Writing Assignment: Socialism

Reminder: We have been discussing different economic systems-- Capitalism, Democratic Socialism and Authoritarian Socialism. In order for us to fully understand how and why the US chose and stayed with Capitalism we wanted to compare it with the story of Socialism. We have discussed Robert Owen's experiment in New Harmony, Indiana. We discussed the working relationship between Friedrich Engles and Karl Marx -- the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. We discussed Eduard Bernstein and how he stirred away from this thinking due to changes he saw in Capitalism and what was NOT working with Socialism. We watched and discussed how Lenin took it upon himself to become the vanguard of the Communist Party and instead of the workers in the cities taking on a full fledged revolution, instead it would be the peasants in Russia. We discussed that despite the fact that people had poor working conditions , pay, children's labor etc..... in the cities-- that did not cause people to jump to revolution. And we ended with a discussion of Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor and Eugene Debs with the American Socialist Party

Below I posted 5 sections from part 1-- from the PBS Episode called,

" Heaven on Earth- the Rise and Fall of Socialism". If you were absent and or need to refresh your memory from the segments you may view here the portion you missed.

Below is the assignment that goes with this activity

You are to write a half page diary entry in which you will either choose the Russian Revolution or the American Federation of Labor,

You will have to decide in your story if you would choose to join or resist Lenin's revolution, join Samuel Gompers American Federation of Labor or join the American Socialist Party.