Socialism

Socialism is a political and economic theory advocating the reduction of poverty and improvement in social wellbeing through the collective control and allocation of RESOURCES. Every nation has some degree of socialism. Even the free-market political and economic systems include government control of resources to provide national defense, INFRASTRUCTURE development, and usually education. In the United States, most people equate socialism with communism. Socialism, as espoused and as put into practice, has many variations; two major divisions are social democracy and Marxist socialism. Social democracy, as practiced in some Scandinavian countries, involves greater collective control and allocation of resources. Social democracies tend to offer free national health INSURANCE, free public education through the university level, free or subsidized housing, and access to WELFARE with few restrictions or requirements. In social democracies, any citizen, not just adults with children, can seek and receive public support. One of the major political parties in most European countries will be social democrats or a similarly named organization. While the Democratic Party in the United States is usually associated with advocating greater government involvement in the economy and more social programs, in the last 30 years Republican administrations have expanded government spending and deficit spending more than Democratic administrations. (The party controlling the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate also significantly affects government-spending policies.) President Franklin Roosevelt (1932–45) significantly increased social spending in the United States. Roosevelt established SOCIAL SECURITY as well as a variety of publicspending programs, and he supported the rights of workers to organize in UNIONs and pursue COLLECTIVE BARGAINING with employers. The 1920s are referred to by some as the era of the “robber barons.” Names like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt exemplified the huge division between the rich and poor in America. Some historians credit Franklin Roosevelt with saving CAPITALISM by providing support for the very poor and limits on wealthy industrialists. Few Americans today are old enough to remember that, in 1932, military personnel with machine-gun bunkers were brought in to insure that Roosevelt’s inauguration would be peaceful and not be overwhelmed by protests from the “masses.” Marxist socialism, based on the ideas of Karl Marx and others, advocated workers’ control of resources and PRODUCTION. (Many Americans mistakenly think socialism and communism were created in Russia. In fact the term socialism was first used in France in the 1830s.) Marx was German-born but spent much of his lifetime in England. Observing the horrible working conditions and barely subsistence wages in industrial revolution factories, Marx predicted and supported a worker’s revolution to take control of the means of production. Marx divided the population into two groups, the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.” The bourgeois were the elite, owners of CAPITAL, while the proletariat, were the laborers. Marx predicted the proletariat would rise up, seizing control of the factories. With worker control of the factories, Marx envisioned a classless society, where everyone was equal. As developed in the 20th century, authoritarian socialism and communism grew and then declined. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries were the “evil empire” in the cold-war conflict with the United States from the 1940s until 1989. Some economists argue the United States “spent” the Soviet Union into self-destruction. With the cold war, both sides continually escalated military weaponry. The Soviet Union, with its collective control of resources, could not produce military weapons (or other goods) as efficiently as the United States, forcing the Soviet leadership to use a greater share of their limited resources to keep up the “weapons race.” This constantly reduced the resources and therefore the goods and SERVICES available for Soviet citizens, eventually leading to the unrest that toppled the government. One of the major criticisms of socialism is that it does not provide incentives to be efficient or innovative. Capitalism, with private control of resources and PROFIT incentives, provides greater incentives to be productive. Most socialist economies (as of 2002, Cuba, North Korea, and to a lesser degree China) are not leaders in economic output and growth, but critics of capitalism argue that it operates on a system of fear—i.e., if one is not productive, continually replacing technology, updating skills, and responding to threats from competitors, one will be replaced and go hungry. Many people feel that socialism, with collective control and allocation of resources for the collective benefit of the group, works well for family economic decision making.
See also COMPETITION.