Contributions to socialist thought

Contributions to the socialist thought is a partial list of individual contributions on a worldwide scale.

Plato

Plato nowrap|(c. 427 BC – 347 BC)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) promulgated the idea that men were naturally free, but had to be educated to live in society. This required a natural liberty and a "national will" which could be directed to improvement of the society. He is famous for the quote "men are born free, but are everywhere in chains", and urging that Europeans throw off the restrictions that they lived under, and substitute, instead, a self-governing moral basis.

However, Rousseau's ideal society was very illiberal: he advocated an unhindered power of the sovereign over the body and property of the individual; he spoke against private ownership and human rights, such as the freedom of press.

Rousseau was a philosophers of contractarianism writing "Du Contrat Social" ( [http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm "The Social Contract"] ).

Robert Owen

Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a wealthy Welsh industrialist who turned to social reform and socialism. In 1825, he founded a communitarian colony called New Harmony in western Indiana. The group fell apart in 1829, mostly due to conflict between Utopian ideologues and non-idealogical pioneers.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) is known for the assertion that "Property is theft!" in his work "What is Property?" Proudhon expounded the idea that capitalists exploit labourers by paying the worker less than the worth of his labour while selling the worker's produce at its full price. He was the first individual to call himself an anarchist.

Karl Heinrich Marx

Karl Marx (1818–1883) argued that this alienation of human work (and resulting commodity fetishism) is the defining feature of capitalism. Prior to capitalism, markets existed in Europe where producers and merchants bought and sold commodities. According to Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe when labor itself became a commodityndash when peasants became free to sell their own labor-power, and needed to do so because they no longer possessed their own land. People sell their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for whatever work they do in a given period of time (in other words, they are not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work). In return for selling their labor power they receive money, which allows them to survive. Those who must sell their labor power are "proletarians." The person who buys the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is a "capitalist" or "bourgeoise." The proletarians inevitably outnumber the capitalists.

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) developed communist theory alongside his better-known collaborator, Karl Marx, co-authoring "The Communist Manifesto" (1848). Engels also edited several volumes of "Das Kapital" after Marx's death.

René-François-Armand (Sully) Prudhomme

Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907)

Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès

Jean Jaurès (1859–1914) was a committed antimilitarist who tried to use diplomatic means to prevent what became the First World War. As conflict became imminent, he tried to organise general strikes in France and Germany in order to force the governments to back down and negotiate. This was difficult since many Frenchmen wanted revenge for their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

One day before the mobilization that entangled France in the First World War, he was assassinated in a Paris café by Raoul Vilain, a young French nationalist who resented Jaurès' pacifism. Ten years after his death, Jaurés' remains were transferred to the Panthéon.

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Leon Trotsky

The ideas of Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) form the basis of Trotskyism, his variation of communist theory. Trotskyism remains a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism and Maoism.

Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg (1870/1871–1919)

Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) is seen by many as one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, in particular as a key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the "Prison Notebooks", contain Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory associated with his name, such as:
* Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the capitalist state;
* The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from the working class;
* The distinction between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.) where leadership is constituted through ideology or by means of consent;
* "Absolute historicism";
* The critique of economic determinism;
* The critique of philosophical materialism.

Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)

John Rawls

John Rawls (1921–2002) is noted for his contributions to liberal political philosophy. Among the ideas from Rawls's work that have received wide attention are:
* "Justice as Fairness", a combination of the liberty principle and the difference principle;
* The "Original position";
* Reflective equilibrium;
* Overlapping consensus;
* Public reason.

"Justice as Fairness" is the phrase Rawls used to refer to his distinctive theory of justice, consisting of two principles: that all have the greatest degree of liberty compatible with like liberty for all, and that social and economic inequalities be attached to positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity and to the greatest benefit of the least well-off members of society. The first of these two principles is known as the liberty principle, while the second half of the second, reflecting the idea that inequality is only justified if to the advantage of those who are less well-off, is known as the difference principle.

Gaddar

Gaddar

See also

* Contributions to liberal theory
* Socialism