Tensions In Capitalism Vs Communism

Tensions in Capitalism vs Communism

Tension is the typically the underlying causes of wars. The Cold War in fact had the underlying tensions of fundamental disagreements on how to govern a country and seeing if a communist or capitalist society would create a better standard of living. While these are two broad tensions, they created a war of ideas.
Every war starts with two ideas because two sides cannot or will not agree on one, however sometimes those one or two ideas stir into an evolution of ideas thus creating bigger issues. For example, Benjamin Disraeli wrote Sybil which warned readers about an excess amount of capitalism, whereas someone like Karl Marx who saw communism as a science and as a faith. Karl Marx, wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, because of this Marx is credited with the idea of communism. However, Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev are credited with leading a communist society based upon Marx’s philosophy. Lenin went on to develop his own case. Since Lenin was an extension of Marx, he thought

that capitalists caused inequality and war, and did not in fact think that justice or peace would occur until capitalists were defeated. This lead to Lenin’s regime of “an authoritarian revolution that would liberate those from the bottom by commanding them from the top”. This form of regime led to the argument, would a communist or a capitalist society form a better living standard for the people?
Jobs, housing, clothing, education, healthcare and access to food are all essential to a good standard of living.

Central to the conflicts during the Cold War was the idea that one system of government was more focused on the masses by providing a “better” standard of living. Communism focused on providing the working class more power and focused on equality. “Marxism brought hope to the poor, fear to the rich, and left governments somewhere in between” (Gaddis 86), this essentially explains how communism ran. On the other hand, Capitalism focused on supporting a higher standard of living because people have the freedom to excel and gain wealth. Karl Marx gave the theory of inequality of capitalism. However, inequality will not provide a good standard of living for all people, while communism tries to put everyone on an equal field. The people who follow a communist society were much better off because of how they were all treated

equally.
As a final point, between the United States of America and the Soviet Union was how to govern their respective countries, “the issue at stake was almost that of human survival: how best to organize human society” (Gaddis 84) since there are two sides to each argument, Soviet Union wanted to spread communism, and the United States wanted to spread capitalism. Economy was a big part in governing their countries, “by 1971, the Soviet Union’s economy and those of its East European satellites were stagnating” (Gaddis 84) , however with the “New Deal” taking place in the United States, there was an expansion of government “the power of government had expanded dramatically under F.D.R., but the future of markets, spontaneity, and even in the eyes of his critics- freedom itself was much less clear” (Gaddis 91), there was clear differences between the two countries. Likewise, the Soviet Union’s growth happened to occur in the economic area, and the United States’ growth was governmental. Both countries clearly had stronger assets that worked well within themselves.