I have a question for you. If before you were born and had to chose a political party to vote for whilst in the womb, before you knew how your life would develop who would you chose? Well the answer is Socialist as it offers the fairest chance in life.
Socialists advocate state control over the entire economy of a state being given to the government. This means the government have control over the production of all goods and services and can plan there economy. Usually a socialist government is characterised by high taxes to pay for the goods and services it has to provide to its population. “Redistribution of wealth” is another characteristic of Socialism it is usually done by taxing the rich higher than the poor but still providing everyone with the same services regardless of income. Although classic Socialists believe that all goods and services should be provided by the government other Socialists take the view that Socialism and Capitalism can work together.
For a number of people however Capitalism is the best economic system in the world because it encourages the population of a state to privately own a business enterprise to create wealth. The idea being to crate competition between businesses and reward people for hard work based on how much money they can make with minimal contribution to the state. This in theory should create a prosperous and wealthy state.
In a Capitalist state tax’s are usually low this is because the state seeks to provide only bare essentials to the population (such as Armed Forces and police) with almost all goods and services being provided to the population by private businesses. This enables the state to maintain low tax’s as the state has less services to provide to its population. Although pure Capitalism is difficult to achieve as it is problematic to have all services a government has to provide being controlled by private business
The recant global financial crisis has revealed a number of problems with the Capitalist system. For example greed has been a factor in the financial crisis and Capitalisms encouragement of wealth implies an encouragement of greed and there for risk. This leads to people taking risks and over time these risks become more dangerous because as the risk increases so does the prospect of grater wealth along with the prospect of losing money. Arguably it is this that has lead to the financial crisis as everything comes down to risk, in a Socialist society this would not happen in this way as the government plan the economy the emphasis is not on generation of wealth so there for greed and risk are not factors.
Accountability is also an issue in a Capitalist state how do the electorate fix something if they are unhappy, how can anyone hold the bankers who took the risks into account. As they are at the centre of the economy it is fair to assume this is this is there doing although unless they have broke the law nothing can be done to punish them for taking such risks. This problem of Accountability is evident out with the economy for example if one is unhappy about their health care or transport systems they can only write to complain and as long as profits are up the businesses won’t do anything especially if it will cost. In Socialism on the other hand if one had a problem with health care or any state owned business one could complain to ones parliamentary representative and if unhappy with the response vote against that representative at the next election. In capitalism it is much harder to remove the CEO of a company there for accountability is a problem.
Religious and moral groups also have trouble with Capitalism this is because Capitalism encourages materialism and because the poor of society are often driven into poverty. In socialism however the poor are helped though a system of welfare benefits. People form poorer backgrounds well always achieve less than there richer counterparts in a Capitalist state because the wealthy can afford to send their children to better school and afford better universities for them, there for the get a better career in the future than a poorer child based on wealth. In a Socialist state all education is state owed so children are entered into education establishments based on their academic capability and not on their wealth.
Socialism is often compared to or confused with Communism. Such comparison is unfair because Socialism is an economic ideology it does not seek to control society were as communism dose. Another difference is that socialism says that the distribution should take place in accordance to the amount of an individual’s production efforts, while communism says that that goods and services should be distributed among the population according to an individual’s needs. Also Socialists are open to the economy having capitalist elements, were as Communists dismiss this idea.
It is my belief that a Socialist system with Capitalist elements and strict regulatory bodies in place would make the perfect economy if the government of the state would nationalise the correct business (such as banks, utilities, transport ect) and it was accepted on a global scale. I think that Socialism offers the fairest society even though its intention is only to control the economy. Sate control and planning of the economy would make the type of financial crisis we are seeing today highly unlikely, perhaps only caused by a major disaster. It is my hope that the businesses that have been nationalised remain nationalised and that western government’s move to a Socialist ideology.
