Recently in the media there has been talk about socialism.Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange be owned and regulated by the community as a whole. There are several different types of socialist Ideologies. Of these ideals are Anarcho, Utopian, State-Communism (e.g. Marxist-Leninist), Democratic, Social Democratic, Libertarian, Christian, and Market-Communism. Several past and present countries or states have declared themselves socialist. The majority of self declared socialist states have been Marxist-Leninist or inspired by it, following the model of the former Soviet Union or some form of people’s or national democracy. They share a common definition of socialism and refer to themselves as a socialist state. 

 In Marxist-Leninist theory this is a transitional period between the overthrow of capitalism and realization of communism. Under this form of socialism the state gains control of media, production (what to produce, how to produce, and to whom it goes), Educational, and health programs. Under State-Communism there is a high degree of centralization of production targets decided by Central Committees with local officials in charge of meeting these targets. A centrally planned economy frequently involves large degrees of political control resulting in politicians having too much power. An example of this is the former Soviet Union. In the 1930s and 40s, the Soviet Union had periods of massive industrial and economic growth. However this system became more and more bureaucratic, wasting, and lacking incentive. Toward the end of the Soviet Union this caused the economic system to become increasingly broken with major shortages of key goods and services.

 In contrast to State-Communism is Anarcho-Socialism. This type of socialism rejects  state and religious ownership of property. This grew out of a philosophy by Mikhail Bukanin. He proposed that the means of production should be collectivised and workers should be paid according to their input. Similar to this is Utopian socialism, in which adherents down play the role of class warfare. Both of these require co-operation between owners and workers, with the decentralization of the state in production and local decision making. With an emphasis on individuals considering the common good instead of selfish ends. Opposed to the adversarial worker vs capitalist and trade unions.

 Popular in American conversation for the last few years has been Democratic Socialism. This differs from State-Communism in that the state is not all powerful, and the political system remains democratic. This type of socialism generally advocates nationalism of key industries such as water, gas and electricity, but allows private enterprise to operate in the rest of the economy. Democratic socialism proposes a progressive tax system to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor through the provisions of a welfare state. It also supports use of trade unions in wage bargaining and a use of a universal or minimum wage to raise low household income and provision of public services through a progressive tax. For example, a marginal income tax of 50% of GDP, but also there is a thriving market economy, giving a high standard of living.

  National Socialism and democratic socialism vary in 2 ways. First being whether they nominally let business keep control and run itself with the state telling it what things are best to do for the bigger picture. Nazism and Fascism took this approach. Allowing you to keep your private business with rules you must follow or else there will be punishment from the state. The other difference is that National Socialist suggest the people pull together working for the common good. This actually worked pretty well as a nation is a homogenous grouping of people. It fell apart when the party became aggressive expansionists, but their basic unit was a smart choice. It was thought that this grouping was proletariat, and that workers of the world would unite together against there class enemies. The thought was that workers were a good group to rally around internationally. This failed pretty badly. They never got the result they aimed for but sure killed a lot of people on the way.