What is Socialism?

You arrive in a large city in 1915. As you step out of the train and onto the ground, you take a deep inhale of the air and feel the coldness fill up your lungs. You feel the cold embrace you as you think to yourself about the new life you are going to start. You realize the job lined up for you is nothing more than a small factory job with average low pay, but at least it is a start, and it is in the land of opportunity.

But once you walk around the street you realize something wrong with the city. There are protests everywhere on the street. People shaking and waving signs with slogans such as "Wage labor is Slavery!" and "Fight for Workers Rights!". You take no initial interest in this and decide to start your new life.

6 months later, your life is set up in the city. You have your job and a small apartment, but big enough for just you. Work is hard. There is little time for breaks, the hours are long, and the conditions are rough. Still, it pays your bill and so no one at the factory say anything.

1 year later, you begin to get annoyed at the bosses of your workplace. Conditions are still the same, if not worse. You have put in your hardest effort, yet you are still barely able to afford food for yourself. Your co workers are annoyed too. There has been discussion amongst the other workers of the factory to organize and fight for better rights. Eventually, they do organize and form a Labor Union. After a while, the Union at work teams up with other Unions around the area, and even around the country. However, the Unions do not make much progress as the only way they can fight for better conditions is with simple protests.

2 years later, enough is enough. You have given your life to your work and the factory and can take no more. You have been hearing of a political party that has recently been formed that is one of first to represent the members of the lower classes (workers, peasants, etc.) You decide to join the party. They figure the only way they will make any type of change is to turn around the government that allows factories like this to form. It is decided that the members of the party will overthrow the current government and establish their own, based upon principles of equal rights, socially and economically. The revolution succeeds and the government is toppled. The direction of the new society is now up to the liberators and to everyone..........

So now that I read that long, confusing intro, what the heck is Socialism?
Well sir I am glad you asked! I am not going to mince words with you. You wanted the definition of Socialism and here it is:

Socialism means collective ownership, and democratic control by the people, of the factories, farms, mines, mills, and all other industries and services.

This is my standard definition. Basically, in a workplace a boss sees over a hundred workers. The workers do not actually own what they make, the company owns what they make because they have private rights over it. Even though you make the product, you do not get paid for selling it because it is not yours. What you get paid for is the labor or work you perform in a given set of time. In this timeframe, an average is set to which you will be paid per hour. This average is called wage. So you work for eight hours making things and for this eight hours you are given a wage in exchange for the labor given.

Socialism is meant to eliminate the privately held part. In Socialism, instead of a boss holding all the decisions of wage making, all the decisions that affect workers lives, and most of the money made from the product overall, the workers themselves own all. The boss is thrown out and management is taken under democratically and all workers decide on all matters. Wage is either also democratically decided upon or abolished altogether.

However, this example is only about in a factory. Socialism, while primarily representing the working class, can be applied to most aspects of society, not just factories. In the case of the government itself, instead of a boss being overthrown, it's the head of state and then a direct democracy is put in place for law making and political decisions.

Well I kinda get it now....but what's the difference between Socialism and Communism?
Socialism and Communism are two very close things. Both are working class ideologies.

While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the terms Socialism and Communism interchangeably, the now widely accepted difference is Communism is the goal and Socialism is the way.

Socialism: Socialism means collective ownership, and democratic control by the people, of the factories, farms, mines, mills, and all other industries and services.

Communism: An ideology advocating the abolition of all private property and absolute collective ownership of the means of production.

Socialism can be understood as Communism-lite. While Socialism is radical and calls for direct worker rights, Communism is about abolition of all private property and distribution to be determined democratically.

A commonly accepted difference is that Socialism is the intermediate stage between Capitalism and Communism. This theory was developed by Vladimir Lenin and is common among Marxist thought today. Lenin said that after the vanguard party had overthrown the oppressive Capitalist system, a period of workers ownership of the state or a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (Proletariat = a Latin term Marx used to describe the lower class that did not own the means of production) This workers state would erase all traces of Capitalism and liberate workers from harsh conditions. After all of Capitalism was erased from society, then a period known as Communism would arrive in which all production of goods would be owned collectively and all property would be owned publicly. Marx said that in this period, there would be no need for the state and it would eventually wither away on its own due to becoming obsolete.