Individual Equality
Socialism is a broad term encompassing ideologies that advocate for the socialization of means of production through shared ownership. While socialism is the ideology that aims to solve problems of private ownership, Communism is the means to realize this socialism. More narrowly, it emerged as a Marxist-Leninist concept promoted by Stalinists, seeking an ideal human society through increased technological productivity.
However, its limitations are clear both ideologically and practically. First, there was a fundamental lack of understanding of human nature in assuming that equality alone would lead to an ideal society. In reality, socialist systems attempting to realize these ideals, led by the Soviet Union, all collapsed catastrophically. Humans are inherently selfish creatures with desires to excel over others, making the foundational assumptions of socialism fundamentally flawed.
The concept originated from Jean Jacques Rousseau’s misguided Social Contract Theory, which wrongly blamed society for human evil despite humans being evolutionarily social beings. This ultimately became a demonic concept that claimed countless lives. Furthermore, the Northern European countries that people often cite as examples of socialism are actually capitalist systems with enhanced wealth distribution, not socialist at all. Individual equality inevitably infringes upon individual freedoms, and these concepts cannot coexist completely.
Humans are inherently driven by desire, selfishness, and the ambition to excel over others - this must be understood when designing social structures. This very nature has been a driving force behind human progress. Capitalism, through its various iterations from Nordic models to American approaches, has consistently created stable societies and remains a promising system for the future.