This book is an analytical study of the history of modern socialism from 1889, when the Second International was founded, up to the present. The biographical portraits of the individuals chosen in this study provide insight into important issues in socialist history. These contrasting studies of twenty prominent socialistsómajor thinkers and important activists or agitatorsóilluminate particular problems in the historical evolution of socialism. The book's final chapter offers a substantial analysis of developments in the post-war period and an exploration of the crises facing contemporary world socialism in all its guises.

Socialists are united far more by their shared opposition to anomic individualism than by their commitment to any single interpretative scheme or body of beliefs. However, the 42 texts by the 27 socialists represented in this collection show that, in spite of the striking differences, there are certain crucial similarities and points of convergence. These volumes show that in Britain, at least in the years from 1825-1952, the democrats who called themselves socialists tended to concentrate their discussion around four common themes that served as the core of their common cause: quest for community, the institution of equality, the rehabilitation of the state, and transition by consent. The classic texts contained in these ten volumes, which encompass the Ricardian socialists, the Christian socialists, and the Fabian socialists, seek to make human interaction and social responsibility the centrepiece of economic debate from a variety of ideological perspectives. These key contributions to British thought between 1825 and 1952 are still a source of stimulus to students of political economy even as they have acquired the status of great historical works.

The texts in this collection of 10 volumes demonstrate both the diversity and continuity in British theories of democratic socialism. The selection encompasses the Ricardian socialists, the Christian socialists, and the Fabian socialists. Volume 4 includes the Fabian Essays, edited by Bernard Shaw.

This volume describes the various movements and parties, across all six continents, that wanted social change through state transformation. It begins with a reconstruction of social democracy's trajectories from the 1870s until the present. The evolution of socialism on different continents is illustrated through a number of national case studies. Experiments at a subnational level (for example, municipal socialism) are also explored, as are the varying experiences of international umbrella organizations. The next part focuses on divergent socialist experiments and ideologies in several parts of the world, including South Asia, Africa, the Arab world, Brazil, Venezuela, and Israel/Palestine, followed by an overview of 'independent' socialist movements, including left-socialist parties of the 1930s and the post-war period, and the global New Left since its beginnings in the 1950s. The volume concludes with critical essays on socialism's long-term and global development.

Example in this ebook We are living in an age of great social transformations that are steadily progressing. In all strata of society we perceive an unsettled state of mind and an increasing restlessness, denoting a marked tendency toward profound and radical changes. Many questions have arisen and are being discussed with growing interest in ever widening circles. One of the most important of these questions and one that is constantly coming into greater prominence, is the woman question. The woman question deals with the position that woman should hold in our social organism, and seeks to determine how she can best develop her powers and her abilities, in order to become a useful member of human society, endowed with equal rights and serving society according to her best capacity. From our point of view this question coincides with that other question: In what manner should society be organized to abolish oppression, exploitation, misery and need, and to bring about the physical and mental welfare of individuals and of society as a whole? To us then, the woman question is only one phase of the general social question that at present occupies all intelligent minds; its final solution can only be attained by removing social extremes and the evils which are a result of such extremes. Nevertheless, the woman question demands our special consideration. What the position of woman has been in ancient society, what her position is to-day and what it will be in the coming social order, are questions that deeply concern at least one half of humanity. Indeed, in Europe they concern a majority of organized society, because women constitute a majority of the population. Moreover, the prevailing conceptions concerning the development of woman’s social position during successive stages of history are so faulty, that enlightenment on this subject has become a necessity. Ignorance concerning the position of woman, chiefly accounts for the prejudice that the woman’s movement has to contend with among all classes of people, by no means least among the women themselves. Many even venture to assert that there is no woman question at all, since woman’s position has always been the same and will remain the same in the future, because nature has destined her to be a wife and a mother and to confine her activities to the home. Everything that is beyond the four narrow walls of her home and is not closely connected with her domestic duties, is not supposed to concern her. In the woman question then we find two contending parties, just as in the labor question, which relates to the position of the workingman in human society. Those who wish to maintain everything as it is, are quick to relegate woman to her so-called “natural profession,” believing that they have thereby settled the whole matter. They do not recognize that millions of women are not placed in a position enabling them to fulfill their natural function of wifehood and motherhood, owing to reasons that we shall discuss at length later on. They furthermore do not recognize that to millions of other women their “natural profession” is a failure, because to them marriage has become a yoke and a condition of slavery, and they are obliged to drag on their lives in misery and despair. To be continue in this ebook

This book poses a major revisionist challenge to 20th century British labour history, aiming to look beyond the Marxist and Fabian exclusion of working class experience, notably religion and self-help, in order to exaggerate ‘labour movement’ class cohesion. Instead of a ‘forward march’ to secular state-socialism, the research presented here is devoted to a rich diversity of social movements and ideas. In this collection of essays, the editors establish the liberal-pluralist tradition, with the following chapters covering three distinct sections. Part One, ‘Other Forms of Association’ covers subjects such as trade unions, the Co-operative Party, women’s community activism and Protestant Nonconformity. Part Two, ‘Other Leaders’, covers employer Edward Cadbury; Trades Union Congress leader Walter Citrine; and the electricians’ leader, Frank Chapple. Part Three, ‘Other Intellectuals’, considers G.D.H. Cole, Michael Young and left libertarianism by Stuart White. Readers interested in the British Labour movement will find this an invaluable resource.

In Socialism of Fools, Michele Battini focuses on the critical moment during the Enlightenment in which anti-Jewish stereotypes morphed into a sophisticated, modern social anti-Semitism. He recovers the potent anti-Jewish, anticapitalist propaganda that cemented the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in the European mind and connects it to the atrocities that characterized the Jewish experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning in the eighteenth century, counter-Enlightenment intellectuals and intransigent Catholic writers singled out Jews for conspiring to exploit self-sustaining markets and the liberal state. These ideas spread among socialist and labor movements in the nineteenth century and intensified during the Long Depression of the 1870s. Anti-Jewish anticapitalism then migrated to the Habsburg Empire with the Christian Social Party; to Germany with the Anti-Semitic Leagues; to France with the nationalist movements; and to Italy, where Revolutionary Syndicalists made anti-Jewish anticapitalism the basis of an alliance with the nationalists. Exemplified best in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous document that "leaked" Jewish plans to conquer the world, the Jewish-conspiracy myth inverts reality and creates a perverse relationship to historical and judicial truth. Isolating the intellectual roots of this phenomenon and its contemporary resonances, Battini shows us why, so many decades after the Holocaust, Jewish people continue to be a powerful political target.