Socialism and Karl Marx

The socialists, believing everyone is equal, saw that the proletariat was being treated poorly and knew that would have to change. The cruel working conditions and little civil rights made a gap that no single man could cross without help. Many believed that socialism was the key. Socialism grew from the problems of the Industrial Revolution. The relationship of the Revolution to socialism was that of a problem to a solution, respectively. If not for the Industrial Revolution, the problems between the classes would never have grown so apparent. Then again, without the Industrial Revolution the world would be stuck in the past.

Socialism along with many other ideologies has a vast number of different strands and with a couple of different roads to achieving what is fundamentally socialism. Socialism being the ideology that utilises collectivisation to bring people together and to unite people by their common humanity. The two most obvious roads of socialism would be that of revolutionary socialism and also that of evolutionary socialism. This are taken on by two different types of socialists, revisionist socialists and fundamentalist socialists. Revolutionary socialism is the belief that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolution against the current political system. To them

Karl Marx was born in Prussia in 1818. Later in his life he became a newspaper editor and his writings ended up getting him expelled by the Prussian authorities for its radicalism and atheism (Perry 195). He then met Fredrich Engels and together they produced The Communist Manifesto in 1848, for the Communist League. This piece of writing basically laid out Marx’s theory of history in short form (Coffin 623). The Communist Manifesto is mainly revolved around how society was split up into two sides, the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. I do believe that the ideas of the Communist Manifesto did indeed look educated on paper but due to the lessons of history communism is doomed to fail in the past, present, and future. Communism did not prevail in many different countries, two of them being Berlin and the Soviet Union.

Socialism is the underlying motivation behind communist movements in history. Socialists believe that it is unjust for a small amount of people to own the biggest portion of the wealth in society. This idea lead to the concept of a communist society, in which the existence of private property is eliminated in favor of government-owned property being shared among all it’s people. The government would provide jobs and care for all people equally. The idea was that through communism, there would be no social classes, thus eliminating alienation for any of the people in the society.

Throughout Europe, people of all different classes and moralities had different views of socialism and how it should be achieved/expressed throughout time in that area. An economic and political system based on collective or state ownership of the means of production and distribution is known as socialism. Socialism branched from Republicanism in the early 19th century, because people came to disapprove unequal distribution of wealth and goods. Socialists wanted equal rights for all, but they were opposed to upper class people who received more income for less work with little impact on society. A socialist economic system is the representation of attempting to eliminate economic inequalities and exploitation. Goals of this would be ending

“From each according to ability, to each according to his contribution”, is socialism’s slogan. Socialism is a social and economic system characterized by common ownership, democratic control, and production for use only. Common ownership means that the resources of the world are owned by everyone thus, nobody can take control of resources beyond their personal belongings. The concept of democratic control means that everybody in a society has the right to participate in the social decisions that affect them. Production under socialism is directly and entirely for use. For example, everyone receives their share of production based on how much they have contributed. After a percent of their share is deducted to go to the common good, workers receive their share of production. Examples of common good is transportation and education, but common good is also used to help those who cannot directly play a part in production like elderly people or children. Socialism works under the assumption that everyone is willing to

It is the economic system used by a government that regulates only certain businesses for the welfare of the citizens. The government normally only regulates housing, education, food, and medical issues. Since that is all the government regulates, private citizens are allowed to own businesses. However, the income of these businesses is controlled thru taxes. The strength of socialism is that the government has more control over businesses and can regulate what happens in them. The weakness is that people interested in owning a business in the area of housing, education, food, or medical issues cannot. All the three economic systems are different in unique ways.

However, believers in socialism would completely disagree with this ideal. Socialism is the economic system in which the workers, instead of a rich minority of entrepreneurs, own all industry. Workers receive the full fruits of their labors instead of being given miniscule compensation for backbreaking labor. Since the people are paid well for their work, work becomes a cooperative entity where people come to rely on one another and people actually are more inclined to do their fair share to help the advancement of society as a whole.

Revolutionary socialist Karl Marx believed that the economic calculation problem should be solved adopting a communist approach; he expressed his ideas in his most notable work “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848. Marx believed that capitalism should be replaced by socialism and eventually communism and it should be done through abolishing markets, prices and private property. To understand Marx’s ideas it is important to define capitalism socialism and communism. Capitalism can be defined as ‘an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state’. On the other hand socialism can be defined as ‘a political and economic theory of social organization, which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole’.

Socialism is defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production. Basically, the government is in control of all business in the country that adopts it as an economic strategy, in our case, The United States of America. Now when we dissect this idea of socialism we find that there are to thought processes behind it. Some truly believe that socialism could truly be the answer to the problems of our nation, both economically and morally. These people try to push socialist policies in hopes of helping the nation and they are doing so with the purest of intentions. However, there are also the people who completely understand what socialism leads to, and want nothing more than to gain while others

The redistribution of wealth is to create a society where there are no millionaires while poverty stricken families go hungry in the street. Along the same lines, higher minimum wages and strong employee unions help to create a more equal nation, where even lower income workers make a living wage. Although the idea of a society where everyone lives in an equal brotherhood has been around for a very long time (Fourier, Owen, Simon) the birth of socialism has been accredited to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848. It is important to note that socialism and communism are two different things, but Marx and Engels used the two terms interchangeably.

As mentions before socialism is the doctrine that espouses public ownership or control of a major means of production. It aims to achieve an equitable and efficient distribution of social goods and greater economic planning then exist under capitalism. Although the central concerns of socialism appears to be economic its ramifications extend to the moral, social and political realms, in fact together with nationalism, it is the leading ideological and political movement of the 20th century.

Socialism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation.

Accordingly, one idea or fact that is often raised to differentiate socialism from communism is that socialism in general is the political movement that refers to an economic system in that they believe that the state should be in charge of all important producing industries thus taking hold of the control of free market in order to promote economic parity and egalitarianism. Theoretically, socialism seeks to distribute wealth equally among its citizens in a way that the rich don’t take

Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto states, “The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy” (1888:32). Marx predicted that once proletariats had seized power, the state would abolish capitalism through collective ownership, taking economic control away from the free market and subsequently liberating society from alienation and oppression. This would give rise to a socialist society of equality, ultimately leading to communism. This essay discusses the strengths and limitations of democratic socialism in achieving Marxist socialism. In the UK democratic socialism has bought about