One major Issue has divided the competing traditions and tendencies within socialism, the ends and means that socialists strive for. There are two variations so socialism that focus on the means and the end, revolutionary and evolutionary.
Revolutionary socialists believe that socialism can only be introduced by a revolutionary overthrow of the existing political system, in most cases capitalism. The first successful socialist revolution was the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, which served as a model for future generations of revolutionary socialists. Revolutionary socialists seek a mass uprising of the working class to seize control of the economy and create a society based on common ownership.
As the 19th century progressed, in the advanced capitalist states, the attitude for a revolt against a capitalist system depleted. With a rise in wages, an increase in the rights of the working class and better working conditions, the working class lost its revolutionary character and in turn bringing about the development of evolutionary socialism. This developed form of socialism believed that socialism would develop naturally and peacefully as a more liberal form of capitalism presented itself. They believed socialism would occur through a gradual process of social reform and the working class would use the ballot box to introduce socialism, which would therefore develop as an evolutionary outgrowth of capitalism.
With the development of socialism, a society called the Fabian Society developed. The Fabian Society is a British socialist organization whose purpose is to advance the principles of socialism via gradualist and reformist means. The society laid many of the foundations of the Labour Party. With the help of the Fabian Society, evolutionary socialism existed for a while in the form of the Labour party however the party’s failure to be elected caused them to tame their views and principles, most notably through the removal of Clause 4. In the mid-20th century the UK had a social democracy in the Attlee government who established the welfare state (Re-enforcing the idea of equality of outcome) and developed the long boom of the 50s and 60s through Keynesian economics. Since the Labour party’s removal of Clause 4, however, it has been argued that they have departed greatly from social democratic principles.
Another form of socialism, Fundamentalist socialism, rejects capitalism. They seek to abolish and replace the system. They argue that the main flaw of capitalism is the idea of private property and therefore they want to establish socialism in the form of common ownership. Revisionist socialism on the other hand only wants to reform capitalism, rather than abolish it. It wants to establish socialism through social justice, meaning narrowing economic and social inequalities through welfare and redistribution.
The collapse of communism proved revolutionary fundamentalism to be unsuccessful as its often military style approaches to ruling the state meant that people were often more unsatisfied with socialism than they were with capitalism and have a counter revolution which revolutionary socialists were seeking in the first place.