Communism

"Communism"

What is Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. It also can be defined as a conceptualized system of government in which resources and production facilities are the property of the entire society rather than individuals. In a communist society, labor is shared equally as well, and the benefits of labor are distributed according to need (Communism.4all 1). No one person shall be ranked higher than another and there is to be one person in charge of the society in a communism government. There are still to this day many countries that fall under the rule of communism and the ways they were transformed under communist rule is quite interesting. Just a few to mention are; Vietnam, Cuba, and China. China and Russia both went to great lengths to turn their countries into communist ones. Russia then became a non-communist country and is better for it. Communism is also looked at from a religious standpoint and the church has extremely strong views on it. Communism is not only a governmental system it is how people are forced to live their lives, good and the bad come with it.

As I mentioned before, communism goes under the liberation of the proletariat. A proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor-hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat or the class of

Proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century (Marxists 1). This is just one example of the ways of the Communist rule.

The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half of the 18th century, and which has since been repeated in all the civilized countries in the world (Marxists 2). Before the industrial revolution began, devices such as the steam engine, spinning machines and a bunch of other mechanical devices were invented. These new and extremely expensive machines could only be purchased by the capitalists. Therefore, the machines were brought industry work into the hands of the capitalists and were worthless property to the workers. This meant that the capitalists had everything and the workers had nothing.

Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of labor was less time consuming and the worker could make more and a less amount of time. The invention of these machines reduced the amount of time that the workers had to spend on making the items themselves. This in turn lessened the work for because soon there would be no need for the workers due to the machines. But, at the same time, they also fell in to the hands of big capitalists, and their workers were deprived of whatever independence remained to them (Marxists 3).

Communism is viewed also by a religious standpoint. To explain the kind of communism that the early church practiced it is necessary to understand the sense of

brotherhood that the members of the Church had toward each other. It was not, to be sure, an arbitrary communism and bears no relation to communists of today, but the

principal on which it was based was communistic. They held jobs, bought and sold and made profit of their earnings, much like you would see in an ideal social democracy (Latter Rain 1).

What the Jerusalem church practiced was a voluntary and democratic social communism. The representation of communism in the modern world is something entirely different. American society and capitalism in general has oversimplified the terms of independence and class struggle as being part of the red menace and demonized the social gospel to the point of starving the greater part of the world. The Communists however see capitalistic society as a 19th century bourgeois relic which is doomed to perish. The truth is that laissez faire capitalism and totalitarian communism is both anti-Christian. In case you are wondering, I'm a social democrat. Communism represents an obsolete point of view that lags a century behind the present situation and capitalism has always violated the precepts of Jesus and apostolic mandate (Latter Rain 1).

To a Marxist, communism has solved the enigma of history. Communism is defined as a movement and consciousness of movement advancing towards the highest form of social organization. It settles the question of men and nature, existence and essence, freedom and necessity, individual and collectiveness. In theory and practice it solves all these questions and it is mindful that it solves them. With its criticism of oppression and expectations of a better world, Marxist communism started as a rational eschatology, in many ways akin to restoration prophetic ideals. With the appearance of

Soviet communism, however, the rational and eschatological setting was discarded and only the tyranny and atheism remained (Latter Rain 2).

China was not always a country with a communist government. It was not until a man by the name of Mao Zedong came to power, and changed the ways and status of the Chinese. Mao Zedong was born in 1893 and lived in a town called Shaoshan. Mao left home and joined the Nationalist army in 1911 when the Revolution began. In a training college, Mao was introduced to the philosophy of Marxism (Hoobler 140). The father of communism came to command in 1935 as the chairman of the Party's Politburo during the Long March. Also, Mao had the support of the farmers, accounting roughly for eighty-five percent of China's population. Zhu De, leader of the thousand fighters, combined forces with Mao to fight other peasant armies.

The following years were ones where Mao's rule was strengthened. A huge advantage though, was the attack of nationalists, led by Chiang kai-sjek, both involved in a struggle for power in China. The first were fierce periods with unfortunate losses, in favor of the nationalists. Communists were punished badly, in fact many were slaughtered. This describes the legendary Long March of Mao and his supporters, who traveled from the East to the West for over a year in order to escape the nationalists. Here Mao applied the important tactics learned earlier. Eventually only ten percent of the original 200,000 Chinese made it to their final destination. Kai-sjek was outnumbered and the nationalists were defeated due to ambushes and starvation. As a result Kai-sjek fled to Taiwan and formed the Republic of China (van de Merwe 1).

While Mao was child,