Communism: Karl Marx And The Red Scare

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Recommended: The role of the idea of communism in shaping America

Ever since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels introduced the idea of communism in 1848, most of the world has been changed. The main theory of communism was, and still is, utilized by many countries. Thanks to communism, the political understandings of our modern world has been changed significantly, resulting in communist countries whose politics still contain small amounts of communist ideology. Weather it be America or China, communism has shaped the world for better or for worse.

Communism is a theory where all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. Communism was founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the second half of the 19th century. “Marx and Engels met in 1844, and …show more content…

“The democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union became engaged in a series of largely political and economic clashes known as the Cold War. The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that Communists...inside America might actively work as Soviet spies and pose a threat to U.S. security (History.com Staff)” Because of the Red Scare, some anti-communists, out of fright, started a “witch hunt” to try to get rid of the threat communists posed and they also would not give jobs to suspected communists. For example, Hollywood would not cast suspected communists and they would blacklist them as well. “In the early 1950s, 300 actors, writers and others suspected of being communists were blacklisted in Hollywood and excluded from the workforce” (Stanford GSB Staff). In Hollywood, people who were thought to be communists were denied jobs and put on a list with other communists called the blacklist. This is because working with communists could cause money to be lost in Hollywood, seeing as communists were identified as spies for the Soviet Union. All in all, being a suspected communist put many people in trouble and out of jobs, especially in Hollywood, because they were seen as a threat to the American

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