Communism: The Role Of Socialism In American Politics

Socialism has made yet another comeback in American politics with many millennials actually preferring it to capitalism (Thompson). Similarly, it has also come under harsh criticism from the conservative right who claim that those who support it don’t have an understanding of basic economics. This is partly true since many of those who prefer socialism to capitalism cannot even define the word, let alone come up with solutions to implement it (Thompson). That is why I would like to start my essay off by providing a definition. Socialism is an economic system where the government has control over the means of production and evenly distributes capital to its citizens (Edgar 673). The end goal of this ideology is to move humanity towards self-sustenance

Though he was a major supporter of Marx at first, Bernstein began to notice that capitalist nations were not collapsing like Marx had predicted, but rather thriving. Because of this, he began to question Marx’s theory and began to come up with new perspectives on communism. He called this new ideology called “revisionism.” This new ideology critiqued Marx by arguing that socialism (and eventually communism) can be achieved through gradual reforms in the already established political systems, as opposed to violent revolutions. This idea of Marxist revisionism gained popularity, mostly in Germany where the Socialist Democratic Party gained upwards of 4.5 billion votes, but also with the Labour Party in Britain. In Germany, communists split off from the social democrats and voted against them. In turn, this significantly weakened their power and led to the rise of fascism. After Hitler’s rise to power and a second world war become an inevitability, other socialist movements were halted. The two exceptions to the rule were in Sweden and Canada. In Sweden, the Sweden Socialist Party managed to counter large scale unemployment with extensive social policies. Canada followed a similar path to socialism as Sweden with the exception that their party was mainly comprised of rouge farmers who left the United States in search of better opportunities. These

We even the first self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist,” Bernie Sanders, running for president to prove it. So that brings us back to the question: is socialism a beneficial ideology? With all of the failures in the past it would be logical to assume so, but there is one thing that many people tend to overlook. The nations that implement pure socialism with no capitalism are always doomed to fail. The same could be said about pure capitalism as well. There is currently no country on earth to practice pure capitalism; even the US has a mixed economy, incorporating socialist aspects like Social Security, Welfare, public schooling, government jobs…the list goes on. While the public sector doesn’t usually stimulate the economy as heavily as the private sector does, it does act as a counter to poverty caused by joblessness and improves happiness across the board. Therefore, to say that one economic system is absolutely superior to the other is as disillusioned as the first settlers of New Harmony were. I believed that instead of engaging in an ideological warfare, we should be focusing on the facts and coming up with solutions on how to improve upon our current economic and environmental worries, as opposed to dismissing information because it’s against our