As the guns of the Second World War went silent,
two superpowers emerged as opposing poles
of political thinking.
On one side was the President of the United
States, Harry S. Truman, a believer in liberalism,
democracy and capitalist free enterprise.
On the other side, in Moscow was the Soviet
Premier, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.
He was a believer in communism, self-sufficiency
and material guarantees for his country’s
citizens.
Two leaders with conflicting ideas for what
the world needed and neither had room for
the other.
The ideologies acted as THE driving force
of the entire Cold War.
Two powers with incompatible worldviews, but
each backed up their views with apocalyptic
amounts of nuclear weapons.
Today, we’re going to talk about just how
different these worldviews were.
Let’s begin with what is likely the most
obvious difference...economics.
No really...don’t leave….it’s interesting...I
promise.
The United States and the Soviet Union had
completely differing concepts of what made
an economy both fair and just.
Each side also happened to see the other’s
chosen mode of economics as an affront to
human rights and freedom.
Let’s begin with the United States and it
will not likely come as a surprise to most
if it was said the leadership of the United
States believes in capitalism.
But what does capitalism actually mean?
The main concept behind it is that the main
things that drive the economy, factories,
farms, business all belong to private individuals,
called capitalists.
A capitalist is someone who uses their own
money to invest into a business in the hopes
of turning a profit.
For work that they cannot do themselves, or
do not want to do, employees are hired and
paid a wage for that work.
For somebody who believes in capitalism, they
would agree that this is the ideal free society.
It gives everyone the freedom to try new ideas
and to compete to see which ones work the
best but also creates competition which ensures
prices stay low.
The critique of capitalism however is that
it can create social and economic inequality
and damage the environment.
It also creates cycles of prosperity and recession
and those who work wage jobs do not make enough
money to enjoy the prosperous times but still
suffer the negative consequences of those
depressions.
The Soviet Union tried to run a socialist
economy, where the things that drive the economy,
factories, farms, businesses all belong to
everyone.
They valued strong cooperation over competition.
The Soviets planned every function of the
economy through the government.
Supporters of this type of system would point
out that there was zero unemployment in the
Soviet Union.
The system also allowed for the economy to
be focused on significant tasks, which was
great when you needed to do something large,
like defeat Nazi Germany or send people into
space.
However, a critic of the system would point
out that what is being presented as collective
ownership by the people is actually government
ownership.
With only a single controller, mismanagement
could, and did, lead to crippling shortages
and even mass starvation.
Another stark difference between the ideologies
of the USA and the USSR was what it meant
to have representation.
The United States has held a particular view
of what it means to represent and to be represented.
This is a view that began with the American
Revolution and persisted, albeit in an altered
form, during the Cold War.
Although George Washington might not have
approved, the USA adopted two competing political
parties quite early on.
Although sometimes there has been more than
two parties, for the most part, the interests
of the American voter has needed to fit into
one of two political parties.
This is central to the US notion of what makes
a democracy; there needs to be at least two
parties.
The Soviet Union had a different concept of
democracy.
It might surprise you, but elections were
held in the USSR.
There just happened to be only one party.
Although this might strike you as a pointless
exercise, it wasn’t necessarily!
There can be different ideas and different
choices in an election, within the same political
party.
However, other political parties were outlawed
until the VERY end of the Soviet Union.
The Soviets believed in the concept put down
by Karl Marx of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Marxist belief held that political parties
each represented different classes of people.
It follows logically then, that if there are
no more classes, there should not be political
parties either.
Of course, at the beginning of the Cold War,
Soviet leadership had the extra layer that
was Joseph Stalin.
He was, even compared to other Soviet leaders,
extremely authoritarian.
His ideas of democracy were...nonexistent.
However, once you move forward in time, past
the Stalinist era, many Soviet leaders at
least attempted to undo the damage caused
by Stalin’s authoritarian regime.
So, lets now combine some of these ideas of
economic direction and political representation.
The Soviet Union and the USA had different
concepts of what an ideal trade relationship
to the rest of the world should look like.
The difference can be boiled down to the disparity
in the relative strength of each empire.
Keep in mind, the Cold War was never a fair
fight; The US was always better off compared
to the Soviet Union but nonetheless, they
too different approaches to trade.
The United States believed in so-called ‘free
markets’.
The liberal worldview believes that free markets
make free people and the best way to spread
freedom is to open trade barriers wherever
they exist.
This meant encouraging less government intervention
in the market, with lower trade tariffs elsewhere.
A cynic would point out that this leaves countries
vulnerable as the influence of a country with
a larger production capacity and large corporations,
just like the United States, could easily
expand their influence there.
This could allow these corporations to more
or less take control of that countries resources.
The USSR’s idea of trade was largely derived
from their feeling of being on the defensive
throughout the Cold War.
While this viewpoint is certainly at odds
with the Western notion that the Soviet Union
wanted to expand and take over the world,
the idea of of communist vanguard to overthrow
global capitalism was largely dead in the
wake of the second world war.
Stalin was highly paranoid and saw the US
and other capitalist countries as being out
to tear down the Soviet Union.
But we need to ask ourselves, is it still
paranoia if those anxieties are true?
This idea of a hostile world led the Soviets
to practice autarky, a dedication to economic
self-sufficiency.
They needed to make sure that the Soviet government
could still function even in the face of economic
sanctions or even invasion.
Autarky is still practised in the few remaining
communist countries today.
In Cuba for example, cars originally built
in the 1950s are still in use, having been
repaired, rerepaired and rererepaired over
the decades.
Finally, and for many, most importantly, the
largest differences between the USSR and the
USa was regarding the concept of what rights
were.
What did the government owe to and vow to
protect for its citizens?
The United States, as a liberal country, sees
rights as freedoms.
Even today, you may still hear terms like
‘equality of opportunity’, where everybody
has an equal chance to succeed despite circumstances
at birth.
That expression, ‘Equality of Opportunity’
likely speak more to the liberal idea of rights
than any other phrase.
The American concept of rights is centered
around choices, personal liberties and the
ability to build a life as each person sees
fit.
It also makes no promises or guarantees of
success or even that basic needs will be met
but with hard work, anything can be achieved
by anyone.
These are noble ideas, steeped in the concepts
of equality and opportunity.
Now consider that at the end of the Second
World War, the United States was a country
that still practised racial segregation and
even had its own Empire, not that it would
actually call it that.
As the Cold War progressed, the US would go
to bat in defence of colonizers over the colonized.
The ideals of the United States were noble
in spirit but somewhat tarnished in practice.
The Soviet Union took a different approach
to rights.
The Soviets looked at the United States, with
their emphasis on freedom, choice and opportunity
as bourgeois attempts to convince themselves
of their own freedom while supporting a system
based on inequality.
There is an old saying that the Americans
were scientists while the Soviets were engineers
and we can apply this analogy to this situation.
The Americans were idealists, working with
high concepts and theories.
The Soviets on the other hand focused on what
worked and was practical.
When applied to ‘rights’, the Soviets
focused on such tangible items as food, shelter,
and jobs.
Of course, how they provided these things
to their citizens varied, depending on the
time frame and the state of the economy but
in the end, the role of the government was
to secure for the Soviet citizen a home, a
job and even their next meal.
It is worth noting that the Soviet view of
equality smacked of its own hypocrisy when
one compares the differences in life between
the regular Soviet citizen and the Soviet
leadership.
The Americans saw capitalism and liberalism
as the only way to end tyranny around the
globe.
The Soviets, in juxtaposition to this, saw
Communism as necessary to liberate humanity;
the final revolution to save mankind.
Two entirely irreconcilable ideas.
Both ideas had passionate believers, both
ideas had passionate believers with access
to enough weapons to wipe out humanity several
times over.
This rivalry could not end with a truce but
was seen as an intense fight to the death
on every front.
The discussion of the ideologies will continue
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