Key socialists and their reflections on society

• Marx and Engels - Sc (S)

  Society is dominated by class interests and conflicts. Only a true communist society will be fair and equal. Requires high levels of state intervention by a centralised and powerful state
• Luxemburg - Sc (S)

  Argued that societies are dominated by class and needs to be drastically remodelled. Thought alternative societies made within working-class communities were far better and need to form the basis of a future society
• Webb - Sc (S)

  Saw capitalist societies as creating poverty and inequality. Rejected paternalism and voluntary endeavour as ways of dealing with this situation. Society, via the state, needed to focus its efforts on the root causes of poverty which required peaceful and gradual change
• Crosland - Sc (S)

  Agreed that society needed to be fairer and more just but queried the traditional sharp class divides as defined by Marx and Engels. In a more developed and complex industrialised society, it was too simplistic to view society as being comprised of employers and workers. Focused especially on education and the alleged benefits of a comprehensive as opposed to a selective system of secondary education
• Giddens - Sc (S)

  Like Crosland, sees society as more complex than earlier socialists. With the growth of embourgeoisement, the belief that the decline of traditional heavy and manufacturing industry, and the rise of the white collar and service sectors, have rendered many assumptions about traditional social class meaningless. Those advocating for a more equal society should work with forces such as free-market economics and individualism. Pragmatism must prevail over principle and theory