communism essay introduction

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Communism is a form of government most closely associated with the ideas of Karl Marx, which he outlined in The Communist Manifesto . Communism is based on the goal of eliminating socioeconomic class struggles by creating a classless society in which everyone shares the benefits of labor and the state controls all property and wealth.

Social Studies, Civics, Economics

Soldiers Marching in Beijing

China is one of just five proclaimed communist nations left. There were many more communist countries in 1973 when this photograph of Chinese soldiers was taken.

Photograph by J. Cuinieres/Roger Viollet via Getty Images

Communism is a form of government most frequently associated with the ideas of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who outlined his ideas for a utopian society in The Communist Manifesto , written in 1848. Marx believed that capitalism , with its emphasis on profit and private ownership, led to inequality among citizens. Thus, his goal was to encourage a system that promoted a classless society in which everyone shared the benefits of labor and the state government controlled all property and wealth. No one would strive to rise above others, and people would no longer be motivated by greed. Then, communism would close the gap between rich and poor, end the exploitation of workers, and free the poor from oppression. The basic ideas of communism did not originate with Marx, however. Plato and Aristotle discussed them in ancient times, but Marx developed them into a popular doctrine , which was later propelled into practice. Marx’s ideal society ensured economic equality and fairness. Marx believed that private ownership of property promoted greed, and he blamed capitalism for society’s problems. The problems, he claimed, stemmed from the Industrial  Revolution . The rise of factories, the reliance on machines, and the capability of mass production created conditions that promoted oppression and encouraged the development of a proletariat, or a working class. Simply put, in a capitalist system, the factories fueled the economy, and a wealthy few owned the factories. This created the need for a large number of people to work for the factory owners. In this environment, the wealthy few exploited the laborers, who had to labor in order to live. So, Marx outlined his plan to liberate the proletariat, or to free them of the burden of labor. His idea of utopia was a land where people labored as they were able, and everyone shared the wealth. If the government controlled the economy and the people relinquished their property to the state, no single group of people could rise above another. Marx described this ideal in his Manifesto , but the practice of communism fell far short of the ideal. For a large part of the 20th century, about one-third of the world lived in communist countries—countries ruled by dictatorial leaders who controlled the lives of everyone else. The communist leaders set the wages, they set the prices, and they distributed the wealth. Western capitalist nations fought hard against communism , and eventually, most communist countries collapsed. Marx’s utopia was never achieved, as it required revolution on a global scale, which never came to pass. However, as of 2020, five proclaimed communist countries continue to exist: North Korea, Vietnam, China, Cuba, and Laos.

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What Is Communism? Definition and Examples

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History of Communism

Key principles, communism in practice.

Communism is a political, social, and economic ideology that advocates the replacement of private ownership and profit-based economies with a classless economic system under which the means of production—buildings, machinery, tools, and labor—are communally owned, with private ownership of property either prohibited or severely limited by the state. Because of its opposition to both democracy and capitalism , communism is considered by its advocates to be an advanced form of socialism .

Key Takeaways: Communism

• Communism is a social and political ideology that strives to create a classless society in which all property and wealth are communally owned, instead of owned by individuals.
• The ideology of communism was developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848.
• A true communist society is the opposite of a capitalist society, which relies on democracy, innovation, and the production of goods for profit.
• The Soviet Union and China were prominent examples of communist systems.
• While the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, China drastically reformed its economic system to include many free-market elements of capitalism.

While the term communism was not widely used until the 1840s, societies that could be considered communist were described as early as the 4th century BC by the Greek philosopher Plato. In his Socratic dialogue, Republic, Plato describes an ideal state in which a ruling class of guardians—mainly philosophers and soldiers—serves the needs of the whole community. Because private ownership of property would make them self-seeking, indulgent, greedy, and corrupt, the ruling guardians, Plato argued, had to function as a large communal family that ownership of all material goods, as well as spouses and children.

Religion inspired early visions of voluntary communistic principles. In the Bible’s Book of Acts , for example, the first Christians practiced a simple kind of freely chosen communal living as a way of maintaining solidarity and avoiding the evils associated with the private ownership of worldly possessions. This voluntary communal living did not last long and was not widely practiced outside of Jerusalem, and it cannot be considered equivalent to political communism. In many early monastic orders, monks took vows of poverty requiring them to share their few worldly goods with each other and the poor. Again, this voluntary communal living is not the same as political communism.

In his visionary 1516 work Utopia, English statesman Sir Thomas More describes an imaginary perfect society in which money is abolished and the people share food, houses, and other goods. Contemporary communism was inspired in Western Europe by the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The revolution, which allowed some to attain great wealth at the expense of an increasingly impoverished working class, encouraged Prussian political activist, Karl Marx , to conclude that class struggles resulting from income inequality would inevitably give rise to a society in common ownership of the means of production would allow prosperity to be shared by all.   

In 1848, Marx, along with German economist Friedrich Engels, wrote The Communist Manifesto , in which they concluded that the problems of poverty, disease, and shortened lives that afflicted the proletariat—the working class—could be resolved only by replacing capitalism with communism. Under communism, as envisioned by Marx and Engels, the major means of industrial production—factories, mills, mines, and railroads—would be publicly owned and operated for the benefit of all.

Marx predicted that a fully realized form of communism following the overthrow of capitalism would result in a communal society free of class divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Of his many followers, especially Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin adopted Marx’s visions of a communist society.

During World War II , the Soviet Union joined with other European communist and socialist regimes in fighting the fascist threat posed by Nazi Germany . However, the end of the war also ended the always shaky alliance between the Soviet Union and its more politically moderate Warsaw Pact satellite countries, allowing the USSR to establish communist regimes across Eastern Europe. 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 led to the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) under Vladimir Lenin in 1922. By the 1930s, Lenin’s brand of moderate communism had been replaced by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which under Joseph Stalin , exerted absolute government control over all aspects of the Russian society. Despite the incalculable human cost of his iron-fisted, authoritarian application of communism, Stalin transformed the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower.

After the Second World War, the political tensions of the Cold War and the economic drain of maintaining its status as a global military superpower slowly weakened the Soviet Union’s grip over its Eastern Bloc communist satellite nations, such as East Germany and Poland. By the 1990s, the prevalence of communism as a global political force quickly diminished. Today, only the nations of China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam continue to function as communist states.

While the most widely recognized communist countries, such as the Soviet Union, China, and Yugoslavia, developed their own models which varied from each other over time, six defining characteristics of pure communist ideology are often identified.  

Collective ownership of the means of production: All means of production such as factories, farms, land, mines, transportation, and communication systems are owned and controlled by the state.

Abolition of Private Property: As collective ownership implies, private ownership of means of production is prohibited. In a purely communist state, individual citizens are allowed to own nothing except the necessities of life. The operation of privately owned businesses is similarly prohibited.

Democratic centralism: The official organizing and decision‐making principle of Communist Parties, democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions, while reached by a nominally democratic voting process, are binding on all members of the party—effectively all citizens. As conceived by Lenin, democratic centralism allows party members to participate in political discussion and state opinions but compels them to follow the Communist Party “line” once a decision has been made.

Centrally planned economy:   Also known as a command economy , a centrally planned economy is an economic system in which a single central authority, typically the government in communist states, makes all decisions regarding the manufacturing and distribution of products. Centrally planned economies are different from free-market economies , such as those in capitalist countries, in which such decisions are made by businesses and consumers according to the factors of supply and demand .

Elimination of income inequality: In theory, by compensating each individual according to their need, gaps in income are eliminated. By abolishing revenue, interest income, profit, income inequality , and socioeconomic class friction is eliminated, and the distribution of wealth is accomplished on a just and fair basis.

Repression: In keeping with the principle of democratic centralism, political opposition and economic freedom are prohibited or repressed. Other basic individual rights and freedoms may also be repressed. Historically, communist states, such as the Soviet Union, were characterized by government control of most aspects of life. “Correct thinking” in adherence with the party line was encouraged by coercive, often threatening propaganda produced by state owned and controlled media.  

Communism vs. Socialism

The exact difference between communism and socialism has long been debated. Even Karl Marx used the terms interchangeably. Marx viewed socialism as the first step in the transition from capitalism to communism. Today, communism is often identified with socialism. However, while they share several characteristics, the two doctrines differ significantly in their goal and how it is achieved.

The goal of communism is the establishment of absolute social equality and the elimination of socioeconomic classes. Achieving this goal requires that private ownership of the means of production be eliminated. All aspects of economic production are controlled by the central government.

In contrast, socialism assumes that social classes will inevitably exist and strives to minimize the differences between them. The government’s power over the means of production under socialism is regulated by democratic citizen participation. Contrary to a common misconception, socialism allows the private ownership of property.

Unlike communism, socialism rewards individual effort and innovation. The most common form of modern socialism, social democracy, works to achieve equal distribution of wealth and other social reforms through democratic processes and typically co-exists alongside a free-market capitalist economy.

Notable examples of communist regimes throughout history include the former Soviet Union, and the modern-day nations of Communist China, Cuba, and North Korea.

Soviet Union

Today, the former Soviet Union is still widely considered the prototypical example of communism in action. Under Joseph Stalin from 1927 to1953, and his successor Nikita Khrushchev from 1953 to 1964, the Soviet Communist Party prohibited all forms of dissent and took control of the “commanding heights” of the Soviet economy, including agriculture, banking, and all means of industrial production. The communist system of central planning enabled rapid industrialization. In 1953, the Soviet Union shocked the world by exploding its first hydrogen bomb . From 1950 to 1965, the Soviet Union’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a faster rate than that of the United States. Overall, however, the Soviet economy grew at a rate much slower than those of its capitalist, democratic counterparts.

During the Cold War, Soviet central economic “Five Year Plans” overemphasized industrial and military production, leading to chronic underproduction of consumer goods. As long lines at understocked grocery stores became a fixture of Soviet life, weak consumer spending became a drag on economic growth. The shortages led to black markets, which while illegal, were allowed and even supported by corrupt leaders within the Communist Party. Growingly dissatisfied with six decades of shortages, corruption, and oppression, the Soviet people demanded reforms to the economic, social, and political system. Undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev starting in 1985, these reform efforts known as perestroika and glasnost , not only failed to halt the economic decline, but they likely hastened the end of the Communist Party by loosening its grip on sources of public dissent. By 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and by 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 separate republics.

Communist China

In 1949, Mao Zedong's Communist Party gained control of China, joining the Soviet Union as the world's second major Marxist-Leninist state. In its violence, deprivation, and steel-fisted insistence on unquestioned adherence to the Communist Party line, Mao’s rule in China resembled that of Joseph Stalin. Hoping to spark an industrial revolution in China, Mao’s “ Great Leap Forward ” plan of 1958 ordered the rural population to produce impossible quantities of steel by 1962. Instead of useable steel, the plan produced the Great Chinese Famine killed between 15 and 45 million people. In 1966, Mao and his infamous “ Gang of Four ” launched the Chinese Cultural Revolution . Intended to purge China of the “Four Olds”—old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas—the “purge” resulted in the deaths of at least another 400,000 people by the time of Mao’s death in 1976.

Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping introduced a series of successful market reforms. Tempted by these reforms, the United States began normalizing diplomatic relations with China when President Richard Nixon visited in 1972. Today, though state-owned enterprises continue to form a large part of the economy, the Chinese Communist Party presides over a largely capitalist system. Freedom of expression is greatly restricted. Elections are banned, except in the former British colony of Hong Kong , where only candidates approved by the Communist Party are allowed to appear on the ballot. 

Formally organized by Fidel Castro in 1965, the Communist Party of Cuba remains the only political party permitted to function in Cuba. In the latest revised Cuban constitution of 1992, the party was defined as the “organized vanguard of the Cuban nation.” By most accounts, communism has left Cuba as one of the world’s least free countries. According to the independent Heritage Foundation, Cuba now ranks 175th in the world for economic freedom—one spot above Venezuela. Before Castro’s takeover, however, Cuba was one of the wealthiest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

In July 2021, the failures of Cuban communism boiled over as thousands of angry Cubans marched in protest to shortages of food, medicine, and energy, and the Cuban government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to what were the largest demonstrations the nation had witnessed in decades, the government killed at least one protester, arrested journalists, and cut off access to social-media internet sites that protesters had been using to communicate. Many analysts agreed that while the protests will result in few immediate changes to Cuba’s one-party communist rule, they put an unprecedented level of pressure on the government to speed up economic and social reforms.

North Korea

Oxford University scholar Robert Service has called North Korea the modern country that most closely follows the communist principles established by Karl Marx. The country adheres to an indigenous ideology of communism known as Juche , first formulated by Kim Il-sung , the founder of modern North Korea. Juche promotes self-reliance and complete independence from the rest of the world. As a result, North Korea is regarded as one of the most isolative and secretive countries in the world. Also in keeping with Juche, the government, ostensibly on the behalf of the people, has complete control over the country’s economy.

In the 1990s, a series of natural disasters, combined with poor agricultural policies, and general economic mismanagement led to a famine that left between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans dead from starvation. Rather than addressing the obvious needs of its people, the ruling regime continued to invest heavily in its military, now believed to have developed or otherwise obtained nuclear weapons. Today, North Korea functions as a totalitarian dictatorship under its flamboyant current leader Kim Jong-un . Like his ancestral predecessors, the people are trained to revere Kim as a quasi-deity. The news media is under strict government control. With internet access is not generally available to the people, ordinary North Koreans have almost no way of connecting to the outside world. Any hint of political dissent is quickly and punitively crushed, with human rights violations commonplace. While Kim has instituted some minor reforms, North Korea’s economy remains under the tight control of the ruling communist regime.

For all the worries and wars it has caused, true communism as envisioned by Marx and Lenin no longer exists as a serious political force—and may never have.

By 1985, at the height of the Cold War, nearly one-third of the world’s population lived under communism, mostly in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite republics. However, modern scholars doubt that any of these countries were ever truly communist at all since they significantly strayed from many of the basic components of a Marxist system. Indeed, scholars argue that the failure of these Cold War governments to adhere to the true ideals of communism combined with their trend toward left-wing authoritarianism contributed directly to the decline of communism in the late 20th century.

Today, only five countries—China, North Korea, Laos, Cuba, and Vietnam—list communism as their official form of government. They can be classified as communist only because in all of them, the central government controls all aspects of the economic and political system. However, none of them have eliminated elements of capitalism such as personal property, money, or socioeconomic class systems as required by true communist ideology.  

In their 2002 book Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR, professors Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff, both specialists in Marxian economics, argue that the gut-wrenching tensions of the Cold War were, in fact, an ideological struggle between the private capitalism of the West and the “state-controlled capitalism” of the Soviet Union. Resnick and Wolff conclude that the war between pure communism and pure capitalism never happened. “The Soviets didn’t establish communism,” they wrote. “They thought about it, but never did it.”

Why Communism Failed

Even as pure Marxist communism created opportunities for human rights atrocities by authoritarian leaders, researchers have identified two common factors that contributed to its ultimate failure.

First, under pure communism, the citizens have no incentive to work for a profit. In capitalistic societies, the incentive to produce for profit spurs competition and innovation. In communist societies, however, “ideal” citizens are expected to selflessly devote themselves exclusively to societal causes without regard to their welfare. As Liu Shaoqi, the first Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party of China wrote in 1984, “At all times and all questions a party member should give first consideration to the interests of the Party as a whole and put them in the foremost and place personal matters and interests second.”

In the Soviet Union, for example, in the absence of free legal markets, workers had little incentive to either be productive or to focus on making goods that might be useful to consumers. As result, many workers tried to do as little work as possible on their official government-assigned jobs, devoting their real effort to more profitable black market activity. As many Soviet workers used to say of their relationship with the government, “We pretend to work for them, and they pretend to pay us.”

The second reason for the failure of communism was its inherent inefficiencies. For example, the overly complex centralized planning system required the collection and analysis of enormous amounts of detailed economic data. In many cases, this data was error-prone and manipulated by party-chosen economic planners to create an illusion of progress. Placing so much power in the hands of so few, encouraged inefficiency and corruption. Corruption, laziness, and intense government surveillance left little incentive for industrious and hard-working people. As a result, the centrally planned economy suffered, leaving the people, poor, disillusioned, and dissatisfied with the communist system.

• Service, Robert. “Comrades! A History of World Communism.” Harvard University Press, 2010, ISBN 9780674046993.
• “Index of Economic Freedom.” The Heritage Foundation , 2021, https://www.heritage.org/index/about.
• Bremmer, Ian. “What the Protests in Cuba Mean for the Future of Communism and U.S. Relations.” Time , July 2021, https://time.com/6080934/cuba-protests-future-communism-u-s-relations/.
• Pop-Eleches, Grigore. “Communist Legacies and Left-Authoritarianism.” Princeton University , 2019, https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/gpop/files/communist_leagacies.pdf.
• Stone, William F.  “Authoritarianism: Right and Left.” Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1954. Online ISBN 978-1-4613-9180-7.
• Lansford, Thomas. “Communism.” Cavendish Square Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-0761426288.
• MacFarlane, S. Neil. “The USSR and Marxist Revolutions in the Third World.” Cambridge University Press, 1990, ISBN 978-081221620.
• Resnick, Stephen A. and Wolff, Richard D. “Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR.” Routledge (July 12, 2002), ISBN-10: ‎0415933188.
• Costello, T. H., Bowes, S. “Clarifying the Structure and Nature of Left-Wing Authoritarianism.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 2001, https://psyarxiv.com/3nprq/.
• Shaoqi, Liu. “Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi.” Foreign Languages Press, 1984, ISBN 0-8351-1180-6.
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World History Project - 1750 to the Present

Course: world history project - 1750 to the present   >   unit 7.

• READ: The Global Story of the 1930s
• READ: Fascism in Germany
• READ: Fascism in Italy

READ: Communism in the Soviet Union

• READ: Authoritarianism in Japan
• READ: Fascist Histories, Part II - Exercising Authoritarianism
• READ: Appeasement
• The Road to War

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Second read: key ideas and understanding content.

• What big challenges did Lenin and the Bolshevik (communist) leadership face in the first stages of their revolution?
• How does the author characterize the Bolshevik party during the early part of their rule?
• How did Stalin’s rise to power change the way the Bolsheviks ruled?
• What were some consequences for everyday life under the Soviet command economy?
• How were fascism and communism under Stalin similar and different?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

• Communism under Stalin was certainly different from fascism. But Italian Fascism, as you now know, was different from German fascism. Why do we call Mussolini and Hitler’s approaches fascism, but use the term communism for Stalin’s regime?
• Think about the last time you heard someone called a “communist” or a “fascist”. Do you think the term was used correctly?
• In this unit we see the rise of governments that have certain political characteristics. We call these characteristics fascism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. Using these definitions, evaluate which of these terms can appropriately be applied to this government. It may be all, some, or none:
• A totalitarian regime has a highly centralized system of government that requires strict obedience.
• An authoritarian regime focuses on the maintenance of order at the expense of personal freedom.
• A fascist regime is a government that embraces extreme nationalism, violence, and action with the goal of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Communism in the Soviet Union

Introduction, the rise of stalin, communism and fascism.

• Both, of course, exhibited an authoritarian impulse to bring the population into line with the aims of the state.
• Both sought to install a totalitarian system that could do as it pleased.
• Both used violence to achieve political ends.
• Both rejected liberalism.
• The fascist “new man” even had a counterpart in the “new Soviet man”. Each was a mythic symbol of their movement’s values.
• The Soviets embraced left-wing socialist internationalism, while fascists embraced right-wing ethnic nationalism.
• The Soviets, in theory at least, rejected the doctrines of racism and ethnic nationalism, while these doctrines were central to fascism.
• Soviet communism wanted to erase class and gender inequalities, while fascists wanted to affirm social and gender hierarchies that limited women to marriage and motherhood and promoted a violent cult of masculinity for men.
• A premier is a head of a government, like a prime minister.
• Collectivization is the idea that, within a state, nothing can be privately owned because everything is meant to be shared with all members of the state.

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History Grade 11 - Topic 1 Contextual Overview

What is Communism?

Communism is a social, economic, and political ideology whose aim is to establish a communist society in which there is a collective ownership of the means of production [1] . The goal of communism is to eliminate social classes in society. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are considered the founding fathers of communism [2] . Communism believes that the current order of society comes from capitalism. Communism views capitalism as a system which mainly consists of class struggles between the proletariat (working class) who make up the majority of the population and the bourgeoise (capitalists), who make profit from exploiting the working class through private ownership of the means of production and they form the minority of the population. Communism believes that through a revolution , the working class could seize power and establish social ownership of the means of production where the main goal would be to transform society into a more equitable one towards communism). Karl Marx was a key figure in conceptualising this ideology.

Karl Marx Writings:

Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Germany (5 May 1818- 14 March 1883) and was an economist, political theorist, and philosopher.  Karl Marx became stateless because of his work that mainly consisted of political publications which forced him to live in exile with his wife and children [3] . Marx’s best-known works include the 1848 pamphlet titled The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital which consisted of 3 volumes of this work. His works have had and continue to have a significant influence on intellectual, economic, and political history.

Marxism is collectively understood as Karl Marx’s criticisms of existing societal arrangements, economic and political systems as well as his offerings of alternative arrangements. Marxists believe that all human civilization has come out of conflict, more specifically, class conflicts. Class conflicts show themselves in the capitalist mode of production. In this mode of production, class conflicts arise from the differences between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is better understood as the ruling class that owns and controls the means of production (land) and the proletariat would be the working class that exchange their time and labour for living wages, thus, allowing for production in the capitalist mode of production.

Part of Marx’s predictions around capitalism are that it would produce internal tensions that would lead to its own destruction followed by the replacement of that system by a new communist mode of production. The contradictions under capitalism would drive the proletariat to revolt against the capitalist system in a quest for political power and a classless and communist society categorised by a free association of producers. Marx actively advocated for this ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, arguing that they (the proletariat) have the power to organise a proletarian revolution that would eventually lead to the capitalist system overthrown and begin to promote economic and political freedoms.

1905 Revolution: Issues that led to the Revolution

The Russian Revolution of 1905 which was also known as the First Russian Revolution was a time of mass social and political unrest which took place in various parts of the Russian government, some of which were aimed at the government [4] . The unrests took the form of worker strikes, peasant unrest and military rebels who wanted to overthrow the government. These strikes led to many constitutional reforms in Russia such as the establishment of a State Duma , the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906.

The 1905 revolution was propelled and fuelled by various causes such as the Russian defeat in the war against Japan which ended in 1905. The revolution was also caused by a growing realisation by many sectors of society for the need for reform in Russia. In addition to this, the revolution was spurred on by newly emancipated peasants who were earning low wages with limited land rights and ownership. Ethnic and national minorities also added to the discontent in Russia as they resented the government because of how it oppressed and discriminated against them such as stripping them of voting rights and limiting their schooling options. Another sector of society were the industrial working class who hated the government for not protecting them and suppressing their voices by banning their strikes and labour unions. University students developed a new consciousness with growing radical ideas to overthrow the government was another major course of the revolution [5] . Collectively these issues created the recipe for the 1905 revolution.

Link between the 1905 and the 1917 revolution including political, economic and social causes:

Following the 1905 revolution, Nicholas 2nd (Russia’s last Emperor) promised the Russian people changes and better living conditions, however, he failed to do this and Russia’s social and economic problems continued. In 1914, Russia entered World War one to support their French and British allies (Wade, 2017) [6] . However, Russia’s involvement in the war became disastrous as their military was inferior to Germanies military which resulted in mass casualties that they had never faced before in previous wars.  This war caused food and fuel shortages in Russia which significantly increased inflation which crippled Russia’s economy (Wade, 2017).

Like the 1905 revolution, these conditions in 1917 caused demonstrations for bread and better living conditions by way of mass participation of workers and peasants. Even though authorities opened fire and killed protesters, they continued to protest and gained momentum. Eventually, the revolution brought an end to the Tsarist monarchy on February 1917. This victory saw Trotsky return to Russia and became the leader of the Bolsheviks [7] . Here Trotsky played a pivotal role in the October Revolution where they orchestrated the overthrow of the new provincial government. Following this, Trotsky was appointed the Commissar of foreign affairs in government and played an instrumental role in pulling Russia out of World War one. From 1918-1925 he oversaw the Red Army .  

The civil war and war communism:

After establishing peace with Germany, the Soviet state soon saw disgruntlement within itself from dissatisfied sections which did not approve of the radical policies of the Bolsheviks (Raleigh, 2002) [8] . To show their discontent, centres of resistance were formed in southern and Siberian Russia by anti-Communist forces who called themselves the whites who were led by former officers of the tsarist army. The Whites and the Red Army soon waged a civil war which would determine Russians future. By 1920, the communist were the clear victors of the Civil War (Raleigh, 2002). The White Army had been defeated and were divided and had not clear cause which led to their demise.

The Soviets state communists applied control in the economic life of the country by applying extreme measures which became known as war communism (economic policies applied by Bolsheviks during the cold war) [9] . This war communism meant coordinating Russia’s economic resources such as nationalising industry across Russia and rejecting workers control of these factories and brining in experts to run these.

Lenin’s seizure of control of the State:

After the overthrow of the Tsar in 1917, Russia came under the command of a Provisional Government which was against violent social reform and who continued Russia’s involvement in WW1. While this was happening, Lenin began planning a coup d'etat of the Provincial Government (Medvedev, 1979) [10] .  His selling point of this overthrow was advancing that workers and peasants should directly rule. This was welcomed by workers and peasants as they demanded immediate change in what became known as the October Revolution . Lenin secretly organised factory workers, peasants and soldiers in a successful coup d'etat which was bloodless (Medvedev, 1979). The Bolsheviks seized power of the government and by extension of the Soviet state and made Lenin the leader of the communist state.

Lenin’s economic policy:

In 1921, Lenin adopted the New Economic Policy (NEP) as a temporary retreat from its previous policy of extreme centralization and doctrinaire socialism. Lenin saw this economic policy as the one that would include a “free-market” and “capitalism”. These are assumed to be subject to state administration, whilst socialized state enterprises would function on a “profit-basis”. [11] In the light of the depressed Russian economy, the NEP and its insistence on market-oriented economic policies were deemed necessary after the Russian Civil War which dated from 1918 to 1922. In this context, the nationalization of industry (formed during the War Communism of 1918-1921) was partially withdrawn by the Soviet authorities and had thus implemented a system of mixed economy. On the one hand, this system allowed private individuals to own small enterprises . On the other hand, the state continued to regulate banks, foreign trade, and large industries . Furthermore, the NEP has dismantled prodrazvyorstka (forced grain-acquisition) and introduced a system known as prodnalog which basically imposed taxes on farmers, payable in the form of raw agricultural product. [12] This allowed them to keep and trade part of their produce. It is argued that, initially, this tax was paid in kind.

Thus, the adoption of the NEP signalled the promulgation of a new agricultural policy. For example, the Bolsheviks saw traditional village as ‘pre-modern’ and ‘backward’. Hence, the NEP only permitted private landholdings because the idea of the collectivized farming met strong backlash. In the light of severe economic conditions in Russia, Lenin’s policies opened up markets to the greater degree of free trade, hoping to lure the large population to increase production. However, James Gregor argues that Lenin’s policies did not only restore private property rights, profits, and a whole range of other capitalist enterprises, but his policies turned to international capitalist markets for support and aid. [13] Lenin had the belief that in order to achieve socialism, he had to create the “missing material prerequisites” of modernization and industrial development that made it possible for Soviet Russia "fall back on a centrally supervised market-influenced program of state capitalism". [14] In this regard, Lenin followed the logic of Marxist vision that a society must first reach the full stage of capitalism as a pre-condition for socialism to be inaugurated. Zickel, Raymond postulates the use of Marxism-Leninism as a concept to describe Lenin’s approach to economic policies which were seen to support policies that paved the way towards the realization of communism. [15] However, the death of Lenin in 1924 brought the NEP to an end.

At the start of the 1930s, Stalin implemented a host of radical that completely changed industrial and agricultural face of the Soviet Union. This came to be known as the Great Turn as Russia moved away from the near-capitalist NEP and instead adopted a command economy. The NEP adopted by Lenin was implemented in order to ensure the survival of the socialist state following seven years of war  (World War I, 1914–1917, and the subsequent Civil War, 1917–1921) and had reconstituted the Soviet production to its 1913 levels. However, Stalin and the majority of the Communist party felt that the NEP compromised communist ideals and did not deliver adequate economic performance, and this rendered the policy inadequate to create a socialist state. It was thus believed that the pace of industrialization had to be increased in order to catch up with the west.

In reading these important debates in the history of the Russian revolution, how and where do we position women’s involvement in these male-dominated spaces? The Russian Revolutions of 1917 saw the collapse of the Russian empire – a temporary government and the establishment of the world’s first socialist state under the Bolsheviks. In this regard, explicit comments were made to promote the equality of men and women.  It has been an article of faith in history writing in that men in society are considered the legitimate political subject, whilst women remain domesticated, confined to the home, and thus defined outside the domain of politics and economics. There is a clear line demarcated here between the private and the public sphere. The former is understood to be the mere zone of passivity, and thus its primary constituents (women) are rendered as ‘pre-revolutionary’ and ‘pre-political’ subjects in this regard. The latter is assumed to constitute the domain of politics. The experiences of women before the Russian revolution are no exception to these male dominated narratives of ‘formal’ political participation in public life. It was thus believed that the revolution would grant women the decorum to move out of the private realm and enter the public realm as revolutionary subjects.

These ideas underwrote the communist vision of women’s emancipation in Russia and elsewhere in the world.  Katie McElvanney’s work complicates this understanding and shows how women’s involvement in the Russian revolution merely put burden on them as they were expected to perform dual duties. On the one hand, they were expected to perform traditional demands of the private sphere i.e., taking care of children and a host of related traditional gender roles. On the other hand, they were expected to be active in the demanding politics of public life. It was mainly urban based, educated, and wealthy women who actively participated in the Russian revolution. As mentioned above, the traditional village life was viewed outside the domain of politics and economics. As a result, towards the end of the 19th century, many women began to migrate to industrial urban cities to work in factories or domestic service. It is in this context; they began to affiliate themselves to the revolutionary movements and furthered the project of women’s liberation.

Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism:

Karl Marx assumed and theorised that the working class would gain a collective class consciousness and be powerful enough because of their numerical advantage and be able to control the most vital sectors of industry to gain social and political power to form a classless and stateless society which was equal (Evans, 1993) [16] . Lenin’s theory can be considered a development of Marx’s theory. Lenin on the other hand had theorised that the minority working class of the Soviet Union could be able to conscientize and inspire peasants and other workers in other countries to seize state power and not abolish the state as in Marx’s analysis and political thinking

Lenin’s government deviated from Marxism temporarily by introducing the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was an economic policy adopted by the government from 1921-1928 which was a temporal retreat from their exclusive centralization and doctrinaire socialism (Richman, 1981) [17] .  The NEP replaced war communism as the official economic policy and war communism almost brought the Soviet economy near collapse. The NEP ended gran confiscation and replaced it with a fixed tax and people to own small businesses and allowed them to sell surplus goods which meant a return of market (Richman, 1981).

Women and the Russian revolution:

In 1905 the young Russian feminist movement were delighted by the uprising of 1905 which was followed by a loosening of some of the restrictions that women were subjected to and the creation of the national parliament. In 1908, there was a pushback to this and feminists had to retreat (Ruthchild & Goldberg, 2007) [18] . This meant that women were not allowed in institutions of higher learning and moral among liberal forces was low.

However, the outbreak of the war in August in 1914 came as a surprise and as a result the Empire was not adequately prepared for this. While men enrolled into the army, millions of women assumed new roles which were vacated by the men. Industrial centres saw a significant increase from 1914 to 1917. Women were assuming work roles and came out of domesticated roles as peasant women also took new roles taking over some of their husbands’ farm work. Some women fought directly in the war often disguised as men and thousands more served as nurses. These new roles women assumes during the war affected the subsequent roles women would play in the coming revolutions.

Following the collapse of the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks created the world’s first socialist state. The Bolsheviks made conscious and explicit commitments to promote the equality of men and women. Even before this, many Russian working women and feminists actively participated in the war and were affected by the events of the war and thus were included in the new policies of the new government. The Bolsheviks advocated for liberalism and made Russia one of the first countries to allow women to vote. Amongst the laws the Bolsheviks implemented that liberated women were: liberalizing laws on divorce and abortion. decriminalising homosexuality and giving women a higher status in society.

The role of the Bolsheviks Government in changing the lives of women:

The first years of Bolsheviks rule inaugurated substantial changes to the lives of many women. Alexandra Kollontai was a people’s commissar for Social Welfare and the first woman in the Bolshevik Government. Through her activism and others, the question of women in the revolutionary struggle became more pronounced and this led a number of reforms concerning the liberation of women in public life. The provisional government that took power after the February 1917 overthrow of the Tsar promoted liberal values and made Russia the first major country that enfranchised women- giving them the right to vote and hold public office. In relation to reforms that transformed the lives of women, notably, the Family code of 1918, granted women equal status to men, secularized, granted equal legal rights to both ‘illegitimate’ (children born outside of wedlock) and ‘legitimate’ children, and allowed a couple to take either a husband or wife’s name once married. In addition, divorce became easily obtainable, abortion was legalized in the 1920s, and communal facilities for childcare and domestic tasks. These changes were instituted with the aim of relieving women of household chores.

However, these reforms that liberated women were short-lived. In the mid- to late 1920s, both public and party attitudes on family policy had leaned towards conservative politics. In the 1930s, Stalin reversed most of the progressive policies enshrined in Family code of 1918. In addition, closed the party’s women bureau in 1930s with the view that women’s emancipation has been achieved in the Soviet Union, and therefore this department was no longer necessary, according to him. This was a puzzling development considering the fact that women only constituted (on average) only 3-4% of the party’s central committee.

Death of Lenin and the power struggle:

After Lenin’s death in 1924, there was a power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky for who would be next in charge of the party and by extension, the country. The two did not see eye to eye in matter of policy in 1927 which led to Trotsky’s expulsion from the party which led to Trotsky going into exile in 1928 (Mandel, 1995) [19] . After Trotsky went into exile, this meant that Stalin became in charge of the state.

Two conflicting schools of thought dominated regarding the future of the Soviet union within the party after Lenin’s death. Trotsky believed that world revolution was necessary for socialism to survive in the Soviet union.  Stalin on the other hand was of the belief that socialism should be in one country. With this stance, Stalin ousted his opponents who advocated for world revolution as he gained support from the party’s right wing which was sufficient to get him to stay in power.

Stalin’s interpretation of Marxism-Leninism:

After  taking charge of the state, Stalin implemented various policies that came to be known as Stalinism . Stalinism were the policies and governance implemented by Stalin in his rule of the Soviet Union which reined from 1927 to 1953. Amongst these were one-party totalitarian police state, collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialisation .

What this autocratic rule under Stalin did in the country was force anyone or any organisation it saw as a threat to hide their discontent with the state because being openly against the state meant either being arrested, executed, forced into labour in concentration camps or exiled.

The coming of the Second World War:

The Soviet union and Germany signed a peace agreement with Nazi Germany in 1939 (Roberts, 1995) [20] . Within this agreement was a secret clause that included how these two nations would divide certain parts of Eastern Europe such as Romania, Poland, Estonia and Finland. However. Germany invaded Poland on September 1 with the Soviet Union following the invasion of Poland as well on the 17th of September. However, the invasions of Eastern Europe caused tensions between the two nations as they did not stick to ‘their’ respective territories. 

On June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.  With the help of its West allies, the Soviet Union managed to stop Germany. Over the next 4 years, the Soviet Union continued defending itself and eventually led to victory. While the Soviet Union managed to stop Germany from fully invading, it suffered the most casualties, losing more than 20 million citizens. Stalin met with Britain’s president Winston Churchill and the United States of Americas president Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference to discuss war against Germany and the future of Europe. In April 1945, Berlin finally fell with Germany defeated.

This content was originally produced for the SAHO classroom by Sebastian Moronell, Ayabulela Ntwakumba, Simone van der Colff & Thandile Xesi

[1] Douzinas, Costas and Zizek. “The idea of communism”. Verso Books, 2010. p. 145.

[2] Marx, Engels and Moore. Manifesto of the communist party. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972. p. 28.42.

[3] Werner. Karl Marx: an illustrated biography. Verso, 2000. p. 4.

[4] Abraham. The revolution of 1905: Russia in disarray. Vol. 1. Standford University Press, 1994. p. 127-150

[5] Abraham. The revolution of 1905: Russia in disarray. Vol. 1. Standford University Press, 1994. p. 304

[6] Rex. The Russian Revolution, 1917. Vol. 53. Cambridge University Press, 2017. p. 176

[7] Trotsky. History of the Russian revolution. Haymarket Books, 2008. p. 793

[8] Raleigh. Experiencing Russia’s civil war: politics, society and revolutionary culture in Saratov, 1917-1922. Prince University Press, 2002. p. 80

[9] Lih. “Bolshevik Razverstka and War Communism.” Slavic Review 45, no. 4 (1986): p. 673-688

[10] Medvev. The October Revolution. Columbia University Press, 1979. p.80-92

[11] Lenin, V.I. "The Role and Functions of the Trade Unions under the New Economic Policy", LCW, 33, p. 184., Decision of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.), 12 January 1922. Published in Pravda No. 12, 17 January 1922;  Lenin's Collected Works , 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, first printed 1965, Volume 33, pp. 186–196.

[12] Ibid.,

[13] A. James Gregor , Marxism, Fascism & Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, Stanford: CA, Stanford University Press, 2008, p. 55-56

[14] Ibid.,

[15] Zickel, Raymond E (1991).  Soviet Union a Country Study. 2nd ed . Washington D.C.: Library of Congress. Federal Research Division. pp.  64 . Important to note is that Marxist theory sees the revolution from an evolutionary perspective.

[16] Evans. Soviet Marxism-Leninism: the decline of an ideology. ABC-CLIO, 1993. p. 29-45

[17] Richman. “War Communism to NEP: the road from serfdom.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 5, no.1, 1981. p. 89-97

[18] Ruthchild and Goldberg. “Women’s Suffrage and Revolution in the Russian Empire, 1905-1917.” Aspasia 1, no.1, 2007. p. 1-35

[19] Mandel. Trotsky as alternative. Verso, 1995. p.32.

[20] Roberts. The Soviet Union and the origins of the Second World War: Russo-German relations and the road to war, 1933-1941. Macmillan International Higher Education, 1995. p.62

• Ascher, Abraham. The revolution of 1905: Russia in disarray. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press, 1994.
• Blumenberg, Werner. Karl Marx: an illustrated biography. Verso, 2000.
• Douzinas, Costas, and Slavoj Žižek. "The idea of communism." (2010). Verso Books, 2010.
• Evans, Alfred B. Soviet Marxism-Leninism: the decline of an ideology. ABC-CLIO, 1993.
• Lih, Lars T. "Bolshevik Razverstka and War Communism." Slavic Review 45, no. 4 (1986): 673-688.
• Mandel, Ernest. Trotsky as alternative. Verso, 1995.
• Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Samuel Moore. Manifesto of the communist party. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972.
• Medvedev, Roy A. The October Revolution. Columbia University Press, 1979.
• Raleigh, Donald J. Experiencing Russia's civil war: politics, society, and revolutionary culture in Saratov, 1917-1922. Princeton University Press, 2002.
• Richman, Sheldon L. "War Communism to NEP: the road from serfdom." The Journal of Libertarian Studies 5, no. 1 (1981): 89-97.
• Roberts, Geoffrey. The Soviet Union and the origins of the Second World War: Russo-German relations and the road to war, 1933–1941. Macmillan International Higher Education, 1995.
• Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg. "Women's Suffrage and Revolution in the Russian Empire, 1905-1917." Aspasia 1, no. 1 (2007): 1-35.
• Trotsky, Leon. History of the Russian revolution. Haymarket Books, 2008.
• Wade, Rex A. The Russian Revolution, 1917. Vol. 53. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Blumenberg, Werner. Karl Marx: an illustrated biography. Verso, 2000.

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3 (page 72) p. 72 War Communism

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The October revolution was followed by deep economic collapse. To mobilize the battered forces of industry and agriculture to meet the needs of war, the Bolsheviks set in place the policies that were later termed ‘War Communism’. ‘War Communism’ examines how far the Bolsheviks were able to impose state regulation on the economy along socialist lines and their achievements and failures. From the beginning, they were beset with problems in terms of industrial productivity and supply. The most critical problem was that of food supply. This led to the breakdown of urban life which caused civil war. The civil war saw the hardening conviction that the state was the modality through which socialism would be built.

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Who was Karl Marx?

Karl Marx was a German philosopher during the 19th century. He worked primarily in the realm of political philosophy and was a famous advocate for communism . He cowrote The Communist Manifesto and was the author of Das Kapital , which together formed the basis of Marxism .

Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883, when he was 64, after succumbing to a bout of bronchitis. Not owning any land when he died, he was buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Originally, his headstone was nondescript, but in 1954 the Communist Party of Great Britain etched the stone with “Workers of all lands unite,” the last line of The Communist Manifesto , along with a quote from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach (1845).

What was Karl Marx’s family like?

Karl Marx was one of nine children. When he got older, he married his childhood sweetheart, Jenny von Westphalen. The two had seven children together, four of whom died before reaching adolescence. Because of Marx’s anti-capital core beliefs, his family was impoverished for much of their lives.

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Karl Marx (born May 5, 1818, Trier , Rhine province, Prussia [Germany]—died March 14, 1883, London , England) was a revolutionary, sociologist , historian, and economist. He published (with Friedrich Engels ) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist Manifesto , the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He also was the author of the movement’s most important book, Das Kapital . These writings and others by Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism . ( See also socialism ; communism .)

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

Karl Heinrich Marx was the oldest surviving boy of nine children. His father, Heinrich, a successful lawyer, was a man of the Enlightenment , devoted to Kant and Voltaire , who took part in agitations for a constitution in Prussia . His mother, born Henrietta Pressburg, was from Holland. Both parents were Jewish and were descended from a long line of rabbis, but, a year or so before Karl was born, his father—probably because his professional career required it—was baptized in the Evangelical Established Church. Karl was baptized when he was six years old. Although as a youth Karl was influenced less by religion than by the critical, sometimes radical social policies of the Enlightenment, his Jewish background exposed him to prejudice and discrimination that may have led him to question the role of religion in society and contributed to his desire for social change .

Marx was educated from 1830 to 1835 at the high school in Trier. Suspected of harbouring liberal teachers and pupils, the school was under police surveillance. Marx’s writings during this period exhibited a spirit of Christian devotion and a longing for self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity. In October 1835 he matriculated at the University of Bonn. The courses he attended were exclusively in the humanities, in such subjects as Greek and Roman mythology and the history of art. He participated in customary student activities, fought a duel, and spent a day in jail for being drunk and disorderly. He presided at the Tavern Club, which was at odds with the more aristocratic student associations, and joined a poets’ club that included some political activists. A politically rebellious student culture was, indeed, part of life at Bonn . Many students had been arrested; some were still being expelled in Marx’s time, particularly as a result of an effort by students to disrupt a session of the Federal Diet at Frankfurt. Marx, however, left Bonn after a year and in October 1836 enrolled at the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy .

Marx’s crucial experience at Berlin was his introduction to Hegel ’s philosophy, regnant there, and his adherence to the Young Hegelians . At first he felt a repugnance toward Hegel’s doctrines; when Marx fell sick it was partially, as he wrote his father, “from intense vexation at having to make an idol of a view I detested.” The Hegelian pressure in the revolutionary student culture was powerful, however, and Marx joined a society called the Doctor Club, whose members were intensely involved in the new literary and philosophical movement. Their chief figure was Bruno Bauer , a young lecturer in theology, who was developing the idea that the Christian Gospels were a record not of history but of human fantasies arising from emotional needs and that Jesus had not been a historical person. Marx enrolled in a course of lectures given by Bauer on the prophet Isaiah . Bauer taught that a new social catastrophe “more tremendous” than that of the advent of Christianity was in the making. The Young Hegelians began moving rapidly toward atheism and also talked vaguely of political action.

The Prussian government, fearful of the subversion latent in the Young Hegelians, soon undertook to drive them from the universities. Bauer was dismissed from his post in 1839. Marx’s “most intimate friend” of this period, Adolph Rutenberg, an older journalist who had served a prison sentence for his political radicalism, pressed for a deeper social involvement. By 1841 the Young Hegelians had become left republicans. Marx’s studies, meanwhile, were lagging. Urged by his friends, he submitted a doctoral dissertation to the university at Jena, which was known to be lax in its academic requirements, and received his degree in April 1841. His thesis analyzed in a Hegelian fashion the difference between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus . More distinctively, it sounded a note of Promethean defiance:

Philosophy makes no secret of it. Prometheus’ admission: “In sooth all gods I hate,” is its own admission, its own motto against all gods,…Prometheus is the noblest saint and martyr in the calendar of philosophy.

In 1841 Marx, together with other Young Hegelians, was much influenced by the publication of Das Wesen des Christentums (1841; The Essence of Christianity ) by Ludwig Feuerbach . Its author, to Marx’s mind, successfully criticized Hegel, an idealist who believed that matter or existence was inferior to and dependent upon mind or spirit, from the opposite, or materialist, standpoint, showing how the “Absolute Spirit” was a projection of “the real man standing on the foundation of nature.” Henceforth Marx’s philosophical efforts were toward a combination of Hegel’s dialectic —the idea that all things are in a continual process of change resulting from the conflicts between their contradictory aspects—with Feuerbach’s materialism , which placed material conditions above ideas.

In January 1842 Marx began contributing to a newspaper newly founded in Cologne , the Rheinische Zeitung . It was the liberal democratic organ of a group of young merchants, bankers, and industrialists; Cologne was the centre of the most industrially advanced section of Prussia. To this stage of Marx’s life belongs an essay on the freedom of the press. Since he then took for granted the existence of absolute moral standards and universal principles of ethics , he condemned censorship as a moral evil that entailed spying into people’s minds and hearts and assigned to weak and malevolent mortals powers that presupposed an omniscient mind. He believed that censorship could have only evil consequences.

On October 15, 1842, Marx became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung . As such, he was obliged to write editorials on a variety of social and economic issues, ranging from the housing of the Berlin poor and the theft by peasants of wood from the forests to the new phenomenon of communism. He found Hegelian idealism of little use in these matters. At the same time he was becoming estranged from his Hegelian friends for whom shocking the bourgeois was a sufficient mode of social activity. Marx, friendly at this time to the “liberal-minded practical men” who were “struggling step-by-step for freedom within constitutional limits,” succeeded in trebling his newspaper’s circulation and making it a leading journal in Prussia. Nevertheless, Prussian authorities suspended it for being too outspoken, and Marx agreed to coedit with the liberal Hegelian Arnold Ruge a new review, the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Yearbooks”), which was to be published in Paris.

First, however, in June 1843 Marx, after an engagement of seven years, married Jenny von Westphalen. Jenny was an attractive, intelligent, and much-admired woman, four years older than Karl; she came of a family of military and administrative distinction. Her half-brother later became a highly reactionary Prussian minister of the interior. Her father, a follower of the French socialist Saint-Simon, was fond of Karl, though others in her family opposed the marriage. Marx’s father also feared that Jenny was destined to become a sacrifice to the demon that possessed his son.

Four months after their marriage, the young couple moved to Paris, which was then the centre of socialist thought and of the more extreme sects that went under the name of communism. There, Marx first became a revolutionary and a communist and began to associate with communist societies of French and German workingmen. Their ideas were, in his view, “utterly crude and unintelligent,” but their character moved him: “The brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies,” he wrote in his so-called “Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844” (written in 1844; Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [1959]). (These manuscripts were not published for some 100 years, but they are influential because they show the humanist background to Marx’s later historical and economic theories.)

The “German-French Yearbooks” proved short-lived, but through their publication Marx befriended Friedrich Engels , a contributor who was to become his lifelong collaborator, and in their pages appeared Marx’s article “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie” (“ Toward the Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right”) with its oft-quoted assertion that religion is the “opium of the people.” It was there, too, that he first raised the call for an “uprising of the proletariat” to realize the conceptions of philosophy. Once more, however, the Prussian government intervened against Marx. He was expelled from France and left for Brussels—followed by Engels—in February 1845. That year in Belgium he renounced his Prussian nationality.

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Communism and Capitalism Through the History Essay

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Introduction

Revolution of social darwinism.

During the modern history, there existed two main economic systems, namely: communism and capitalism. Their ideologies are intrinsically divergent and often unreceptive to each other. All over the hostilities defame and institutional propaganda has become extensive known creating worry and hatred between communist and capitalist.

Capitalism is defined as the economic system based on free trade where private sectors are allowed to do businesses with another individual or group of private citizens. In this system, the means of product and service production is mainly carried out and owned by the individuals instead of the government while communism also known as fascism is contrary to this where production and distribution of products is carried out by the state as non-profit organization.

The book “The Time Machine” is mainly a social appraisal of H.G. Wells who was a Victorian England predicted into a far future. The largest part of his life he remained a socialist with communist background and he argued in most of his books that capitalism was a major challenge to the post-modern future.

Fast development in technology, social life, education and other capitals had commenced the industrial Revolution in during 17 th and 18 th century. Additionally, he argued that by the late 19 th century of “The Time Traveler” the UK was most powerful with the economy whereas industrialists were enjoying their absolute wealth.

The capitalists during this era overworked men, women and even young children who were forced to work overtime with penny wages in dirty, smoke-filled industries. After observing all this as it took place, Wells decided to incorporate various scientific, natural and social ideologies in his arguments against capitalism and he majored on the citizens who were selective, discriminatory for their personal gain as they continued to exploit the poor and vulnerable members of the society (Wells 47 ).

First of all, Wells characterized capitalism as a revolution of social Darwinism. In this theory “Origin of Species”, the author Charles Darwin argued that nature allowed the reproduction of species that their characters fitted for best survival.

Therefore, social Darwinism was formulated by the British Philosopher Herbert Spencer whom regularly misrepresented this idea of natural fitness to validate 19th century social stratification among wealthy and unfortunate people. Wells contradicted with this philosopher where he argued that it did not imply that surviving species on an environment and the best but simply fit for their precise environment (Wells 83).

It is therefore concluded that evolution does not guide into perfectibility but to the maximum adaptability of a species. Communism was therefore aggravated mainly by the pessimistic impact of the industrial revolution on poor industrial employees. It was aimed at creating a social class of public common ownership where they believed that the society in general was more important than personal rights liberty and individual’s freedom.

On the other hand, as the communist fought hard against the capitalist, there were negative impacts that were associated with it where most dictators erupted as the results of communism for they were overall decision makers. For communism to work out, it relies on human nature where they need to be completely humane and ready to work for gaining of their neighbors (Wells 94).

Capitalism has the major economic system which takes control of the world economy and it has proved to be perfect enough comparing to the other economies such as socialism. It is characterized by its mode of production where prime resources such as capital and land are owned by the individuals.

Trade activities are fully controlled by the interaction between customers and sellers in the market and the owners here is free to make maximum profit from their resources. The main objective of a capitalist state is to secure concurrent high employment and stable prices (Wells 58).

During late 19 th century, wars uprising and economic despair has acted against capitalism. The great depression period has acted as the most challenging moment within the capitalism history where shares in the stock market depreciated at an alarming rate. Capitalism on its sides is referred to as the best economic friend for it freely allows for global competitive market and capitalist contributes a lot to the economy of a nation.

There are two types of capitalism which are commonly known, of which one of them is the proprietary capitalism. During this period of capitalism, there were only some corporations and no one could relate them to the modern society. The other form of capitalism is progressive capitalist economy.

In this type of capitalism, business outputs are present as inputs of the future. Even though capitalism has gone through transitional changes all over the years, capitalistic economy structure has remained to be most influential economy as well as the political structure in the world.

Finally, communism and capitalism has acted towards the economic development but several challenges have affected both economies. The communism has greatly affected it people where personal growth has been affected by national ideology of togetherness dragging back both economic and infrastructure development. On the other hand, capitalism has lead to emergence of life standards where it exists rich and the poor resulting to the exploitation of the vulnerable members of the society.

Wells, H. George. The Time Machine. Penguin Classics, 2007. Print.

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A Deal That Could Save Venezuela

By Francisco Rodríguez

Mr. Rodríguez is a professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

It was a stunning victory. As results began to trickle in from around the country, they showed the opposition winning by a more than two-to-one margin. The once-formidable political machine in power proved to be no match for millions of voters who sent a clear message to their authoritarian leader: Your time is up.

But despite the landslide, the ruling party ignored the will of the people, and the leader’s allies proclaimed him president.

Those events took place in Poland in 1989 under the rule of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski. But they could just as well have described Venezuela in the aftermath of its presidential election on July 28. The cases differ in key ways — unlike Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Jaruzelski was never accused of misrepresenting election tallies (as I strongly believe Mr. Maduro has done), and the election in Poland was for the legislature, which then appointed Mr. Jaruzelski president. But I believe there is something to be learned from this comparison, and especially from its aftermath.

As the international community contemplates how to react to Mr. Maduro’s apparent election theft , a sense of understandable fatigue has set in for observers hoping for an end to his long, corrosive and antidemocratic rule. After all, it seems either the international community or the country’s opposition have tried just about everything. Targeted sanctions aimed at regime officials? Done that. Oil sanctions to starve the government of resources? Tried that, too. Easing sanctions as an incentive to hold free elections? That didn’t work, either. Put a $15 million reward on his head? Try to spur a military uprising? Check, check. None of it worked.

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