Member-only story
Capitalism, socialism and communism
If asked, most people would likely declare that they know fairly well what the terms in the title mean. In the heat of the election year political debates, these terms are often used without much thought about their meaning. It happened to me that my opinion was perceived by different people as me advocating for all three of these political concepts. It appears that some people see all the evils in one of these three political concepts, and every time when they disagree with some political view, they label it as capitalistic, socialistic or communist — depending on their bias.
A historic view
Capitalism as a political system gradually has grown up in Europe since medieval times but it was about the middle of the 19th century when many people realized that, despite all of the technological progress, they could not accept the injustices of the social order associated with it. The term “capitalism” was a natural for naming a system where capital and the people enriched by it — capitalists — flourished. “The Communist Manifesto,” published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is considered the pivotal moment in people starting to use the terms “capitalism,” “socialism” and “communism” as descriptions of diverse political concepts. One should note that from the start, capitalism, as the existing political system, had a bad reputation, and socialism and communism as ideas of a better future were perceived as noble.
