An Overview Of Socialism: Aims And Principles
Socialism is when a population collectively owns and runs all of production and distributes the outcome equally. The owning portion is oftenly delegated to the state while the “distribution” portion usually comes in the form of supporting welfare state to satisfy the communities necessities such as education, housing, and healthcare. The main purpose of socialism is to ensure equality for all members of the community, which leads to removing social class differences formed on proprietorship. For example, in America's capitalist society, going to college is expensive, which means that those who can afford college are usually given better opportunities: those who can’t are forced to compete at a material disadvantage. This progresses to class inequality, not on the basis of talent or ability, but on generational wealth.
Socialism was founded in 1848 after Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles wrote the book “The Communist Manifesto. ” Also, early socialism was formed on the idea that if we could eliminate classes and have true society equality, it would be an Utopia. As like any political system, socialism has countless variations, the two most popular being Social Democracy (practiced by Sweden and Bernie Sanders) and the Marxism-Leninism form, used by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China. A Social Democracy usually is run under the standards of having equal rights and opportunities, a state-run welfare system and a capitalist economy. In the last few decades of the 1900’s, social democratic parties arose in Europe, mainly from Marxism. Marx predicted that like previous socio-economic systems, capitalism creates internal pressure which would drive itself the destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism. A
few examples of socialism includes the former Soviet Union which was ran by Vladimir Lenin and was an example of a socialist system. Along with Cuba, ran by Miguel Diaz-Canel, and an example of a socialist nation. Last but not least, North Korea which is run by Kim Jong-Un and is an example of a socialist state. North Korea lacks a stock exchange and the economy is state run. They also support many socialist programs. This is very similar to Cuba because they also lack a stock exchange and is almost entirely state run. A common misconception is that both socialism and communism are identical, but it’s not. Here is where socialism differs from communism. According to Shobhit Seth, “socialism does not support violence or aggression including the overthrowing of capitalists by workers, socialism also does not recommend that all private property ownership should be exterminated. Socialists actually believe that the gap should be diminished, which results in preventing accumulation. ”
The main goal of socialism is to diminish, but not totally eliminate the gap between the rich and the poor. Also, the government takes responsibility to redistribute production and wealth through its agencies and policies, making the society more fail and leveled. Some countries that are currently run under the system of socialism includes Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, Greece and many more. A big socialist problem that is going on right now is the corruption of Venezuela. Venezuela is in a state of crisis and in dire need of help and rehabilitation. As of right now, the only other country that ranks worse than Venezuela in freedom is North Korea. Currently Venezuelans are dying in huge amounts and have no freedom.
Venezuela was once the wealthiest country in Latin America and still has the world's biggest oil reserve. This all changed 20 years ago when Venezuelans voted for socialism and elected Hugo Chávez. Following the ending of the newly elected president, many people celebrated and praised Chávez. Many people believe that socialism is not why Venezuela is in such a bad place right now, these people are wrong and here is why. Mismanagement is a big part of the downfall of a socialist state/country. Mismanagement is what happens under a socialist government because no socialist group is wise enough to manage an entire economy. Even if these socialist leaders have good intentions, they eventually run out of other people's money. The socialist solution then is to print more, which causes massive inflation and destroys the nation's economy. When business owners raised prices to keep up with the corrupt countries economy, the government usually took the businesses away.
“Socialists believe that the government can run businesses better than greedy owners that just want profit. ” And that lead to tyranny in Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China, Russia, and Korea. Now let’s talk about socialism among the Nazi’s. National Socialism is more commonly known as Nazism. Nazism “is the ideology and practices associated with the Nazi Party. ” The term known as “National Socialism” came out of attempts to start a nationalist redefinition of socialism. This would be an alternative to free market capitalism along with international socialism. Nazism rejected the Marxist idea of “class conflict” and also opposed cosmopolitan internationalism. They also sought out to convince all of the German society to adapt their personal hobbies to the “common good. ”
This resulted in Nazism accepting politics as the main priority of the economic organization. Another example of socialism failing is the Cambodian genocide. The socialist dictators of Cambodia lived by the motto “to keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss. ” A man by the name of Pol Pot had the idea of forming a new political party with his peers and taking over Cambodia. The group called themselves Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge proceeded to implement ideas, they started moving people out of the cities and into farmlands, forcing the people to work. Some people were executed because they refused to work, others died in the fields due to dehydration, starvation, and disease. These fields were called the “killing fields” and many more Cambodians starved because this new method simply did not work. Under the reign of Pol Pot, 1 in 4 people in Cambodia died in less than 4 years. This was an example of socialism act practice, proving that it kills.
All the deaths were the result of a bad idea and an experiment that from the start, had no possible way of working. This is one of the largest genocides in history up to this day, ultimately leading to 1. 5 to 3 million deaths, around a quarter of Cambodia's total population. It is said that a true form of socialism and communism has never been tried, so how do we know they don’t work? A thing about socialism and communism is they both fail to acknowledge human nature. Humans are selfish beings, therefor when put in a place of power they will more than likely abuse it. This is where communism and socialism fails to succeed, some individual or group always wants the power, that's why most socialist states/countries end up being run by a dictator or a totalitarian government.
Socialist economies across the world have existed and continue to progress throughout time. However, it is said that there is no pure socialist economy remaining. Although there are no pure socialist economies remaining, there are still economies that take inspiration from socialist ideas (economic policy, social welfare, etc. ). Democratic socialist economic policies revolve around the idea that the means of production should not be owned by the government, but simultaneously certain general social goods should be run by the government (hence why they still support capitalism). For example, health care and housing are social goods that democratic socialist countries think should be ran by the government. Furthermore, democratic socialist countries do not agree on the idea of publicizing privatized companies and private sectors. A benefit of democratic socialism is that it reduces classism within the local societies/communities. Also, democratic socialism eliminates the threat of price fixing and economic cycles. Some cons of democratic socialism include that it cedes more control over basic needs to the government.
