marx. So you can't write is this way!!! The whole article must be improved, but I don't know much about socialism. --Jakob 00:40, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article is extremely biased, which is dangerous for a simplified-language encyclopaedia. It describes Socialism as not "fair", and "aggressive". This is hardly neutral. Myself being a Socialist, i find this quite offensive. People will read this article and get completely the wrong idea. Please note: I don't think for one minute this was done on purpose.

Plus, the article almost equates Socialism with Communism, which is very wrong and misleading. If noone has rewritten it to be neutral, then i will soon enough.

Changed[change source]

I've rewritten several sections of the article to remove bias. This is my first page on the Simple English Wiki, and i'd be happy if someone could check it to make sure i haven't overcomplicated anything, or broken any rules.

This article is illiterate garbage.![change source]

Firstly Fascism and "National Socialism" are not types of socialism, and its scurrilous and ahistorical to claim they are. Secondly the social democrats and communists where split as far back as marx's times. I've removed the nazi slur, but someone else will need to rewrite the social democrat stuff. This article should just be deleted and started again by someone who isn't a functional illiterate politically 121.215.147.27 (talk) 20:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you know so much about it, why don't you help out and fix it? --Isis ♠(talk) 20:34, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it is illiterate garbage[change source]

You find one article anywhere about socialism that makes any sense at all. Socialists don't sit around coffee shops discussion socialism to make it better, they do it to try to understand what the garbage is all about.

Though I agree with some sentiments, they are biased[change source]

I voted for Obama. I would again. I support many of of his policies. This is clearly biased in discussion of him by a supporter of his. This needs an editor lock to only allow neutral postings. This overall is one of the worst, most useless wikipedia postings I have ever read.

wow[change source]

TOO MANY WORDS. DID NOT READ.

__________________________

This is an outstanding summary of socialism with one major ommission-Hitler. Adolph Hitler was one of the most, if not the most, famous socialist that ever lived. His party, the National Socialist, typified government control and management of the means of production.

I think you're a little confused - Hitler, although his party was named the National Socialists, was in fact a fascist. It's like saying North Korea is democratic simply because it has 'democratic' in its name.

Same for China! It's not actually communist, but it's name says that. Gcjdavid (talk) 12:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Many Inaccuracies and Biases[change source]

Ironically, I think that many biases and innacuracies have been introduced into this piece and it is highly misleading and borderline partisan in areas..

First, the discussion of Social Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism is inappropriate,the first being a partisan political ideology, the latter being a political/economic/social form of societal organization. Examples given to illustrate what "social democracy" is are simply appropriating the classical democratic captilist form of governmental orgnaization in which there is always a fuzyy and debated line between public goods vs. private goods - this debate being endemic to democratic capitalism. If most or all the means of "production" are in private hands and there are private property rights, the economic organization of the state is decidedly capitalist. There may be a Social Democratic political party with a distinct ideology regarding that classic dividing line between public and private, but until that ideology advocates public ownership of a large share of that societies assets, it is capitalist in economic intent. The provision of fire fighting and peace services are simply what the democratic society has determined as public services, and, moreover, are not classical "means of production" of anything wealth creating.

Most countries in the world today, therefore, are democratic captialsist countries (a correct expression of social/economic/governmental organization) and not Social Democracies (a correct political/partisan expression).

In genenral, the whole overview confuses the purely political from forms of societal organization, intermixing them freely to great confusion.

Secondly, even as a dedicated capitalist, I find the opening description to remain biased and inflamatory rather than descriptive.

Overall, it seems like part of this article is written by and anti-socialist and others by and anti-captialist. All in all, it is a valid topic that requires a comprehensive rewriting (even the history of Socialism Section is written casually with more opinion than fact, speculatively asserting what the author thinks "people" believe).

Suggested use of a timeline.[change source]

For simple English the best approach is to not include the complexity that occurs in using the topic word in different tenses. "Socialism was" is a different category to "socialism is". Socialism is a set of instances applied to different categories, uses, and times.

I suggest the best format is to initially write about the instances of the present. Then describe the history. Then describe the categories of uses. Then describe the categories in theorization during different times.

Else, anyone can disagree for all of eternity!

The present uses should always have initial discussion (over the mentions of past uses). The introduction should be the sole domain of the present. (Meaning: the explanation of the term, roughly, from the current users of the term). The following history section can then open the forum to a greater discussion in this article/passage. Leaving the history section is then needed to close the discussion of instances. Following that, categories allow for the discussion of interpretations in theory and practice.

Socialism is connected to the world's transformation in the most destructive moments in the 20th century - of course it's contentious! Democracy was also extremely contentious in it's origins. Kingdoms and empires the same! 180.93.175.136 (talk) 15:35, 14 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, after taking a look at the article, it already seemed like this was the case - the article begins by discussing socialism as it is presently understood and does not dive into the history of the term/theorizing until several paragraphs down. While the introduction could doubtlessly be better and more clearly written (I'll put it on my to-do list and maybe look at it at some point), I'm having trouble understanding how the article as it currently is initially presents the concept as both a past and a present reality without clearly differentiating between the two concepts. Maybe could you provide some more specific examples from the article? Kansan (talk) 15:43, 14 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blatant and rambunctious bias[change source]

"Socialism describes a new kind of society where people work together to achieve a good standard of living. The people enjoy a good life. And for this they gladly lend their services. Society becomes a place of bounty and pleasure. Those people that advocate this cooperative society are called socialists. Socialists believe that everything in society and made by the cooperative efforts of society exists for the benefit of society, and that it is from society that the people enjoy improved conditions of life."

Doesn't sound one sided at all... ImpotentSpaghetti (talk) 01:59, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This appear to be the description of the objective or the ambition of socialism more than the opinion we can have for the many socialists governments which won elections.

For this, keeping the current text, I hadded the words as an ideal/idealism

« Socialism as an ideal/idealism describes a kind of society where people work together to achieve a fair standard of living. Society becomes a place of bounty and pleasure. Those people that advocate this cooperative society are called socialists. Socialists believe that everything in society and what is made by the cooperative efforts of society exists for the benefit of society, and that it is from society that the people live in these conditions of life. » There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them...

Here we have three sentences:

One to introduce the concept: why this concepts does exist; what is its goal;
One to introduce the term socialist.
One to introduce what socialists believe, introducing interaction between cooperative efforts and society.

You might judge it inaccurate or incomplete, but it is important to note that such an article is difficult to write including to en.wikipedia and fr.wikipedia, as the truth or wrongth, the understanding of what is written it is strongly dependant of many things:

The words which by their many and inconsistent use introduce meaning confusions such as socialsim ≟ social democraty or socialsim ≟ communism; Social Democratic Party of Germany ≠ Party of Democratic Socialism (Germany)
The time which made the word changed from the description of the initial project to the many current government experience, without counting intermediates ones and some potential cold war influence
Variation of the use of the terms for their meaning and their connotations depending on countries (such as America vs Western Europe vs Eastern Europe vs China; without being limitative)
Potential bias which can be induced by the defensors or opponent to one kind of any ideology or any opposite ideology.
Scope of the term which can be considered in three ways: a philosophical idea; State socialism; element of a Multi-party system.

If one issue is difficult to deal with, here they are five!

Now if you have any idea to complete the article in a not one sided at all way, taking into account those potential issues, but staying in the simple way, I suggest you provide what can be added.

My personal opinion is that each subject could be in a separate page, with a kind of homonym page pointing to each one.86.75.160.141 (talk) 22:01, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is extremely biased![change source]

I am a boy studying about socialism shallowly. Our teacher told me that socialist governments are:

1)Workers get what they did. E.g. when a farm worker contributes to 80 percent of the output, he gets 80 percent of the profit. 2)Government own most companies.

Here, it said that the people shared the output of the country/organisation/company/etc. Isn't that communism? Gcjdavid (talk) 12:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

some bias in this article and there is a suggestion[change source]

Even if I am not familiar with the socialism, I still know that the socialism is completely different from the communism and that goods and services should be produced for the people's use, not for profit."is completely wrong. Besides, there is a suggestion that this article can plus some comments about socialism with Chinese characteristics because it is the biggest system of socialism in the world now and it is very successful and important. Xiaoxuxu0313 (talk) 04:07, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article has something wrong or not easy sentences.I fixed some content. And I have added something about socialism with Chinese characteristic. Xiaoxuxu0313 (talk) 18:19, 02 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article is/was the subject of an educational assignment in Spring 2015. Further details are available on the course page.

To each according to his contribution merge[change source]

The way To each according to his contribution is currently written, it sounds like a essay on socialism. I know that this is one of the definitions of socialism, but the article doesn't explain why the phrase itself is important. I think it would make more sense for Simple Wikipedia to have one article. Clarinetguy097 (talk) 04:57, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Personal opinions and unsourced claims[change source]

This really is a dreadful page on a topic which might be read by many users. I think it has to be completely re-written by editors who put their own opinions in second place, and use good sources as the basis for each claim which a reader might think is doubtful. Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:44, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]