Cabudare Kids

What they promise and what happened

What socialism and communism aim for, told fairly, and what happened when a government took control of everything.

Hi! I'm Cardi. You already know about the two Koreas and the Berlin Wall. Today we'll understand the ideas behind them.
Let's be fair: first, what they promise; then, what happened.
Socialism is the idea that land, factories and resources should not have private owners. Instead, the government, in the name of everyone, would own the factories and the land.
Communism is a kind of socialism: it wants everything important to belong to everyone. Its goal is a society with no rich and no poor.
Those are nice goals: sharing wealth more fairly so that nobody is poor. Many people supported them with good intentions.
What happened when people tried it in real life?
In several countries, the government took almost everything: the factories, the shops and the prices. And people couldn't vote freely or complain.
When nobody can say "this isn't working", mistakes don't get fixed. Things run out, there are lines and there is less to buy.
Remember? In North Korea and in East Germany, people couldn't say what they thought. They couldn't leave the country either.
East Germany even built a wall so its people wouldn't leave.
In Cuba, since the early 1960s, every family has a booklet. It says how much rice, grains or sugar it can buy each month.
Cuba's government blames the United States embargo, which is real. A Cuban writer says people were caught between the embargo and a government that wanted to stay in power.
In 2005, Venezuela's president at the time said socialism had to be reinvented.
Years later, the government set very low prices for things like bread. Bakers lost money, and little flour arrived from abroad. Bread began to run short.
Today, almost 7 million Venezuelans live outside their country in Latin America and the Caribbean alone.
Watch out for a common mistake: some people say Denmark is socialist. Denmark takes good care of its people. But its prime minister explained in 2015 that it is a market economy, not a socialist planned economy.
And people there vote in free elections.
When people can vote, speak up, run a small business and choose, they can see mistakes. And they can fix them.
Wanting equality is good. The hard part is getting there without taking freedom away.
What did you learn?
- Wanting equality is good, but we have to see which system gets there without taking freedom away.
- When nobody can complain or vote, a government's mistakes don't get fixed.
- Helping people a lot is not the same as controlling everything. Denmark does it with a market economy and free elections.
This really happened
This is where we checked every fact in the story:
1. 1.Encyclopaedia Britannica, Socialism, accessed September 28, 2026.
2. 2.Encyclopaedia Britannica, Communism, accessed September 28, 2026.
3. 3.Havana Times (Dariela Aquique), The Story of the Ration Book in Cuba, March 18, 2014.
4. 4.Venezuelanalysis, …Closes World Social Forum with Call to Transcend Capitalism, January 31, 2005.
5. 5.NPR (John Otis) / KVPR, Venezuela's Bread Wars: With Food Scarce, Government Accuses Bakers Of Hoarding, April 7, 2017.
6. 6.R4V, Inter-Agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela, Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela, August 2026.
7. 7.The Local Denmark, Danish PM in US: Denmark is not socialist, November 1, 2015.
8. 8.Freedom House, Denmark: Freedom in the World 2025 Country Report, 2025.
For grown-ups: notes and links to sources
For grown-ups: the date the Cuban ration book began differs between sources (March 1962 or July 1963). The number of Venezuelans comes from the UN-backed R4V platform (August 2026) and counts Latin America and the Caribbean only.

The story

What did you learn?

This really happened