Communism is simply a terrible ideology, but it is often misunderstood, especially on an Internet where all sorts of falsehoods run wild. I will attempt to explain what Communism is as well as its history as best as I can. I suppose I have an agenda behind this, because my family lived in Beijing at the height of Mao's power.
Let's look into the idea of Marxism first. Marx was not part of the proletariat, or working class. He was a member of the middle class who looked at the plight of the working class and saw the terrible working circumstances that they lived in. So you could say that communism began with a genuine interest in helping these people. Marx decided in a couple of rules that became the main ideas of Communism.
1. History is a series of class conflict. Marx found inspiration in the ideas of Hegel, who said that new ideas will clash with the status quo until a synthesis of the ideas results. To put this in an analogy, the Romans used to worship a variety of Pagan Gods. When Christianity came along, there was a brief struggle of ideas that resulted in a new Christianity becoming the main belief, a Christianity with additional motivations of materialism and with new beliefs and rituals, such as the date of December 25 for Christmas. In the same way, Marx applied the idea of idea conflict and substituted classes. He argued that history chronicled the exploitation and the alienation of the working classes by the "upper class." 2. The ultimate triumph of the working class. Marx believed, however, that eventually, the working class would wake from its oppression, band together, and overthrow the bourgeoisie (middle and upper classes), using their past experience of being exploited to avoid exploiting others. This communist utopia would result in the collective ownership of everything by everyone. Unfortunately, this point has numerous shortcomings. For one, Marx expected developed nations like Britain and France to adopt Communism first, rather than the poorly-developed Russians. The exact opposite happened. Moreover, the working class still has not found unity. Even to this day, we categorize the working class by their occupation: plumber, mechanic, laborer, etc., and even the working class still uses this categorizing scheme. When people say that "If humans were perfect, Communism would succeed," they mean that if the proletariat leading the revolution were perfect, then communism would happen. However, if the people were really perfect, would they really be prompted to rise against the bourgeoisie instead of working industriously? Instead, throughout history, we have seen that the few who set themselves to lead their fellow proletariat were corrupted by the power they received, using it to gain and consolidate more and more power. 3. Ideology. Marx mentioned ideology several times without actually defining it. According to his confidant Engels, ideology is the rules that the dominant-class-ruled society sets to confuse the subjugated class. In other words, in the case of capitalism, it was argued that the upper class used capitalism to confuse the working class into having private property. The upper class would have the agenda of keeping the working class working for them. Ideology is extremely important to any Communist country. To the Communists, the idea of fostering a perfect ideology was extremely important to them, and that is exactly why there is so much propaganda and censorship in Communist countries. 4. Labor Theory of Value and the evil of capitalism. Marx looked at how hard the working class worked and sympathized with him. What this theory means is that the only thing that should determine the cost of a commodity is the amount of time and effort it takes to make it. Marx did acknowledge, however, that different objects had a use value (the direct use of it) and an exchange value (the market price). For example, the use value of firewood is that you can burn it and it keeps you warm, while the exchange value goes back to the basics of the Labor Theory of Value. Marx argued that capitalism was stiffing the working class; that capitalism wasn't giving workers their fair share of the money. He called the gap between what they should earn and what they actually earned the "surplus value." He also argued that capitalism destroyed social relationships over more objective relationships; in other words, people were becoming overconcerned about the market price of a good instead of how much work it actually took to make it. He called his "Commodity Fetishism." There are some glaring problems with this. Economists both in his time and in more recent times have shown that there are many other factors to the price of a good, including the prices of its raw materials, the skill required to make the good, and all other costs (the electricity to run a factory, for instance). Marx's absolute claim that the only source of profit is the exploitation of workers has seen much criticism as well.
Accept for the fact that most citys in america pay less than other jobs that they could easily do. Teaching isn;t really a ticket to an awesome life. They do get enough, but most of my teachers have spouses that work other jobs too. I'm extremly doubtfu that the people who make the best teachers do it for the money. Rather communist like don't you think? :P
In a way, but imagine the shock our country would go in to, also I'm into the whole if you earn it, well it's yours.
Teachers get good pay? What? After taxes and union fees?
If you have a good degree yes, it's really not horrible, i live in a small town and our average teacher salary is 50,000 and you have to think thats only for around 8 months of work.
But they're not doing it to get paid! And make a thread about that why don't you?
Marx saw that not everyone who works works for money. There is another incentive other than money.
"The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money." -Karl Marx
"I have continued to work at different things, and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something. I did it because I happened to be where I was." -Mikhail Kalashnikov
Those that can't do, teach. The majority of teachers i have encountered would undoubtedly rather be working in another job that offered more pay somewhere else. Thats not discredit all teachers, as lots do genuinely put job satisfaction first, but the majority, at least in Britian do not.
Marx saw that not everyone who works works for money. There is another incentive other than money.
Not everyone, but the majority do and would probably all like to be paid even more.
Now I'd like to talk a little about the history of communism in China. I have rather strong feelings about this because my family lived in Beijing, the heart of China, through all the tumultuous times. This is Part I, dealing all the way up to Mao's ascension to power.
The whole thing begins with a very famous man named Sun Yat-sen. He was educated in Hawaii and became a doctor (sound like anyone else?). While in America, he picked up the ideas of Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton, but mixed them with a socialist and an anarchic view. He was also a convert to Christianity. Overall, his ideology was quite flexible.
At the time China was ruled by the Qing Dynasty. The emperors were not Han Chinese, they were Manchurian. This combined with widespread poverty created much discontent, coming to a head with the Wuchang Uprising and the Xinhai Revolution. The Qing Dynasty was overthrown, and the Republic of China was formed, with Sun Yat-sen as president of the Kuomintang (KMT). But China was not unified; it was a fragmented state of warlords. Sun Yat-sen started to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to achieve unification, but he died of liver cancer before anything was really done.
Now Sun Yat-sen, a very charismatic figure and still highly revered by both Taiwanese and Mainlanders, had left a big gap to fill, and as history has so often seen before, a power struggle arose which ended in favor of Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek managed to subdue the southern warlords and secure the allegiance of the Northern warlords, thus unifying China. After this, he turned on the Communists, driving them all the way to the northwest in what is now known as the Long March. The Communists under Mao Zedong established their base in Yan'an, a mountainous and very cold, but very strategic site. They became guerillas. Of particular importance in this time period is Mao's output in poetry. Mao was a skilled poet and calligrapher, and his poetry really is among the best.
After the Japanese invaded and during WWII, the KMT and the CCP for the most part cooperated against the "Japanese devils." They still continued to claw at each other's throats openly and clandestinely whenever they could. During this period, Mao perfected the art of guerrilla warfare, and his writings on this subject continue to be read by military commanders throughout the world. He is still considered a genius in this regard, and I definitely agree.
After WWII was over, the communists quickly overtook Manchuria, which was unguarded by the KMT and later taken back at great cost. Now at this point, Chiang Kai-shek made his losing error. He had a choice whether to exterminate communism or to deal with the warlords, and he chose both. He attempted to re-ally with the warlords at the cost of alienating the common people. In addition, the Soviets were attacking Manchuria. Chiang Kai-shek's attempts at creating truces failed, and the Chinese Civil War commenced.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Communists were not stocked well by the Soviets; in fact, Stalin ignored their requests for captured weapons. The Communists got their weapons instead from the warlords and from defeated Kuomintang troops. Not only that, but the Communist army was more in line with their ideology, providing them with a morale boost that the drafted Kuomintang troops did not have. This proved to be the most important factor in the war. Although the KMT was larger and had more support from the Allies (especially the US), they had poor morale and poor support from the people, who remembered their grudges as Chinese people are wont to do. The Communists relentlessly pushed their forces through, eventually capturing the KMT capital of Nanjing. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China, with its capital in Beijing, although pockets of KMT forces would not be fully mopped up until the following year.
The KMT fled to Taiwan, where they still remain. I believe that Mao's decision not to pursue the KMT into Taiwan was a tactical one: After three years of war, he needed to regroup. I don't think he had the materiel needed to adequately perform an assault on it either. Whatever the case, the war has not technically ended. No armistice has been signed formally ending it, and indeed crises and sporadic fighting popped up all through the Cold War. China is now split between the ROC and the PRC, neither of which recognizes the sovereignty of the other.
If you want my opinion, Mao should have become a general for the army, because all he ever did was try to treat the people like soldiers. Simply an aweful humanitarian.
I'm no expert on him, but if he ever did anything good for the people, it was by military force. ( i'm refering to Parsat's last paragraph)
Mao was quite unskilled when it came to the economy. His attempts in creating a truly communist economy were terrible failures. The problem was that in a situation like this, you really couldn't hope to be just a general. If you were just a general, you were vulnerable to purges, as Stalin's regime showed. In addition, Mao really had no intention to not accept the top seat. The man fought for so long, and he had ideas for China. Unfortunately his ideas did not work out in the real world, as with too many other communist ideas that I have read or seen.
