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Essentially, capitalism allows for anyone (that has sufficient capital) to create a business and produce anything they want, however they want, with no regard for democracy in the workplace, equal work participation (the owner does not have to work, just own the workplace), or indeed how the rest of society is doing. A capitalist (an owner of means of generating capital and a member of the bourgeois, or "upper", class) does not have to care about whether or not what their business is producing is necessary for society. All a capitalist has to worry about is making a profit. This is why socialists view capitalism as, among other things, ecologically unsustainable; because the Earth has limited resources, and each country has limited space for a limited amount of factories. Under capitalism, these factories are used for anything and everything that can generate profit, not for necessities that society actually needs. This leads to people who live in poverty to be able to afford a smartphone, but not always be able to put food on the table. Capitalist society produces too much of what we don't need, and too litte of what we do need, because the capitalist system is based on profit for capitalists, not human needs.

But capitalists don't decide it's time to stop making money once they reach a certain net worth. On the contrary, capitalists are never happy and continually seek to make as much money as possible. The problem with this is that money is merely a social construct with no inherent value. Money in itself is not worth anything, but instead it represents a value that exists somewhere. But this value is not infinite. Capitalists cannot keep making money forever, because eventually they will have taken all the value from the world and would have to start taking money from the poor. And yet this is exactly what has happened: The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer. The world's capital, the world's value, has accumulated among the 100-or-so richest individuals in the world, and this accumulation is still occurring. And this accumulation of capital will not simply seize, it will have to be stopped.

One of capitalism's most famous critics, as well as one of socialism's founders, was Karl Marx. Through the years, Marx described various problems with capitalism. Below are just a few examples.

Workers are paid little, whilst capitalists get rich.Probably the most obvious problem that Marx had with capitalism is that the labourers, who do all the work, are paid very little, whereas the capitalists get rich. The method the capitalists use and have used since the dawn of capitalism is the method of primitive accumulation ("Urspngliche Akkumulation"). The workers produce something for one price, and the capitalists sell it for a much higher one, whilst simultaneously shrinking the wages of the workers as much as possible, in order to maximise profits. The profit that capitalists make using the method of primitive accumulation is called the surplus value. According to Marx, this "profit" is simply theft, stolen by the capitalists from the hard-working labourers. Marx firmly believed that the workers have a right to the value that they produce, and that those who work with means of production should, alone, own those means of production. In other words, Marx believed that those who work in a workplace should collectively own and democratically decide how that workplace should be run. The only people allowed to be owners of something that can generate capital are those who actually generate that capital.

Capitalism is alienating - "Entfremdung."Marx understood that work can be the source of our greatest joy, but that capitalism has turned it into something we all detest. Everyone hates Mondays. Monday is the day we lose the freedom of the weekend to start working. But why do people hate Mondays? Why don't people enjoy their work? Essentially, modern work has us do one thing all day, but alienates us from what we believe we could ideally contribute to society. Someone who might want to write symphonies may have to work in a factory, because they need to earn money in order to afford food and housing. And on the other hand, some people who do work with what they feel contributes to society (teachers, for example) are paid very little to do so. Another problem that contributes to alienation is that modern work has become extremely specialised. Capitalists and factory owners don't want master craftsmen to produce the chairs in their furniture factory, they want to be able to hire almost anyone to produce one leg of one chair, and three other people to produce the other three legs, because then it's easy to fire and replace someone if there's a profit to be made, or production can increase with technological advancement. Ten people could be replaced by a computer and one engineer to maintain the computer, leaving 9 people unemployed, all for the sake of profit.

Capitalism is very unstable.From its very beginning, Capitalism is full of economic crises. Capitalists may dress up as these crises as "freakish" and "rare" and "soon to be the last one," but this is far from the truth, argued Marx, because capitalism is unstable by its very nature. Capitalism suffers from a crisis of abundance, rather than, as in the past, a crisis of shortage. Modern production is simply too effective. We produce too much: Much more than we could possibly consume. Modern work is so productive that we could give everyone on Earth a house, a car, enough food and water, as well as free access to a good school and a hospital. But, according to calculations by the World Food Program, there are over 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. And according to the Global Campaign for Education, over 70 million people don't have access to education. If we were to only produce things we need, rather than, for example, 24 different brands of soap, very few of us would actually have to work, and we could ensure that the common person has what they need to survive. Once people have enough food and a place to live, we can start worrying about producing less essential things.

When most people (in the western world, including North America and Europe) hear the word "socialism" they think of Scandinavian and Central European welfare states that have high taxes and different forms of social security nets. It is a common misconception that these countries are socialistic. The correct term to describe these countries is "social democracy", which is a revisionist form of socialism that does not advocate for a transition to the socialistic mode of production. These countries are by all accounts still capitalistic; they advocate for a reform of the current status quo, not a complete transition from capitalism to socialism.

What socialism is, actually, is a political and economic theory of social organisation which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned and regulated by the community as a whole, rather than by private individuals.

Socialists believe that workers have a right to "reap what they sow", i.e. that they have a right to the value that they produce, and that capitalists who do nothing but own businesses, factories, corporations, etc., do not have any right to steal value from the hard-working labourers. Socialism is inherently an anti-capitalistic ideology, and socialists believe that capitalism is an outdated system that has to be replaced, in order for the working class to achieve true freedom from oppression and exploitation.

"Socialism" can also be used as an umbrella term, describing a collection of ideologies that advocate for the socialist mode of production. This includes but is not limited to:

Most forms of socialism are based on, or are at least inspired by, Marxism.

Simply put, democratic socialism advocates for a transition (whether revolutionary or reformistic) from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production accompanied by a democratic system, whereas social democracy advocates for a "better" version of capitalism achieved through reform of the current status quo that allows for government ownership of (mostly) non-profitable parts of society as well as social security nets and welfare paid for by raised taxes.What's wrong with social security nets and welfare?

There is nothing inherently wrong with these things. In fact, socialists want more welfare and social security for the people. Socialists want to ensure that everyone has a place to live, enough food and water to lead a healthy life, as well as free access to good schools and hospitals, among other things (parental leave, work safety laws, paid sick leave, paid vacation, etc.). The problem most socialists have with social democracies (which are famous for providing their citizens with these luxuries) is that they firstly only provide some of these things for their citizens (social democracies don't provide free housing, for example), and that those things are paid for mostly through taxes. High income taxes goes directly against the socialistic idea of letting workers reap what they sow. By taking hard-earned wages from the proletariat (the working- and middle-class), the social democratic state becomes no better than the capitalist class, which uses the method of primitive accumulation to leech profit from their workers. More on this further down on this page.

Marxism is a world view and a method of societal analysis, as well as a collection of political and economic theories that were developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism focuses on class relations and societal conflict, and uses a materialistic interpretation of historical development, and a dialectical view of social transformation. Marxist methodology uses economic and socio-political inquiry and applies that to the critique and analysis of the development of capitalism and the role of class struggle in systemic economic change.

Whilst socialism and communism existed before Marx, he and Engels were the ones who turned the utopian dream of a perfect society into a practical science. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are alone responsible for popularising socialism and communism throughout the world, and it is safe to say that socialism would have remained an impractical, utopian, near impossible-to-implement ideology without Marxist analyses.

Communism is a social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society. Communist society is the last stage of socialism (from a materialistic perspective of history, see: Marxism). It is defined as a socio-economic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and a state. The term "communist society" should be distinguished from the Western concept of the "communist state", the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism-Leninism.What is the difference between socialism and communism?

In Marxist theory, socialism is the transitional state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realisation of communism. Communism is a higher stage of socialism, and socialism is a lower stage of communism.

"Communist" countries such as China, Cuba, Laos, Nepal, and Vietnam have never claimed to have achieved communism, but are communistic in the sense that their goal is the establishment of communist society.

Yes, all communists are by definition also socialists, but not all socialists are communists. Most socialists agree that, theoretically, communism should be the next mode of production after socialism, but different socialistic ideologies have their own ideas for how this society should be reached and what it would look like (and if it can even be reached at all). In addition, many socialistic organisations and political parties no longer want to be associated with the word communism, after the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc essentially changed the meaning of the word communism from "a stateless, moneyless, global society without private ownership of the means of production" into "a state governed by a Marxist-Leninist political party".

Democracy. During no stage of socialism is a dictatorship necessary. Socialists do, however, advocate for a so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat," which should not be confused with an actual dictatorship. In Marxist theory, all societies which have economic classes also have a dictatorship of one of those classes. In capitalist society, the bourgeois class holds political power over the proletariat, and so capitalist society can be called a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, socialist society is supposed to be ruled by the working class, so it is called the dictatorship of the proletariat, as in "rule of the working class." The dictatorship of the proletariat only exists in socialist society, however. In communist society, which is classless, there is not a dictatorship of any particular class.

That said, many socialists believe that it is impossible to achieve socialism through bourgeois (liberal, parliamentary) democracy, because those systems were designed by the rich in order to keep the rich in power. But it is not true that socialists don't want democracy. In fact, socialists want more democracy than there already is: Socialists want true democracy where every individual's vote and opinion truly matters. Socialists don't just want more direct democracy (i.e. allowing for the population to directly control how their country is run, rather than just letting them vote for a "representative" that super-promises to vote in their interests, but is under no real obligation to actually do so), but also allow for democratic control of the means of production. That is, allow all workers to democratically decide how their place of work is run, what is produced, how much it should sell for, and so on.

Although the Nazi Party was called "National Socialist", it was not socialistic. The Nazis promoted a corporatist, class collaborationist ideology which they termed "socialist" in an attempt to gain working class support (socialism was a hugely popular idea in Germany at the time). In practice, Nazi Germany privatised most of the economy, made independent labour unions illegal, and placed communists, socialists, and social democrats in concentration camps along with other "undesirable" citizens such as Jews, people of colour, handicapped people, etc.

If you're afraid the communists are going to break into your home and take your Xbox because private property has been abolished, you can sleep easy knowing that "private property" is not the same as "personal property." Private property refers to means of production (factories, machinery, etc.), whereas personal property refers to the things you the common person own. Your house, your car, and your Xbox are all personal property, and belong to you.

No. Firstly, because unimportant positions such as "janitor" probably would not exist, and the duty of cleaning up would be shared among the people within a certain community (a workplace, a neighbourhood, etc.) Secondly, because money would not exist in communist society in the same sense that it does today.

The rest is here:
Socialism101.com: Basic