More often than not, socialism is associated with Marxism. But this is a misconception, as Marxism is an ideology of communism, an extreme and exceptional current of socialism. Marxism left a significant ideological imprint in socialist doctrines; nevertheless, it did not constitute a mass movement of the Left.

The reality is trivial: Marxism belongs to the Left, but the mainstream of the Left’s ideologies is not Marxian.

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Ironically, the main currents of socialism emerged as a reformation, a revision of Marxian thoughts. Those revisionists can be divided into two groups: conformists and non-conformists. To the latter group belong, for example, revolutionary syndicalists and Bolsheviks who emancipated themselves from the determinism of Marxian materialist conception of history and saw a violent revolution as the only means to overthrown capitalism. The former group — Social Democrats — constitutes the majority of the socialist movement in Europe then and now.

Social Democrats representing the flavor of the evolutionary socialism have been incorporated in the framework of the democratic state and sought to undermine capitalism from within. In the beginning, they symbolized labor and fought for improving laborers’ welfare on the sites of parliament by securing wealth redistribution in the laws of the land. At some point, an erroneous division of society into two classes — the proletariat and bourgeoisie — had vividly manifested itself as an emerging middle class, becoming a dominant stratum in the contemporary industrial countries….

Capitalism was overthrown in dozens of countries, and something that was called “socialism” by revolutionaries was tried there with great failure. All known socialist regimes failed to exceed the prosperity of capitalism and committed an assault on individual rights as well as freedoms. The modern left is employing an approach of partial socialization of property and partial collectivization of consciousness, at least in the beginning. It is evident, as leftists are promoting policies of over-taxation, over-regulation, wealth redistribution, government spending, the creation of a nanny state, the indoctrination of the youth in schools and colleges with leftist ideology, and outright rejection as well as ridicule of other points of view.

Socialism happens to be a political myth itself. It is used by the modern left as a vehicle to gain political power and exploit the state as a money-making machine for the enrichment of the chosen elites. Meanwhile, their voters continue to be in a state of perpetual victimhood and are forgotten until the next election.

(Read more of the Allen Gindler article in American Thinker)