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Crystal Moore
P.4 AP Eng Lang
Dr.Gonder
7 December 2016
Final: Why King Was Right about Political Theories
For humanity, finding a perfect system to live by has proven difficult. Both individual
people and governments have created and abandoned multiple systems because they didnt work
for very long due to their flaws. Two very different political and economic systems, capitalism
and communism, are present in many countries worldwide, despite having many weaknesses.
Martin Luther King Jr. once addressed these flaws, and he concluded that neither capitalism nor
communism is perfect because both systems lacked significant human ideals. I wholeheartedly
agree with Kings opinion because both capitalism and communism fall short when it comes to
their issues with social justice, conformity, and corruption.
Both communism and capitalism fail to acknowledge social justice properly. Although
Marx, an author of The Communist Manifesto, champions the cause of the poor, the exploited
and the disinherited(Source A), the system shaped by his ideas does not reflect this. Source H, a
chart comparing both capitalist and communist economies, shows us that the government of a
communist nation has full control over everything. With an all-powerful government, the poor
that Marx once sympathized with will find themselves at the mercy of a controlling government,
never being able to gain the justice that they were promised. Similarly, capitalism fails to help
the underprivileged, but for different reasons. Capitalisms main ideas of a free market and
private property lead to cutthroat competition and selfish ambition(Source A). As seen in many
western nations, such as the United States, this means that the poor have next to nothing while a

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small percentage of people, the very wealthy, can own a majority of the property and money.
Even with some federal aid, many poor people in capitalist nations are often stuck in poverty for
generations. Obviously, both capitalism and communism benefit those in power while hurting
everyone else.
Both capitalism and communism fail in allowing individuals to live how they wish.
Communism is the worse of the two when it comes to this subject. Stalin, a former leader of the
communist Soviet Union, incorporated both Marxs idea of confiscating the land and factories
and running the entire economy as a single enterprise(Source D) and Lenins one-party police
state(Source D) to create conditions that would result in an even greater loss of freedom. With
only one party in the government, the Soviets would not have been able to change or oppose
Stalin. The end of all private property means that everyone is the same. There is little
individuality in a communist nation. Compared to this, capitalist countries have much more
economical and political freedom. Conformity in a capitalist country is presented as materialism
and ideas of success. As King put it, capitalism causes people to judge success by the index of
our salaries and the size of the wheel base on our automobiles(Source A), which allows society
to define what we should want in life. These ideas are put into the minds of children in capitalist
nations as the only things that matter. Everyone wants to be rich because that is what we have
been told to reach for since childhood. Once again, both capitalism and communism share a
glaring flaw.
Lastly, both systems are susceptible to corruption. Just like the systems they create,
humans themselves are imperfect, and communism ends up failing in many countries because
no such infallible people can be found in this world(Source B). The same goes for capitalism.
Due to human greed, capitalism starts to be less about opportunities and more about superfluous

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wealth and abject poverty(Source A). What sounds good in theory ends up having a poor
execution, and no amount of planning can get rid of this.
To conclude, I completely agree with Kings opinion on the flaws of both capitalism and
communism. Neither system is or will ever be perfect. While both systems do have some positive
aspects, they are much too flawed to ever be considered adequate by a majority of the people
who live under them. While it is too early to know if humanity will ever create an ideal system, I
can say with confidence that neither capitalism nor communism is it.