More handpicked essays just for you.
What was the impact of the cold war on american politics
What was the impact of the cold war on american politics
How the cold war changed american politics
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Red Revised
In a recent article concerning the political movement behind followers of Garabandal, journalist Barry Hanratty reports “to speak of communism today almost seems anachronistic” (Hanratty). Communism today does seem to be an oxymoron. The United States’ Cold War politics have trapped communism in a different century and attached to this word those negative feelings once associated with foreign Communist powers. Americans have now forgotten the actual definition of communism, relying solely on the propaganda fed to America during its wars against communist nations and particularly Joseph McCarthy’s time in Congress. However, some individuals in America are moving past the propaganda and looking at communism at the root of its definition, seeing it - not as a totalitarian form of government, but rather as a system which distributes all property of a community equally among community members, making social class nonexistent and all individuals share equal economic status. Fran Rubel Kuzui proved to be one of those individuals by directing the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer which shows communism as something positive rather than threatening. The episode that exemplifies this most is “Normal Again.” In this episode, Kuzui uses the two realities Buffy finds herself in to contrast communism with capitalism, showing not only a preference to communism, but also that it has a place in a new generation.
Each form of the two economic systems are established in their respective realities through camera angles. In the reality where Buffy is a vampire slayer, the camera shoots everything at a level angle. When her friends help Buffy up off the bench in the graveyard, the camera follows Buffy in a way that...
... middle of paper ...
...ording to his need. Our nation’s history with communism has clouded this economic philosophy, thereby preventing the youth of the United States to weigh communism fairly. “Normal Again” gives a new generation a new perspective. This episode opened up the possibility that the capitalism that rules America may be just as constricting and frustrating as a mental institution; that the only escape may be the equality-centered community communism offers.
Works Cited Page
Hanratty, Barry. “Garabandal’s Prophecy about Communism.” The Workers of Our Lady.
Bishop Roman Danylak. 27 Oct. 2007 .
Trbic, Boris. “Dark is the Night.” Australian Screen Education 41 (2006): 34-8.
Whedon, Joss, prod. “Normal Again.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Sixth Season
on DVD. Twentieth Century Fox, 2004.
In the 1950’s the Second Red Scare also referred to as McCarthyism was in full swing. Fearful of communist overtaking the United States almost everyone, including educators were scrutinized and affected. In the letter “To Dr. William Ross”, Katherine Porter is responding directly to Dr. Ross and his request for an Oath of Allegiance as a condition of her employment at Colorado State University. She is writing during a time when refusal to sign such an oath, often resulted in denial or loss of employment, and destruction of careers. In “To Dr. William Ross”, Katherine Porter effectively uses logos, ethos and pathos to support her claims, and persuade her audience that an oath of allegiance is not necessary for one to be loyal and allegiant to their country.
In the mid-1900’s, communism was a big issue worldwide. Communism is a political theory created by Karl Marx in which everyone essentially gets an equal share in society, including the fact that houses are publicly owned by the government. The controversial issue to this concept is that some jobs make money than others, so people of a higher class didn’t feel like they were getting their fair share. The case and trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has to do with communism because the couple was accused of committing espionage against the United States. Showcased in the article “Case Against Rosenberg Falls Apart,” published by Achieve3000, Americans were afraid of communism, and the acts by the government were very impactful to society.
Coming from an “unconventional” background, George Saunders is readily able to relate to the circumstances the everyday working laborer goes through (Wylie). However, Saunders has an advantage to spread out his ideas and concerns about life in the U.S. via his short stories and novellas. Because of neoliberalism and capitalism and its correlation to the huge wealth gap in the U.S. Saunders focuses his protagonists’ view from a proletariat standpoint, allowing the reader to see the life of consumerism has impacted our society. Saunders does not use conventional methods to portray this reality. Instead, Saunders emphasizes on the “absence” of certain moral human characteristics in order to take the reader away from viewing into a hero’s looking glass— to set a foundation of a world where our morals become lost to our materialistic and inherent need of money (Wylie).
To understand the ways in which political systems are important to this novel, it is necessary to define both capitalism and socialism as they are relevant to The Jungle. Capitalism, and more specifically, laissez-faire capitalism, is the economic system in America. It basically means that producers and consumers have the right to accumulate and spend their money through any legal means they choose. It is the economic system most fitting with the idea of the American Dream. The American Dream portr...
Since the end of World War II until the mid- eighties , most Americans could agree that communism was the enemy. Communism wanted to destroy our way of life and corrupt the freest country in the world. Communism is an economic system in which a person or group of persons who are in control. The main purpose of communism is to make social and economic status of all individuals of the same . Deletes inequalities in property ownership and wealth distributed equally to everyone . The main problem with this is that a person who is rich can be stripped of most of his fortune to someone else can have more material goods and be his equal .
Though the rewards are pleasing to the ear, the path to obtaining the benefits of communism is a violent one. This strict governing idea was derived from Communist Manifesto, a book written by two German economists, Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, who declare that many problems in society are caused by the unequal distribution of wealth. These two believe that “Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.” To achieve the goal of happiness and prosperity for all, the lines that distinguish the differences between the rich and poor must be erased. Obviously, the rich will never voluntarily give up their goods or status; therefore the figureheads must force equality among the citizens. Communism places their citizens, whether they be the wealthy or the laborers, into working classes that specify their contribution to the government. With such balanced placement of the people, individuality is impossible for any single person to achieve.
The first reason Americans began fearing the Communist party, is due to the party’s association with Russia and Stalinism. Russia was the most widely known Communist state in the world and the American Communist party’s adoration of it was the best-known thing about them . This became a large problem for the American Communist party when Stalin became a terrifying figure to the average American as knowledge of his atrocities and betrayals began to leak past the Iron Curtain. While most of the American Communists “just didn’t believe” these rumours, the average person did, and they did not see a difference between the American C...
The famed political author George Orwell once said “I write […] because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention . . .” (Orwell 3). This philosophy is at the heart of his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in which he strives to reveal the dangers of communism through the extreme totalitarian world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The principal danger which Orwell presents is that “communism [is] not a revolutionary force, but instead [is] a new, dangerous form of totalitarianism” (Rossi 207) in which the government is stifling society to gain control and power at the cost of its citizen’s freedom, and humanity. There are
In 2008, Rudra Sabaratnam, the CEO of the City of Angels Medical Center, committed health care fraud when he attempted to extort money from Medicare and Medi-Cal. He was wealthy, yet, his greed for more money led him to cheat the taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars, depriving the people who actually need the help and money. The greed that Sabaratnam had was partly caused by the profit seeking capitalist system. The desire for wealth in capitalist society leads to corruption and causes a divide between the rich and the poor, so perhaps a system that supports equality and fairness is a better choice. The Eastern-European expression,“Capitalism is man exploiting man; communism is just the opposite,” summarizes one of the main ideas in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s aversion to a capitalist society is a motif that appears in several of his literary works, but in The Grapes of Wrath he attacks capitalism constantly and he exposes the poverty, cruelty, and greed found in our capitalist system. By emphasizing the wealthy’s insatiable appetite for profit, which forces the migrants to face hardships, Steinbeck accentuates the inequitable aspects of capitalism, and promotes communism as an alternative.
As a direct consequence of World War I, which ended in 1918, Communism emerged. Communism is an ideology that combines social and economic systems to what is depicted as an equal society, where an emphasis is placed on production for use . During the Great Depression, in the 1930’s, the lives of many people were changed drastically; the number of unemployed was great, and the amount of employment available was minimum. As a result those who wanted work, took what was available, even if it meant receiving a minimal amount of money just to survive, if that.
America, throughout the ages, has always despised Communism and Communistic beliefs; however, during the 20s to around the 90s, there was a deeper hatred for Communism and a fear that lingered in most Americans’ hearts. Communism is a political theory that was derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. The majority of Americans strongly disagreed with
The "Communist Manifesto" Mountain View College Reader. Neuleib, Janice. A. Cain S., of Kathleen. Ruffus, Stephen. The.
Karl Marx noted that society was highly stratified in that most of the individuals in society, those who worked the hardest, were also the ones who received the least from the benefits of their labor. In reaction to this observation, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto where he described a new society, a more perfect society, a communist society. Marx envisioned a society, in which all property is held in common, that is a society in which one individual did not receive more than another, but in which all individuals shared in the benefits of collective labor (Marx #11, p. 262). In order to accomplish such a task Marx needed to find a relationship between the individual and society that accounted for social change. For Marx such relationship was from the historical mode of production, through the exploits of wage labor, and thus the individual’s relationship to the mode of production (Marx #11, p. 256).
Janos, Andrew C. “What was Communism: A Retrospective in Comparative Analysis.” Communist and Post- Communist Studies Volume 29 (1996): 1-24. Print.
Communism started off of rage and popular dissatisfaction from a monarquic empire in the early 1900’s