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Socialism: Understanding The Political World

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Socialism is a political ideology that aims to provide equality between all citizens. According to Understanding the Political World: A Comparative Introduction to Political Science, James N. Danziger (2015) defined socialism as, “One of the major Western political ideologies, in which the most important goal is to provide a high quality, relatively equal standard of living for all” (p. 468). The goal of this ideology is to find the balance between government involvement and private ownership. Socialism originated by seeing the success capitalism had produced. One of the observations that were made was that if the state controlled production, working conditions could be improved. Social reformers, including Karl Marx, were very impressed …show more content…

The leader of this vision, Henri de Saint-Simon, wanted this society to run as one factory. After his death was when the origin of socialism was created and his followers continued this ideal society as a single factory. Their idea was to run their government like a business. In American history the socialist movement hit the ground running in the early 1900s. Socialism started to gain more attention with President Woodrow Wilson, then came World War I, through the 1920s and then came the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was determined to get America out of this horrible time so he introduced many new socialist reforms hoping to put some energy into the economy. Socialism has made its way through history on the principal that people in a society should be equal. Many people see socialism as unfair, which is why it has never been popular in the United States, but has made its way into some countries in Europe. For example, Denmark has a high ranking when it comes to GDP. According to our textbook, Understanding the Political World, Danziger (2015) writes that, “The great majority of productive resources in Denmark are privately owned, and the state allows entrepreneurs considerable freedom of action, with a ranking of ninth on the economic freedom measure. However, the state is very active in guiding the Danish political economy” (p. …show more content…

They both believed that capitalism led to exploitation of workers and that it made people form social class systems, leading to inequality. In short, the government decides what they think what will be best for the people and centers a plan on those ideas. Until equality has been achieved, a communist government will remain strong and forceful. Because these governments are so powerful, they are usually seen as ineffective because the individual does not have any economic

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