The Birth of Communism

On this day 100 years ago, Vladimir Lenin led the October Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, and toppled Russia's old government in factor of a communist. Thus was born the Soviet Union. At first, they did seem to be successful, and through the next few decades, we saw numerous countries fall to communism. Why?

Well, it appealed to the people. Most of the instances involved colonized nations or less-developed countries that were tired of being controlled. We see a lot of dictators in Africa that formed Marxist-Socialist-communist governments but we see how corrupt they have been. Lots of promises that have yet to be achieved.

Communism itself seems like a good idea, but in every instance it has led to problems too large to counter. The Soviet Union, especially under Stalin, suffered so much. Massive centralization did not work out and resulted in uncountable deaths. The same happened with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China. These were all meant to help the masses, but instead hurt the masses.

While in the end, communism has worked out to an extent for many nations, it still leads to stronger governmental control, and a clean example is North Korea. That's all I have to say about North Korea because we've been hearing too much about it.

True communism will never work out. No person wants to share everything. Seizing the means of production doesn't work. All of the communist, or "communist" should I say because let's be honest, that doesn't exist anymore, nations have capitalist policies embedded within. Vietnam had its Doi Moi (see my earlier post) system that allowed some privatization. China brought in capitalism in the 80's with Deng Xiaoping. That has continued to this day, and look at how booming China is now. 

Karl Marx and Engels developed something extraordinary and unheard of in the 1800's, and though it did seem that "the history of all hitherto existing society† is the history of class struggles," the best way to fix it has yet to surface. For the time being, we can say that what was birthed over a century ago has yet to be seen.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453469/russian-revolution-centenary-100-years-communist-hell

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf