Socialism 2 Essay, Research Paper

There are many ways that countries are run. Obviously, most are run by officials–but what kind of system do they govern by? Some of the most important systems used today are capitalism, socialism, and communism.

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned. Business organizations produce goods for a market guided by the forces of supply and demand. Capitalism requires a financial system that enables business firms to borrow large sums of money, or capital, to maintain and expand production. Underlying capitalism is the presumption that private enterprise is the most efficient way to organize economic activity. Freedom, under capitalism, has only one meaning: freedom form the initiation of force by others. Politically, the root political cause of capitalism is freedom

The marketplace is the center of the capitalist system. It determines what will be produced, who will produce it, and how the rewards of the economic process will be distributed. From a political standpoint, the market system has two distinct advantages over other ways of organizing the economy: (a) no person or combination of persons can control the marketplace, which means that power cannot be monopolized by a certain party or a special interest group; (b) the market system tends to reward efficiency with profits and to punish inefficiency with losses. Economists often speak of capitalism as a

free-market system ruled by competition. But capitalism in this ideal sense cannot be found anywhere in the world. The economic systems operating in Western countries today are mixtures of free competition and governmental control.

Socialism is a form of government where the right to property is vested in the government. The term socialism is commonly used to refer both to an ideology–a comprehensive set of beliefs or ideas about the nature of human society and its future desirable state–and to a state of society based on that ideology. Socialists have always

claimed to stand above all for the values of equality, social justice, cooperation, progress, and individual freedom and happiness, and they have generally sought to realize these values by the abolition of the private-enterprise economy and its replacement by “public ownership,” a system of social or state control over production and distribution. Methods of transformation advocated by socialists range from popular education through constitutional change to violent revolution.

Communism is a system of governing where the government explicitly eliminates freedom of speech, and makes liberal use of propaganda designed to create allegiance to communism and hatred of other forms of government, especially capitalism. The term

communism is generally applied to the Marxist-Leninist political doctrines that guided the USSR until its disintegration in 1991 and that were shared by governments and political parties in eastern Europe, China, and elsewhere. The term also denotes the centralized political system of China and of the former Soviet Union and its satellite countries in Eastern Europe. This system, associated with collective ownership of the means of production, central economic planning, and rule by a single political party, was discredited almost everywhere outside China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam as a result of its collapse in Europe and the USSR. Communism is a distant cousin of the 19th-century socialism.

Communism is not as much a form of Socialism, as much as it is the next step after Socialism. In a socialist government, there still is a central controlling body overseeing the welfare of the people. In an ideal communist government, the central government is nearly completely dissolved. Communism, generally, is seen as a bad

system because of its dark past, and is very rarely seen in today s world. But if communism were used by non-corrupt leaders who actually knew how to run it correctly, it might be a success. Capitalism, unlike communism, is dependent on private individuals control of the economy, instead of the governments. That is one of the benefits of capitalism; the success or failure comes from the public s determination to stay in control. Socialism is similar to capitalism, but here, the government own the businesses and therefore runs the economy.

Fortunately our leaders chose a good way to run this country–once again putting most of the government, at least somewhat, in the public s hands. After that, it is up to us as to what happens, but this way, the Constitution is followed more closely and the

power is left to the people.