Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What was the first country to adopt socialist principles?
After three years, the First World War, at first greeted with enthusiastic patriotism, produced an upsurge of radicalism in most of Europe and also as far afield as the United States ("see Socialism in the United States") and Australia. In the Russian revolution of February 1917, workers' councils (in Russian, "soviets") had been formed, and Lenin and the Bolsheviks called for "All power to the Soviets". After the October 1917 Russian revolution, led by Lenin and Trotsky, consolidated power in the Soviets, Lenin declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!". Briefly in Soviet Russia socialism was not just a vision of a future society, but a description of an existing one. The Soviet regime began to bring all the means of production (except agricultural production) under state control, and implemented a system of government through the workers' councils or soviets.
The concept of a primary stage of socialism was conceived before China introduced economic reforms. When discussing the necessity of commodity relations at the 1st Zhengzhou Conference held between 2 and 10 November 1958, Mao Zedongthe Chairman of the Communist Party of China's Central Committeesaid that China was in the "initial stage of socialism". Mao did not elaborate on the idea; his successors did.
Labor Zionism originated in Eastern Europe. Socialist Zionists believed that centuries of oppression in antisemitic societies had reduced Jews to a meek, vulnerable, despairing existence that invited further antisemitism, a view originally stipulated by Theodor Herzl. They argued that a revolution of the Jewish soul and society was necessary and achievable in part by Jews moving to Israel and becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Most socialist Zionists rejected the observance of traditional religious Judaism as perpetuating a "Diaspora mentality" among the Jewish people, and established rural communes in Israel called "kibbutzim". The kibbutz began as a variation on a "national farm" scheme, a form of cooperative agriculture where the Jewish National Fund hired Jewish workers under trained supervision. The kibbutzim were a symbol of the Second Aliyah in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing to a certain extent Utopian socialism. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an important aspect of Labor Zionism. Though socialist Zionism draws its inspiration and is philosophically founded on the fundamental values and spirituality of Judaism, its progressive expression of that Judaism has often fostered an antagonistic relationship with Orthodox Judaism.
Between World War I and World War II (1918–1940), Riga and Latvia shifted their focus from Russia to the countries of Western Europe. A democratic, parliamentary system of government with a President was instituted. Latvian was recognized as the official language of Latvia. Latvia was admitted to the League of Nations. The United Kingdom and Germany replaced Russia as Latvia's major trade partners. As a sign of the times, Latvia's first Prime Minister, Kārlis Ulmanis, had studied agriculture and worked as a lecturer at the University of Nebraska in the United States of America.
Soviet Russia (1919), Iceland (1935) and Sweden (1938) were among the first countries to legalize certain or all forms of abortion. In 1935 Nazi Germany, a law was passed permitting abortions for those deemed "hereditarily ill", while women considered of German stock were specifically prohibited from having abortions. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, abortion was legalized in a greater number of countries.
The main tasks of the CMEA were plan coordination, production specialization and regional trade. In 1961 Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, put forward proposals for establishing an integrated, centrally planned socialist commonwealth in which each geographic region would specialize production in line with its set of natural and human resources. The resulting document, the "Basic Principles of the International Socialist Division of Labour" was adopted at the end of 1961, despite objections from Romania on certain aspects. The "Basic Principles" were never implemented fully and were replaced in 1971 by the adoption of the "Comprehensive Programme for Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and Development of Socialist Economic Integration". As a result, many specialization agreements were made between CMEA member states for investment programmes and projects. The importing country pledged to rely on the exporting country for its consumption of the product in question. Production specialization occurred in engineering, automotive, chemicals, computers and automation, telecommunications and biotechnology. Scientific and technical cooperation between CMEA member states was facilitated by the establishment in 1969 of the International Centre for Scientific and Technical Information in Moscow.
The UN adopted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, "as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations." The Soviet Union abstained from voting on adoption of the declaration. The US did not ratify the social and economic rights sections.
The Western Left academics are nowadays very happy to talk about "varieties of capitalism", but talking about "varieties of socialism" remains almost an absolute "no-no". Most Marxists continue to believe in "only one" (Marxian) socialism: either that, or nothing at all. "Either" a society or movement conforms to the true concept of socialism, "or" it does not; and if it does not, it "cannot be" socialism. However, precisely "because" there are many different Marxist beliefs about socialism, Marxists cannot agree among themselves whether Soviet-type societies were socialist, capitalist, or something else. Some countries meet with the moral expectations which Marxists have, and others do not.Originally Marx and Engels themselves had heckled the advocates of "true socialism", but later Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky promoted Marxist socialism as the one and true "scientific socialism" within the Socialist International. When he was 43 years old, Lenin stated: "The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true". Lenin's Communist International (a deliberate split with the social democrats) adopted Marxist socialism as its official political doctrine.
The U.S.S.R. was the first country in the world to legalize abortion. For many years prior to the October Revolution, abortion was not uncommon in Russia, although it was illegal and carried a possible sentence of hard labor or exile. After the revolution, famine and poor economic conditions led to an increase in the number of “back alley” abortions, and after pressure from doctors and jurists, the Commissariats of Health and Justice legalized abortion in 1920. Abortions were free for all women, although they were seen as a necessary evil due to economic hardship rather than a woman’s right to control her own reproductive system.
According to orthodox Marxist theory, the overthrow of capitalism by a socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought, all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity, if not inevitable. Marxists believe that a socialist society is far better for the majority of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian revolution of 1917, Lenin wrote: "The socialization of production is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour". The failure of the 1905 revolution and the failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War One led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism.
CPC theoretician Su Shaozhi, an official from the "People's Daily", began a debate in 1979 at a CPC theory conference to re-examine Mao Zedong's assertion of "class struggle as the key link" when he introduced the term "undeveloped socialism" to refer to China. Su, co-writing with Feng Langrui, published an article in "Economic Research" () in 1979 which called into question the Chinese socialist project by using Marxist methodology. The article analyzed the basis of Chinese socialism by looking at the writings of Karl Marx. Marx drew a distinction between lower-stage communismcommonly referred to as the socialist mode of production and higher-phase communismoften referred to as communism. Su's and Feng's article created three subdivisions within the socialist mode of production; the first phase was the transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of productionthe phase in which the proletariat seized power and set-up the dictatorship of the proletariat and in which undeveloped socialism was created. The second phase was advanced socialism; the socialism that Marx wrote about. They said China was an undeveloped socialist nation because:
Three of the Governments proclaimed in 1919 continued to be active in the months after the March 1st Movement; the Governments proclaimed in Seoul, Shanghai and Vladivostok. After a period of negotiations, members of these three governments agreed to form the unified Provisional Government in Shanghai, with succession of the legitimacy of the Seoul Government and bringing the members of the Vladivostok legislature into the Shanghai legislature. The unified Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was established on 11 September 1919 with a new constitution.
The First Republic of Korea () was South Korea's first independent government, ruling the country from 1948 to 1960. It succeeded USAMGIK, the United States military government, which ruled the area from 1945 to 1948. The Philippines recognized South Korea on 15 August 1948. The First Republic was established on August 15, 1948, with Syngman Rhee as the first president. Like subsequent governments, it claimed sovereignty over the entire Korean Peninsula, although it only had power over the area south of the 38th parallel. The investiture of the Rhee government followed the general election of May 10, 1948. The country's first constitution had been promulgated by the first National Assembly on July 17. It established a system with a strong president, who was elected indirectly by the National Assembly. The April Revolution in 1960 led to the resignation of Syngman Rhee and the transition to the Second Republic of South Korea.
It does not consider the former Soviet Union socialist, but rather a "tragic degeneration" of the Russian Revolution and the socialist tradition. While it views the Russian Revolution positively as a mass democratic revolution of the working class in Russia, it is in complete opposition to the bureaucratic dictatorship that came about after the death of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin's subsequent reign of terror. It sees these not as an inevitable outcome of the Russian Revolution, but an expression of Russia's isolation and economic starvation and a result of the vacuum of workers' power from below. "This was not a healthy ground upon which socialism could be built. The whole basis of socialism is having enough to go around, but Russia didn't have that. In this context, the democratic structures in the Soviets (workers' assemblies) ceased to function.
Xue Muqiao introduced the term "underdeveloped socialism" in his book "China's Socialist Economy". The book was written in the orthodox Marxist–Leninist framework enunciated by Joseph Stalin in "Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R." (1952). Xue wrote that within the socialist mode of production there were several phases and for China to reach an advanced form of socialism it had to focus on developing the productive forces. He proposed a theory in which the basic laws of economic growth were those in which "the relations of production must conform to the level of the productive forces". Similar to Stalin, Xue considered the productive forces to be primary and that the relations of production had to conform to the level of the productive forces. Xue believed that this was a fundamental universal law of economics. Unlike Stalin, Xue believed there were principles that guided the socialist transition, the key one being the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work"; this principle would guide socialist development, even when China had reached advanced socialism, and would be replaced with "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" only when there existed general abundance. Xue based his arguments upon the economic policies pursued during the Cultural Revolution, which he believed had led to "the most severe setbacks and heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People's Republic".
The Marxist conception of history - which originated within Engels' "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" (1884) - holds that society has evolved through a series of progressive stages. The first of these was primitive communism, which Marxist theorists believed was held by classless, hunter-gatherer societies. According to Marxist doctrine, most of these, however, evolved into slave-based societies, then to feudal societies, and then to capitalist societies, which Marxists note is the dominant form today. However, Marxists believe that there are in fact two more social stages for human society to progress through: socialism and then communism. Marxist archaeologists often interpret the archaeological record as displaying this progression through forms of society. This approach was particularly popular in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and as archaeologist Bruce Trigger later related:
The founding of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (also referred to as Comecon, CMEA, CEMA, or the Council) dates from a January 1949 communiqué agreed upon by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania in Moscow. The communiqué announcing the event cited the refusal of these countries to "subordinate themselves to the dictates of the Marshall Plan" and their intention to resist the trade boycott imposed by "the United States, Britain and certain other countries of Western Europe" as the major factors contributing to the decision "to organize a more broadly based economic cooperation among the countries of the people's democracy and the USSR."
Marxism, first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-1800s, has been the foremost ideology of the communist movement. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism, and rather than model an "ideal society" based on intellectuals' design, it is a non-idealist attempt at the understanding of society and history through an analysis based in real life. Marxism does not see communism as a "state of affairs" to be established, but rather as the expression of a real movement, with parameters which are derived completely from real life and not based on any intelligent design. Therefore, Marxism does no blueprinting of a communist society and it only makes an analysis which concludes what will trigger its implementation and discovers its fundamental characteristics based on the derivation of real life conditions.
On April 11, 1919, the provisional constitution was enacted, and the national sovereignty was called "Republic of Korea" and the political system was called "Democratic Republic". Introduced the presidential system and established three separate systems of legislative, administrative and judicial separation, the KPG inherited the territory of the former Korean Empire and stated that he favored the former imperial court. It actively supported and supported the independence movement under the provisional government, and received economic and military support from the Kuomintang of China, the Soviet Union and France.
After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Armenia gained short-lived independence as the First Republic of Armenia. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, a founding member of the Soviet Union that was formally constituted in 1922. In 1936, the Transcaucasian state was dissolved, leaving its constituent states, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, as full Union republics.
Originally every independent country in the Commonwealth was a Dominion with the British monarch as head of state. The 1949 London Declaration prior to India becoming a republic allowed countries with a different head of state to join or remain in the Commonwealth, but only by unanimous consent of the other members. The governments of Pakistan (in 1956) and, later, Ghana (in 1960) availed themselves of this principle, and the National Party had not ruled out South Africa's continued membership of Commonwealth were there a vote in favour of a republic.
The first meeting of the "General Council" of the socialist parties and trade unions was held in 1920, between January 31 and February 2, and reunited 47 delegates, including 8 from Transylvania, and 2 from Bukovina. Besides tactics and means of unification, one of the major subjects of the discussion was the international affiliation of the unified party: either with a resurrected Second International or with the more radical Third International (Comintern). The Bucharest socialist section, increasingly communist in outlook, had already requested affiliation to the later in June 1919, however the other sections had yet to come to a decision. During the following months the communist ideas gained traction, and, after the Bucharest section adopted a motion that supported affiliation to the Third, many local section followed suit, mostly in Old Romania, but also in Transylvania and Banat (e.g. the Reșița-Petroșeni section). Ultimately, a new meeting of the "General Council", held in April 1920, decided to officially announce it no longer considered the socialist movement in Romania to be bound to the Second International. As a sign of unity, in the context of the May general elections, the Council also resolved for some Transylvanian candidates to run in constituencies inside Old Romania, with some representatives from the latter running instead in Transylvania. Consequently, 21 socialists were elected in the Chamber of Deputies and 3 in the Senate.
The Congress tasked with the unification of the movement, initially set for April, was postponed twice, as the dispute regarding international dragged on. In the meantime, a regional Congress of the Socialist Party of Transylvania and Banat was held in Cluj during August 15-17, reaffirmed its support for an unified party and relinquished its independence, declaring it would abide by the programme and statute to be decided by the country-wide socialist Congress. A similar resolution was adopted by the Congress of the socialist movement of Banat, held in Timișoara during September 19-20.
In 2001, the DSP, along with several other socialist parties including the International Socialist Organisation, formed the Socialist Alliance, initially an electoral vehicle. In 2002 the DSP championed the idea of turning Socialist Alliance into more of a party formation, although at first it had to withdraw this proposal as the ISO's opposition threatened to destroy the alliance. In 2003 the DSP became the first (and so far only) Socialist Alliance affiliate to become an internal tendency within the Alliance, changing its name to the Democratic Socialist Perspective, in line with its view that SA should become a "Multi-Tendency Socialist Party", a view that the May 2003 National Conference of the Socialist Alliance subsequently adopted.
This view is challenged by Stalinists and their followers, who claim that socialism was established in the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin came to power and instituted the system of five year plans. The 1936 Constitution of the USSR, known as the Fundamental Law of Victorious Socialism, embodied the claim that the foundations for socialism had been laid. Joseph Stalin introduced the theory of Socialism in one country, which argued that socialism can be built in a single country, despite existing in a global capitalist economic system. Nevertheless, it was recognized that the stage during which developed socialism would be built would be a lengthy one and would not be achieved by the USSR on its own. According to the official textbooks, the first stage of the transition period from capitalism to socialism had been completed by the 1970s in the European socialist countries (except Poland and Yugoslavia), and in Mongolia and Cuba. The next stage of developed socialism would not be reached until "the economic integration of the socialist states becomes a major factor of their economic progress" and social relations had been reconstructed on "collectivist principles". Communist writers accepted that during these earlier stages in constructing socialism, the exchange of commodities on the basis of the average socially necessary labour embodied within them occurred and involved the mediation of money. Socialist planned economies were systems of commodity production but this was directed in a conscious way towards meeting the needs of the people and not left to the "anarchy of the market". At the stage of developed socialism, "the state of dictatorship of the proletariat changes into a state of all people reflecting the increasing homogeneity of society" and the "evening out of economic development levels" within and between socialist countries. It would provide the foundations for a further stage of perfected socialist society, where an abundance of goods permitted their distribution according to need. Only then could the world socialist system progress towards the higher phase of communism.
Parallel to these developments, the Soviet Union led efforts to coordinate the investment strategies of the members in the interest of a more rational pattern of regional specialization, increased productivity, and a more rapid overtaking of the capitalist economies. These efforts culminated in 1962 with the adoption at the 15th Council Session of the Basic Principles of the International Socialist Division of Labor. Although the principles of specialization were generally favored by the more industrial, northern-tier states, the less developed East European countries were concerned that such specialization would lead to a concentration of industry in the already established centers and would thus thwart their own ambitious industrialization plans. Moreover, the increased economic interdependence that the Basic Principles called for had inevitable political connotations. The latter were reinforced in 1962 by articles and speeches by Soviet party leader Nikita Khrushchev proposing a central Comecon planning organ to implement the Basic Principles and foreseeing the evolution of a "socialist commonwealth" based on a unified regional economy.