The concepts of “socialism”, “the limits of individual freedom and universal equality” for people who had “happiness” to get acquainted 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, turned out to be a nightmare for millions of people, spawned merciless terror, bloody tyrants, and became a complete contradiction to its basic principles.
The birth of socialism as the foundation of world order
The limits of individual freedom of socialism of the 19th century formulated by French ideologists are reflected in the works of Karl Marx, Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and many others. But neither in the late times, nor in the 1830s, when this trend was just emerging, did not have a common opinion among the ideologists, there was no single basis and no clear idea for the transformation of socialism into a political system. The only thing that all theorists agreed on was the collective construction of a just and equal 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 term itself - socialism, the limits of individual freedom - became innovative in the 19th century, but its structure was discussed thousands of years before. The oppressed masses always gravitated to personal freedom, but only a few understood that freedom and equality are possible only when building a social structure based on a democracy that did not have complete freedom. Plato was the first to express the idea of ​​building a socialist society ; he clearly formulated it in the “State” dialogue. Aristophanes repeated these theses, dressing his ideas in a comic form in his “Legislators”. In Europe, reviving after medieval savagery, the utopian enlightenmentists Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella took up the socialist ideas of ancient authors , but this whole heresy was severely suppressed by the Catholic Church.
The main ideas of socialism formulated in the XX century
The limits of the individual freedom of socialism were not immediately formulated. The table of the main points looks something like this:
Theses of Socialism| System measure | Live labor. |
| New property created | By living labor. |
| The final product of production in the form of consumer goods belongs to | Worker by virtue of exchange. |
| Worker receives for living labor | Consumer goods and services for free or through Soviet trade in the full amount of labor invested. |
| The owner of the means of production receives | Nothing. No profit. |
| Investments in the development of production | A worker invests part of his labor by subscribing to a state loan. |
| Production Management and Property Management | Workers through the Soviets appoint a manager. |
| Inheritance rights of productive assets | Only the right to repay the state loan is inherited, the right to reinvestment is not inherited. |
However, the following can be added to the theses presented:
1. The abolition and complete eradication of all exploitation that makes the oppressed class slaves.
2. The abolition and destruction of class division as such and inequality in general.
3. The complete abolition of the privileges of the ruling class, the equation of all rights and freedoms.
4. The complete or partial abolition of the old orders and their replacement with new ones, called to serve the common good.
5. The declaration of freedom of conscience, the subordination of the church to the interests of the state and society.
6. Building a new, progressive society on the principle of social equality and justice.
7. A statement of respect for each member of society, his work, property and freedom.
8. Advancement of socially unprotected layers to prosperity and their transformation into an elite.
9. The introduction into the masses of collectivist values ​​to dominate the individualistic consciousness.
10. The establishment of proletarian internationalism, guaranteeing freedom, equality and the brotherhood of all nations.
These are the main points of what socialism suggested. The limits of individual freedom in many of them were not taken into account or contradicted their own main principles.
Socialist basis: the transition from theory to practice
Perhaps the French ideologists of socialism in the mid-19th century, such as Saint-Simon, Blanqui, Fourier, Desami and others, themselves believed in what they wrote and proclaimed. But the way in which socialism considers the limits of individual freedom, the broad masses learned only in practice, at the beginning of the 20th century. The French socialists awakened the dozing monster. But the wave of revolutions and popular uprisings, which swept through Europe in 1848-1849, did not achieve its goals. Mankind was able to assess the limits of individual freedom, equality, fraternity and everything that socialism proclaimed only after the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. And the same people who extolled the “honest and fair system” were horrified by what they saw and called it “red infection”. For us, this is already a relic, but we still have the opportunity to see socialism, the limits of individual freedom in all their glory on the example of Cuba and North Korea.