Socialism and communism are political structures dating way back to 200 years ago. Biography.com says it all started on May 5th 1818 in Prussia, the birth of a man who indirectly killed millions of people with his ideas and a book. This man’s name was Karl Marx. He was a very intelligent and independent man, earned a doctorate from a college his father did not want him to go to. After receiving his doctorate he worked as a journalist and became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung which was a newspaper. Soon he was out of a job because the government suppressed the newspaper. Three months after he married a woman named Jenny von Westphalen and they moved to Paris in 1843.
Marx created the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher which was political journal but due to political arguments between Marx and his partner Arnold Ruge, it died after its first issue. However this whole ordeal benefited Marx because it brought him close to a contributor named Friedrich Engels. The two criticized the Young Hegelians and its founding philosopher, Bruno Bauer who just so happened to be one of Marx’s previous friend’s. After this Marx moved to Brussels, Belgium in 1845. Marx met Moses Hess who introduced him to the ideology of Socialism, which Marx later perfected to the way he wanted to see it, which is known as communism.
Marx soon tried to reach out to socialists in Europe to form the Communist League. In 1847 the League asked Marx and Engels to write their most famous book yet, The Manifesto of the Communist Party or the Communist Manifesto. After this Marx had a hard time finding a place to live, getting kicked out of Belgium, then France, even his birthplace, Prussia, until he settled in London. He wrote the first volume of “Das Kapital”. The rest of his life was devoted to writing and revising his other volumes which he never completed. Engels published the ones he did not finish. Later on March 14th 1883 Marx died in London from pleurisy. That is the history of the greatest driving force of socialism ever and he even created his own ideology called Marxism, it says that it’s inevitable for capitalism to go down and for socialism, in any form, to rise up and take over.
A brief description of socialism is that the government of a state takes control of production, supplying and trade. A brief description of communism is the society is economically classless and there is only public and government property. These seem like good ideas to many, however the superior economic structure is capitalism, the allowance of those to work to the greatest of their ability, if they choose, to gain as much or as little as they can. Many see this idea as flawed because it allows some to fail, however it’s not the system’s fault it’s the fault of the people who don’t succeed. While in communism and socialism the system is too flawed to run in highly populated or densely populated countries and states. It cannot be allowed for socialism or communism to be a part of our economic structure because capitalism is so much better in every way.
Specifically the U.S.A.’s free market capitalism, that is currently used, is the only way to go for America. Socialism and communism have countries that people claim are socialist, when they really aren’t, communism is just a failure in general, and there is an example of how bad socialism is when used in full force.
Many believe that socialism should be for everyone because there are many successful countries that have socialism implemented. Sweden is a famous example that comes to mind. Many know this country for being very successful and almost everyone there has a good life. Socialism seems to be doing well for them, however in the short documentary, “Sweden: Lessons for America”, Johan Norberg, a historian and economist, gives a better explanation than what is known about Sweden here in America. There was one example of an author had a 102% tax rate for writing very popular children’s books, and because of this the government had to take many actions to make Sweden a success, one action was implementing a free market system, making Sweden not socialist.
Every country that is “socialist” do not follow all of Marx’s ten planks, which are rules for all communist and socialist countries. Whenever Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) or Bernie Sanders use socialist success in Nordic countries, because Sweden is similar to other “socialist” Nordic countries, they are lying about it being fully socialist. No country that has many people can go socialist and expect success.
Now, the failure that is communism. Some of the world’s massive killings were due to communism. Men like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong tried saving their countries with communism but instead killed millions. Mao specifically was responsible for the death of 45 million in his first four years because of the Great Leap Forward policy, which was their attempt to show England that they could do communism better. However this was the worst time to try communism, it was during the Great Chinese Famine. Prior to this famine China had a few other famines, still more than any country should ever have though.
Some years before Stalin tried communism for his own nation and it resulted in starvation of the Soviets on a massive scale. Combined with the limited resources communism’s first years in China showed how terrible it is at dealing with crisis and starves countries. Currently every communist country in the world, there are five, has difficult living conditions. American companies have to make jobs for the Chinese because with such a large population there aren’t enough for China to make. Every single current communist country has a majority of the population being poor and well below the poverty line, by American standards. The only people who are rich are those who work in government or have the highest paying jobs in the big international corporations. For example say a famous company in China was selling to America and the UK, the CEOs and leaders of that company would be the only ones with good salaries. The other communist countries, which are North Korea, Laos, Cuba and Vietnam are all very poor and bad to live in.
Venezuela is considered one of the last truly socialist countries, truly socialist countries also include those which are communist, and they are some of the most horrible countries to live in. Juan Guaidó is trying to seize Nicolás Maduro’s power. Guaidó has had to help the people of Venezuela by bringing in food and medical supplies because venezuela is so run down that they can’t provide for their people, one of the points of a socialist government. A Guardian article states that a whole 82% of Venezuela’s population is in poverty, it’s obvious that percentage is much higher than any country should ever have. More reason for Guaidó to be receiving lots of support from many people, including our current President Donald Trump. If all goes well with Guaidó we could gain a foreign ally.
Socialism and communism, when used in their true forms cannot work for countries. Starvation and poverty in a population are common things found in either types of countries. With the top two of histories recorded murderers being communists, that should be enough proof that it cannot work for anyone. Communism and socialism can never work for the U.S.A. Capitalism is the only possible way for America to prosper. Even the Nordic countries and some others that are socialist aren’t truly socialist and do use some capitalist functions, like the free market in the Nordic countries. To sum up socialism and communism may seem like a great idea to most, but they are the most terrible forms of government that anyone could implement.
