Bourgeois socialism

{{Short description|Political terminology and perspective}} {{EngvarB|date=December 2022}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2022}} {{Conservatism sidebar}} {{Socialism sidebar}} '''Bourgeois socialism''' or '''conservative socialism''' (i.e. conservation of the mode of production, not to be confused with social conservatism) was a term used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in various pieces, including in ''The Communist Manifesto''. ''Conservative socialism'' was used as a rebuke by Marx for certain strains of socialism but has also been used by proponents of such a system.<ref name="conservative2006">Viereck (2006), p. 74.</ref> Bourgeois socialists are described as those that advocate for preserving the existing mode of production while only attempting to eliminate perceived evils of the system (e.g. economic reforms while preserving the rule by the bourgeoisie).<ref name=":0">{{cite book |last=Engels |first=Frederick |title=The Principles of Communism |year=1847}}</ref> Conservative socialism and '''right-wing socialism''' are also used as a descriptor, and in some cases as a pejorative, by free-market conservative and right-libertarian movements and politicians to describe more economically interventionist strands of conservatism, such as paternalistic conservatism.{{sfn|Huerta de Soto|2010|page=80}}

== Perspectives and usage == {{see also|Marx's theory of the state#Bourgeois state}} The Marxist view is such that the bourgeois socialist is the sustainer of the state of bourgeois class relations. In ''The Principles of Communism'', Friedrich Engels describes them as "so-called socialists" who only seek to remove the evils inherent in capitalist society while maintaining the existing society often relying on methods, such as welfare systems and grandiose claims of social reform.<ref name=":0" /> Opinions vary as to whether if bourgeois socialist is actively protecting or intentionally excusing the current order, but the common thread is that they are in objective fact preserving it. Rather than abolishing social class divisions, they wish to simply raise everyone up to be a member of the bourgeoisie to allow everyone the ability to endlessly accumulate capital without a working class. In ''The Communist Manifesto'', Marx and Engels use philanthropists, feminists ("temperance fanatics") and political reformers as examples of this type of socialism that they saw as opposed to their own aims. In expressing their views on the subject, Marx referenced Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's ''The Philosophy of Poverty'', stating the following about bourgeois socialism: "The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom." Bourgeois socialists are considered as working for the enemies of communists by preserving the society that communists seek to overthrow thus Engels claims that communists must continuously struggle against them.<ref>Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1848). ''The Communist Manifesto''. "Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature". [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm#b "2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism"].</ref>

''Right-wing socialism'' is used as a pejorative term by some free-market conservative and right-libertarian movements, politicians, and economists, such as Murray Rothbard and Jesús Huerta de Soto,{{sfn|Huerta de Soto|2010|page=80}}<ref name="prospects1">Rothbard, Murray (2010). ''Left, Right, and the Prospects for Liberty''. Auburn, Alabama: Mises Institute. p. 19.</ref> to describe economic interventionist variants of conservatism they see supporting paternalism and solidarity as opposed to commercialism, individualism, and ''laissez-faire'' economics.<ref name="conservative2006"/>{{sfn|Huerta de Soto|2010|pp=79–80}} They argue that paternalist conservatism supports state promoted social hierarchy and allows certain people and groups to hold higher status in such a hierarchy which is conservative.{{sfn|Huerta de Soto|2010|p=79}} ''Right-wing socialism'' is also used to refer to moderate social democratic forms of socialism when contrasted with Marxism–Leninism and other more radical left-wing alternatives. During the post-war period in Japan, the Japan Socialist Party divided itself into two different socialist parties, usually distinguished into the Leftist Socialist Party of Japan (officially the Japanese Socialist Party in English) and the Rightist Socialist Party of Japan (officially the Social Democratic Party of Japan in English). The latter received over 10 per cent of the vote in the 1952 and 1953 general elections and was a centre-left, moderate social democratic party.<ref>Ware, Alan (1996). [http://www.questia.com/read/65415177/political-parties-and-party-systems ''Political Parties and Party Systems'']. Oxford University Press. p. 395.</ref><ref>Moask, Carl (2007). [https://books.google.com/books?id=DmLO6R-81KkC&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239 ''Japanese Economic Development: Markets, Norms, Structures'']. Taylor & Francis. p. 239.</ref> Agrarian socialism, guild socialism, military socialism, National Bolshevism, national syndicalism,<ref>Sternhell, Ze'ev (1986). ''Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France''. (2nd ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.</ref><ref>Sternhell, Ze'ev; Sznajder, Mario; Ashéri, Maia (1994). ''The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.</ref><ref>Sternhill, Ze'ev (1998). "Fascism". In Griffin, Roger, ed. ''International Fascism: Theories, Causes, and the New Consensus''. London; New York City: Arnold Publishers.</ref> Peronism,<ref>Christian, Shirley (13 January 1990). [https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/13/world/buenos-aires-journal-carlos-carlos-how-does-your-economy-sink.html "Buenos Aires Journal; Carlos, Carlos, How Does Your Economy Sink?"]. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved 14 January 2020.</ref><ref>Servetto, Alicia (1999). [http://bibliotecavirtual.unl.edu.ar:8180/publicaciones/bitstream/1/681/1/ES_9_17_1999_pag_91_109.pdf "El derrumbe temprano de la democracia en Córdoba: Obregón Cano y el golpe policial (1973-1974)"]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110706083051/http://bibliotecavirtual.unl.edu.ar:8180/publicaciones/bitstream/1/681/1/ES_9_17_1999_pag_91_109.pdf|date=6 July 2011}}. ''Estudios Sociales'' (in Spanish). 17: 19. Revised paper of a 1997 Conference at the National University of La Pampa.</ref> Prussian socialism,<ref>Harris, Abram Lincoln (1989). ''Race, Radicalism, and Reform: Selected Papers''. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.</ref><ref>Hughes, H. Stuart (1992). ''Oswald Spengler''. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. p. 108.</ref><ref>Hüppauf, Bernd-Rüdiger (1997). ''War, Violence, and the Modern Condition''. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.</ref><ref>Kitchen, Martin (2006). ''A History of Modern Germany, 1800-2000''. Malden, Massaschussetts; Oxford, England; Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.</ref><ref>Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul (2006). ''World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1''. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 628.</ref><ref>Winkler, Heinrich August; Sager, Alexander (2006). ''Germany: The Long Road West'' (English ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 414.</ref><ref>Rohkrämer, Thomas (2007). "A Single Communal Faith?: The German Right from Conservatism to National Socialism". ''Monographs in German History''. '''20'''. Berghahn Books.</ref><ref>Weitz, Eric D. (2007). ''Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.</ref> state socialism, and Strasserism are sometimes termed ''right-wing socialism'' by various authors.{{sfn|Huerta de Soto|2010|p=80}} Historian Ishay Landa has described the nature of right-wing socialism as decidedly capitalist.<ref>{{cite book|last=Landa|first=Ishay|title=The Apprentice's Sorcerer: Liberal Tradition and Fascism|date=2012|publisher=Haymarket Books|pages=60–65}}</ref>

== Proponents and practice ==

=== Democratic socialism in the United States === From a classical Marxist standpoint, democratic socialism of the DSA type can be criticized as a modern form of what Marx and Engels called “Conservative, or Bourgeois, Socialism”: a politics that seeks to redress social grievances while preserving the basic framework of bourgeois society. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels define bourgeois socialism as the desire to remedy social suffering “in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society,” and criticize reforms that leave the capital–labor relation intact. They write that this socialism wants the benefits of modern society without the revolutionary struggle produced by it, and that its reforms “in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour.”<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61-h/61-h.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref>

On this reading, DSA’s emphasis on elections, legislative reforms, welfare-state demands, rent controls, union rights, and democratic pressure inside or alongside the Democratic Party can be seen not as revolutionary socialism but as an attempt to make capitalism more humane. The critique is not that DSA is literally pro-capitalist in intent, but that its practical strategy often remains within the institutions of bourgeois democracy and therefore risks stabilizing the very order it opposes.<ref>{{Cite web |title=PRRK: Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Lenin: Marxism and Reformism |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Proletarian Revolution And The Renegade Kautsky |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

Lenin’s critique sharpens this point. In The State and Revolution, he argues that the capitalist state is not a neutral instrument for reconciling classes but “an organ of class rule,” and that the modern representative state is an instrument for the exploitation of wage labor by capital.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The State and Revolution — Chapter 1 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

Lenin also calls the democratic republic “the best possible political shell for capitalism,” because capital can dominate it through wealth, corruption, and institutional power even when formal suffrage exists.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The State and Revolution — Chapter 1 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

From that perspective, a socialism centered on winning elections and expanding reforms inside the existing state appears right-wing within the socialist movement: it accepts the bourgeois-democratic shell as the main terrain of transformation rather than calling for the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and its replacement by proletarian power.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Communist Manifesto (Chapter 3) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Chpt. 3) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Critique of the Gotha Programme-- III |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch03.htm |access-date=2026-05-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

=== Monarchical socialism === An early proponent of conservative socialism was 19th-century Austrian politician Klemens von Metternich as early as 1847.<ref name="conservative2006"/> Monarchists had begun to use ''socialism'' as an antithesis of bourgeois ''laissez-faire'', indicating reliance on a social conscience as opposed to pure individualism.<ref name="conservative2006"/> Metternich said the aims of such a conservative socialism were "peaceful, class-harmonizing, cosmopolitan, traditional".<ref>Viereck (2006), pp. 74–75.</ref> Monarchical socialism promoted social paternalism portraying the monarch as having a fatherly duty to protect his people from the effects of free economic forces.<ref name="conservative1">Viereck (2006), p. 75.</ref> Metternich's conservative socialism saw liberalism and nationalism as forms of middle-class dictatorship over commoners.<ref name="conservative1"/>

Johann Karl Rodbertus, a monarchist conservative landowner and lawyer who briefly served as minister of education in Prussia in 1848, promoted a form of state socialism led by an enlightened monarchy supporting regulatory economics through the state.<ref name="intelligentsia1989">Shatz, Marshall S. (1989). ''Jan Waclaw Machajski: A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligentsia and Socialism''. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 86.</ref> Rodbertus supported the elimination of private ownership of land, with the state in control of national capital rather than redistribution of private capital, a position known as state capitalism.<ref name="intelligentsia1989"/> In the 1880s, Rodbertus' conservative socialism was promoted as a non-revolutionary alternative to social democracy and a means to justify the acceptance of Otto von Bismarck's State Socialism policies.<ref name="intelligentsia1989"/>

=== War Socialism === {{redirect|Military socialism|the policy implemented by the Soviet government during the Russian Civil War|War communism|the policy implemented by the Bolivian military dictatorship in the 1930s|Government Junta of Bolivia (1936–1938)}} {{see also|Military Keynesianism}} During World War I, the German government issued total mobilization of the economy and social sphere for war, resulting in government regulation of the private and public sector.<ref name="psychopathic1977">Waite, Robert George Leeson (1993) [1977]. ''The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler''. Da Capo Press. p. 304.</ref> This was referred to as the war economy (''Kriegswirtschaft'') or War Socialism (''Kriegssozialismus'').<ref name="psychopathic1977"/> ''War Socialism'' was coined by General Erich Ludendorff, a prominent proponent of the system.<ref>Paxton (1997), p. 106.</ref>

In War Socialism, the militarized state exercised controls and regulations over the entire economy.<ref>Waite, Robert George Leeson (1993) [1977]. ''The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler''. Da Capo Press. pp. 304–305.</ref> In Germany, the War Socialist economy was operated by conservative military men and industrialists, who had historically been hostile to socialism.<ref>Findley, Carter Vaughn; Rothney, John Alexander (2011). ''Twentieth-Century World'' (7th ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. p. 66.</ref> Its goal was to maximize war production and to control worker discontent that was growing amongst the organized labour movement.<ref>Paxton & Hessler (2011), p. 89.</ref> A leading proponent in Germany of War Socialism was General Wilhelm Groener, who insisted against objections of business leaders that labour union representatives be included in factory labour committees as well as regional food and labour boards. This was achieved and gave German unions collective bargaining rights and official functions in the German state for the first time in history.<ref>Paxton & Hessler (2011), pp. 89, 95.</ref>

War Socialism existed in other European countries involved in the war. In the United Kingdom, a number of public figures promoted the adoption of War Socialism, including Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George.<ref>Corporation, Marshall Cavendish (2002). ''History of World War I, Volume 3''. Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation. p. 697.</ref> Tsarist Russia had War Socialism.<ref name="giangiacomo1914">Pons, Silvio; Romano, Andrea (2000). ''Russia in the Age of Wars, 1914–1945'' (English trans.). Feltrinelli. p. 68.</ref> Sociologist Pitirim Sorokin argues that War Socialism had existed for two hundred years in support of the Russian tsarist regime until their overthrow in 1917.<ref name="giangiacomo1914"/> The War Socialist economy of Russia was based upon that in Germany and was supported by non-socialist and socialist parties alike.<ref>Raleigh, Donald J. (2002). ''Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922''. Princeton, New Jersey; Oxfordshire, England: Princeton University Press. p. 24.</ref>

== References == {{Reflist}}

===Works cited=== * {{cite book |last=Huerta de Soto |first=Jesús |year=2010 |title=Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship Fourth edition |publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing |isbn=978-1-849-80500-1}}

== External links == * Section of [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm#b ''The Communist Manifesto''] dealing with bourgeois socialism.

Category:Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Category:Bourgeoisie Category:Marxist terminology Category:Conservatism and left-wing politics Category:Paternalistic conservatism Category:Right-wing anti-capitalism