Fluctuations Between Socialism And Capitalism

Fluctuations between Socialism and Capitalism
Both, socialism and capitalism are the two major political and economical branches that reign almost every country in the world. Since the end of the Second World War, socialist and capitalist countries have been in constant conflicts and wars dividing the world into two blocks creating many controversies and disputes for the control of the world’spolitics. Perhaps the most important conflict involving these two political branches was the Cold War, bringing decades of uncertainty and fear to the entire world.
In order to understand the consequences of the Cold War and how does the historical conflicts between socialism and capitalism intervened in this problem, we need to define some terms. According to Britannica Encyclopedia, Capitalismis defined as: “an economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most of the means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets”. Contrasting with this, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Socialism is defined as: “any of various theories orsystems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved”.Consequently, since the first years of development of these two theories there have been differences between them because of their dissimilar purposes and implementations. In addition, they perfectly represent both poles of the social classes, being capitalism the one for the high class and socialism for the lower classes. “Capitalism and socialism are both types of systems in different societiesthroughout the world that have been successful at times, but also not so fortunate in its success at other times in history” (Free Essays)
Furthermore, it was just a matter of time that all the disagreements among socialists and capitalists were revealed. Without taking into consideration the reactions from capitalist countries, Joseph Stalin declared that all the peaceful coexistence with the capitalistcountries was in the past, and started to raise against the Western countries. In addition we need to add the US refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933. These declarations acted as the explosive to start the never-ending Cold War.
The Cold War started in 1945, during the post World War II, with hostilities among the Soviet Union and the Western countries. However during the pass ofyears many countries added, either to the western block or to the Soviet Union and allies, to this conflict. Countries like China, Cuba, Korea, and many others started to create isolated conflicts, especially with the United States.
Nevertheless, almost every conflict and guerrilla ended up with meaningless agreements or with the break of relationships among countries. In addition, the politiciansstarted to implement actions by their own, without taking into consideration the consequences of these decisions. Thus, the fear of a “Nuclear Winter” on mankind became a part of the life of every citizen in the world. The Cold War was an arms race in which the creation of fear among other countries was the most important purpose in order to have the leading role in this conflict.
Yet, the Cold Warwasn’t a typical war. There weren’t any invasions to other countries, no fighter planes flying over countries dropping bombs, no tanks destroying everything around them, no deployment of missiles. However money was spent developing nuclear weapons, creating new technologies, using propaganda, and two superpowers (USA and the ex-Soviet Union) became enemies like if there was a real war. The...