HIST 2650 Final Paper
Minkang Zhang.7876
Walk the Communism
One hundred years ago, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik party overthrew the Russian
Provisional Government in the October Revolution and then established the first dictatorship of
the proletariat in the World. With his interpretations of scientific Marxist theory, Lenin’s aim
was clear. He would bring a new and better order of this society, the communism. From here, the
idea of communism was widely known to the world and the debates around it never ended. This
article will explain the general idea of the communism, introduce the origin and the development
of it and show the profound effect the communism has on the course of the world history.
Communism is the philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose
ultimate goal is the establish of the communist society. The basis of communist society must be
the social ownership of the means of production and exchange. Machinery, locomotives,
steamships, factory buildings, warehouses, grain elevators, mines, telegraphs and telephones, the
land, sheep, horses, and cattle, must all be at the disposal of society (Bukharin, 1920). According
to the explanation of Karl Marx, who was considered as the most influential and important figure
during the development of communism ideology, human societies developed through class
struggle and the communist society was established by the working class after a revolution to
topple capitalism, where the minority control the mean of production and the major working
classes sell their labor power in return of wages (Marx, K. 1847. The Communist Manifesto.)
The communism would bring the society to an ideal Utopia. In a communist society, all
decisions are made collectively, and leadership is chosen rather than imposed. There are no
prisons, no standing army, and no state bureaucracy since the threat of social ostracism is
sufficient pressure against anyone who threatens the collective or harms another. Yet
productivity has advanced to the point that the workday could be reduced to three or four hours
since workers own and control all the labor process. In a communist society, improvements in
labor productivity would be a means to shorten the workday and reduce the time and drudgery of
necessary labor to a minimum in order to free people up as much as possible to devote their
energies to other pursuits, including participating in the running of society (Amato, 2005).
However, throughout human history, the described beautiful and dreamy communist society has
never been realized. Some socialists even view the idea of communism as the lies of ideologue
careerists to dominate and rule the world (Biorseth, 2009). Even so, human’s exploration and
practice of communism has never stopped.
