IDEOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVES COMMUNISM DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM The middle of the twentieth century is characterized by competing economic ideologies and systems. Selections on capitalism are not included because the basic economics course itself constitutes an examination of this system. Space limitations and the importance of communism and democratic socialism, as current alternatives to capitalism, account for the restriction of this Part's selections to items dealing with those systems.
Russia espouses the communist ideology. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, intellectual parents of that ideology, outlined in The Communist Manifesto the historical forces which they believed would lead to the ultimate collapse of capitalism and its replacement by communism.
The divergence between the ideology and practice of communism is highlighted in several selections. Harrison E. Salisbury, Pulitzer Prize winner for articles based on his six years' experience as Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, evaluates "The Red Revolution After Forty Years." Milovan Djilas, former Vice President of Yugoslavia who was imprisoned for his critical ideas, reveals how a new and exploiting class develops in the allegedly classless communist society. Leszek Kolakowski, Polish intellectual, in a satirical article entitled "What is Socialism?," exposes the totalitarian and tyrannical nature of the Soviet brand of socialism.
English socialism, which has generally been chary of revolutionary techniques, has been undergoing considerable soul searching in recent years. Their brand of democratic socialism, which through the Labour Party accomplished the nationalization of a number of basic industries and the creation of a Welfare State, appears to have lost much of its original zeal. This situation, as seen by leading English socialists, is reviewed in Paul T. Homan's "Socialist Thought in Great Britain."