During WWII, should we have been going to war against Socialism or really fighting Communism?

Question

SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and gives you part of the milk.

Answer 1

I would say that it was war against National Socialism, and allied forces would have defiantly fought the same battle extended against Communism. Bus since National Socialists itself started fighting against communists …allied side had to take back seat.
I think it must be unhappy feeling inside US-British camp about letting Russians be on their side.
As far as Socialism vs communism (do not think your analogy of cows really depict it right ) …I think they are like neighbors, who know that they are gonna live side by side but their kids really fight and continuously bring complaints home. Socialism is perhaps mild neighbor, communism sometimes takes extreme stance on issues.
And as far as Hitler’s’ National Socialism’, it was fanaticism with racial extermination,
Let’s forget about it. Entire world have to be ashamed of its existence not just Germans.

Answer 2

very crude analysis, but i see the point.

communism is just the natural extension of socialist though. the problem with communism, is it depends utterly on the government remaining uncorrupt. humanity being what it is, this is most likely not going to happen. communism is in that regard, a utopia: a perfect society, which requires a perfect world to function.

socialism allows a certain degree of human predation. it allows you to make more cows than your neighboor, but not as much as you would be able to do in a capitalist society. the advantage? you gain limited access to your neighboors chickens. you see, while you're busy making milk, the government takes some of that and gives it to your community. in return, you get some of your neighboor's eggs, and some bacon, and some corn, and... you get the idea. it's more about spreading the wealth, while still retaining an incentive for a competitive edge.

now, to answer your question: the allied powers weren't fighting communism in world war two, they were fighting fascism. in fact, russia was a communist ally. germany and italy, however, were facists.

after the war, it seemed that mother russia was going to drown the world in a red tide, so the propaganda machines got turning and painted the commies as some sort of machine-like non-humans. they put communism up as the opposite of democracy, when REALLY it's the opposite of CAPITALISM. why was this a bad thing? because by this point corporations had started making major political contributions to important figures, that's why. capitalism was, is, and will forever be the real enemy.

Answer 3

World War II was not a war against an economical system, it was a war against world domination by totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism was the evil being fought. Which is a bit ironic bearing in mind that Stalin was a totalitarian leader maybe worse than Hitler, but at least he hadn't made any attempts at world domination.

After worldwide depressions during the late 20's early 30's just before the war, there were serious doubts that capitalism could be viable economic system. Many people (even in America) praised socialism and Communism.

Answer 4

We were going up against "National Socialism" if that is what you're talking about.

We could have done that but it would've been risky, considering that Stalin was our ally (we were allies only in the sense that we wanted to eradicate Nazism). And we'd be fighting a multiple front war where we'd be vastly outnumbered.