Social Justice

“The most powerful of authoritarians built their success on an association with social justice.” Referencing two authoritarians from different regions, to what extent do you agree with this statement?

 

Introduction

Historical context (establish perspective)

In the cold war, the authoritarians often needs to consolidate its power to ensure their successful control over the government and the country. Many social problem they have face for their new born country and it has benefits and drawbacks for them.

Thesis

Authoritarian’s policies towards social issues have some extend in both consolidate his successful career as an leader, but also jeopardize its regimes in other areas.

 

Topic-Nasser

Historical context	Land reform
Who	the poor, the rich and Nasser
What	Nasser redistributed the rich’s land to poor peasants in Egypt.
When	1952
Where	Egypt
Why  (cause/effect)	this was a response to the current situation of poverty in Egypt
Analysis  (significance to your argument)	This policy have gain Nasser support from the peasantry, the majority in the population, for his resolution to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, which certainly help consolidate his new born regime, hence helped his success. However, this solution to this social issue have made him unpopular among the rich and the western countries that doing business with them. This have made many western countries stopped trading with Egypt and made Egypt’s economy suffer huge loses. And this made Nasser’s dream to unite the Arab world more unlikely to happen given the worsened economy of Egypt.

Topic-Castro

Historical context	The public school system
Who	Castro and the people of education
What	public school system covering from primary school to college have been set up for the Cuban people
When	1959 to now
Where	Cuba
Why (cause/effect)	This was an effort to solve to low literacy rate in Cuba, and also an effort to solve the economy problems Cuba face by providing more qualified labor.
Analysis (significance to your argument)	hisThis have clearly a direct response to the social justice where the poor should be educated in a socialist revolution. It firstly helped Cuba to be able to provide well education to the peasants, and helped it to have many well trained labors, especially doctors that helped Cuba to have the highest expected years of living among the developing nations. This have surely been a success policy for Castro’s socialist revolution and gaining him huge support from the peasantry that allow him to stay in power even after the collapse of USSR. However, Cuba’s socialist system doesn’t pay these highly skilled labor well, so it caused a brain drain phenomenon where Cuban doctors and college graduates fleed to USA for better paid job. This have certainly damaged the Cuban economy as they have lost the labor that they spend so much money to educate.

 

Conclusion

Continuity

We can see that these two authoritarian have very similar socialist approach towards social problems that are associated with the poor. They tried to give benefits to the poor in order to gain their support for the government or to make them to live better, but their ignorance towards the economic aspects of their country have let their country to suffer tremendous losses on the economy. This have surely tell us that socialist policies often have drawbacks on the economy because of their affinity to the poor and hostility towards the rich who is the real engine for economic development.