by Chris Markel

Created on: April 16, 2009   Last Updated: April 17, 2009

I have been a socialist most of my adult life. I first began to study the philosophy and concepts of socialism while I was in my twenties. With two years of study in economics at a university, a degree in history and through deeper, independent study, a qualified understanding of socialism developed. And as the years passed, I have grown hardened in the belief in the concepts of socialism.

Now that I have qualified myself, I can say this:

There are many definitions of socialism. But the one I found most easyfor people to grasp was the one given by William Pritchard in 1972. He wrote, "This concept of socialism as a possible future society is one wherein the means of production will be socially controlled and democratically administered, where use, not profit, is the objective, where the needs of humanity are deemed paramount with sale for profit eliminated."

There are also many concepts and theories in how it can be implemented into an economic program. This makes socialism, in my view, a flexible solution to the various demands and demographics of nations and peoples all over the world that seek and need economic recovery and rebuilding.

Socialism is the wave of the future. The dialectics of social evolution dictate it. That is a hard fact. Karl Marx spent a life time working at proving that fact. But, as long as capitalism exists as a major economic system, guarded and protected by the Corporate American Ruling Class's military and police machine, socialism's progress will be slow.

All through modern world history, this machine has worked hard at trying to crush the advance of socialism. The "New World Order" agenda is Corporate America's last effort in maintaining its capitalistic control and battle against the advance of socialism. But socialism continues to grow in recognition as a solution to the global economic maladies that capitalism has created.

And as north American citizens will soon discover, the capitalistic system is to expensive to maintain. With 700 billion dollars there and 300 billion dollars here being given as bail-outs to major corporations as a solution in dealing with the current depression, in the end, the cost to the American people will be more than they can afford.

That is the financial cost of maintaining capitalism.

Another cost that has been endured for quite sometime is to the world as a whole. And that is in the depletion of natural resources for profits. Then, there is the foul air that we breath, the polluted water we drink, that

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