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Communism Essay

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Communism: A Review of an Ideology Raymond Castaneda English 228: Fall Session 2012

The purpose of this essay is to explain how unsuccessful Communism is ideologically in part due to its’ economic shortcomings. For ages, mankind has been in search of a perfect society, a utopia; a society, in which no suffering exists, and everyone is happy. In writing, they are common, from the City of Atlantis to the Garden of Eden. However, there are no utopias, none for which anyone can provide proof of. For better or worse, there have been men who have attempted to bring about these utopias in the form of egalitarian societies. Some of these societies have aimed at removing the differences in social class and material wealth between people in an attempt to establish a utopian society. For example communism which was based on a Marxist utopian ideology, has proven to be ultimately a flawed principle and regime. In recent times, so called utopian societies were identified as either socialist, or communist. True communist societies have aimed to be egalitarian, and perhaps even utopian. While the effects of communist and socialist regimes are not confined to one single aspect of human life, this essay focuses on the economic effects of communism. Unfortunately, they have not succeeded in either; instead these societies have resulted in poverty, violence, and overall failure . Modern communism cannot be explained without first defining it, as there have been many historical and contemporary variations. Communism, as first defined in Paris in the 1840s by historian (Pipes, 2003), is “three related but distinct phenomena: an ideal, a program, and a regime set up to realize the ideal”. When Pipes writes of “the ideal”, he refers to the idea that if people were to have no private property, and instead share in a communal wealth, all men would see each other as equals. While,

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