Communism essays

Communism essays Its hard to believe that 60 years ago, the threat of communism was at the door step of the United States. Most everyone was in the some way effected by the threat. From being assoiated with communists or even being acused of actually Communism is often called a collective ideology, which calls for collective or state, ownership of land and other productive property. The origin of the idea of Communism lie deep in Western though. Communist communities have been reported to have existed in ancient times, usually established by a religious order. Marx and Friedrich Engels first set out its basic concepts in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. The thoughts expressed in the communist manifesto were greatly different then previous Utopian views. Marxs major work, Das Kapital (1867), he based the work on the four closely related concepts: his theory of history, the labor theory of value, the nature of the state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marxs view of history was a story of class struggle of social classes competing for the control of labor and productive property. One class was the oppressors; the other, the oppressed.Marx also rejected the free enterprise ideas of profit and competition. In his opinion, the value of commodity was sety by the amount of labor put into it. A pair of shoes or a rebuilt bicycle is worth a certain amount because it takes that much labor to produce it. Therefore, communists say, the laborer should receive that value in full. Marx saw the state and its government as the tools by which the capitalists maintained their power and privilages. He also stated that he thought religion was the opiate of the people, a sort of drug that persuades workers to tolerate their harsh lot in this life in the hope that someday they will gain what Marx called a fictional afterlife. Although, Marx did not believe that revolu...