scientific socialism

scientific socialism (countable and uncountable, plural scientific socialisms)

1. (socialism, obsolete) Society dominated by a scientific government.
   • 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, chapter V, in Benj. R. Tucker, editor, Proudhon: What is Property?‎, Dover edition, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Library, section 2:

     Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government, — that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism.

2. (socialism) Socialism that starts from the analysis of capitalism, revealing its inner workings and contradictions, in order to develop a plan to move from capitalism to socialism.

   Synonym: Marxism

   Antonyms: prescientific socialism, unscientific socialism, utopian socialism

• scientific socialist