Varieties of Socialist Government

British Parliamentary, Non-Marxist, Socialism

Marxist Non-Communist Socialism

Communist Socialism

Ramsay MacDonald, Labour Party of Great Britain (Wikimedia Commons)

1st openly avowed socialist Prime Minister of Great Britain. Not a Marxist.

1st term: 22 January 1924-3 November 1924

"For Socialism is not fully explained as the result of Labour against capitalism: it is a conception of Society in which the antagonisms from which that revolt arises are harmonised. Did Socialism only mean to put Labour in power so that cramped working class interests could pursue the same self-regarding policy as capitalist interests pursued, stormy indeed would be the prospect. It is true that in the conflicts, which divide the workman from his employer in present-day society, Socialism has to take sides with the forces that are making for the new society; but it is above the conflicts in spirit, and it is steadily infusing in both sides the creative desire to get beyond present divisions, and reach a state in which all service will be done for communal ends by men who feel the community in their hearts, and know that its wealth means their own wealth."

--MacDonald, "Socialism: Critical and Constructive"

Friedrich Ebert, Social Democratic Party of Germany

(Wikimedia Commons)

1st President of Germany, 1919-1924. The SDP were at that time officially Marxist, but bitterly opposed Lenin's Communism and suppressed--at times brutally--its adherents in Germany.

V. I. Lenin, Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Wikimedia Commons)

Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, 30 December 1922-21 January 1924. Marxist and Communist.