Saturday, February 15, 2014
Fundamentals of Communism
Much of this reading will come across as a review for us. At this point in the year, we should be very familiar with the tenets of communism. After reading the excerpt from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto (locations 17-19), consider how the communist ideology aligns with the political practice. To what extent did any ONE (Mao, Allende, Castro, Stalin, etc.) communist leader live up to Karl Marx's ideals?
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The excerpt from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto is very spirited in tone. It gives me the feeling that Marx envisioned a very revolutionary society that would have to be extremely passionate to create a communist society. I do see how this communist ideology parallels to the practice of communism. Many communist countries use mass campaigns and cultural revolutions to spread the ideology. I particularly remember this from the Allende documentary. It continuously showed parades and crowds of people cheering and chanting for Allende. However, in political practice, communist doesn't live up to this hype. We saw this in Cuba where so any people that originally supported Castro lost hope because their expectations weren't fulfilled.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Karl Marx's idea of communism is that it's unrealistic. His idea is about a state where everyone owns everything equally and the wealth of the nation is divided up in equal amounts throughout the population. I believe that none of the leaders of the communist countries we have studied have ever even come close to what Marx envisioned. Marx would of been proud of the achievements of Allende over all the others due to the methods he used and the practice of getting everyone in the nation to come out and join in the festivities. Even if there was perfect laid out plan for communism which had step by step procedures on how to succeed, I believe that selfish men would gain power in these countries and destroy the very ideal they believe in.
ReplyDeleteKarl Marx made communism seem like an awesome, perfect idea. And during this time period, people were desperate for salvation, it seemed. Thinking about it logically, communism doesn't seem all that bad if you only think of the words "everyone is equal", and forget about how the harder workers will not earn what they should earn. I personally think Stalin definitely lived up to Karl Marx's ideals, and even went too far given his persecution of people. All communist leaders have something similar about them - they yearn for all people to be the same.
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