SOHEYL HAMZAVI
POLSC-120, A. ARAIM
12/9/15
SOCIALISM Socialism is not an ideology that most people in the United States discuss often, but why is that? It is sometimes regarded as a “dirty” word to most, as it has distant similarities to the form of government that Joseph Stalin ruled his nation as, Communism; one of the very forms of governments our nation fought against. We as a people try to distant ourselves from Socialism because we are afraid that it will eventually lead to a similar transformation that Russia had when it became the USSR. The reason for that, I believe, is because people aren’t educated enough about the topic itself, therefore leading them to stray away into their comfort of living in a nation led by Capitalism. In order
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In simplest terms, Socialism is an economic system and ideology where the means of producing wealth are owned by society as a whole. This means that the value produced belongs to everyone in society as opposed to a small class of private owners. Control is generally delegated by the state, while distribution comes in the form of underlying social welfare that satisfies everyone’s needs such as housing, education, healthcare, and so forth. The end result of Socialism is to guarantee a level playing field for every person in a society by removing class distinctions based on ownership. Most countries today don’t use this form of government, excluding Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway, but I will get into detail about that later …show more content…
It started out by having two branches of socialism; those being “utopian” and “revolutionary” socialism. Utopian socialism was associated to Comte de Saint Simon and Charles Fourier, who were both against revolutionary action after seeing the carnage of the French Revolution. The other French socialists were the revolutionaries. The most important of these revolutionaries was Louis Auguste Blanqui, and he associated a lot of his terms with Communism. Like the utopians, he criticized Capitalism but he believed that it could only be overthrown through violent revolution by the working classes. In the last third of the 19th century in Europe social democratic parties arose in Europe drawing mainly from Marxism. By 1968, the Vietnam War created the New Left, socialists who tended to be critical of the Soviet Union and social democracy. Some elements of the New Left and others favored decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. In Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez coined the term 'Socialism of the 21st Century', which included a policy of nationalization of national assets such as oil, anti-imperialism, etc. By 1842, socialism became the topic of a major academic analysis by a German scholar, Lorenz von Stein, in his Socialism and Social Movement. According to an 1888 volume of A New English Dictionary on Historical
Socialism in the United States tends to keep itself hidden and rarely show. Although it is something huge according to Scholars like Louis Hartz’s , David Montogmery, E.L. Godkin and Werner Sombart. David Montogomery says “ the American form of Socialism has centered on control of the workplace rather than creating a
Socialism along with many other ideologies has a vast number of different strands and with a couple of different roads to achieving what is fundamentally socialism. Socialism being the ideology that utilises collectivisation to bring people together and to unite people by their common humanity. The two most obvious roads of socialism would be that of revolutionary socialism and also that of evolutionary socialism. This are taken on by two different types of socialists, revisionist socialists and fundamentalist socialists. Revolutionary socialism is the belief that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolution against the current political system. To them
Throughout Europe, people of all different classes and moralities had different views of socialism and how it should be achieved/expressed throughout time in that area. An economic and political system based on collective or state ownership of the means of production and distribution is known as socialism. Socialism branched from Republicanism in the early 19th century, because people came to disapprove unequal distribution of wealth and goods. Socialists wanted equal rights for all, but they were opposed to upper class people who received more income for less work with little impact on society. A socialist economic system is the representation of attempting to eliminate economic inequalities and exploitation. Goals of this would be ending
Socialism and capitalism are two concepts that are used by governments in respective countries regarding how the economies operate. The two concepts are based on political, economic and social systems. The United States of America is an example of a capitalist country while Sweden is a socialist nation. Apart from the similarity in which the government plays a role in the effectiveness of the two systems, there is no discrimination in both systems regarding race, color or other arbitrary classification. There are notable differences between the two systems based on ownership structure, equity, and employment.
As mentions before socialism is the doctrine that espouses public ownership or control of a major means of production. It aims to achieve an equitable and efficient distribution of social goods and greater economic planning then exist under capitalism. Although the central concerns of socialism appears to be economic its ramifications extend to the moral, social and political realms, in fact together with nationalism, it is the leading ideological and political movement of the 20th century.
Accordingly, one idea or fact that is often raised to differentiate socialism from communism is that socialism in general is the political movement that refers to an economic system in that they believe that the state should be in charge of all important producing industries thus taking hold of the control of free market in order to promote economic parity and egalitarianism. Theoretically, socialism seeks to distribute wealth equally among its citizens in a way that the rich don’t take
Socialism Violates personal freedom. It eliminates “injustice” by transferring rights and responsibilities from individuals and families of the state. It completely stops true
It is the economic system used by a government that regulates only certain businesses for the welfare of the citizens. The government normally only regulates housing, education, food, and medical issues. Since that is all the government regulates, private citizens are allowed to own businesses. However, the income of these businesses is controlled thru taxes. The strength of socialism is that the government has more control over businesses and can regulate what happens in them. The weakness is that people interested in owning a business in the area of housing, education, food, or medical issues cannot. All the three economic systems are different in unique ways.
Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which represents the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. The origins of the socialism occurred during the industrial revolution. While Carl Marx wrote out the way of socialism, it was actually developed in France. Socialism was first majorly adopted by the Russians after the Bolshevik party came to power. Because Russia was such a great influence across Asia and eastern Europe they were able to spread socialism. When the cold war developed after world war 2 there was a sodden need to spread socialism. The two super nations USSR and the USA batteled an indirect war to spread their economic system. Americas capitalism and Russia socialism. During the cold war there were several rises in socialism in north African countries and south American countries. But when the cold war came to an end, socialism spread to asian countries and most importantly china. The cold war had ended and there was no more
Socialism is the underlying motivation behind communist movements in history. Socialists believe that it is unjust for a small amount of people to own the biggest portion of the wealth in society. This idea lead to the concept of a communist society, in which the existence of private property is eliminated in favor of government-owned property being shared among all it’s people. The government would provide jobs and care for all people equally. The idea was that through communism, there would be no social classes, thus eliminating alienation for any of the people in the society.
Socialism is also similar to Marxism or can be considered as a part of the Marxist theory. Socialism is a belief that everyone has a right of a share from their country’s wealth with the state running the economy of the country and removing Capitalism by owning all the industries. The main aim of socialism is to establish state economy and to establish a society where no one is rich and no one is poor and a society where everyone is equal and free from the bondage of class divisions.
When people believe in socialism they view their country/ population to be as a whole, individuals do not work or live in isolation, the population becomes united. This Idea puts socialism in a place that is the complete opposite of capitalism, which is based on private ownership of the means of production. Socialism is when a population collectively owns and controls the means of production and distributes the end result proportionally. But why are some countries doing so well while Russia is still recovering from the past history of trying to practice socialism? Well like communism, socialism has plenty of different amount of variations. The two most popular ones are Social Democracy, which is practiced in Sweden and the Marxism-Leninism form of socialism, which is used, by the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. The Social Democracy form of socialism usually tries to improve equality rights, opportunities, and the economy. While the Marxism-Leninism form of socialism prioritizes in the benefit to the state because they believe that any benefit to the state would also be a benefit for the people. However when the country practices this type of socialism the ruling party is forces to lower the standards of living of the population for the good of the state. Socialism very much like communism has its own benefits and its own flaws. One of the biggest and probably the best thing about socialism is that it eliminates greed, No individual person can have much more than the other, and the government owns all of the businesses, so money and greed isn’t a big problem when a country follows the idea of socialism. Another benefit of socialism is that the basics/ needs of the population is met, health care is universal, education is free, food is supplied, as well as clothing and other necessary items to live. But although this idea/ theory sounds great, when
Socialism Socialism is a type of economic system, a political movement, and a social theory. Socialism is based on the idea that governments should own and control a nation's resources rather than individuals. Socialism was first used to describe opposition to the free enterprise and market economies. The Industrial Revolution was the cause of many social problems. Long work hours, low pay, and poor working conditions caused Americans to first consider socialism.
Rather than eradicate capitalism, socialism exists within it. Moreover, democratic socialism is characterised through the balance and compromise between free market capitalism and the Governmental state (Bernstein 1993: 142, Heywood 2012:128, Anderson 1985: 10). Marx considered socialism as a class movement, which is what subsequently played out in the political realm, once universal suffrage had been achieved. For previously powerless people it was the only peaceful way to be heard: “Electoral politics constitutes the mechanism through which anyone can as a citizen express claims to goods and services.” (Przeworski 1985:11).
The term socialist has been thrown around quite a bit in the past few years. Not since the cold war has the term garnered so much attention in the press and from politicians. But when you look at countries who actually have a socialist economic structure, you can see some similarities to the United States – but there are some really stark differences.