The Shattered Dream of Communism

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Many people all over the world look for an outlet for which they can improve their quality of life. They strive to find the means of transforming their dreams into reality. Communism, to people everywhere, has offered the means for transforming the dream of economic equality into reality, throughout history. Communism, however, like various other political and economic movements in the history of man, has become just another shattered dream.

Communism is a political and economic movement brought out to the public in the mid-nineteenth century. The communist's main demand is the abolition of private property, which in turn will put an end to any present class system. This is undoubtedly the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution (Engels). This revolution instills in every proletarian mind the feeling that they can be victorious. The working classes of the world are the ones who are being done wrong. In the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proudly proclaim that "proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win" (77). Often, a political party will have a further motive behind their struggle. Communists that "every class struggle was a political struggle" (Marx 46).

The proletariat is often considered the working class. This group of people was the main concern of all communist principles. The proletariat is the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own (like farming), are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live (Marx 34). The proletariat does not draw profit from any kind of capital. On occasion the average worker can have a small victory for themselves, but for the most part the real f...

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Bibliography:

Engels, Friedrich. "The Principles of Communism." 3 May 2000

Fast, Howard. Being Red. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.

Goldston, Robert. The Soviets. New York: Bantam Books, 1967.

Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.

Hew Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. London: Verso, 1998.

Padover, Saul K. "Engels." The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography. 1973 ed.

Padover, Saul K. "K. Marx." The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography. 1973 ed.

Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are The Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998.

Wilkinson, Phillip, and Jacqueline Dineen. People Who Changed The World. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994.

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