Famous Socialists

A list of famous socialists, from utopian socialist thinkers to leaders of Communist states.
Socialists generally believe in forming a society where resources are more equitably
distributed. This often involves common ownership of the means of production. Within
socialism, there are different strands. The biggest divergence is between democratic
socialists and the one-party Communist states of the Soviet Union and China.

Early Socialist Pioneers

Robert Owen (1870–1924) Early socialist pioneer. His New Lanark

factories were a model for giving workers better conditions. He also advocated a form of
utopian socialism and co-operative communities.

Karl Marx (1818–1883) Karl Marx was the foremost Socialist intellectual.
His work Das Capital, formed the basis of Marxism. With Frederich Engels, he
published The Communist Manifesto, a radical agenda for Communist revolution.

Frederich Engels (1818–1883) Engels was a great supporter and

collaborator with Karl Marx. He helped write and publish The Communist Manifesto. His
own work Conditions of the Working Classes was a landmark study into the industrial
proletariat.

Communist Leaders
 V.Lenin (1870–1924) Leader of the Russian Revolution in 1917. He
masterminded the Bolshevik revolution and became the first leader of the Soviet Union.
Lenin began the policy of suppressing any opposition to Communist party rule.

Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) Successor to Lenin. Stalin ruthlessly

strengthened his grip on power by eliminating any internal opposition and establishing
his dictatorship.

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931– ) Leader of the Communist party and the

Soviet Union. Gorbachev sought to reform the Soviet Union through Glasnost and
Perestroika. Gorbachev stated he believed in the ideals of socialism.

Chairman Mao (1893–1976) Leader of the Chinese Communist party and successful
revolutionary. Mao established his own form of Communism, which included the
devastating Cultural Revolution.
 Fidel Castro (1926–2016) Cuban revolutionary leader. Castro led the
Communist revolution of 1959, where he successfully ousted the US-backed Fulgencio
Batista.

Socialist revolutionaries

Che Guevara (1928–1967) A Latin American Marxist revolutionary.

Guevara was a key figure in the Cuban revolution, but Guevara also wanted to ferment
other revolutions in Africa and Latin America and criticised many aspects of the Soviet
Union for betraying Marxist principles.

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary. Trotsky was a key

figure in the Russian revolution. He also advocated worldwide Marxist revolution. He
was later assassinated on the orders of Stalin in Mexico.

British Socialists
 Tony Benn (1925–2014) The son of a liberal politician, Benn became
more left wing and committed to socialism as time went on. During the 1970s and ’80s,
he was the leading figure in the socialist wing of the British Labour party.

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) A firebrand socialist. The former miner and

trade union leader, Bevan was a committed socialist and helped to implement the new
National Health Service.

Clement Attlee (1883–1867) British Prime Minister 1945–51. Attlee

presided over one of the most radical Labour governments of the Twentieth Century. His
government pushed through nationalisation and the creation of the welfare state.

Jeremy Corbyn (1949 – ) A Labour MP since 1983, Corbyn was a

backbench MP who supported a variety of socialist positions on the economy. He is also
active in supporting a nuclear-free world and an end to a military interventionist foreign
policy. In 2015, he unexpectedly won the election to be the leader of the Labour party
and moved the party to a more socialist position.

Socialist Intellectuals
 George Orwell (1903–1950) English author who was a leading advocate
of democratic socialism. He fought in the Spanish civil war for a Marxist group (POUM)
on the Republican side. He criticised the totalitarian nature of Soviet Communism.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) Revolutionised modern physics with his

General Theory of Relativity. A supporter of socialism, he wrote an article Why
Socialism? Published in 1949.

Helen Keller (1880–1968) Keller became famous for being a leading

advocate for the disabled. She was deaf-blind herself. She was also a lifelong supporter of
the American socialist party and socialist causes.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) A brilliant mathematician, pacifist and

peace campaigner, Russell was also a believer in democratic socialism.

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish, modern Cubist painter. Picasso was a

committed supporter of Communism throughout his life and remained an exile from his
native Spain because of Franco’s fascism.
American Socialists

Eugene Debs (1855–1926) Trade Union Leader, and five times

Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. Debs spent time in jail for
supporting trade union activity and opposing the First World War.

Martin Luther King (1929–1968) King, best known for his civil rights
campaign, was also a democratic socialist believing that Capitalism was not best suited
for dealing with poverty and injustice.

Bernie Sanders (1941– ) US senator from Vermont. Sanders has been a

lifelong democratic socialist, with strong beliefs on universal health care, income
inequality, and the need to regulate banks. he is also highly critical of current US foreign
policy. Sanders rose to prominence in 2015 with a bid for the Democrat Presidential
nomination.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989 – ) A Democractic activist, Ocasio-

Cortez was elected to the House of Representatives in 2019. She has become a leading
political figure promoting a new wave of socialist policies, such as free universal health
care, free education and a progressive “Green New Deal.”

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “Famous Socialists”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net,

4th February 2016. Updated 2 March 2018.
The Naked Socialist

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Related pages

Famous Revolutionaries – People who inspired or began revolutions.

Including Spartacus, Joan of Arc, George Washington, Karl Marx.

People of the Enlightenment (1650s to 1780s) The Enlightenment is a

period which saw the growth in intellectual reason, individualism and a challenge to
existing religious and political structures.

People who shaped democracy – Ancient Greeks such as Cleisthenes and

Colon, and modern promoters of democracy – John Locke, William Penn and Rousseau.
 The difference between communism and socialism is not conveniently clear-cut.
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but these economic and political
theories are not the same. Both communism and socialism arose from protests
against the exploitation of the working class during the Industrial Revolution.

While applications of their economic and social policies vary, several modern
countries—all ideologically opposed to capitalism—are perceived as either
communist or socialist. In order to understand contemporary political debates,
it's important to know the similarities and the differences between communism
and socialism.

Communism vs. Socialism

In both communism and socialism, the people own the factors of economic
production. The main difference is that under communism, most property and
economic resources are owned and controlled by the state (rather than individual
citizens); by contrast, under socialism, all citizens share equally in all economic
resources as allocated by a democratically-elected government. This difference
and others are outlined in the table below.

Communism vs. Socialism

Attribute Communism Socialism
Basic From each according to his From each according to his
Philosophy ability, to each according to ability, to each according to his
his needs. contribution.
Economy Central government Central government
Planned By
Ownership of All economic resources are Individuals own personal
Economic publicly owned and controlled property but all industrial and
Resources by the government. production capacity is
Individuals hold no personal communally owned and managed
property or assets. by a democratically elected
government.
Distribution of Production is intended to Production is intended to meet
Economic meet all basic human needs individual and societal needs and
Production and is distributed to the distributed according to
people at no charge. individual ability and
contribution.
Class Class is abolished. The ability Classes exist but differences are
Distinction to earn more than other diminished. It is possible for some
workers is almost nonexistent. people to earn more than others.
Religion Religion is effectively Freedom of religion is allowed.
abolished.
What’s The Difference Between Socialism And
Communism?
Socialism has three main meanings:
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the
ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital,
land, etc., in the community as a whole.

2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a

society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of
collectivist principles.

Socialism is a social theory .. makes sense. It theorizes that a collective

cooperation of citizens will make all governmental institutions public. For
example, no one will receive a healthcare bill when going to the doctor
because they, and everyone else, have paid a hefty amount in government
taxes. That’s where the collective cooperation comes in.
Communism, on the other hand, is a branch of socialism. It’s similar in that it’s
still founded on the idea of collective cooperation, but differs in that
communists believe that cooperation should be run by a totalitarian
government made up of one and only one government.
Russia gave communism a bad name when it reigned as the USSR. It was
here that thousands who were seen as threats to the state—artists, authors,
intellectuals, even those who practiced religion—were sent to be slaughtered
or exiled … uh, yikes. I guess you could call it socialism gone bad.
Although the USSR fell way back when, Russia is still
very communist culturally, though financially they’re a capitalistic system.
Countries like the People’s Republic of China are certainly
more communist than Russia, where all things are publicized up to the point
that citizens can’t even use the internet fully due to the government’s fear of
free thought.
So, although communism is a form of socialism … it’s definitely the rotten egg
of the two.
How are they different from democracy?
Democracy is “a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in
the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a
free electoral system.” The Greek demokratia is derived from demos,
“common people,” and kratos, “strength.”
Basically, in a democracy the head of state is usually a president and the
supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote (which is then
exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by
them). Capitalism is part of democracies (not communist or socialist
countries). The community as a whole does not own all of the property and
wealth in a democracy.

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Socialist Countries 2019

Socialist countries are states that have aligned themselves with Socialism. There is no criteria or
official process for being named a Socialist state. All that is required is that a country identifies itself
as Socialist. This includes nations that claim to be Socialist or have constitutions that state that they
are based on socialism, even if they do not follow the economic or political systems associated with
socialism. Countries that appear to follow Socialism are not designated as socialist unless the nation
explicitly states so, regardless of how it looks to outsiders.

Most of the self-declared Socialist countries base their politics on the Marxist-Leninist model that
was followed by the Soviet Union. Because of this, some of these states are erroneously thought to
be Communist states. It is difficult to accurately define a socialist country because the term has
come to have many meanings and intereptations. In broad terms, socialism is a political and
economic theory that advocates the community as a whole overseeing production, distribution and
exchange. The easiest way to define socialism is that it seeks to redistribute the wealth of a nation,
closing the gap between the rich and the poor.

There are many countries around the world that claim to be socialists. Current states that follow the
Marxist-Leninist principles include the Laos People’s Democratic Republic, the People’s Republic
of China, the Republic of Cuba, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This number has dropped
dramatically in recent years. Former countries under the Marxist-Leninist idea of socialism
included Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Belarus, Benin, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Congo,
Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, East Germany, Hungary, North
Korea, Mongolia, Mozambique, Poland, Romania, Somalia, Russia, Ukraine, North Vietnam,
South Yemenand Yugoslavia.
Countries that have constitutional references to socialism and are thus considered to be Socialist
states include: People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Co-operative Republic of Guyana, Republic
of India, North Korea, Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, Portuguese Republic, Democratic
Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and the United Republic of Tanzania.

Countries that once referenced socialism in their constitutions but no longer do so include: Algeria,
Burma, Cape Verde, Egypt, Grenada, Iraq, Libya, Madagascar, Seychelles, Sudan and Syria.

There are also multi-party states with governing Socialist parties. These states are: Angola, Bolivia,
Congo, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Greece, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua,
Tanzania, Uruguay and Venezuela.

There are territories that have claimed to be socialist but are not recognized as independent states.
These include Freetown Christiania, Revel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities, Democratic
Federation of Northern Syria and Wa State.

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Flag Name Population 2019 Area

China 1,433,783,686 9,706,961 km²

India 1,366,417,754 3,287,590 km²

Bangladesh 163,046,161 147,570 km²

Vietnam 96,462,106 331,212 km²

Tanzania 58,005,463 945,087 km²

Nepal 28,608,710 147,181 km²

 Flag Name Population 2019 Area

North Korea 25,666,161 120,538 km²

Sri Lanka 21,323,733 65,610 km²

Portugal 10,226,187 92,090 km²

Laos 7,169,455 236,800 km²

Guyana 782,766 214,969 km²

Socialist Countries by Population 2019

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