The Peace on The Horizon - 75 Years after The World War 2 in the Middle East (45)

 

(Japanese Version)

(Arabic Version)

 

(contents)

 

Chapter 2 Global wave – The end of colonial era and the emerging two super powers (7)

 

045 Clash of the East and the West (1/3)

The industrial revolution which started from the 18th century teared the old society into two classes; capitalists and workers. In the 19th century, Karl Marx said in his book “Das Kapital” that production means monopolized by a small number of capitalists while workers had no means except offering their own workforce. Marx called such production system as capitalism.

 

Marx advocated "Communism" aiming at an equality of the society by joint ownership of production means. In the beginning of the 20th century, communism was coupled with socialist ideology to counteract individualism and liberalism. Socialism and Communism penetrated as a new idea to overwhelm capitalism. The idea was realized when the Russian Revolution took place in 1917. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was born. It was the first socialist-communist state in the world.

 

The USSR accumulated its power steadily after the World War I. The USSR became one of the driving force to beat the totalitarian states Germany and Japan as a member of the Allies in the World War II. During the World War II US and USSR cooperated each other. But it was “Bitter enemies in the same boat” or “Cohabiting but living in different worlds”. Oil and water could not mix at all. After the war the confrontation came to surface. The confrontation between West and East blocks had begun. The former was led by the United States and the latter was led by the USSR. Though the face-to-face collision was avoided, hot wars took place worldwide. It was called as "Cold War".

 

(To be continued ----)

 

 

Areha Kazuya

(From an ordinary citizen in the cloud)