Definition of the concept: socialism, the limits of individual freedom

The notion of "socialism", "the limits of individual freedom and universal equality" for people who had the "happiness" to become familiar with this in practice, acquired a completely different meaning and were replaced by the term "ideology." What was prescribed as a blessing for all segments of the population, not just a single country, but the world community, was a nightmare for millions of people, engendered merciless terror, bloody tyrants, and became a complete contradiction to its basic principles.

The birth of socialism as the basis of the world order

The limits of the individual freedom of socialism of the 19th century formulated by French ideologists were reflected in the works of Karl Marx, Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin, Vladimir Lenin and many others. But neither in later times, nor in the 1830s, when this current was born, ideologists had no common opinion, there was no single basis and no clear idea of the transformation of socialism into a political system. The only thing on which all theorists converge is the collective construction of a just and equitable society with the individual freedom of each of its members. This became the main concept of socialism.

The roots of socialism: from antiquity to the Renaissance

The very term - socialism, the limits of individual freedom - became innovative in the XIX century, but the device was discussed thousands of years before. The oppressed masses always endeavored for personal freedom, but only a few realized that freedom and equality are possible only when building a social (social) structure on the principle of democracy, which did not possess complete freedom. He first expressed the idea of building a socialist society of Plato, he clearly formulated it in the dialogue "State". Repeated these theses and Aristophanes, who put his ideas in a comic form in his "Legislators". In Europe, reborn after Medieval savagery, the socialist ideas of ancient authors were picked up by the Utopian enlighteners Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella, but all this "heresy" was severely suppressed by the Catholic Church.

The basic ideas of socialism formulated in the twentieth century

Not too soon were the limits of the individual freedom of socialism formulated. The table of the main theses looks something like this:

However, the following theses can be added to the theses:

1. The abolition and total eradication of all exploitation, which makes the oppressed class slaves.

2. The abolition and annihilation of class division as such and inequality as a whole.

3. The complete abolition of the privileges of the ruling class, the equation of all in rights and freedoms.

4. The complete or partial abolition of the old order and the replacement of their new, designed to serve the common good.

5. The proclamation of freedom of conscience, the subordination of the church to the interests of the state and society.

6. Building a new, progressive society based on the principle of social equality and justice.

7. Adoption of respect for each member of society, his work, property and freedom.

8. Promotion of socially unprotected strata to prosperity and their transformation into an elite.

9. The introduction of collectivist values into the broad masses for domination over individualistic consciousness.

10. The establishment of proletarian internationalism, guaranteeing freedom, equality and brotherhood of all nations.

These are the main theses of what socialism offered. The limits of individual freedom in many of them were not taken into account or contradicted their own main principles.

Socialist basis: transition from theory to practice

Perhaps the French ideologists of socialism of the mid-19th century, such as Saint-Simon, Blanks, Fourier, Desamy and others, themselves believed in what they wrote and proclaimed. But how, under socialism, the limits of individual freedom are considered, the broad masses learned only in practice, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The French socialists woke a dozing monster. But the wave of revolutions and popular uprisings that swept across Europe in 1848-1849 did not achieve its goals. To assess the limits of individual freedom, equality, brotherhood and everything that socialism proclaimed, humanity could only after the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. And the same people who praised the "fair and just system" were horrified by what they saw and called it a "red infection." For us, these are vestiges, but we still have the opportunity to see socialism, the limits of individual freedom in all their glory in the example of Cuba and North Korea.