She is quite right, for example, to stress that Thatcher's crusade against socialism was not merely about economic efficiency and prosperity but that above all, “it was that socialism itself—in all its incarnations, wherever and however it was applied—was morally corrupting.” —Stephen Pollard, New York Times Book Review, 18 Jan. 2009
Lenin's great genius, of course, was for ideology, which was redefined all too often to support the tactical requirements of the moment. But owing to his fanatical conviction of his own righteousness, especially where socialism was concerned, and also to the Promethean force of his will, his pronouncements were enshrined by his followers as universal truths. —Michael Scammell, New Republic, 20 Dec. 1999
System of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control; also, the political movements aimed at putting that system into practice. Because social control may be interpreted in widely diverging ways, socialism ranges from statist to libertarian, from Marxist to liberal. The term was first used to describe the doctrines of Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Robert Owen, who emphasized noncoercive communities of people working noncompetitively for the spiritual and physical well-being of all (seeutopian socialism). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, seeing socialism as a transition state between capitalism and communism, appropriated what they found useful in socialist movements to develop their scientific socialism. In the 20th century, the Soviet Union was the principal model of strictly centralized socialism, while Sweden and Denmark were well-known for their noncommunist socialism. See alsocollectivism, communitarianism, social democracy.