Compare and Contrast Anarchism and Socialism

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KINGSTON UNIVERSITY LONDON NAME: ASHEREEN JESSY KANESAN ESSAY QUESTION: COMPARE AND CONTRAST ANARCHISM AND SOCIALISM An ideology is a compilation of notions. Usually each ideology has unique notions on what it finds to be the best form of government and economic system. In this essay, two ideologies will be looked at, and this essay will explore their differences and similarities. These ideologies are anarchism and socialism. To analyze the similarities and differences of Socialism and Anarchism, we will look at four different aspects of these ideologies – their economic systems, type of government, approach to personal property and understanding of freedom and religion. Socialism took shape as a political belief in the early nineteenth century, as it developed as a reaction against the emergence of industrial capitalism. Socialism in its early forms tended to have fundamentalist, utopian and revolutionary character. Their goals was to abolish a capitalist economy based on market exchange, and replace it with a qualitatively different socialist society, usually to be constructed on the principle of common ownership. Anarchism on the other hand was powerful in countries like Spain, France, Russia, and Mexico in the early twentieth century. The main principle behind anarchism is the belief that political authority in all its forms, and especially in the form of the state is both evil and unnecessary. The literal meaning of anarchy is ‘without rule.’ The type of economy socialism believes in is where the people own and manage the resources of the society, whereas anarchism believes that people should govern themselves and therefore are free to group themselves to produce wealth. Both socialist and anarchists believed in equality for all individuals to attain general wellbeing of each individual, however the tackle of realizing the
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