What Is a Socialist? Beliefs, Types and Who Calls Themselves One

What a socialist believes

Ask ten socialists what they believe and you may get ten different programs. But most share a starting point. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes socialism mainly in contrast with capitalism: in a socialist society, the bulk of the means of production is under social, democratic control. The entry stresses that this is not the same as control by the state alone, which it calls statism.

From that starting point, most socialists hold some version of four beliefs:

• Shared ownership of productive property. Factories, land, banks and large firms should be owned or steered by the public, by workers or by communities, not only by private shareholders. Personal property, such as a home or savings, is a separate matter.
• Equality. Not identical outcomes, but broadly equal access to what people need to live well: health care, education, housing and a fair share of what society produces.
• Solidarity. People are interdependent, and the economy should be organized around cooperation rather than competition alone.
• Democracy beyond politics. If citizens vote on their government, many socialists argue, workers and communities should also have a say over the firms that shape their lives.

Socialists usually criticize capitalism for producing large inequalities of wealth and power, for treating labor as a commodity, and for business cycles that throw people out of work. They disagree, sometimes bitterly, about the remedy.

The main kinds of socialist

"Socialist" is less a single ideology than a family name. Here are the main branches, from the most market-friendly to the most radical.

Whether social democrats still count as socialists is itself debated. Many European social democratic parties began as socialist parties and dropped the goal of replacing capitalism over the twentieth century. Our pages on democratic socialism vs social democracy and social democracy vs socialism cover that line. For the market branch, see market socialism vs socialism. For the anti-state wing, see anarchism vs libertarian socialism.

Communists are part of the wider family too, but the twentieth century split between communist and democratic socialist parties was deep. Our guide to socialism vs communism explains it in detail.

A short history of socialists

The early socialists

The word socialism entered English and French in the late 1820s and 1830s, among followers of the Welsh manufacturer Robert Owen. Owen ran a model mill town at New Lanark in Scotland, with shorter hours, schools and decent housing, and in 1825 he founded a cooperative community at New Harmony, Indiana. In France, Charles Fourier designed self-governing communities he called phalanxes, and Henri de Saint-Simon imagined a society run by producers rather than idle owners. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels later called these thinkers utopian socialists, because they hoped to persuade society by example rather than through class struggle.

Marx and the split over reform

Marx and Engels gave socialism its most influential theory, covered in our guide to what is Marxism. By the 1890s, the German Social Democratic Party was the largest socialist party in the world, and it faced a choice. In Evolutionary Socialism (1899), Eduard Bernstein argued that capitalism was not collapsing, that workers' lives were improving, and that socialists should pursue gradual reform through parliament. Rosa Luxemburg replied that reform alone could never abolish capitalism. That argument between reformers and revolutionaries still runs through socialist politics.

Socialists in government

In the United States, Eugene V. Debs ran for president five times for the Socialist Party of America. His best share came in 1912, about 6% of the vote, and in 1920 he won more than 900,000 votes while in federal prison for opposing the First World War. In Britain, the Labour Party founded with the help of Keir Hardie won a landslide in 1945. Its manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, declared that "the Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it." Under Clement Attlee, it nationalized coal, rail and the Bank of England and created the National Health Service, with Aneurin Bevan as its architect.

Elsewhere, socialists governed in Sweden under leaders such as Olof Palme, in France under François Mitterrand, and in Chile under Salvador Allende. In Canada, Tommy Douglas led North America's first socialist provincial government in Saskatchewan and pioneered public health insurance.

Socialists today

In Europe, socialist and social democratic parties remain major players in many countries, although most now accept a market economy. Parties to their left, often called democratic socialist or left parties, argue for more public ownership.

In the United States, the label had long been mostly an insult, until Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 brought "democratic socialist" into mainstream debate. The Democratic Socialists of America said in July 2026 that it had passed 120,000 members, by its own count the largest socialist organization in US history. Members of the group have won seats in Congress, in state legislatures and on city councils, and Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member, won the 2025 New York City mayoral election.

Many Americans who like socialist ideas do not call themselves socialists, and the reverse is also true. Our guide to what is democratic socialism covers the modern US movement in depth.

What Americans think the word means

Part of the confusion around the word is that people mean different things by it. In September 2018, Gallup asked Americans to say, in their own words, what socialism means. Gallup had asked the same question in 1949.

Fewer Americans now link socialism with the textbook meaning of state ownership, and more link it with equality and welfare programs. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 43% of US adults said some form of socialism would be a good thing for the country, while 51% said it would be bad.

Pew Research Center's 2022 survey found the same divide in what people associate with the word. Among Democrats, 56% said that making sure everyone's basic needs are met describes socialism extremely or very well. Among Republicans, 62% said the same about restricting individual freedoms. For overall favorability numbers over time, see our guide to capitalism vs socialism.

The case for and against

What socialists argue

Socialists argue that capitalism leaves too much power with those who own capital, and that political democracy is hollow when economic life is run by a few. They point to public health systems, public education and labor rights, many of them first demanded by socialist movements, as proof that shared provision works. Democratic socialists add that cooperatives and worker-owned firms show that ordinary people can run enterprises well. Eco-socialists argue that only a planned, non-profit economy can respond to climate change at the speed needed.

What critics argue

Free-market critics such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman argue that central planning cannot gather the knowledge that market prices carry, and that concentrating economic power in the state threatens political freedom. Critics also point to the economic failures and repression of communist states, and to inefficiency in some nationalized industries. Conservatives often add that socialism underrates family, faith and community institutions that are not run by the state or the workplace.

The debate inside the left

Socialists also criticize each other. Revolutionaries say reformers end up managing capitalism instead of replacing it. Reformers say revolutions have too often led to dictatorship. Libertarian socialists distrust any powerful state, socialist or not. Those internal arguments are why one label covers such different people.

Find where you fit

You might be a socialist if you think large parts of the economy should serve public needs first, and that workers should have real power at work. Which kind depends on whether you want to reform markets, replace them, or rebuild the economy from the bottom up.

Take the Political Compass Test to see how far left you sit on economics and where you land on authority. The 12 Axes Political Test can tell a democratic socialist from a market socialist or a libertarian socialist. For a fast check, try the Left or Right Quiz. You can also browse left-wing figures to see who shares your views, or read our guides to socialism vs communism and what is democratic socialism.