"Socialism from Above" is the name given by Draper to philosophies of collectivized property that envision administration from above by an elite, whether intellectual, political, or technical.
"Socialism from Below" would proceed from a very different conception of common ownership, with power instead flowing from the workers themselves, with decision-making capacities broadly distributed.
In the pamphlet, Draper argues that the divide between these two souls of socialism underlies all other divisions, such as "reformist or revolutionary, peaceful or violent, democratic or authoritarian, etc."
The piece is organized primarily as a brief history of socialism and important socialist thinkers, beginning with a critical glance at "ancestors" such as Plato, Pythagoras and the Gracchi brothers before turning to François-Noël Babeuf, Henri de Saint-Simon, and utopians such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen.
The next sections of the pamphlet consider in turn subsequent manifestations of socialism from above, including anarchists (specifically Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin), Ferdinand Lassalle, the Fabians, Eduard Bernstein, and American socialists like Edward Bellamy.