The Dual Revolution

The twentieth century was a time filled with conflict and struggle. During this time, the world experienced both of the World Wars, the Great Depression, multiple revolutions, and the Cold War. Many of these events caused trouble for the capitalist way of thinking, and often showed a different way of approaching economic situations. The dual revolution – capitalist-industrial and democratic – was one of the crucial factors in the defining periods of the twentieth century. During the twentieth century, the dual revolution prospered and pushed the world to the growth and standards that exist today. The dual revolution in the twentieth century began with the rise in consumerism and the rise of the United States. Other economic and political

In Cold War-era proxy wars, like in Korea and Vietnam, the countries were unnecessarily subjected to the battle between communism and capitalism. For example, there was no reason as to why the United States should have been involved in Vietnam, and yet, due to the need to contain communism, the United States involved itself. Other countries like Iran, Chile, Guatemala, and the Philippines also suffered from the United States’ involvement as they had elected leaders that were labeled as communist who were overthrown through the powers of the United States; the new leaders were dictators, but sided with capitalism. In these four situations specifically, the people’s right to decide their own government, an idea that the United States was founded on, was ignored in favor of furthering capitalism and containing communism. The issues with capitalism as well as the other aspects of the dual revolution, became very prevalent in the 1930s. The dual revolution was challenged in the 1930s because of the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain as well as due to the Great Depression and subsequently the brief failure of capitalism. Fascism is a part of right-wing totalitarianism in addition to a private system of capitalism. The free-trade ideals that were so heavily wanted by the United States would not have happened under fascism, and the United States would have been left to fend for itself. The rise of fascism, however, came as a result of the Great Depression, which left the United States to fend for