Socialism

"*** A Communism and socialism are umbrella terms referring to two left-wing schools of economic thought; both oppose capitalism. ***

These ideologies have inspired various social and political movements since the 19th century. Several countries have been or are currently governed by parties calling themselves communist or socialist, though these parties' policies and rhetoric vary widely.

As an ideology, communism is generally regarded as hard-left, making fewer concessions to market capitalism and electoral democracy than do most forms of socialism. As a system of government, communism tends to center on a one-party state that bans most forms of political dissent.

These two usages of the term ""communism"" – one referring to theory, the other to politics as they are practiced – need not overlap: China's ruling Communist Party has an explicitly pro-market capitalist orientation and pays only lip service to the Maoist ideology whose purist adherents (Peru's Shining Path in its heyday, democratic socialism for example) regard Chinese authorities as bourgeois counterrevolutionaries.

Socialism can refer to a vast swath of the political spectrum, in theory and in practice. Its intellectual history is more varied than that of communism:

the Communist Manifesto devotes a chapter to criticizing the half-dozen forms of socialism already in existence at the time, and proponents have taken just about every left-of-center stance on the ideal (or best achievable) structure of economic and political systems.

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