Communism Vs. Socialism

Sometimes when people think of the word "Socialist," they almost immediately think of the Soviet Union, socialist France, or Bernie Sanders. While some of these might identify as socialist, others might not. The word holds too much of a heavy connotation to be used randomly. Rather, specifically, or with understanding.

The Socialist Party of the U.S, defines socialism as an ideology that works towards "a radical democracy that places people's lives under their own control - a non-racist, classless, feminist socialist society... where working people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically-controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups." This means that some of the issues they strive

While socialism is already considered radical, communism is just a more radical form of socialism. Communism focuses on politics while socialism focuses on the economy. Socialism and communism both strive for a form of equality(http://www.diffen.com/difference/Communism_vs_Socialism), but communism argues that all people are the same, therefor, it doesn't matter how much work you put into society, society will still keep you equal. Communism completely relies on the idea that as a sacrifice, people will work as hard as society needs them to. This adds to the defense for the ideological opposite of socialism: Capitalism.

Capitalism understands that not everyone works as hard. However this doesn't mean all forms of socialism are flawed or skewed, or that capitalism is better than socialism. Socialism comes in many forms such as Democratic Socialism, Christian Socialism, and Market Socialism.

Socialism debate. While capitalists argue that socialism leads to lower production rates, socialists argue that this is only a sacrifice for the greater good. With that said, most governments aren't willing to sacrifice industry for the sake of egalitarianism. One of the most socialist countries, Norway, is in fact, the most developed country (http://listovative.com/top-15-most-highly-developed-countries-in-the-world/), the highest rate of freedom of the press (https://index.rsf.org/#!/),and has one of the highest GDPs (http://knoema.com/nwnfkne/world-gdp-ranking-2015-data-and-charts). Other socialist countries like Sweden and Denmark rank highly in these programs as well. So this begs us to ask the question, is socialism the better policy?

With democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, taking millennial votes by storm, this appears to be where the world is heading. Is it time we all accepted it, or should capitalists fight back? Some countries that are communist or socialist, also struggle with political freedoms. Laos, which is a communist country, ranks #171, out of 180, in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index. North Korea, which claims communist and socialist ideology, ranks #179 (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933874.html). So where does socialism