Beach
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are made from rock, such as sand, shingle, pebbles; the particles can be biological in origin, such as mollusc shells or coralline algae. Some beaches have man-made infrastructure, such as lifeguard posts, changing rooms, showers and bars, they may have hospitality venues nearby. Wild beaches known as undeveloped or undiscovered beaches, are not developed in this manner. Wild beaches can be preserved nature. Beaches occur in areas along the coast where wave or current action deposits and reworks sediments. Although the seashore is most associated with the word beach, beaches are found by lakes and alongside large rivers. Beach may refer to: small systems where rock material moves onshore, offshore, or alongshore by the forces of waves and currents; the former are described in detail below. There are several conspicuous parts to a beach that relate to the processes that shape it; the part above water, more or less influenced by the waves at some point in the tide, is termed the beach berm.
The berm is the deposit of material comprising the active shoreline. The berm has a crest and a face—the latter being the slope leading down towards the water from the crest. At the bottom of the face, there may be a trough, further seaward one or more long shore bars: raised, underwater embankments formed where the waves first start to break; the sand deposit may extend well inland from the berm crest, where there may be evidence of one or more older crests resulting from large storm waves and beyond the influence of the normal waves. At some point the influence of the waves on the material comprising the beach stops, if the particles are small enough, winds shape the feature. Where wind is the force distributing the grains inland, the deposit behind the beach becomes a dune; these geomorphic features compose. The beach profile changes seasonally due to the change in wave energy experienced during summer and winter months. In temperate areas where summer is characterised by calmer seas and longer periods between breaking wave crests, the beach profile is higher in summer.
The gentle wave action during this season tends to transport sediment up the beach towards the berm where it is deposited and remains while the water recedes. Onshore winds carry it further inland enhancing dunes. Conversely, the beach profile is lower in the storm season due to the increased wave energy, the shorter periods between breaking wave crests. Higher energy waves breaking in quick succession tend to mobilise sediment from the shallows, keeping it in suspension where it is prone to be carried along the beach by longshore currents, or carried out to sea to form longshore bars if the longshore current meets an outflow from a river or flooding stream; the removal of sediment from the beach berm and dune thus decreases the beach profile. In tropical areas, the storm season tends to be during the summer months, with calmer weather associated with the winter season. If storms coincide with unusually high tides, or with a freak wave event such as a tidal surge or tsunami which causes significant coastal flooding, substantial quantities of material may be eroded from the coastal plain or dunes behind the berm by receding water.
This flow may alter the shape of the coastline, enlarge the mouths of rivers and create new deltas at the mouths of streams that had not been powerful enough to overcome longshore movement of sediment. The line between beach and dune is difficult to define in the field. Over any significant period of time, sediment is always being exchanged between them; the drift line is one potential demarcation. This would be the point at which significant wind movement of sand could occur, since the normal waves do not wet the sand beyond this area. However, the drift line is to move inland under assault by storm waves; the development of the beach as a popular leisure resort from the mid-19th century was the first manifestation of what is now the global tourist industry. The first seaside resorts were opened in the 18th century for the aristocracy, who began to frequent the seaside as well as the fashionable spa towns, for recreation and health. One of the earliest such seaside resorts, was Scarborough in Yorkshire during the 1720s.
The first rolling bathing machines were introduced by 1735. The opening of the resort in Brighton and its reception of royal patronage from King George IV, extended the seaside as a resort for health and pleasure to the much larger London market, the beach became a centre for upper-class pleasure and frivolity; this trend was praised and artistically elevated by the new romantic ideal of the picturesque landscape. Queen Victoria's long-standing patronage of the Isle of Wight and Ramsgate in Kent ensured that a seaside residence was considered as a fashionable possession for those wealthy enough to afford more than one home; the extension of this form of leisure to the middle and working classes began with the development of the railways in the 1840s, which offered cheap fares to fast
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency, employing millions of people to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was established on May 6, 1935, by Executive Order 7034. In a much smaller project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, writers and directors in large arts, drama and literacy projects; the four projects dedicated to these were: the Federal Writers’ Project, the Historical Records Survey, the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Music Project, the Federal Art Project. In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former slaves in the South were interviewed. Theater and music groups toured throughout America, gave more than 225,000 performances. Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the rediscovery of pre-Columbian Native American cultures, the development of professional archaeology in the US; every community in the United States had a new park, bridge, or school, constructed by the agency.
The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion. Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while developing infrastructure to support the current and future society. Above all, the WPA hired workers and craftsmen who were employed in building streets. Thus, under the leadership of the WPA, more than 1 million km of streets and over 10,000 bridges were built, in addition to many airports and much housing; the largest single project of the WPA was the Tennessee Valley Authority, which provided the impoverished Tennessee Valley with dams and waterworks to create an infrastructure for electrical power. Camp David, the presidential estate in Maryland used for international meetings, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge were both constructed by the WPA. At its peak in 1938, it provided paid jobs for three million unemployed men and women, as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration.
Between 1935 and 1943, when the agency was disbanded, the WPA employed 8.5 million people. Most people who needed a job were eligible for employment in some capacity. Hourly wages were set to the prevailing wages in each area. Full employment, reached in 1942 and emerged as a long-term national goal around 1944, was not the goal of the WPA. "Millions of people needed subsistence incomes. Work relief was preferred over public assistance because it maintained self-respect, reinforced the work ethic, kept skills sharp."The WPA was a national program that operated its own projects in cooperation with state and local governments, which provided 10–30% of the costs. The local sponsor provided land and trucks and supplies, with the WPA responsible for wages. WPA sometimes took over state and local relief programs that had originated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation or Federal Emergency Relief Administration programs, it was liquidated on June 30, 1943, as a result of low unemployment due to the worker shortage of World War II.
The WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for eight years. A joint resolution introduced January 21, 1935, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 8, 1935. On May 6, 1935, FDR issued executive order 7034; the WPA superseded the work of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, dissolved. Direct relief assistance was permanently replaced by a national work relief program—a major public works program directed by the WPA; the WPA was shaped by Harry Hopkins, supervisor of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and close adviser to Roosevelt. Both Roosevelt and Hopkins believed that the route to economic recovery and the lessened importance of the dole would be in employment programs such as the WPA. Hallie Flanagan, national director of the Federal Theatre Project, wrote that "for the first time in the relief experiments of this country the preservation of the skill of the worker, hence the preservation of his self-respect, became important."The WPA was organized into the following divisions: The Division of Engineering and Construction, which planned and supervised construction projects including airports, dams and sanitation systems.
The Division of Professional and Service Projects, responsible for white-collar projects including education programs, recreation programs, the arts projects. It was named the Division of Community Service Programs and the Service Division; the Division of Finance. The Division of Information; the Division of Investigation, which succeeded a comparable division at FERA and investigated fraud, misappropriation of funds and disloyalty. The Division of Statistics known as the Division of Social Research; the Project Control Division, which processed project applications. Other divisions including the Employment, Safety and Training and Reemployment; these ordinary men and women proved to be extraordinary beyond all expectation. They
Airport
An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities for commercial air transport. Airports have facilities to store and maintain aircraft, a control tower. An airport consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface such as a runway for a plane to take off or a helipad, includes adjacent utility buildings such as control towers and terminals. Larger airports may have airport aprons, taxiway bridges, air traffic control centres, passenger facilities such as restaurants and lounges, emergency services. In some countries, the US in particular, they typically have one or more fixed-base operators, serving general aviation. An airport serving helicopters is called a heliport. An airport for use by seaplanes and amphibious aircraft is called a seaplane base; such a base includes a stretch of open water for takeoffs and landings, seaplane docks for tying-up. An international airport has additional facilities for customs and passport control as well as incorporating all of the aforementioned elements.
Such airports rank among the most complex and largest of all built typologies with 15 of the top 50 buildings by floor area being airport terminals. The terms aerodrome and airstrip may be used to refer to airports, the terms heliport, seaplane base, STOLport refer to airports dedicated to helicopters, seaplanes, or short take-off and landing aircraft. In colloquial use in certain environments, the terms airport and aerodrome are interchanged. However, in general, the term airport may imply or confer a certain stature upon the aviation facility that other aerodromes may not have achieved. In some jurisdictions, airport is a legal term of art reserved for those aerodromes certified or licensed as airports by the relevant national aviation authority after meeting specified certification criteria or regulatory requirements; that is to say, all airports are aerodromes, but not all aerodromes are airports. In jurisdictions where there is no legal distinction between aerodrome and airport, which term to use in the name of an aerodrome may be a commercial decision.
In United States technical/legal usage, landing area is used instead of aerodrome, airport means "a landing area used by aircraft for receiving or discharging passengers or cargo". Smaller or less-developed airfields, which represent the vast majority have a single runway shorter than 1,000 m. Larger airports for airline flights have paved runways of 2,000 m or longer. Skyline Airport in Inkom, Idaho has a runway, only 122 m long. In the United States, the minimum dimensions for dry, hard landing fields are defined by the FAR Landing And Takeoff Field Lengths; these include considerations for safety margins during takeoff. The longest public-use runway in the world is at Qamdo Bamda Airport in China, it has a length of 5,500 m. The world's widest paved runway is 105 m wide; as of 2009, the CIA stated that there were 44,000 "... airports or airfields recognizable from the air" around the world, including 15,095 in the US, the US having the most in the world. Most of the world's large airports are owned by local, regional, or national government bodies who lease the airport to private corporations who oversee the airport's operation.
For example, in the United Kingdom the state-owned British Airports Authority operated eight of the nation's major commercial airports – it was subsequently privatized in the late 1980s, following its takeover by the Spanish Ferrovial consortium in 2006, has been further divested and downsized to operating just Heathrow now. Germany's Frankfurt Airport is managed by the quasi-private firm Fraport. While in India GMR Group operates, through joint ventures, Indira Gandhi International Airport and Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. Bengaluru International Airport and Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport are controlled by GVK Group; the rest of India's airports are managed by the Airports Authority of India. In Pakistan nearly all civilian airports are owned and operated by the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority except for Sialkot International Airport which has the distinction of being the first owned public airport in Pakistan and South Asia. In the United States, commercial airports are operated directly by government entities or government-created airport authorities, such as the Los Angeles World Airports authority that oversees several airports in the Greater Los Angeles area, including Los Angeles International Airport.
In Canada, the federal authority, Transport Canada, divested itself of all but the remotest airports in 1999/2000. Now most airports in Canada are owned and operated by individual legal authorities or are municipally owned. Many U. S. airports still lease part or all of their facilities to outside firms, who operate functions such as retail management and parking. In the U. S. all commercial airport runways are certified by the FAA under the Code of Federal Regulations Title 14 Part 139, "Certification of Commercial Service Airports" but maintained by the local airport under the regulatory authority of the FAA. Despite the reluctance to privatize airports in the US, the government-owned, contractor-operated arrangement is the standard for the operation of commercial airports in the rest of the world. Airports are divided into airside areas; the landside area is open to the public, while access to the airside area is controlled. The airside area includes all parts of the airpo
Electrical grid
An electrical grid, or electric grid, is an interconnected network for delivering electricity from producers to consumers. It consists of Generating stations that produce electrical power high voltage transmission lines that carry power from distant sources to demand centers Distribution lines that connect individual customers. Power stations may be located near a fuel source, at a dam site, are located away from populated areas; the electric power, generated is stepped up to a higher voltage at which it connects to the electric power transmission net. The bulk power transmission network will move the power long distances, sometimes across international boundaries, until it reaches its wholesale customer. On arrival at a substation, the power will be stepped down from a transmission level voltage to a distribution level voltage; as it exits the substation, it enters the distribution wiring. Upon arrival at the service location, the power is stepped down again from the distribution voltage to the required service voltage.
Electrical grids vary in size from covering a single building through national grids which cover whole countries, to transnational grids which can cross continents. Although electrical grids are wide spread, 1.4 billion people are not connected to an electricity grid. Electrical grids can be prone to malicious attack; as electric grids modernize and introduce computers, cyber threats start to become a security risk. Early electric energy was produced near the service requiring that energy. In the 1880s, electricity competed with steam and coal gas. Coal gas was first produced on customer's premises but evolved into gasification plants that enjoyed economies of scale. In the industrialized world, cities had networks of piped gas, used for lighting, but gas lamps produced poor light, wasted heat, made rooms hot and smoky, gave off hydrogen and carbon monoxide. They posed a fire hazard. In the 1880s electric lighting soon became advantageous compared to gas lighting. Electric utility companies took advantage of economies of scale and moved to centralized power generation and system management.
With long distance power transmission it became possible to interconnect stations to balance load and improve load factors. In the United Kingdom, Charles Merz, of the Merz & McLellan consulting partnership, built the Neptune Bank Power Station near Newcastle upon Tyne in 1901, by 1912 had developed into the largest integrated power system in Europe. Merz was appointed head of a Parliamentary Committee and his findings led to the Williamson Report of 1918, which in turn created the Electricity Supply Bill of 1919; the bill was the first step towards an integrated electricity system. The Electricity Act of 1926 led to the setting up of the National Grid; the Central Electricity Board standardized the nation's electricity supply and established the first synchronized AC grid, running at 132 kilovolts and 50 Hertz. This started operating as a national system, the National Grid, in 1938. In the United States in the 1920s, utilities formed joint-operations to share peak load coverage and backup power.
In 1934, with the passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, electric utilities were recognized as public goods of importance and were given outlined restrictions and regulatory oversight of their operations. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 required transmission line owners to allow electric generation companies open access to their network and led to a restructuring of how the electric industry operated in an effort to create competition in power generation. No longer were electric utilities built as vertical monopolies, where generation and distribution were handled by a single company. Now, the three stages could be split among various companies, in an effort to provide fair accessibility to high voltage transmission; the Energy Policy Act of 2005 allowed incentives and loan guarantees for alternative energy production and advance innovative technologies that avoided greenhouse emissions. In France, electrification began in the 1900s, with 700 communes in 1919, 36,528 in 1938. At the same time, the nearby networks began to interconnect: Paris in 1907 at 12 kV, the Pyrénées in 1923 at 150 kV, almost all of the country interconnected in 1938 at 220 kV.
By 1946, the grid is the world's most dense. That year that state nationalised the industry, by uniting the private companies as Électricité de France; the frequency was standardised at 50 Hz, the 225 kV network replaces 110 and 120. From 1956, service voltage is standardised at 220 / 380 V, replacing the previous 127/220 V. During the 1970s, the 400 kV network, the new European standard, was implemented. Grids are designed to supply voltages at constant amplitudes; this has to be achieved with varying demand, variable reactive loads, nonlinear loads, with electricity provided by generators and distribution and transmission equipment that are not reliable. Grids use tap changers on transformers near to the consumers to adjust the voltage and keep it within specification. Transmission networks are complex with redundant pathways. For example, see the map of the United States' high-voltage transmission network; the structure, or "topology" of a grid can vary depending on the constraints of budget, requirements for system reliability, the load and generation characteristics.
The physical layout is forced by what land is available and its geology. Distribution networks are divided into two types, network; the simplest topology for a
Urban ecology
Urban ecology is the scientific study of the relation of living organisms with each other and their surroundings in the context of an urban environment. The urban environment refers to environments dominated by high-density residential and commercial buildings, paved surfaces, other urban-related factors that create a unique landscape dissimilar to most studied environments in the field of ecology. Urban ecology is a recent field of study compared to ecology as a whole; the methods and studies of urban ecology comprise a subset of ecology. The study of urban ecology carries increasing importance because more than 50% of the world's population today lives in urban areas. At the same time, it is estimated that within the next forty years, two-thirds of the world's population will be living in expanding urban centers; the ecological processes in the urban environment are comparable to those outside the urban context. However, the types of urban habitats and the species that inhabit them are poorly documented.
Explanations for phenomena examined in the urban setting as well as predicting changes because of urbanization are the center for scientific research. Ecology has focused on "pristine" natural environments, but by the 1970s many ecologists began to turn their interest towards ecological interactions taking place in, caused by urban environments. Jean-Marie Pelt's 1977 book The Re-Naturalized Human, Brian Davis' 1978 publication Urbanization and the diversity of insects, Sukopp et al.'s 1979 article "The soil and vegetation of Berlin's wastelands" are some of the first publications to recognize the importance of urban ecology as a separate and distinct form of ecology the same way one might see landscape ecology as different from population ecology. Forman and Godron's 1986 book Landscape Ecology first distinguished urban settings and landscapes from other landscapes by dividing all landscapes into five broad types; these types were divided by the intensity of human influence ranging from pristine natural environments to urban centers.
Urban ecology is recognized as a diverse and complex concept which differs in application between North America and Europe. The European concept of urban ecology examines the biota of urban areas, while the North American concept has traditionally examined the social sciences of the urban landscape, as well as the ecosystem fluxes and processes. Since urban ecology is a subfield of ecology, many of the techniques are similar to that of ecology. Ecological study techniques have been developed over centuries, but many of the techniques use for urban ecology are more developed. Methods used for studying urban ecology involve chemical and biochemical techniques, temperature recording, heat mapping remote sensing, long-term ecological research sites. Chemical techniques may be used to determine their effects. Tests can be as simple as dipping a manufactured test strip, as in the case of pH testing, or be more complex, as in the case of examining the spatial and temporal variation of heavy metal contamination due to industrial runoff.
In that particular study, livers of birds from many regions of the North Sea were ground up and mercury was extracted. Additionally, mercury bound in feathers was extracted from both live birds and from museum specimens to test for mercury levels across many decades. Through these two different measurements, researchers were able to make a complex picture of the spread of mercury due to industrial runoff both spatially and temporally. Other chemical techniques include tests for nitrates, sulfates, etc. which are associated with urban pollutants such as fertilizer and industrial byproducts. These biochemical fluxes are studied in aquatic ecosystems and soil vegetation. Broad reaching effects of these biochemical fluxes can be seen in various aspects of both the urban and surrounding rural ecosystems. Temperature data can be used for various kinds of studies. An important aspect of temperature data is the ability to correlate temperature with various factors that may be affecting or occurring in the environment.
Oftentimes, temperature data is collected long-term by the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, made available to the scientific community through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Data can be overlaid with maps of terrain, urban features, other spatial areas to create heat maps; these heat maps can be used to view trends and distribution over space. Remote sensing is the technique in which data is collected from distant locations through the use of satellite imaging and aerial photographs. In urban ecology, remote sensing is used to collect data about terrain, weather patterns and vegetation. One application of remote sensing for urban ecology is to detect the productivity of an area by measuring the photosynthetic wavelengths of emitted light. Satellite images can be used to detect differences in temperature and landscape diversity to detect the effects of urbanization. Long-term ecological research sites are research sites funded by the government that have collected reliable long-term data over an extended period of time in order to identify long-term climatic or ecological trends.
These sites provide long-term temporal and spatial data such as average temperature and other ecological processes. The main purpose of LTERs for urban ecologists is the collection of vast amounts of data over long periods of time; these long-term data sets can be analyzed to find trends relating to the effects of the urban environment on various ecological processes, such as species diversity and abundance over time. Another example is the examination of temperature trends th
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized medical and nursing staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital is the major health care facility in its region, with a large number of beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care. Specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' hospitals, hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric treatment and certain disease categories. Specialized hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. Hospitals are classified as general, specialty, or government depending on the sources of income received. A teaching hospital combines assistance to people with teaching to medical nurses; the medical facility smaller than a hospital is called a clinic.
Hospitals have a range of departments and specialist units such as cardiology. Some hospitals have outpatient departments and some have chronic treatment units. Common support units include a pharmacy and radiology. Hospitals are funded by the public sector, health organisations, health insurance companies, or charities, including direct charitable donations. Hospitals were founded and funded by religious orders, or by charitable individuals and leaders. Hospitals are staffed by professional physicians, surgeons and allied health practitioners, whereas in the past, this work was performed by the members of founding religious orders or by volunteers. However, there are various Catholic religious orders, such as the Alexians and the Bon Secours Sisters that still focus on hospital ministry in the late 1990s, as well as several other Christian denominations, including the Methodists and Lutherans, which run hospitals. In accordance with the original meaning of the word, hospitals were "places of hospitality", this meaning is still preserved in the names of some institutions such as the Royal Hospital Chelsea, established in 1681 as a retirement and nursing home for veteran soldiers.
During the Middle Ages, hospitals served different functions from modern institutions. Middle Ages hospitals were hostels for pilgrims, or hospital schools; the word "hospital" comes from the Latin hospes, signifying a foreigner, hence a guest. Another noun derived from this, hospitium came to signify hospitality, the relation between guest and shelterer, hospitality and hospitable reception. By metonymy the Latin word came to mean a guest-chamber, guest's lodging, an inn. Hospes is thus the root for the English words host hospitality, hospice and hotel; the latter modern word derives from Latin via the ancient French romance word hostel, which developed a silent s, which letter was removed from the word, the loss of, signified by a circumflex in the modern French word hôtel. The German word'Spital' shares similar roots; the grammar of the word differs depending on the dialect. In the United States, hospital requires an article; some patients go to a hospital just for diagnosis, treatment, or therapy and leave without staying overnight.
Hospitals are distinguished from other types of medical facilities by their ability to admit and care for inpatients whilst the others, which are smaller, are described as clinics. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital known as an acute-care hospital; these facilities handle many kinds of disease and injury, have an emergency department or trauma center to deal with immediate and urgent threats to health. Larger cities may have several hospitals of facilities; some hospitals in the United States and Canada, have their own ambulance service. A district hospital is the major health care facility in its region, with large numbers of beds for intensive care, critical care, long-term care. In California, "district hospital" refers to a class of healthcare facility created shortly after World War II to address a shortage of hospital beds in many local communities. Today, district hospitals are the sole public hospitals in 19 of California's counties, are the sole locally-accessible hospital within nine additional counties in which one or more other hospitals are present at substantial distance from a local community.
Twenty-eight of California's rural hospitals and 20 of its critical-access hospitals are district hospitals. They are formed by local municipalities, have boards that are individually elected by their local communities, exist to serve local needs, they are a important provider of healthcare to uninsured patients and patients with Medi-Cal. In 2012, district hospitals provided $54 million in uncompensated care in California. Types of specialised hospitals incl
Socialism
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management, as well as the political theories and movements associated with them. Social ownership can be citizen ownership of equity. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms. Socialist systems are divided into market forms. Non-market socialism involves the substitution of factor markets and money with engineering and technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing an economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws from those of capitalism. Non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system. By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them.
Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm, or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend. The socialist calculation debate concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a socialist system. Socialist politics has been both nationalist in orientation. Originating within the socialist movement, social democracy has embraced a mixed economy with a market that includes substantial state intervention in the form of income redistribution, a welfare state. Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism where there is more decentralized control of companies, currencies and natural resources; the socialist political movement includes a set of political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify opposition to capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production.
By the 1920s, social democracy and communism had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement. By this time, socialism emerged as "the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide, it is a political ideology, a wide and divided political movement" and while the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, some economists and intellectuals argued that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism or a non-planned administrative or command economy. Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, some socialists have adopted the causes of other social movements, such as environmentalism and progressivism. In 21st century America, the term socialism, without clear definition, has become a pejorative used by conservatives to taint liberal and progressive policies and public figures.
For Andrew Vincent, "he word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and medieval law was societas; this latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen". The term "socialism" was created by Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would be labelled "utopian socialism". Simon coined the term as a contrast to the liberal doctrine of "individualism", which stressed that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another; the original "utopian" socialists condemned liberal individualism for failing to address social concerns during the industrial revolution, including poverty, social oppression and gross inequalities in wealth, thus viewing liberal individualism as degenerating society into supporting selfish egoism that harmed community life through promoting a society based on competition. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the shared ownership of resources, although their proposals for socialism differed significantly.
Saint-Simon proposed economic planning, scientific administration and the application of modern scientific advancements to the organisation of society. By contrast, Robert Owen proposed the organisation of ownership in cooperatives; the term "socialism" is attributed to Pierre Leroux and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France. The modern definition and usage of "socialism" settled by the 1860s, becoming the predominant term among the group of words "co-operative", "mutualist" and "associationist", used as synonyms; the term "communism" fell out of use during this period, despite earlier distinctions between socialism and communism from the 1840s. An early distinction between socialism and communism was that the former aimed to only socialise production while the latter aimed to socialise both production and consumption. However, M
The dictionary definition of public works at Wiktionary
