The birth of socialism
The term socialism was first coined by the very famous philosopher, Karl Marx. In his book “The Communist Manifesto” Karl Marx described socialism as a transition period from capitalism to communism, he envisioned a revolution where the laborers would overthrow the so-called “ruling class”. He believed once the revolution was over a new system would be implemented he called it socialism. Socialism, as defined by the Merriam Webster, is any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. He believes socialism would be the system that would ultimately lead to communism. His utopia was not so utopian in practice.
Scandinavian countries are not socialist countries
While you may hear many people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez compare their socialist policies to that of Scandinavian countries and claiming their success was because of their socialist policies. However, are these Scandinavian countries really socialist countries? The short answer is no, but let's dive into that claim a bit further. To reiterate, socialism is any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods as defined by the Merriam Dictionary. Meaning, for a country to be socialistic, all businesses and private property have to be owned by the collective (government). So by definition Scandinavian country don’t fit into the what socialism is, especially considering 90 percent of all companies and resources are privately owned with a minority of it being stated. Not only that those Scandinavian countries are usually ranked pretty high in terms of economic freedom. In fact, Switzerland ranks 4th in the Economic Freedom of the World Index, while Denmark ranks 12th, Iceland ranks 11th, and so on.
The problem with socialism
While Karl Marx’s vision of socialism might seem like a utopia to the blind eye there were some contradictions and problems that lied with it from a practical perspective and a theoretical perspective. From a theoretical point of view how would such a system allocate its wealth and which type of government would such a system revolve under. Also, how would such a system be able to prevent an uprise of a dictatorship since under socialism most of the power is put into the collective, not the individual? And from a practical point of view every country that socialism has been implemented in failed. Ex: Venezuela, Cuba, and a good bit of South America. Not only that, socialism was supposed to fix (wealth disparity) but under a structure that was kine on giving a certain group of people power (referring to the government) it would be inevitable that the people who have ties with the government and the people who are part of the government would be the people who benefited the most. This is ironic seeing as Karl Marx visioned his utopia as one in which everyone is equal in terms of wealth.
Conclusion
While some like Bernie Sanders like to change the meaning of socialism and distort the fact, socialism as an economic system has a history of failure and to adopt such a system that has but many through misery are pure evil.
Countries that are actually socialist
- Venezuela - While Venezuela was doing rather well in the past because of the amount of oil it has, it is now in a slump. Due to the socialist policies implemented by their "leaders".
- Cuba - Just like Venezuela everything is publicized and just like Venezuela, it has failed miserably. On average a person working in Cuba earns just around 50$ a month. This is a great example of what socialism can do for your country. While this list may seem short there a slew of South American countries that have failed due to their socialist policies.
Socialism, in general, has a record failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
— Thomas Sowell
Sources:
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/21/cuba-hikes-salaries-for-doctors-nurses-to-as-much-as-67-month.html
https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking