Socialism and Communism are similar because they both oppose Capitalism. Socialism and Communism address the people’s needs and Capitalism is about money and profit. Shubert & Goldstein (2012) write that Karl Marx believed that the working class (or bourgeoisie) were attempting to “overthrow the aristocracy” which would lead to revolutions. Socialism developed from there, and according to Cam & Kayaoglu (2015), Socialism represents the changing of private property into common property shared among a “whole society” (p. 388). They go on to say that this was the initial stage of Communism but “equality and justice cannot be produced” because production by minority groups cannot be controlled since there is no private property. Communism was a better solution, according to Marx, because people would be given a certain amount of product and not the fruits of their labor. Once Communism rids the Capitalist views that Socialism was built upon, there will be more freedom because there will no longer be classes. The rising of these two groups came about during the Labor Movement. Many unions were being formed, some “affiliated with Socialist political parties” and others who believed in Syndicalism, which is the ideology that revolution can be obtained by the union’s direct action (Shubert & Goldstein, 2012). The strikes that followed were mainly about pay rates and conditions of work environments. The strikes affected the European Societies by creating violence that led to governmental interception. I believe that the Europeans were drawn to Socialism and Communism because after the French Revolution, there was much more push for freedoms and the Europeans thought that it was better to be affiliated with those political parties over Capitalism. Some say that Socialism and Communism did not do much to impact World War I, but I beg to differ. The “Shot heard around the world” was literally the plan of a Bosnian Socialist Party. Communism played a role towards the end of the war because Lenin, deemed a “Russian Dictator” by some, had entered into a treaty with Germany.

References

Çam, T., & Kayaoğlu, M. (2015). Marx’s distinction between socialism and communism. International Journal of Human Sciences, 12(1), 385-391. doi: 10.14687/ijhs.v12i1.3152

Shubert, A. & Goldstein, R.J. (2012). Twentieth-century Europe [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/