Session 13 - Communism vs Capitalism

The second half of the 20th century can be identified mainly by the ideological battle between communism and capitalism. This battle took the form of the Cold War, between the two largest proponents of each ideology. Russia as the country communist state in the world, and USA the strongest capitalist country. It is important then to discuss why events happened as they did and how capitalism eventually emerged as the dominant ideology.

"The theory of communism may be summed up in one sentence; abolish all private property". These were the words of Karl Marx. They fundamentally show how communist societies operate. I believe that here lies the problem. The main reason Russia lost to the United States in the Cold War was because it could not come at par with USA's economic power. USSR tried to fight an economic war with USA by spending large sums of money in proxy wars, nuclear weapons and other areas of technology such as satellite projects. Even though for about 20 years the Soviet Union did compete with USA in these regards, it could not sustain such efforts for a long period of time. This is fundamentally because most economic and business operations in the Soviet Union were spearheaded by the state, and as a result were often inefficient.

Moreover, communist states do not promote initiative and seldom reward extra efforts as compared to  their capitalist counter parts. Because it is basic human nature to work harder when given incentives, communist states failed to achieve high levels of efficiency.

Even though Russia was at one point in time one of the strongest states in the world in terms of political power and military, it challenged USA in the one area it lagged behind in, economic power.