Before arriving in the United States, I expected the political debate to be
leaning towards the right spectrum of political ideology. In my country,
everybody considers the United States the example of a successful
democratic state and the ensign of capitalism. Some of these assumptions
were to be proven wrong once I started to observe the political debate more
closely and discussed current affairs with fellow students at the
University of Tennessee. I then realized the political debate was still
about socialism against capitalism. With the demise of the Soviet Union,
many countries are reversing their socialist policies because they were
proven to be failures. Since the prosperity this country enjoys is mainly
due to the combination of democracy and free markets, I could not help to
wonder at this phenomenon. I could not believe a major overhaul of the
health care system was being sponsored by the democratic party and students
sent letters to this newspaper praising the virtues and accomplishments of
socialism.

In order to understand what socialism stands for, we must divide the
ideology in two parts. First, we must understand the theory that backs its
ideology, and, secondly, we should see the way its ideology could be
applied into reality according to its supporters.

The father of socialism is Karl Marx, who wrote The Communist
Manifesto and Das Kapital, introducing his ideology regarding
capitalism. These books were written in the mid 1800s when
industrialization was starting in many European countries. He said it was
in the best interest of the owners of the big companies to oppress workers.
The oligopolies are more interested in making profits than in the welfare
of the proletariat (oppressed workers.) Thus, the government should be
responsible for the injustices that the workers suffer. Equality of result
is an inalienable right we all should have. Moreover, cooperation, instead
of competition, should be encouraged by the government.

This philosophy is still fashionable today, where some politicians still
play the card of politics of confrontation, stating that the interests of
big businesses confront the interest of the poor. Government is supposed to
provide welfare to its citizens by securing unemployment benefits, health
care, minimum wage and various entitlements. Many groups of society are
victims which the government should take care of. Does all this sound
familiar to you? We are exposed to this philosophy daily in our lives, when
we read the newspaper, watch television or discuss with our friends. Some
of these ideas are so widely circulated that we take them as truths without
further knowledge. If we only inform ourselves about what is going on in
the rest of the world, several ideas we receive from the media would be
rethought.

Equality of result is one of the milestones of socialism. The fact we have
equal rights under the law does not mean we are all entitled to the similar
material results as everybody else. A much more intelligent way to promote
equality between citizens of a country is to provide equality of
opportunity to its citizens. For instance, having the opportunity to attend
a university is an example of equality of opportunity. Equality of result
was applied in Russia, where no matter what your capabilities were, you
would always receive the same wage as any other person employed in the same
job as you, even if you were much more efficient than anybody else in the
workplace. Instead of raising your salary whenever you made a superb
accomplishment, the government would give you a moral recompense such as a
medal. The consequence of these policies was a declining productivity of
the industries which in turn lowered the standards of life.

The modern version of the class struggle is the belief that the interests
of big businesses are dissimilar to the ones of the workers. Many
politicians play that card constantly, referring to it as an unquestionable
truth. Corporations, they say, care more about their profits than the
wellbeing of their workers. Yet, the economic development industrialized
countries attained would not have been possible without big businesses.
Let's look into the example of Sweden which a lot of people praise as a
successful socialist country. Sweden's private sector is suffering a crisis
because entrepreneurship of its citizens is not being encouraged by the
policies of its government. Nowadays it is more beneficial for people to
work in the government sector than in the private sector. Some people even
pay around 65 percent of their salaries to the government, causing people
not to bother being innovative and developing new products since the
majority of their profits would end up in the coffers of the government. I
should not deny that Swedish citizens receive their benefits such as free
tuition in college and free health care. Yet, when one pays taxes, his
freedom of choice is taken away because taxes are mandatory payments to the
government. One has no freedom to choose which type of health care one
desires or even if he actually wants health care.

The examples of the rest of the world show us socialist policies were
rarely successful in another countries.The number of countries that
supported socialism in its full form decreased exponentially since the late
'80s when the Berlin Wall fell. What we knew as the "Second World" cannot
be classified that way anymore since those countries reversed their
ill-fated socialist policies. Moreover, nations that applied mild socialist
programs (Sweden, France, Spain) are seeking ways to replace policies (such
as the ones discussed earlier) with ones more similar to the ones applied
in the United States that were proven to be much more successful. It is
fruitless to consider policies that were already proven to be unsuccessful
in many other countries. Many of the problems our societies face can be
resolved by observing other countries that have had already faced the same
problems as we do now and following the examples of successful
solutions.