L2+Yeomelakis+Jenna

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, HEALTH AND REHABILITATION LESSON PLAN FORMAT
 * UNIVERSITY OF MAINE AT FARMINGTON

Teacher’s Name:** Ms. Jenna Yeomelakis **Date of Lesson:** #2
 * Grade Level:** Grade 9-Diploma **Topic:** Battle of the Ideologies

__**Objectives**__

 * Student will understand that** the Holocaust's impact was world-wide.
 * Student will know** the definitions of ideology, sphere of influence, Communism, Fascism, Democracy, Free Market, Pacifism, Internationalism, Nationalism, Imperialism, Marxism, Utopianism, Nazism and Socialism.
 * Student will be able to** compare and contrast the conflicting ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust.

__**Maine Learning Results Alignment**__
Maine Learning Results: Social Studies. E. History E1. Historical Knowledge, Concepts, Themes, and Patterns Grade 9- Diploma "Holocaust" Students understand major eras, major enduring themes, and historic influences in the United States and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world. b. Analyze and critique major historical eras, major enduring themes, turning points, events, consequences, and people in the history of the United States and world and the implications for the present and future.


 * Rationale:** My lesson meets the needs of the Maine Learning Results because covering this lesson allows the students to understand that the Holocaust's impact was world-wide. The lesson will give students a knowledge of the major ideologies influencing World War II, the Holocaust, and the modern world. The lesson also provides students the opportunity to uncover how powerful ideologies manipulate cultures, spheres of influence, and international psyche today.

__**Assessment**__
Students will organize class discussion notes into a Venn Diagram so that they will be able to clearly distinguish the differences and similarities of the ideologies. Students will participate in Three-Minute Reviews to allow the learners to first take in the information individually and then have the opportunity to ask any clarifying questions. The Three-Minute Review will also allow the students to check their work with other peers to ensure that they are not missing any required information. Using their Venn Diagrams, students will be placed into groups according to ideologies of their choice. Each group will compile all of the information and resources provided by the teacher into a brochure that advocates their particular ideology. At the end of class, the students will individually fill out a short learning log and pass it into the teacher. The learning logs will provide the teacher with the opportunity to check for student understanding, provide constructive feedback, and to answer any additional questions regarding the numerous ideologies. During the learning process and group activities, I will make myself readily available to students so that they are able to consult with me about their projects and receive constructive feedback before turning in their final product.
 * Formative (Assessment for Learning)**

Blog. Students will compare and contrast the conflicting ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust. After the students have received a lesson in each of the different ideologies and how they affected the culture and psyche of the Holocaust, they will then be given links and outside resources to provide further expansion on the numerous ideologies. Students will be assigned to groups according to the learner's choice of a particular ideology and they will compile all of the information into a brochure that advocates their ideology. The students will present their brochure to the class along with a banner representing their particular ideology. After class presentations, the students will take pictures of their banners and write a blog containing the key information about their ideology taken from their brochures. Students will then write comments about each others' blogs, adding any additional information that they found and contributing their views on the particular ideology. For: Remembering the Holocaust. Product: Blog with pictures and information about their ideologies. The students will hand in a hard copy of a print out of their blog entry.
 * Summative (Assessment of Learning)**

__**Integration**__

 * Technology:** I will use the blogging community for students to create their final product (brochures that advocate their particular ideology and banners representing the ideology). Students will also be using the internet to find additional information about their particular ideology.


 * Other Content Areas:** I will be integrating the aspect of formal writing with the brochures about the numerous ideologies of the Holocaust and World War II. I will also be integrating an artistic aspect into the lesson by allowing the students to create a banner that represents their particular ideology.

__Groupings__
Students will be assigned to groups of four according to their choices of the particular ideology of World War II and the Holocaust. Once in their groups based on differing ideologies, groups will use outside materials and resources provided to them by the teacher and continue researching their topics. There will be a facilitator in the group to ensure that the students are keeping on task. There will also be a recorder and presenter. The recorder in the group will write down all of the gathered information about the ideology into the Venn Diagrams. The presenter in each group will give a brief description of their ideology to the class during the Three-Minute Reviews.

__**Differentiated Instruction**__

 * Strategies**
 * Logical:** Students will research, expand on, and organize the data presented on the numerous ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust.
 * Verbal/Linguistic:** Students will participate in group discussions to elaborate similarities and differences of the numerous ideologies and using this information, students will present their ideology through a class presentation.
 * Visual:** Students will have the opportunity to view the varying banners of each ideology with different symbols, colors, etc.
 * Aural:** Students will listen in on group discussions and peer feedback, as well as having the opportunity to hear the teacher's feedback on their learning logs.
 * Intrapersonal:** Students will organize, expand, analyze and reflect ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust into the Venn Diagrams individually, as well as writing their learning logs and blogs individually.
 * Interpersonal:** After organizing their Venn Diagrams individually, students will participate in Three-minute Reviews where they gain and share different opinions, facts, and perspectives of specific ideologies with their peers.
 * Physical/Body Kinesthetic:** The students will be able to stand up and move around while presenting their ideology to the class during presentations. Students are also able to use markers and other drawing/artistic implements to create their brochures and banners.

I will review students' IEPs, 504s or ELLIDEPs and make the appropriate modifications and accommodations.
 * Modifications/Accommodations**

If students are absent, they are responsible to get the appropriate information from the class wiki. I will have the description of the assignment as well as a number of dates that the absent student can request to meet with me to ask any clarifying questions on the information learned in class. All of the daily notes will be made available on the class wiki as well as any worksheets that were handed out that day. Absent students will have one extra day past the due date to hand in the assignment. If they fail to do so, they will not receive credit for the completed assignment.

Students will work collaboratively to learn about the ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust through internet research and then produce a brochure and a banner. Blog: Students will create a blog entry with information taken from their brochure and banner that covers a particular ideology. Students will compare and contrast the differing ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust, address the still-existing ideologies, and understand how existing ideologies affect the world today. Advanced students will also have the opportunity to post their brochures and banners on the class wiki to stimulate further discussions and provide examples for future students.
 * Extensions**

__**Materials, Resources and Technology**__
Laptops (with wireless internet connection) Projector Projector screen Blog Peer evaluations Teacher's letter Venn Diagrams

__Source for Lesson Plan and Research__
Information on Ideology http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:ideology&ei=fpK0SZDuIpLQMpS9-IEF&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ideology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/general/bldef_ideology.htm

Information on Communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/communism.htm http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/communism http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761572241/communism.html http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/129104/communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html http://books.google.com/books?id=yhOOvF61XKgC&dq=communist+manifesto&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=uZO0SeeBOJmqMoeliPsE&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA3,M1

Information on Fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html

Information on Democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

Information on Free Market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeMarket.html

Information on Pacifism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/pacifism.htm http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pacifism http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Evil_Pacifism.html http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApacifists.htm

Information on Internationalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/internationalism

Information on Nationalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nationalism/ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nationalism

Information on Imperialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Imperialism http://books.google.com/books?id=bl0k_ZjcWZ8C&dq=imperialism&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=BJe0SePKEIy-M6b09IEF&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPP8,M1 http://www.michaelparenti.org/Imperialism101.html http://regentsprep.org/Regents/global/themes/imperialism/index.cfm

Information on Marxism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism http://www.marxists.org/subject/students/index.htm http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Marxism.html http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/367344/Marxism

Information on Utopianism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia http://www.ismbook.com/utopianism.html http://mb-soft.com/believe/txc/utopiani.htm http://www.marxists.org/subject/utopian/index.htm

Information on Nazism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazi http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/46.html http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/encyclopedia/article_show/Nazism/m0010993.html

Information on Socialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551569/socialism http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Socialism.html

Information on Spheres of Influence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence http://www.answers.com/topic/sphere-of-influence http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/287778/sphere-of-influence

Additional Encompassing Information Resource Book: __Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior__

__**Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification and Rationale**__
Rationale:** This lesson demonstrates Maine Standard for Initial Teacher Certification by providing different ways for a student to learn and develop. The students will use the knowledge that was taught to them at the start of the lesson and expand on it. They will use their knowledge of the internet to search for more information relating to the numerous ideologies of World War II, the Holocaust, and the modern world. They will also learn new knowledge of the blogging community. The class agenda will be posted on the wiki ahead of class so that students will always know what we will be doing and what will follow each activity. This will help students who need to have organization in the classroom. Students can go as in depth as they want in their analysis of the ideologies. For the creative students, the banner and brochure can be as creative and decorative as they wish. Students will also be able to get up and move around to view the other competing ideologies created by their peers. Students can also work in teams of 4, partners, or individuals; whichever is most comfortable for the student.
 * //Standard 3 - Demonstrates a knowledge of the diverse ways in which students learn and develop by providing learning opportunities that support their intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and cultural development.//

Rationale:** This lesson demonstrates Maine Standard for Initial Teacher Certification by pre-assessing the students' prior knowledge of ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust. Students will be asked to define as many ideologies as they can. The lesson will be modified to fit the knowledge of the students about the ideologies of World War II, the Holocaust, the modern world, and the affects of ideologies on world psyche. The backward design model was used in designing this unit. Students' IEPs, 504s, and ELLIDEPs will be reviewed and the appropriate modifications and accommodations will be made. The facet of understanding that I use in this unit is Compare/Contrast. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast different ideologies of World War II, the Holocaust, and modern day life. This ties into the MLR because it reiterates how powerful ideologies manipulate cultures, spheres of influence, and international psyche today.
 * //Standard 4 - Plans instruction based upon knowledge of subject matter, students, curriculum goals, and learning and development theory.//

Rationale:** This lesson demonstrates the Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification in a variety of ways. A pre-assessment will be done to determine the current knowledge the students have of ideologies of World War II, the Holocaust, and the modern world, so that the lesson may be modified to meet the students' learning needs. The students will be placed into groups and will be given background information on the numerous ideologies. The students will then work in their groups of four to do some research on the internet about their particular ideology. The students will be required to create a blog entry containing a picture of their banner and information taken from their brochure. Students will participate in a Three-Minute Review to check their work with their peers and have the opportunity to ask me any additional clarifying questions.
 * //Standard 5 - Understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies and appropriate technology to meet students’ needs.//
 * Logical:** Students will research, expand on, and organize the data presented on the numerous ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust.
 * Verbal/Linguistic:** Students will participate in group discussions to elaborate similarities and differences of the numerous ideologies and using this information, students will present their ideology through a class presentation.
 * Visual:** Students will have the opportunity to view the varying banners of each ideology with different symbols, colors, etc.
 * Aural:** Students will listen in on group discussions and peer feedback, as well as having the opportunity to hear the teacher's feedback on their learning logs.
 * Intrapersonal:** Students will organize, expand, analyze and reflect ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust into the Venn Diagrams individually, as well as writing their learning logs and blogs individually.
 * Interpersonal:** After organizing their Venn Diagrams individually, students will participate in Three-minute Reviews where they gain and share different opinions, facts, and perspectives of specific ideologies with their peers.
 * Physical/Body Kinesthetic:** The students will be able to stand up and move around while presenting their ideology to the class during presentations. Students are also able to use markers and other drawing/artistic implements to create their brochures and banners.

Rationale:** This lesson addresses the Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification by documenting the students' progress in the following ways: a pre-assessment of the students' prior knowledge and a class discussion on each of the ideologies, so that the lesson can be modified to accommodate the students' learning needs. The teacher will make herself readily available to all teams during the Three-Minute Reviews so that the students are able to receive constructive feedback on their ideas before they produce their brochures, banners, and blog entries. The final blog entry product will be used as a formative assessment to show the students' mastery of the information provided to them in class and in their research. The students should pass in a hard copy of their blog entries and each group will receive a team grade based on peer evaluations.
 * //Standard 8 - Understands and uses a variety of formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and support the development of the learner.//

__Teaching and Learning Sequence__
The students will enter the classroom and sit down at their desks, which are arranged in the standard lecture arrangement (circles). At the end of the lecture, students will be placed into groups of four based upon the ideology of their choice.


 * Students will read the teacher's letter (5 min).
 * The students will briefly talk about prior knowledge of ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust (10 min).
 * Give a lecture/discussion about the ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust while having them individually fill in Venn diagrams (45 min).
 * Select groups according to students' choice of ideology (5 min).
 * Allow students to work in their groups to start research on their particular ideology (10 min).
 * Three-Minute Review (5 min).
 * Day 2: Allow students to work on their brochures and banners, allow the groups to meet with me one-on-one to receive constructive feedback, and have the students fill out learning logs that will be passed into me at the end of class (80 min).
 * Day 3: Product presentations

The ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust affected the world. Students will be able to understand the major events, enduring themes, and turning points of World War II and how it affected the Holocaust. The reason why we're doing this today is to address and understand the still-existing ideologies and how they manipulate cultures, spheres of influence, and international psyche today. Students will be able to assess the situation that occurs when numerous ideologies come into conflict when battling for superiority. Students will also be able to understand the major eras, enduring themes, and historical influences in the Holocaust, United States, Europe, and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world. To engage the students in the beginning of the lesson, they will read a letter that the teacher wrote them. The letter will tell the students that from that moment on, they have to live by particular rules. They have to live the way the teacher lives, believe what the teacher believes, act like the teacher acts, like what the teacher likes, etc. to give the students an understanding of the definition of ideology and how self-righteous ideologies can lead to conflict. I will start to instruct the class on the definition of ideology and then address the numerous ideologies of World War II and the Holocaust. During the discussion/lecture, I will instruct the students to individually fill out their Venn Diagrams that will provide an organized display of the similarities and differences of the numerous ideologies. After the class discussion, students will be split up into groups of four according to the ideology of their choice. I will have the students collaborate with each other and begin to research their particular ideology. The students will analyze key aspects of ideologies and how it affected the Holocaust. I will act as a facilitator and walk around the room to answer clarifying questions, assess their progress, and give feedback on the students' ideas. At the end of the class, I will have a Three-Minute Review activity so that the students have a chance to ask any additional clarifying questions. Day 1: I will introduce to the students the project that they will be working on for this particular lesson. The students will work in groups of four and create a brochure, banner, and blog entry about their particular ideology of World War II and the Holocaust. The students will be filling the role as a campaigning team that is advocating their particular ideology and explain how it affects the world. I will teach the students how to create a blog entry with digital pictures of their banners. I will hand out checklists to each team and they are to fill out the form as each group presents their projects. At the end of all the presentations, students will hand in their peer evaluations along with a hard copy of their blog entry. Day 2: Students will have the full eighty minute period to work on their brochures and banners. The students will work with their peers to compile all of the information gathered in class and from outside resources into a draft of their brochure. Each group will have the opportunity to meet with me one-on-one during class so that I can give them constructive feedback on their drafts of the brochures. Students will be advised to take full advantage of the work period so that may complete their product. At the end of the class, students will fill out a brief learning log to provide the teacher with the opportunity to check for student understanding, provide constructive feedback, and to answer any additional questions regarding the numerous ideologies. The students will self-assess each others' work by peer evaluations and learning logs. I will meet with each group and have them explain to me the logistics of their ideology and how they are going to create their brochure. Each group will be allowed to revise their brochures and make as many refinements as needed before day three (product presentations). They may tag links to valuable websites in their [|Delicious] account. The students will be required to have their brochures, banners, and a hard copy of the blog entries completed for homework.
 * Where, Why, What, Hook, Tailors: Intrapersonal, Linguistic**
 * Equip, Tailors: Bodily Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Aural, Visual, Logical, Verbal/Linguistic**
 * Explore, Experience, Revise, Rethink, Refine, Tailors: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical, Visual, Verbal, Bodily-Kinesthetic**
 * Revise, Refine, Rehearse, Tailors: Spatial, Bodily Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Aural, Verbal**


 * Content Notes**

Definitions of **ideology** on the Web:

 * political orientation: an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation
 * imaginary or visionary theorization
 * An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things (compare Weltanschauung), as in common sense (see Ideology in everyday society below) and several philosophical tendencies (see Political ideologies), or a set ...
 * Doctrine, philosophy, body of beliefs or principles belonging to an individual or group; The study of the origin and nature of ideas
 * ideologic - ideological: concerned with or suggestive of ideas; "ideological application of a theory"; "the drama's symbolism was very ideological"
 * ideologist - an advocate of some ideology
 * ideologist - One who theorizes or idealizes; one who advocates the doctrines of ideology
 * ideological - Of or pertaining to an ideology; Based on an ideology or misleading studies or statistics, especially based on the media or propaganda. ...
 * a body of beliefs, a doctrine, a socially grounded system for producing beliefs and values, a way of producing meanings or doctrines.
 * ideology ...is found not only in the writings of Marx himself but in those of other exponents of what has come to be known as the sociology of knowledge, including the German sociologists Max Weber and Karl Mannheim, and numerous lesser figures. ...
 * A complex term, but in (very) short, ideology refers to a belief system or world-view; a coherent structure of thinking which obscures incongruous elements in order to uphold a particular social order.
 * For example during the 1940s it became fashionable to see the English Civil War from a Marxist school of thought. In the words of Christopher Hill, "the Civil War was a class war.
 * the knowledge or beliefs developed by human societies as part of their cultural adaptation.
 * set of beliefs and goals of a social or political group that explain or justify the group's decisions and behavior.
 * How we as individuals understand the world in which we live. This understanding involves an interaction between our individual psychology
 * "Ideology" means to favor one point of view above all others and to adhere to this point of view. The ideologue sees the world from a single point of view, can thus "explain" it and attempt to "change" it.
 * A body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, a group, a class, or a culture; examples are ethnocentrism and class
 * A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.
 * a more or less systematic set of ideas, values, and beliefs, which underlies the practices of a society, a class, or some other socially significant group of people.
 * A system of beliefs and values that explains society and prescribes the role of government.
 * A collection of values and beliefs that structure the way in which the world is interpreted.
 * Literally the study of ideas, the collective knowledge, understandings, opinions, values, preconceptions, experiences and/or memories that informs a culture and its individual people.
 * This is a complex concept - in its basic form it is a set of ideas or beliefs which are held to be acceptable by the creators of a media text. ...
 * A set of beliefs and ideas that justify certain interests. An ideological position reflects and rationalizes particular political, economic, institutional, and/or social interests.
 * After the fall of Communism the party was deprived of its principal ideological base. However, much of members look with skepticism the fusion of a party resulting from the working class with party of a middle-class and catholic tradition.
 * is a theory or theoretical perspective associated with the self-interest of a particular group.
 * A comprehensive world view pertaining to formal and informal thought, philosophy, and cultural presuppositions usually understood as associated with specific positions within political, social, and economic hierarchies.
 * the unifying system of beliefs, attitudes, and values expressed in the superstructure of a culture. The body of thought and ideas that guides a society and perpetuates the status quo of the bourgeoisie.
 * A deeply contested word, 'ideology' refers firstly to false knowledge or misleading statements.
 * a: a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture b: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture c: the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program

Communism
Communism, a theory and system of social and political organization that was a major force in world politics for much of the 20th century. As a political movement, communism sought to overthrow [|capitalism] through a workers’ revolution and establish a system in which property is owned by the community as a whole rather than by individuals. In theory, communism would create a classless society of abundance and freedom, in which all people enjoy equal social and economic status. In practice, communist regimes have taken the form of coercive, authoritarian governments that cared little for the plight of the working class and sought above all else to preserve their own hold on power.  The idea of a society based on common ownership of property and wealth stretches far back in Western thought. In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th-century Europe (//see// [|Socialism]). At that time, Europe was undergoing rapid [|industrialization] and social change. As the [|Industrial Revolution] advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for creating a new class of poor, urban factory workers who labored under harsh conditions, and for widening the gulf between rich and poor. Foremost among these critics were the German philosopher [|Karl Marx] and his associate [|Friedrich Engels]. Like other socialists, they sought an end to capitalism and the exploitation of workers. But whereas some reformers favored peaceful, longer-term social transformation, Marx and Engels believed that violent revolution was all but inevitable; in fact, they thought it was predicted by the scientific laws of history. They called their theory “scientific socialism,” or communism. In the last half of the 19th century the terms //socialism// and //communism// were often used interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels came to see socialism as merely an intermediate stage of society in which most industry and property were owned in common but some class differences remained. They reserved the term //communism// for a final stage of society in which class differences had disappeared, people lived in harmony, and government was no longer needed.  The meaning of the word //communism// shifted after 1917, when [|Vladimir Lenin] and his Bolshevik Party seized power in [|Russia]. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a repressive, single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies. The Communists formed the [|Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] (USSR, or Soviet Union) from the former Russian Empire and tried to spark a worldwide revolution to overthrow capitalism. Lenin’s successor, [|Joseph Stalin], turned the Soviet Union into a dictatorship based on total state control of the economy and the suppression of any form of opposition. As a result of Lenin’s and Stalin’s policies, many people came to associate the term //communism// with undemocratic or totalitarian governments that claimed allegiance to Marxist-Leninist ideals. The term //Marxism-Leninism// refers to Marx’s theories as amended and put into practice by Lenin. After World War II (1939-1945), regimes calling themselves communist took power in China, Eastern Europe, and other regions. The spread of communism marked the beginning of the [|Cold War], in which the Soviet Union and the United States, and their respective allies, competed for political and military supremacy. By the early 1980s, almost one-third of the world’s population lived under communist regimes. These regimes shared certain basic features: an embrace of Marxism-Leninism, a rejection of private property and capitalism, state domination of economic activity, and absolute control of the government by one party, the communist party. The party’s influence in society was pervasive and often repressive. It controlled and censored the mass media, restricted religious worship, and silenced political dissent. [|Print this section]  It was the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that laid the conceptual foundation for the communist revolutions and regimes of the 20th century. Marx and Engels were German-born intellectuals who worked in various cities in Europe as teachers, journalists, and political activists. In 1847 Marx and Engels joined a small group of working-class leaders in the formation of the Communist League, and shortly thereafter the two men were asked to draw up its platform. In their [|//Communist Manifesto//] (1848)//,// Marx and Engels dismissed all of the reformers who had come before them as naive “utopian socialists,” claiming that their plans for communal property could not be achieved in capitalistic societies. Marx and Engels urged the workers of the world to unite to achieve “scientific socialism,” or communism. Branching out from the theories of German philosopher [|Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel], they trumpeted communism as an unsentimental theory derived from immutable laws of history, and boasted that communism was already a “specter” haunting all of Europe and was “acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.”  In later works, the two writers further developed their sweeping theory of society and history. Marx and Engels asserted that the key to understanding human culture and history was the struggle between the classes. They used the term //class// to refer to a group of people within society who share the same social and economic status. According to Marx and Engels, class struggles have occurred in every form of society, no matter what its economic structure, or //mode of production:// slavery, feudalism, or capitalism. In each of these kinds of societies, a minority of people own or control the //means of production,// such as land, raw materials, tools and machines, labor, and money. This minority constitutes the ruling class. The vast majority of people own and control very little. They mainly own their own capacity to work. The ruling class uses its economic power to exploit workers by appropriating their surplus labor. In other words, workers are compelled to labor not merely to meet their own needs but also those of the exploiting ruling class. As a result, workers become alienated from the fruits of their labor.  Marx and Engels portrayed the grand sweep of Western history as a process of progressively evolving forms of society. The struggle between classes was the motor of social change, fueling revolutions and leading history from one epoch to the next. Just as primitive agrarian society had yielded centuries before to feudal society, and in Europe feudalism given way to industrial capitalism, so too would capitalism be overthrown. Analyzing 19th-century capitalistic society, Marx and Engels perceived a class struggle raging between the //bourgeoisie//, or capitalists who controlled the means of production, and the //proletariat,// or industrial workers. In their view, the bourgeoisie appropriated wealth from the proletariat by paying low wages and keeping the profits from sales and technological innovation for themselves. Marx and Engels were confident the conflict between the bourgeoisie and increasingly impoverished proletariat was coming to a head in the foremost societies of the West. The inevitable outcome would be a revolution in which the proletariat, taking advantage of strikes, elections, and, if necessary, violence, would displace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. A political revolution was essential, in Marx’s view, because the [|state] is the central instrument of capitalist society.  Marx and Engels were almost silent about what would happen after the proletarian revolution. They made provision for a brief transitional period during which workers would form a socialist society with the means of production owned in common. In this period, the working-class majority of the population would need to enact a temporary //dictatorship of the proletariat// in order to seize the property of the bourgeois minority and stifle attempts to sabotage the popular government. Unlike previous ruling classes, the working class would not seek to install a new system of domination and exploitation; its goal would be a system of cooperation in which the immense majority, the proletariat, ruled for the benefit of all. Eventually, society would evolve into full communism, characterized by affluence, the abolition of classes, and an end to the dehumanizing division of labor found in earlier forms of society. In this idyllic condition, Marx and Engels wrote//,// abundance and social harmony would make it possible “for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic.” Labor performed out of economic necessity would give way to truly voluntary activity.  Marxism increased in popularity in the late 19th century, particularly in countries whose urban population was impoverished and whose intellectuals were given no voice in government. Marx and Engels flung themselves into national and international political movements dedicated to promoting socialism and their end goal of communism. They were active in the International Workingmen’s Association (frequently called the First International), an alliance of trade-union groups founded in 1864. Internal feuding led to the association’s dissolution in 1876. A less disjointed union of socialist parties, the Socialist International (also known as the Second International), was formed in 1889 in Paris, France. The Second International represented national-level socialist parties and movements from all over Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan. In 1912 its constituent political parties claimed to have 9 million members. //See// [|International].  By the early 20th century, Marxists held a range of opinions on the main issues before them. Some were more militant than the mainstream, admonishing leftist parties to sharpen class conflict and therefore hasten the death of capitalism and the arrival of the workers’ revolution. Other Marxists rejected the revolutionary perspective, holding that public control of the economy could be achieved by peaceful means, such as by electing Marxists to government positions. Still others called into question Marx’s whole analysis of capitalism and sought to implement aspects of socialism within the capitalist system. These so-called Marxist revisionists noted stabilizing tendencies within capitalism and believed the debut of a welfare state would encourage social equality and give security to ordinary citizens. [|Eduard Bernstein], a German socialist, became the leading voice of Marxist revisionism. He rejected revolutionary action, instead suggesting that the socialist movement should forge political alliances and push for evolutionary reforms within the capitalist system.  The followers of Marx came to power in nations that lacked the preconditions he and Engels considered essential, namely capitalism and a mature industrial economy. The first of these countries was Russia, a huge, poor, relatively backward nation that was just beginning to acquire an industrial base.
 * III ||  || ==The Ideas of Marx and Engels== ||

Fascism
A s an economic system, fascism is [|socialism] with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from //fasces,// the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful [|competition], and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary [|Marxism] , with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism. Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. [|Entrepreneurship] was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions. Fascism is to be distinguished from interventionism, or the mixed economy. Interventionism seeks to guide the market process, not eliminate it, as fascism did. Minimum-wage and [|antitrust] laws, though they regulate the [|free market], are a far cry from multiyear plans from the Ministry of Economics. Under fascism, the state, through official [|cartels], controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. Levels of consumption were dictated by the state, and “excess” incomes had to be surrendered as taxes or “loans.” The consequent burdening of manufacturers gave advantages to foreign firms wishing to export. But since government policy aimed at autarky, or national self-sufficiency, [|protectionism] was necessary: imports were barred or strictly controlled, leaving foreign conquest as the only avenue for access to resources unavailable domestically. Fascism was thus incompatible with peace and the international division of labor—hallmarks of liberalism. Fascism embodied corporatism, in which political representation was based on trade and industry rather than on geography. In this, fascism revealed its roots in syndicalism, a form of socialism originating on the left. The government cartelized firms of the same industry, with representatives of labor and management serving on myriad local, regional, and national boards—subject always to the final authority of the dictator’s economic plan. Corporatism was intended to avert unsettling divisions within the nation, such as lockouts and union strikes. The price of such forced “harmony” was the loss of the ability to bargain and move about freely. To maintain high employment and minimize popular discontent, fascist governments also undertook massive public-works projects financed by steep taxes, borrowing, and fiat money creation. While many of these projects were domestic—roads, buildings, stadiums—the largest project of all was militarism, with huge armies and arms production. The fascist leaders’ antagonism to [|communism] has been misinterpreted as an affinity for [|capitalism]. In fact, fascists’ anticommunism was motivated by a belief that in the collectivist milieu of early-twentieth-century Europe, communism was its closest rival for people’s allegiance. As with communism, under fascism, every citizen was regarded as an employee and tenant of the totalitarian, party-dominated state. Consequently, it was the state’s prerogative to use force, or the threat of it, to suppress even peaceful opposition. If a formal architect of fascism can be identified, it is Benito Mussolini, the onetime Marxist editor who, caught up in nationalist fervor, broke with the left as World War I approached and became Italy’s leader in 1922. Mussolini distinguished fascism from liberal capitalism in his 1928 autobiography: The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill. (p. 280) Before his foray into imperialism in 1935, Mussolini was often praised by prominent Americans and Britons, including Winston Churchill, for his economic program. Similarly, Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialist (Nazi) Party adapted fascism to Germany beginning in 1933, said: The state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property. (Barkai 1990, pp. 26–27) Both nations exhibited elaborate planning schemes for their economies in order to carry out the state’s objectives. Mussolini’s corporate state “consider[ed] private initiative in production the most effective instrument to protect national interests” (Basch 1937, p. 97). But the meaning of “initiative” differed significantly from its meaning in a market economy. Labor and management were organized into twenty-two industry and trade “corporations,” each with Fascist Party members as senior participants. The corporations were consolidated into a National Council of Corporations; however, the real decisions were made by state agencies such as the Instituto per la Ricosstruzione Industriale, which held shares in industrial, agricultural, and real estate enterprises, and the Instituto Mobiliare, which controlled the nation’s credit. Hitler’s regime eliminated small corporations and made membership in cartels mandatory. [|1] The Reich Economic Chamber was at the top of a complicated bureaucracy comprising nearly two hundred organizations organized along industry, commercial, and craft lines, as well as several national councils. The Labor Front, an extension of the Nazi Party, directed all labor matters, including wages and assignment of workers to particular jobs. Labor [|conscription] was inaugurated in 1938. Two years earlier, Hitler had imposed a four-year plan to shift the nation’s economy to a war footing. In Europe during this era, Spain, Portugal, and Greece also instituted fascist economies. In the United States, beginning in 1933, the constellation of government interventions known as the New Deal had features suggestive of the corporate state. The National Industrial Recovery Act created code authorities and codes of practice that governed all aspects of manufacturing and commerce. The National Labor Relations Act made the federal government the final arbiter in labor issues. The Agricultural Adjustment Act introduced central planning to farming. The object was to reduce competition and output in order to keep prices and incomes of particular groups from falling during the [|Great Depression]. It is a matter of controversy whether President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was directly influenced by fascist economic policies. Mussolini praised the New Deal as “boldly. . . interventionist in the field of economics,” and Roosevelt complimented Mussolini for his “honest purpose of restoring Italy” and acknowledged that he kept “in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.” Also, Hugh Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration, was known to carry a copy of Raffaello Viglione’s pro-Mussolini book, //The Corporate State,// with him, presented a copy to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, and, on retirement, paid tribute to the Italian dictator. ss =Pacifism= Pacifism is the moral principle that the use of [|force] is wrong for any reason. This applies to both the initiation of force, as well as defensive or retaliatory force. If your life is being threatened, pacifism holds that you should not defend yourself. If someone has stolen from you, pacifism holds that you should not retrieve your property. If someone has murdered other people, pacifism holds that nothing should be done about it. Pacifism is the moral principle that attempts to permanently disarm its practitioners, leaving them helpless and at the mercy of any thug. Some people accept pacifism due to a faulty [|inductive] process. They notice that force can be used for evil, and generalize it believing that force is only used for evil. Others accept pacifism as a moral commandment or [|duty]. There is no rational reason to accept pacifism, and its consequences are deadly. This ethical premise is destructive to one's life and [|values]. It makes morality oppose [|self-interest], and requires the choice of either being good, or being alive. Pacifism requires one to withhold the use of force. It is thought that if practiced by everyone, the world would be a better place, making life easier to live. This is mistaken, though. A single thug could destroy any society based on pacifism. Since nobody could respond with equal force, even in self-defense or the defense of their loved ones, the thug would be constantly rewarded for his acts. He could rob, steal, or murder, and nobody could stop him. It would encourage others to act this way as well, since nobody would be willing to stop them. But one cannot live under such circumstances. One's life would be at the mercy of the worst people alive. Pacifists are able to survive in as far as either they abandon this faulty principle, or others dismiss it. Without the use of retaliatory force, they could not survive against the threat of other people. A lone pacifist in a society willing to enact justice can survive at the expense of his fellow citizens. It is to them that his survival is maintained. It is his ethical system that makes him dependent on the good will of others.

Imperialism
Imperialism This type of foreign policy was practiced by European nations and Japan throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. In every case, a nation would experience **industrialization** prior to practicing imperialism on a foreign nation or region. This was due to the nearly insatiable demand for cheap **raw materials** and the need for markets to buy manufactured goods. Industrial Roots Abundant **raw materials** and vast **markets** are needed in order to maintain an industrialized economy. Raw materials such as iron and cotton can be turned into products such as steel and textiles. Finally, these products need to be sold to a market in order to realize a profit. The forces of industrialization caused nations to begin looking outside of their borders for cheaper and more abundant raw materials. Foreign populations were also viewed as vast markets where goods produced in domestic factories could be sold. Other Causes **Nationalism**, or pride in one’s country, also contributed to the growth of imperialism. Citizens were proud of their country’s accomplishments, which sometimes included taking over foreign areas. As European nations became competitive with one another, there was an increased pressure to practice imperialism in order to maintain a balance of power in Europe. As Europeans took over foreign lands, they viewed the culture of the native population to be inferior to their own. This concept became know as **“[|The White Man’s Burden]”** Some interpreted this poem to mean that it was the duty of imperializing nations to bring western sensibility to the savage native populations that were encountered in far off lands. This is sometimes referred to as **Social Darwinism**, or the belief that all human groups compete for survival, and that the stronger groups will replace the weaker groups. Others saw it as a warning to western nations to stop the harmful practice of imperialism.
 * [[image:http://regentsprep.org/Regents/global/themes/imperialism/images/imperialism.gif width="430" height="299" align="left"]]Imperialism** occurs when a strong nation takes over a weaker nation or region and dominates its economic, political, or cultural life.
 * **Causes of Imperialism ** ||
 * ** Economic Motives ** || The ** Industrial Revolution ** created an insatiable demand for raw materials and new markets. ||  ||   ||
 * ** Nationalism ** || European nations wanted to demonstrate their power and prestige to the world. ||
 * ** Balance of Power ** || European nations were forced to acquire new colonies to achieve a balance with their neighbors and competitors. ||
 * ** White Man's Burden ** || The Europeans’ sense of superiority made them feel obligated to “civilize the heathen savages” they encountered. ||

Results In the short-term, imperialism was a very profitable foreign policy which came at the expense of the foreign regions where it was being practiced. Cultural diffusion also occurred, leading to an exchange of ideas between the West and the East. For example, European methods of education were adopted, leading foreigners to study ideas of liberty and democracy ** democracy ** embraced during the term of enlightenment and various political revolutions. This exchange eventually led to the demise of imperialism and colonialism.

Utopianism
//[Coined by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) from Greek ou: not, and from Greek topos place (literally, "no place").]//
 * 1) (politics) Any view of societal or political relations that advocates the creation of a perfect society; see also [|perfectionism].

=Nazism= Ideology based on racism, nationalism, and the supremacy of the state over the individual. The German Nazi party, the //Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei// (National Socialist German Workers' Party), was formed from the German Workers' Party (founded in 1919) and led by Adolf [|Hitler] from 1921 to 1945; see [|Germany: history 1919–49], **emergence of the Nazis**. During the 1930s many similar parties were created throughout Europe and the USA, such as the British Union of Fascists (BUF) founded in the UK in 1932 by Oswald [|Mosley]. However, only those of Austria, Hungary, and Sudeten were of major importance. These parties collaborated with the German occupation of Europe from 1939 to 1945. After the Nazi atrocities of World War II (see [|SS], [|concentration camp], [|Holocaust]), the party was banned in Germany, but today parties with Nazi or neo‐Nazi ideologies exist in many countries. The Nazi party's ideology was based on extreme German nationalism, [|anti‐Semitism], and opposition to German [|communism]. Overlaying this thinking was the concept of unquestioning loyalty to Hitler, the Führer (leader). The National Socialist German Workers' Party used these views to force its way to power in Germany by 1933. The various aspects of Nazi ideology were combined to form a political programme, the concepts merging and supporting each other. Nationalist feelings linked with the racial prejudices of Nazi ideology. Nazi belief in a master race of [|Aryans], represented by people of ‘pure’ German stock, supported Hitler's policy of [|//Lebensraum//] (‘living space’). As the Nazis considered that Aryan Germans were superior to other races, such as the Slavs of Eastern Europe, they felt justified in annexing neighbouring states to reduce the overpopulation of Germany. Anti‐Semitism was a key principle of Nazism; any failure on the part of Aryan Germans was blamed on the Jews. They were accused of being part of a worldwide conspiracy to destroy Germany, in league with the communists. To save the purity of the Aryan race and the strength of the German nation, the Nazis believed that the Jews would have to be removed from German society. Also crucial to Nazi party ideology was the role of Hitler as party leader. To the Nazis, Hitler was the guiding visionary who would lead the German nation to a glorious future as the master race of the world. He was, therefore, to be followed without question. The concept of a single master and goal reflected Nazi belief that the needs of the nation were more important than those of the individual. Only if the Germans worked together as one nation, following an absolute leader, would they be able to fulfil their destiny as the master race. On a practical level Nazi party ideology meant opposition to the Treaty of [|Versailles] (1919) and the democratic [|Weimar Republic]. The Nazis blamed the Weimar politicians for ceding German territory and destroying Germany's economy in the 1920s. Under the treaty Germany had surrendered Alsace–Lorraine to France, and large areas in the east to Poland, as well as making smaller cessions to Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Belgium, and Denmark. A [|Polish Corridor] to the Baltic had been created, cutting off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The Rhineland had been demilitarized, German rearmament restricted, and the Germans forced to make large reparations. The Nazis wanted to unite Germany with Austria in an //Anschluss// (union), bringing the German people into one nation, but this, too, had been banned under the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazis sought to overturn the treaty in order to achieve their stated goal of a united and powerful Germany. In the USA the American Nazi Party was founded in 1958 by George Lincoln Rockwell. In the UK Colin Jordan founded the National Socialist Movement in 1962 and in 1967 the [|National Front] was formed. In 1993 there was a political storm after Derek Beackon of the British National Party (BNP; founded in 1982 after a split from the National Front) won a council by‐election in the East London borough of Millwall. There were allegations of intimidation of Asian voters by BNP supporters at the polling stations. In a determined attempt to curb right‐wing violence, the German government banned six neo‐Nazi groups between 1994 and 1995. The UK and USA announced in September 1997 that their holdings of Nazi gold, worth up to £40 million, would be switched into a fund to help victims of the Holocaust. The agreement, reached between the UK, USA, and France, unlocked a 50‐year‐old post‐war reparation deal that divided the gold between governments, specifically excluding all claims from individuals whose gold was stolen by the Nazi Reich. The deal was announced after a meeting of the Tripartite Gold Commission, which had kept tight control over the German gold holdings since it was set up in 1946. The Commission had already distributed more than £2 billion of the gold to the central banks of countries which were looted during the war. The 5.6 tonnes left in bank vaults in the UK and the USA was less than 2% of the gold recovered by the allies at the end of the war. The London talks on Nazi gold, hosted by the UK foreign secretary Robin Cook, ended in early December 1997 with a pledge for a follow‐up meeting. The US under secretary of state announced plans to examine the question of Nazi‐looted art at a gathering in Washington, USA, in 1998. The London talks were attended by 240 delegates from 40 countries. Robin Cook pledged £1 million from the UK government to a new international fund. The USA offered $4 million, with a further $21 million to follow. Cook proposed that all 15 nations due to receive the last remaining gold recaptured from the Nazis should donate it to help Holocaust victims, and that other countries might wish to help. Austria and Germany agreed to seek missing Reichsbank records, and Degussa, the company that smelted stolen goods for the Nazis, agreed to allow World Jewish Congress officials to gain access to its files. A government‐commissioned report into the seizure of Jewish assets in Nazi‐occupied France estimated in 2000 that goods worth FFr8.8 billion/£0.8 billion/$1.3 billion in today's money had been confiscated. The commission recommended compensation for the heirs of the victims, and that the French state and financial institutions should give FFr2.4 billion/£227 million/$400 million to a proposed foundation to promote understanding of the Holocaust in France. Former Nazi prisoners used for slave labour sued 12 German and Austrian companies in August 1998. In December 1999, the German government and industrial groups agreed with Jewish groups to set up a DM10 billion/$5.2 billion/£3.2 billion compensation fund for those who were made to work as slave and forced labourers in Nazi Germany. In July 2000, Germany signed this compensation deal. However, it was criticized by Eastern Europeans who had been forced to work in Nazi camps, who said that they received in compensation a fraction of that which has been awarded to Jews.
 * Nazism in pre‐war Germany**
 * Post‐war Nazism**
 * ‘Nazi gold’**
 * Compensation**

=== S ocialism—defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production—was the tragic failure of the twentieth century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of [|capitalism], it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty. Yet the idea and the ideal of socialism linger on. Whether socialism in some form will eventually return as a major organizing force in human affairs is unknown, but no one can accurately appraise its prospects who has not taken into account the dramatic story of its rise and fall.===

The Birth of Socialist Planning
It is often thought that the idea of socialism derives from the work of [|Karl Marx]. In fact, Marx wrote only a few pages about socialism, as either a moral or a practical blueprint for society. The true architect of a socialist order was Lenin, who first faced the practical difficulties of organizing an economic system without the driving incentives of profit seeking or the self-generating constraints of [|competition]. Lenin began from the long-standing delusion that economic organization would become less complex once the profit drive and the market mechanism had been dispensed with—“as self-evident,” he wrote, as “the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording, and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic.” In fact, economic life pursued under these first four rules rapidly became so disorganized that within four years of the 1917 revolution, Soviet production had fallen to 14 percent of its prerevolutionary level. By 1921 Lenin was forced to institute the New Economic Policy (NEP), a partial return to the market incentives of capitalism. This brief mixture of socialism and capitalism came to an end in 1927 after Stalin instituted the process of forced collectivization that was to mobilize Russian resources for its leap into industrial power. The system that evolved under Stalin and his successors took the form of a pyramid of command. At its apex was Gosplan, the highest state planning agency, which established such general directives for the economy as the target rate of growth and the allocation of effort between military and civilian outputs, between heavy and light industry, and among various regions. Gosplan transmitted the general directives to successive ministries of industrial and regional planning, whose technical advisers broke down the overall national plan into directives assigned to particular factories, industrial power centers, collective farms, and so on. These thousands of individual subplans were finally scrutinized by the factory managers and engineers who would eventually have to implement them. Thereafter, the blueprint for production reascended the pyramid, together with the suggestions, emendations, and pleas of those who had seen it. Ultimately, a completed plan would be reached by negotiation, voted on by the Supreme Soviet, and passed into law. Thus, the final plan resembled an immense order book, specifying the nuts and bolts, steel girders, grain outputs, tractors, cotton, cardboard, and coal that, in their entirety, constituted the national output. In theory such an order book should enable planners to reconstitute a working economy each year—provided, of course, that the nuts fitted the bolts; the girders were of the right dimensions; the grain output was properly stored; the tractors were operable; and the cotton, cardboard, and coal were of the kinds needed for their manifold uses. But there was a vast and widening gap between theory and practice.

Problems Emerge
The gap did not appear immediately. In retrospect, we can see that the task facing Lenin and Stalin in the early years was not so much economic as quasi military—mobilizing a peasantry into a workforce to build roads and rail lines, dams and electric grids, steel complexes and tractor factories. This was a formidable assignment, but far less formidable than what would confront socialism fifty years later, when the task was not so much to create enormous undertakings as to create relatively self-contained ones, and to fit all the outputs into a dovetailing whole. Through the 1960s the Soviet economy continued to report strong overall growth—roughly twice that of the United States—but observers began to spot signs of impending trouble. One was the difficulty of specifying outputs in terms that would maximize the well-being of everyone in the economy, not merely the bonuses earned by individual factory managers for “overfulfilling” their assigned objectives. The problem was that the plan specified outputs in physical terms. One consequence was that managers maximized yardages or tonnages of output, not its quality. A famous cartoon in the satirical magazine //Krokodil// showed a factory manager proudly displaying his record output, a single gigantic nail suspended from a crane. As the economic flow became increasingly clogged and clotted, production took the form of “stormings” at the end of each quarter or year, when every resource was pressed into use to meet preassigned targets. The same rigid system soon produced expediters, or //tolkachi,// to arrange shipments to harassed managers who needed unplanned—and therefore unobtainable—inputs to achieve their production goals. Worse, lacking the right to buy their own supplies or to hire or fire their own workers, factories set up fabricating shops, then commissaries, and finally their own worker [|housing] to maintain control over their own small bailiwicks. It is not surprising that this increasingly Byzantine system began to create serious dysfunctions beneath the overall statistics of growth. During the 1960s the Soviet Union became the first industrial country in history to suffer a prolonged peacetime fall in average life expectancy, a symptom of its disastrous misallocation of resources. Military research facilities could get whatever they needed, but hospitals were low on the priority list. By the 1970s the figures clearly indicated a slowing of overall production. By the 1980s the Soviet Union officially acknowledged a near end to growth that was, in reality, an unofficial decline. In 1987 the first official law embodying //perestroika//—restructuring—was put into effect. President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his intention to revamp the economy from top to bottom by introducing the market, reestablishing private ownership, and opening the system to free economic interchange with the West. Seventy years of socialist rise had come to an end.

Socialist Planning in Western Eyes
Understanding of the difficulties of central planning was slow to emerge. In the mid-1930s, while the Russian industrialization drive was at full tilt, few raised their voices about its problems. Among those few were [|ludwig von mises], an articulate and exceedingly argumentative free-market economist, and [|friedrich hayek] , of much more contemplative temperament, later to be awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in monetary theory. Together, Mises and Hayek launched an attack on the feasibility of socialism that seemed at the time unconvincing in its argument as to the functional problems of a planned economy. Mises in particular contended that a socialist system was impossible because there was no way for the planners to acquire the information (see [|Information and Prices] )—“produce this, not that”—needed for a coherent economy. This information, Hayek emphasized, emerged spontaneously in a market system from the rise and fall of prices. A planning system was bound to fail precisely because it lacked such a signaling mechanism. The Mises-Hayek argument met its most formidable counterargument in two brilliant articles by [|Oskar Lange], a young economist who would become Poland’s first ambassador to the United States after World War II. Lange set out to show that the planners would, in fact, have precisely the same information as that which guided a market economy. The information would be revealed as inventories of goods rose and fell, signaling either that [|supply] was greater than [|demand] or demand was greater than supply. Thus, as planners watched inventory levels, they were also learning which of their administered (i.e., state-dictated) prices were too high and which too low. It only remained, therefore, to adjust prices so that supply and demand balanced, exactly as in the marketplace. Lange’s answer was so simple and clear that many believed the Mises-Hayek argument had been demolished. In fact, we now know that their argument was all too prescient. Ironically, though, Mises and Hayek were right for a reason they did not foresee as clearly as Lange himself. //“The real danger of socialism,”// Lange wrote, in italics, //“is that of a bureaucratization of economic life.”// But he took away the force of the remark by adding, without italics, “Unfortunately, we do not see how the same or even greater danger can be averted under monopolistic capitalism” (Lange and Taylor 1938, pp. 109–110). The effects of the “bureaucratization of economic life” are dramatically related in //The Turning Point,// a scathing attack on the realities of socialist economic planning by two Soviet economists, Nikolai Smelev and Vladimir Popov, that gives examples of the planning process in actual operation. In 1982, to stimulate the production of gloves from moleskins, the Soviet government raised the price it was willing to pay for moleskins from twenty to fifty kopecks per pelt. Smelev and Popov noted: State purchases increased, and now all the distribution centers are filled with these pelts. Industry is unable to use them all, and they often rot in warehouses before they can be processed. The Ministry of Light Industry has already requested Goskomtsen [the State Committee on Prices] twice to lower prices, but “the question has not been decided” yet. This is not surprising. Its members are too busy to decide. They have no time: besides setting prices on these pelts, they have to keep track of another 24 million prices. And how can they possibly know how much to lower the price today, so they won’t have to raise it tomorrow? This story speaks volumes about the problem of a centrally planned system. The crucial missing element is not so much “information,” as Mises and Hayek argued, as it is the motivation to act on information. After all, the inventories of moleskins did tell the planners that their production was at first too low and then too high. What was missing was the willingness—better yet, the necessity—to respond to the signals of changing inventories. A capitalist firm responds to changing prices because failure to do so will cause it to lose money. A socialist ministry ignores changing inventories because bureaucrats learn that doing something is more likely to get them in trouble than doing nothing, unless doing nothing results in absolute disaster. In the late 1980s, absolute economic disaster arrived in the Soviet Union and its Eastern former satellites, and those countries are still trying to construct some form of economic structure that will no longer display the deadly inertia and indifference that have come to be the hallmarks of socialism. It is too early to predict whether these efforts will succeed. The main obstacle to real perestroika is the impossibility of creating a working market system without a firm basis of private ownership, and it is clear that the creation of such a basis encounters the opposition of the former state bureaucracy and the hostility of ordinary people who have long been trained to be suspicious of the pursuit of wealth. In the face of such uncertainties, all predictions are foolhardy save one: no quick or easy transition from socialism to some form of nonsocialism is possible. Transformations of such magnitude are historic convulsions, not mere changes in policy. Their completion must be measured in decades or generations, not years.

Spheres of Influence
in international politics, the claim by a state to exclusive or predominant control over a foreign area or territory. The term may refer to a political claim to exclusive control, which other nations may or may not recognize as a matter of fact, or it may refer to a legal agreement by which another state or states pledge themselves to refrain from interference within the sphere of influence.



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