Excerpt from Elements of Socialism: A Text-Book Provisional definition: As we have already intimated, Socialism may be conveniently divided into four parts. No study of Socialism can be satisfactory, no definition of it can be complete, which does not consider it as (1) a oriti cism of existing society; (2) a philosophy of social evolution; (3) a social forecast or ideal; (4) a movement for the attain ment of the ideal. As a provisional definition, then, we may accept the following: Socialism is a criticism of existing society which attributes most of the poverty, Vice, crime and other social evils of today to the fact that, through the private or class ownership of the social forces of production and exchange, the actual producers of wealth are exploited by a class of non-producers; a theory of social evolution according to Which the rate and direction of social evolution are mainly determined by the development of the economic factors of production, distribution and exchange; a social forecast that the next epoch in the evolution of society will be dis tinguished by the social ownership and control of the prin cipal agencies of production and exchange, and by an equalization of opportunity as a result of this socialization; a movement, primarily consisting of members of the wealth producing class, which seeks to control all the powers of the State and to bring about the collective ownership and con trol of the principal means of production and exchange, in order that poverty, class antagonisms, Vice and other ill results of the existing social system may be abolished, and that a new and better social system may be attained. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.