By Thor Benson

When one asks if socialism and capitalism can work together they bring a myriad of questions within the larger question. Can it be fair? How do we account for greediness? Long after the Cold War, socialism is still a taboo topic to discuss. Not to be confused with the political system of communism, socialism is an economic philosophy, which has rarely, if ever, been purely implemented.

As Noam Chomsky explains in “The Soviet Union Versus Socialism” (1986), the shining example of why Socialism does not work, the U.S.S.R., was never truly Socialist at all. The leaders of the Soviet Union did claim socialism as an ideal of their political regime, but what was actually implemented was more of a “labour army” which was controlled and manipulated almost every step along the way.

Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as: “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”, in other words, a system where ownership gives way to collective control of commerce and property.  In the United States citizens are quite fond of receiving what they personally earned, thus the system has a large opposition.

Capitalism in the U.S. has already incorporated many “social programs, such as food stamps, government subsidized housing, and the ever popular economic stimulus plans. These concepts are meant to aid those who have found their standard of living in our country unlivable. One might believe based on these programs that socialism and capitalism can live in harmony.

This belief is not entirely wrong, aspects of socialist ideals can work in a capitalist system, and they seem to be. On the other hand this leads us to another question, can capitalism work without social programs? The answer seems to be no, as there are no notable examples currently in place. Theoretically, it seems, if a pure capitalist system was arranged in a country the size of the United States that the income gap between rich and poor would increase, and what we now consider “ghettos” could become more reminiscent of third-world living conditions.

It seems pure socialism, and pure capitalism, are not within reach in regards to countries as developed as the United States. For us to become a real socialist economy we would have to convince each and every one of the now famed “1%” to give up their control, and for us to be purely capitalist we risk a revolution far beyond the scope, and level of violence, of the current Occupy movement (which is concentrated and non-violent). Therefore, not only can socialist ideals work with capitalist ideals, but it seems they must.