Mr. Lara
Honors Economics Period 2
19 February, 2016
Communism and Socialism
The origin of Communism can be found in 1844, when Karl Marx, a man from Germany who came from Jewish heritage, was introduced to Friedrich Engels. The two believed that capitalism was an evil economic philosophy in which the working-class were exploited by their class-heads (upper-class). In 1848, the two wrote and published a book entitled "The Communist Manifesto", in which they expressed such hatred for capitalism and released their plans for a perfect society (History and Background of Communism, 1). Which entailed private ownership be given up to the government, and that the state worked as a community (Comparing Economic Systems, 1). Where everyone …show more content…
More specifically, how much the government receives. In communism, their essentially no private ownership of any kind, as the people work for each other and the good if the community as a whole, rather then work to benefit themselves as individuals. It also wishes to throw away the class system as a whole and not define the poor from the rich, and just keep them at equal levels. Not quite as severe, socialism is less lenient on closing the gap between the rich and the poor, but rather keep the two on fair playing fields and sharing the wealth of the people with everyone. As opposed to taking away private ownership from individuals, socialism believes more in assisting the lower-classes to keep them equal to the higher-class (I.e. social security). An easy way of looking at it, communism is a more extreme form, of socialism. As socialism involves those in the community giving up some of their wealth to be distributed to level out the social class, while communism requires that everyone give up their individual property and everyone receive the same as everyone else to satisfy their needs. Another key difference between the two involves the projected fall of capitalism. According to the Communist Manifesto, Marx believed that the fall of capitalism would occur by a revolution from the middle-class (or bourgeoisie) after the exploitation they faced at the hands of the upper-class. Rather than believing in this violent demise of capitalism, socialist (as previously discussed) believe more in trying to narrowing the gap built between to social classes, instead of terminating them