Socialism Study: Socialism and Communism Differences and Common Points; Destiny of Chinese Socialism

From Journal of Peking University, April 2022

Author Dr. Huang Fei is Lecturer at the School of International Relations, Renmin University of China

Abstract: The anti-capitalist thoughts and movements before the 19th century can be called “utopian socialism”. In the early 19th century, the capitalist economy developed rapidly and class contradictions became increasingly fierce, which finally led to the development of “utopian socialism” into two major schools of thought: “socialism” and “communism”. Saint-Simon, Fourier and their followers were considered representatives of socialists, while communists mainly referred to Cabet, Blanqui, De Samy, Weitling and their followers. Later, they were also called utopian socialists and communists. These two groups showed obvious differences on some key issues.

In the history of world socialism in the 20th century, the East and the West formed two typical interpretation systems of socialism: Soviet socialism and democratic socialism. These two formed two interpretation modes in terms of basic connotation, in terms of general principles and in terms of policy propositions.

The formation of these two views of socialism is closely related to the origin and dual meaning of socialist thought: the two major schools as a) socialism and b) communism which are differentiated from “utopianism” ; they show the duality of homogeneity and heterogeneity, which makes the scientific socialism born from their fusion naturally have dual genes.

The diversified generation path of world socialism is the result of the comprehensive effect of the four dimensions of economic development, political structure, class relations and ideological concepts in different time and space on the basis of the dual genes of socialism.

Along this path, China has formed socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era (Xi Jinping) in the process of exploring the path of socialist development, which in the 21st century will lead the world socialism to a new direction.

Keywords: Soviet socialism; democratic socialism; scientific socialism; world socialism; socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era (Xi Jinping)

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