Definition

Socialism is an economic framework within which individuals’ property rights are limited irrespective of whether exercising property rights violates another’s self-ownership.

Discussion

Overview

A functional description of socialism can complement its definition, wherein socialism is the collective ownership of scarce resources. Or, the institutionalized interference with the private property of others.

This interference is typically through the government directing how goods and services are made available within society.

In socialism, this interference in the otherwise private property of others may better increase the welfare of individuals in a society than can be achieved with absolute property rights.

Reasonable people disagree on whether this intended outcome of welfare outweighs the cost of the consequences of restricting private property rights.

Socialism is the economic framework upon which communism is based, wherein individuals are completely restricted from private property rights.

Socialism may be practiced coercively by aggressing or voluntarily by consent.

Live and Let Live’s position is that societies practicing socialism, like those practicing capitalism, must be aligned with the Legal Principle.

Further Resources

Gerald A Cohen, Why Not Socialism? (Princeton University Press, 2009).

Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1951).