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. 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...(Read Full Article)