Socialism can be defined as a political and economic system, its pinnacle being the aim of making society more equal. This concept first originated or dated back to the industrial revolution.
It swept across from Europe and North America, stemming from the 18th century and onwards. Ancient thinkers began to culminate the idea the ‘ideal society’ and so historically one of the earliest socialist ideas can be traced back to the Ancient Greek thinker ,Plato who wrote The Republic where he imagined an ideal society.
The word ‘Socialist’ began to appear in the 18th century and essentially stood as a starkly contrasted definition to the idea of capitalism. The collapse of socialism began to brew when socialist ideas began to become critiqued by more Western countries. The unsuccessful take-off of widespread socialism can be held accountable to the observation that the nature of humans can be interpreted as ‘naturally competitive and selfish’ according to author Nick Hunter. He believes that humans internalise the incentive of beating the system and gaining power over one another. Ultimately amalgamating to the concept of all people co-operating well in a socialist society is doomed to fail.
The student of Plato, Aristotle, most famously created the concept that ‘man is by nature a political animal’ meaning that human beings are innately inclined to form associations and organised direct goal orientated action. Aristotle’s political theory believed that the aim of politics, the goal, was to investigate what makes for a good government and a bad government.
Comparably, the rise of modern-day Twitter politics does just this. Twitter offers a way in which facilitates open communication between citizens and politicians. It is possible that their rise to prominence in the US creates a way which may put an end to the ‘top down’ module of political communication and help close democratic deficit . In turn allowing for increased dialogue between both parties and help scope a more communicative and involving democracy; in other words, a good government (Aristotle) and an ideal socialist society (Plato).
