And most people are wrong. Or rather, they are incomplete. They know some of the things "socialism" refers to, but not all of them.
The word can be used to refer to quite a wide range of concepts, and the word itself was independently invented at least twice (and it predates Marx or any communist).
Saint-Simon is a tiny area in the northern part of France. Living between 1760 and 1825 was a guy named Claude Henri, who started off as count of Saint-Simon, and who was a really interesting guy. Though born an aristocrat, he was a business man and an idealist - he not only embraced the French revolution's call for "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", but he went to the aid of America, where he fought under General Washington at the siege of Yorktown. Inspired by the meritocratic ideas he saw in America, he renounced his aristocratic title and went on to write many treatises that influenced not just political thinkers, but the areas of economics, sociology, and the philosophy of science.
Henri supported the idea of what he called an "industrial society", based upon objective scientific principles, in which the main purpose of government was to defend the "industrial class" (who included not only the manual labourers, but also businesspeople, managers, scientists, bankers and everyone else who did productive work"), from the "idling class" (who included both parasitic idle rich and indolent idle poor).
Someone who originally followed Henri was a French dressmaker, Jeanne Desirée Véret. Influenced also by Charles Fourier (who invented the word "feminism"), she left the Saint-Simeonists after they foolishly decided to excluded women from their decision making process, and she moved to Britain, where she in turn met Owenites such as Jules Gay (whom she later married).
Robert Owen was a Welsh man who lived between 1771 and 1858. In modern terms, we'd describe him as a successful entrepreneur, a self-made millionaire. He wasn't the whinging or envious sort. He was a hard working man, who raised money for, invested in, and eventually owned and ran textile mills. As such, he saw the very best and very worst of the industrial revolution at its height. The best parallels are with other great philanthropists, such as Americans: Carnegie and Vanderbilt, or the Brits: Cadbury and Wedgwood.
It was an interesting time for Britain. Not only was the industrial revolution in full swing; Britain had just come through the Napoleonic wars; the Chartists (originating from Working Men's Associations) were campaigning for votes for all men aged over the age of 21 (and for various other improvements to the political system to make it less corrupt and more representative); the Opium War was about to take place; and parliament had amended the Poor Law to include the "workhouse test" (you could only get public assistance with food if you joined a workhouse, and the conditions inside the workhouses were made as terrible as possible, so that only the 'truly' needy would enter them).
Robert Owen was concerned with many things, such as young children being forced into factories, labourers being forced to work 16 hour shifts each day, children being deprived of any access to education, problems like theft, drunkenness and poor sanitation in worker accommodations being left untackled, and the misuse of truck shops (paying workers not in normal currency, but in tokens only valid at a company owned store where the company trucked in supplies and then sold them onto the workers, often at vastly inflated prices).
The common theme among these things was their impact upon his workers. Owen felt a duty to care for those working for him, to not just pay them as little as he could get away with (and replace them when they died) but to look after them like a decent human being, to get laws passed giving them rights that would ensure they didn't get short-changed by those (such as his peers) who used any flaws in the legislative environment within which capitalism was operating to take unfair advantage of the power inequality between factory owner and factory worker.
And he practiced what he preached. He tried to set his own mills (such as New Lanark, on the River Clyde) up as an example of a different way of doing things. Goods in Owen's truck shop were priced as a small fixed margin above wholesale costs (lower than in normal shops, which started the idea of co-operatives). Workers only had to work 8 hours a day, and children got education. Safety and social problems were not ignored (he also probably started the idea of Trades Unions), and his workers felt safe in his factories. He won their trust and productivity soared. Monarchs and statesmen from around Europe (and beyond) made the trip to Scotland just tour his mill, and returned favourably impressed.
That's the origin of socialism. The idea that the productive members of society should be systematically protected, under law, from being screwed over by those who want to leach off them. In particular, the most vulnerable sectors of the productive members, need to be protected against not getting a fair share of the economic value of their work because of unfair advantage taken by those who set the conditions under which they work and choose who to hire.
The idea that the means of production should be collectively owned at a national level is something that was introduced later, by one particular branch of socialism (a group of followers of Fourier, who later influenced Marx's "scientific socialism"). That's only one particular branch - there are many others, which have an equal claim to the word "socialism", that reject that idea.
For example, there's:
- Anarcho-syndicalism
- Democratic socialism
- Ethical socialism
- Libertarian socialism
- Christian socialism
- Sociocracy
So that's what it is. But is there a handy single line definition of the word that everyone agrees on?
No, alas.
It has been used in too many contexts by too many groups (many of whom have never cared enough to actually research the question).
We could return to Robert Owen, who is most widely credited with spreading the usage of the word, who defined it to mean
" the view that human society can and should be improved for the benefit of all "
but that's a little vague.
But it may be a mistake to look for a single criteria and then to use to that judge each system, saying either "Yes, this system is 100% socialist" or "No, this system is 0% socialist".
Or even to pick a single axis and judge just one percentage based on that (such as "What percentage of GDP is spent collectively?").
Can we define it via self-description, by looking at those countries or ruling parties that describe themselves as socialist? Again, no, because tells us little about how well restrained optimised amounts of socialism affect a society in countries where it is an integrated part of a mixed capitalist system, rather than an attempt at a replacement for it.
Consider, for example, Tony Blair's "New Labour" in Britain, or Stefan Löfven's Social Democrats in Sweden. Neither desired or ever worked closer towards anything like the system in Venezuela. Yet both took actions which Robert Owen (and other early utopian socialists) would have staunchly approved of.
It is that approval, that scrutinizing eye upon the more abusive aspects that capitalism can develop when left unwatched, that might be the best guide to what is or is not socialism. Individuals contribute to and protect society and, in return, society owes a duty of protection back.
Does that mean a state advocating micromanaging everything, with big brother affording nobody any privacy, is more 'socialist' that one which only does the minimum to give the productive members of society a sufficiently fair deal? No. Owen was a pragmatic man, interested in efficiency as well as fairness. He would never has approved anything that caused more problems than it solved.
