Nihilism is the belief that life is essentially meaningless, particularly that religion, morality, and spirituality are fundamentally meaningless. Nihilists believe that even if meaning were to exist, it would be impossible to communicate this meaning between humans. As a philosophical tradition, Nihilism dates back to the ancient Greeks (most notably Gorgias). Many influential philosophers, if not full Nihilists, were substantially influenced by nihilistic thinking, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre, among many others.

Zionism first emerged in the late nineteenth century and picked up steam in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Zionists wanted a Jewish homeland, ideally located in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, signed by the British government in 1917, promised to help provide a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This promise was eventually carried out after World War II, with the creation of Israel in 1948.

Fascism arose in the early nineteenth century and took power in Italy and Spain. Nazism is sometimes included under the umbrella of fascism and sometimes not; it depends on which historian you ask. The heart of the debate lies, basically, in the question of whether or not nazism is its own ideology, or a sub-category of fascism. In a fascist state, the rights of the workers are subjugated to the interests of nationalism and corporations. Fascism values nationalism and industry over any individual human rights.

Neocolonialism refers to the belief that colonialism never really came to an end. They argue that after World War II, and during the Cold War, the European powers stopped dominating nations with their military and instead dominated them economically through corporate and financial institutions and political pressure. Neocolonialism acknowledges the role of the military-industrial complex in the complicated nexus of financial and political measures used to exert pressure on weaker nations, but it sees the military itself as a small cog in the much larger, more complex machine of financial and political domination exerted by richer nations. 

The physiocrats were an eighteenth-century group who equated wealth with land and agriculture and who promoted a "hands-off" approach to government involvement in the economy. They were opponents of the mercantilists, who supported economic regulation by the government. In addition to coming much later in history, the Bolsheviks and National Socialists also supported government intervention in the economy.

Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher, founded the school of though called utilitarianism. Bentham's work was continued by his student Jon Stewart Mill.

Classical liberalism differs significantly from modern day liberalism or progressivism. It espouses an individualistic conception of man’s relation to the state, which is only justified in terms of its obligation to maintain a stable order in which free relations between people lead to general prosperity. Classical liberalism is secular and advocates for religious tolerance, seeks to advance free trade and secure private property - Locke’s three basic rights are life, liberty, and property - and asserts that the legitimacy of government is derived from a social contract between the state and the governed. A social safety net is not a natural market institution and would have been alien to classical liberals like Adam Smith.

Lenin despised trade unions and thought they starved workers of the will to revolt. He did not think the proletariat in Russia was sufficiently large to successfully enact revolution due to the lack of industrialization, although he did believe industrializing was necessary in the long term. During the New Economic Program (NEP) in the 1920s, Lenin also promoted cultural pluralism and relative economic freedom. In “What is to be Done?” (1902) Lenin claims that a vanguard party of elites must be formed to bring about revolution through the spreading of political propaganda. The existence of this body is one of the most important factors distinguishing Marxist-Leninist communism from Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

Deism was the Enlightenment's criticism of organized religion. In emphasizing "natural laws" and ethical conduct, Deism ultimately rejected the more "metaphysical" aspects of religious teaching, and brought an increased focus to science and moral philosophy.

The most commoly cited phrasing of the "watchmaker analogy" was made by William Paley in his 1802 book Natural Theology.

The Communist Manifesto was published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 and detailed the struggle between the various classes and the flaws with the current capitalist system. Engels was a German philosopher and writer who spent time working in England and published a variety of essays with Marx. Marx was a German writer who focused on economics and economic philosophy. He met Engels in 1844, when their partnership was formed. Together they worked on alternative economic theories and eventually developed what would become known as Marxism. This theory is different from communism in that communism allowed for a party to initiate a revolution of the working class, while Marxism only predicted the coming revolution when the working class would rise up.