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Capitalism vs communism
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The Disconnection inside Socialism
The obvious benefits of communism are shadowed by the dark truth that the ruling party and their agenda will effectively alienate the common people in order to protect the state. As history has shown, socialism on a large scale has evolved from theory to tyrannical regimes that embody the same principals of sustaining a dictatorship. “Omon Ra” by Victor Pelevin, published in 1992 by the Tekst Publishing House in Moscow, gives great insight into the structure of a Leninist hierarchy in a post WWII Russian setting. Throughout the novel the main character Omon is constantly and slowly separated from his family, friends, and peers until his mind has adopted a reality of complete isolation from the rest of his “comrades”.
The book is written in first person and Omon opens with a narrative about his family and the origin of his name. OMON is a Russian abbreviation for a Special Forces detachment that his father has worked for his entire life. His older brother passed away in the fourth grade from meningitis. His lone memory of his mother involves a drunken tirade from his father. She passed away when he was very young. Omen was raised by his aunt and visited his alcoholic father on the weekends. His aunt was “indifferent” towards him and arranged it so that he spent most of his time at various camps and “extended day care groups”.
As a child Omen was obsessed with flight and he imagined himself soaring far above conventional flying machines into the “bottomless black pit of space”. In the exploration of his interests, in the Cosmos Pavilion at the Industry Achievements Expo, Omen met his best friend Mityok. When they met, Mityok “was wearing a leather helmet with shiny black Bakelite earphone...
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... to defeat the individualists and alienate the innocent. Omen was forced to grow up and face mortality soon after high school in a country that was not at war. After learning of the murder of his friend Mityok, Omen had nobody left that he could relate to. The deception of the mission and necessity for the “academy” to be under the control of the first office of the KGB, represents the disconnection inside socialism. The first office in any state institution is usually in charge of monitoring political conformity and the handling of state secrets. Therefore, “what would the first department of the KGB itself do?” Although Omen survives he is lead into a rail car where his depiction of his experience is virtually that of the mission. He was safe on a train and still felt that he was alone on the moon making his way to the point where he would eventually die.
The book we read in class was called Anthem by Ayn Rand. This book is about a society that is corrupt in many ways. A couple of ways it’s corrupt is because there is no individualism and they are a very slowly moving society. It took them a long time just to make candles, nowadays candles are made very fast and simple. The government has made it so that the progress of technology is slow and not progressing. None of the people in the town have an actual name, they are known as robots or as a group. Like one of the main characters name is Equality 7-2521. Equality is a street sweeper in this society and is not like any of the other people. He is smart, strong, self-centered and curious. Another character that Equality falls in love with is Liberty 5-3000. She is a peasant that gives Equality water when they are not supposed to talk to each other. Equality’s best friend and only friend is International 4-8818. He helped Equality find the tunnel and kept it a secret from the rest of the society. Equality later names himself Prometheus and Liberty, The Golden One and later on at the house Gaea. Ayn Rand renames them Prometheus and Gaea because they are very much like these gods from Greek mythology. Later on, they run into the Forbidden Forest together to start a new life for them and for the future. They find a house with many books and Equality reads them to discover “I”. That is when Equality 7-2421 renames himself Prometheus and Liberty 5-3000, Gaea.
John Sayles' Matewan: Forming a Communist Society. John Sayles' movie Matewan offers an alternative to the norm when thinking about the development of class and economic systems in the modern world. Upon first glance, it seems as though the coal miners in the town of Matewan were the subjects of a cruel feudal system, sentenced to spend their lives slaving away for a company. who cared very little about them. A classic example of the type of economy Karl Marx spent his life opposing.
" The Son of Revolution" indicates the bounds and paradox of the communist government, which quarantined many individuals, regardless of the fact that its main focus was on equality and the betterment of the community. Works Cited: Liang, Heng, and Judith Shapiro. 1984. Son of the revolution. New York: Vintage Books.
Tucker, Robert C. "Stalinism as Revolution from Above". Stalinism. Edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1999.
Howard Zinn’s unique perspective on American history and the beloved American heroes makes for an interesting story. His book, A People's History of the United States, paints history in a whole new light. While most teachers tell the story of the powerful and renowned elites, the side that Zinn shows in the 13th chapter of his book, “The Socialist Challenge,” goes into detail about the dissent among the population in regard to capitalism. The dissent came since the majority of the population, including most workers, wanted a socialistic society. He also uses other like-minded historians like Emma Goldman, Jack London, and E.S. Swan and historical events such as the fire and strike at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and founding of the IWW Union
Under a backdrop of systematic fear and terror, the Stalinist juggernaut flourished. Stalin’s purges, otherwise known as the “Great Terror”, grew from his obsession and desire for sole dictatorship, marking a period of extreme persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. “The purges did not merely remove potential enemies. They also raised up a new ruling elite which Stalin had reason to think he would find more dependable.” (Historian David Christian, 1994). While Stalin purged virtually all his potential enemies, he not only profited from removing his long-term opponents, but in doing so, also caused fear in future ones. This created a party that had virtually no opposition, a new ruling elite that would be unstoppable, and in turn negatively impacted a range of sections such as the Communist Party, the people of Russia and the progress in the Soviet community, as well as the military in late 1930 Soviet society.
The author manages this by consistently drawing parallels between the state of Ingsoc and that of the Soviet Union. These parallels focus on the dangerous path of dictatorship as both governments they “are not interested in the good of others; [they] are interested solely in power.” (Orwell 301 – 302) Looking solely at the methods of societal control it is evident that Orwell is calling out the communists and drawing the attention of nations to the horror of communist nations as they attempt to control their population. Despite Orwell’s readiness to denounce extreme communism he does not offer any real solution to the issue at hand. He does intimate that maybe the power to overthrow the government lies with the proletariats (89), however he quickly condemns this idea saying that “Until they become conscious they will never rebel and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious” (90) suggesting that if a nation were ever to reach this nightmarish level of totalitarianism they would not even know that they could live differently, and then there would be no
“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a short story depicting the utopian society of Omelas. “Omelas” was written by sci-fi author, Ursula K. Le Guin, and won a Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction the year following its publication. A plot-less story, “Omelas” features a strong narrative voice that presents to readers a compelling ethical dilemma-- the perfect happiness of everyone in Omelas is reliant on keeping one small child in a perpetual state of torment. When Omelans come of age, they visit this child and are educated about its existence. They then make a decision on whether to stay in Omelas, knowing that the happiness of the city rests upon the suffering of an innocent victim, or to walk away from Omelas forever.
they eliminated rebellions during the revolutions, for example, the slaughtering of any animal who spoke against Napoleon or his choices and they conducted foreign intelligence operations, The Dogs stayed by Napoleon's side as he negotiated with Pilkington. "I know not every mom is a secret KGB spy but every mom has this whole other life. Every dad and every person has this whole other life."(Quote it in Keri Russell) This quote talks about KGB spies and officers leading secret lives, hiding their work from friends, family, and anyone else involved in their personal lives. They changed as people, turning violent and rough when they might have been kind and gentle beforehand. These struggles when on for many year until November 6, 1991, the KGB were free and were able to carry on with their normal
Ironically, Communism has never existed anywhere. There has never been a system implemented in our entire history by which a society has been utterly classless. Communism would be a type of egalitarian society with no state, no privately owned means of production and no social class (Wikipedia). Today there is a selection of “Communist” states that exist in a variety of locations on our globe. Sadly, all of the claimed Communist states including the late Soviet Union were and are despicable and corrupted examples of the idea of Communism. By using Stalin as an example it is quite possible to portray to the reader a simple and effective example of the flip side of attempted Communism. Stalin took control of a weak government and crafted an illusionary Communist state. Ironically, Stalin had set himself up as the dictator of a completely totalitarian society. By using the people of Russia, he was able to harness the government and use it for his own needs. This is quite similar to 1984 with the concept of Big Brother. Although Big Brother is not a person, the inner society that controls “him” creates a Stalinist nation; this was quite purposefully included by Orwell.
Elena Gorokhova explains in her memoir that “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.” The novel, A Mountain of Crumbs, depicts the hopelessness, opression and deception of life behind the Iron Curtain during the 70s and 80s. Many rights of the people within the Soviet Union were violated and unacknowledged. In ages past, there were no human rights but the idea evolved after a while. It was at the end of World War II that the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with the purpose of saving future generations from devastating internal conflicts. Human rights are the rights one has simply because one is a human being. There is no distinction between who can exercise and obtain their rights. Some of these obvious rights include that all humans are born free with the promise of life, liberty and security of person. The above rights should be protected and respected by everyone. However, the rights of the communist nations in the USSR were not kept safe. Specifically, the rights to emigrate and move freely as pleased, the freedom of consciousness, thought and religion and the ability to express oneself as they wish. Essentially, people’s rights were being restricted within the Iron Curtain, many of them uncovering their voices and pleeing for change at once, but instead they encountered armed forces prepared to erase anyone in defense of the status quo.
According to Equality 7-2521’s society, the principle of collectivism has overcome more capitalist regimes in the Great Rebirth. Consequently, every facet of society is incorporated into a firm state system. For instance, the school system programmes the children of certain state with the viewpoint that rather than living to satisfy their self desires, they should live entirely for their fellow community members. This philosophy parallels the Soviet use of the term “comrade” to refer to a fellow citizen (Peikoff, 4). This leads to a highly dystopian...
Communism has long been heralded in capitalist countries as the root of all evil. However, as with all phobias, this intrinsic fear of communism comes from a lack of knowledge rather than sound reasoning. It is that same fear that gave the world the Cold War and McCarthy's Red Scare. The purpose of this paper is to inform the reader of communism's evolution through time and hopefully assist the regression of unfounded fear.
Exploring the October revolution and the establishment of communism, Richard Pipes concludes that the origin of communism can be traced back to the distant past in Russia’s history. Pipes states that Russia had entered a period of crisis after the governments of the 19th century undertook a limited attempt at capitalisation, not trying to change the underlying patrimonial structures of Russian society. (Pipes, 1964)