by Adam Birmingham

Created on: May 10, 2009   Last Updated: May 19, 2009

Communism, as I am sure you may know, is a prominent form of government in today's world, it is used in countries as close as Cuba, yet, despite its involvement in modern politics, very few people understand what communism truly stands for.

In the 1950s, shortly after the Red Scare, communism has been harshly demoted in the United States, and many of us have grown up believing that communism is a big scary government the Russians and Chinese run to keep their citizens in line, and in the modern world, that may very well be true, but that is not Communism, not true Communism anyways.

The idea of a government in which a person is entitled to what he or she works for was what Karl Marx pictured as a perfect government, this idea soon became known as Communism. First things first, for anyone who has not noticed why the system of government is called Communism, it is actually surprisingly simple, Karl Marx thought if everyone was truly treated as equal, they could form a perfect community, the word communism is derived from community, a commune.

The idea of Communism is one that is claimed by many governments, including ours, which is one that promotes that everyone is equal, however in communism, everyone is equal so long as they do their part and pull their own weight., if one does do their part, is not part of the community, and is treated accordingly, a person in a commune is judged not by their ethnicity, sexual orientation or beliefs, but instead their contributions and work ethic.

The truest form of Marx's Communism would probably be that of Vladimir Lenin's. In 1917, Vladimir Lenin overthrew the Russian government and converted it to Communism, Lenin released several economic bills and plans for the future of Russia, however Lenin's reign in Russia was short lived, after only seven years in power, he suffered a series of strokes which resulted in his death.

Unfortunately for Lenin, it was Joseph Stalin who took power after his death and 1924, and it would not be a far venture to say the Joseph Stalin drove Karl Marx's idea of communism straight into the ground. Stalin turned a Communistic Russia into a near fascist regime, a cruelty that matched that of Adolf Hitler's. Stalin crushed anyone that threatened his power with his secret police,He became mad with power, the Cold War prompting his Communist ideas behind the so called "Iron Curtain"

So today's idea of communism is a twisted spinoff of its true roots, it is an unfortunate fate for a brilliant man's dream.

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