socialism

The article examines the role of European left parties in the politics of their countries and the European Union. The author of the article examines the main types of European left parties, their program goals and the electorate. Modern left-wing European parties in terms of ideological orientation are mostly representatives of social democrats, the Greens, democratic socialists and communists, which roughly corresponds to the left-wing party coalitions existing in the European Parliament, with the exception of communists of the Marxist-Leninist type popular mainly outside the EU.

The article is devoted to the change in the attitude of American society to the ideology of socialism at the beginning of the XXI century. The article examines reasons for popularity of leftist ideas in the United States, the most popular interpretations of the concept of “socialism” among American citizens, taking into account their age or belonging to a particular social group.

In article the theoretical analysis of genesis of a social ideal is carried out. The author proves that the social ideal is caused by type of a sociality and acts in two modified forms: social ideal of communal type and public ideal. The public ideal as a special form of ideas of a perfect society organization appears only in the conditions of modern society and is connected with actualization of the main social contradiction «personality and society». In an ideological discourse we observe two ways of permission of this contradiction: liberal and socialist.