It's 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. Marx's 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. Marx's 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...