Socialism is a type of economy where the government resources are allocated equally amongst

the people. In this system, free market economy is not followed unlike capitalism and there is a
major government intervention in terms of production, allocation etc.

The system of socialism has roots that connect to ancient times. In ancient Greek era, Philosopher Plato
reflected upon a system where the burdens, wants and the needs of a society are “collectively
managed”. However, in the modern era, communism emerged in the beginning of 19 th century. This
system was basically introduced as a response to tackle the industrial revolution that was getting
empowerment following the sequence of events such as invention of the steam engine that is
considered a major milestone in the history of industrial revolution. This caused some major social and
economic changes.

The reason why influential figures felt the need for introducing this system was due to the fact that
because of industrial revolution, the factory owners were greatly benefitting from it in terms of getting
more and more wealthy. In contrary, the working class was getting exposed to inhumane conditions
such as long working hours, unfairly low wages, and toxic work environment. Moreover, as the factory
owners kept on getting richer, the workers and labors grew poorer and poorer. This led to a condition of
an extreme unfair distribution of wealth that was marked by an insanely huge amount of surplus on one
end and a huge deficit on the other. This social imbalance in the society led to the early socialists such
as Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen to think, reflect and ultimately
present their own models with an aim to control the imbalance in the society and create an
environment of a controlled system that has concerns for well-being of every class of the
society. Henri de Saint-Simon advocated for a system under which all the production and
distribution is controlled by the state. His stance was that only the state authorities can take
care of all the society’s members. Charles Fourier and Robert Owen however proposed systems
that focused on relatively small communities rather than a centralized state system.

When talking about the history of socialism, a very prominent name is not to be missed that is
of Karl Marx. Karl was a German economist, philosopher and a politician and is also regarded as
one of the most influential socialist thinker in history. Karl Marx along with Friedrich Engels,
who was also a German philosopher, in 1848 published a document known as “The Communist
Manifesto”. In this document, there was an entire chapter that aimed on criticizing the earlier
models introduced to promote socialism. Those models were referred to as unrealistic
“utopian” dreams.

Marx was of the view that the true socialism can be achieved after a revolution that enables the
worker class to be on the top. This would lead to elimination in the class system for good. The
influence of Marx continued to grow even after his death.

Following this timeline, came the Russian Revolution in the 20th century, where democracy and
communism came forward as two dominating socialist movements that spread throughout the
world. After the World War II ended, communism rose across Eastern Europe. However, after
the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, communism also dissolved.

While talking about socialism, it was observed that in the United States, socialism never
emerged as it did in Europe. However, some politicians have accepted a system known as
democratic socialism.

The evolution of socialism is indeed complicated, however, some theories about socialism
suggest that it’s a blend of capitalism and communism but it’s more inclined towards
capitalism. However, there lies a significant difference between socialism and communism in
terms of the fact that under communism, everything including the property, economic
resources etc. is owned and controlled by the state. But under socialism, each citizen is entitled
to equal sharing of the government resources. This system is focused towards the welfare of
the people in terms of resource allocation.

This system has faced a lot of criticism as well. The biggest criticism on this system is that in a
society, it is not necessary to distribute all the resources equally as not every individual is equal
in terms of needs and wants. A very common example of this is the comparison between a man
who works for 12 hours a day and another man who works for only 4. But both of them will be
entitled to equal resources. This increases lethargy and people not willing to work. This is why
the system of socialism was abolished.