Karl Marx\'s Concept of Communism

Karl Marx's concept of Communism and its relevance to the ideas of Edouard Bernstein, V.I. Lenin, and the Marshall Plan

The rise of a capitalist economic society is attributed to the occurrence of the Industrial Revolution in Western societies, wherein a transition from a feudal to a capitalist society happened. Two centuries after, capitalism has brought into human society social changes that helped provided various perspectives about how social progress is achieved in the society. An example of this is the emergence of the critical theory of capitalist society by Karl Marx, the eventual rise of Communism in Asia and Eastern Europe, and the formulation of the Marshall Plan by the United States government in the 1940s.

These changes marked a pivotal point to the way capitalism viewed by human society: socialist ideology view modernism and capitalism as inherently oppressive, while the Marshall Plan blatantly demonstrates this economic system (capitalism) as the path towards further social progress and socialism as the idealistic society that brought only poverty and chaos in society.

These viewpoints are discussed and analyzed in the paper, where a comparative analysis of the thoughts on capitalism by Karl Marx, Edouard Bernstein, Vladimir Lenin, and the Marshall Plan is conducted. This paper posits that Marx and Lenin's arguments for socialism stands in opposition to the ideologies advocated by Bernstein and the Marshall Plan, wherein socialist Communism is perceived and as history proves, can be detrimental to the welfare of society in general. On a larger context, the comparative analysis of the works of Marx, Lenin, Bernstein, and the Marshall Plan reflect the politics involved in implementing the economic system of capitalism, as evident in the each political philosopher's analysis of capitalism and socialism as new modes of politico-economic societies.

Karl Marx is an important point of reference in discussing the detrimental effects of capitalism on human societies. With Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx conceived the "Communist Manifesto" a political treatise that questioned the benefits of capitalism on the social order of the modern society in the nineteenth century. Marx argues against the bourgeoisie, the elite and wealthy class who owns and controls all means of production (such as machineries and land) as industrialism emerged in the century. The bourgeois class, according to Marx, have evolved from being landowners to factory-owners, a class that "has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones." From this statement, he then goes on to enumerate how, with the dominance of the elite class, the proletariat or working class is continually oppressed. He thus argues that proletariats, being the oppressed class in the capitalist society, has the role to start a complete reorganization of society, which can turn society from capitalist to one wherein production can benefit the collectivity as whole -- that is, a Communist society.

Marx's adherence to the abolishment of private property as the key towards creating an egalitarian society in Communism has become a popular ideology and most debated-upon issue for philosophers and social scientists who are analyzing the social movements and changes that are happening in human society for the past centuries. Marx's convincing argument that oppression is happening and has become inevitable under the capitalist system became an inspiration for nations to adapt to the conditions that he had proposed in "Communist Manifesto."

One of these leaders of nations who had subsisted to the promise of Communism is Vladimir Lenin, Revolutionary leader who became the first leader of Soviet Russia, and eventually, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Under Lenin's leadership, he began realizing Marx's vision of a Communist society, where there is no private property and no class stratification. However, Lenin did not subscribe to Marx' belief that it should be the working class who will induce social reform and revolutionize to build a Communist society, in opposition against capitalism. In "What is to be done?," Lenin argues that revolution under a broad organization of revolutionaries made up of "hardened workers" is not feasible, simply because this organization is "loose," making the revolutionaries of workers more susceptible to outside intervention. These interventions, he states, are the police and gendarmes; hence, a broad organization of workers are not ideal, for it will "...achieve neither the one aim nor the other; we shall not eliminate our rule-of-thumb methods, and, because we remain scattered and our forces are constantly broken up by the police, we shall only make trade unions...." What Lenin suggests, then, is an organization of professional revolutionaries, who, despite being less in number than the workers, are more able to accomplish the tasks needed for social changes in the society. The revolutionary of professionals will work and cooperate with the workers to ensure success in enforcing this social change and shift to a Communist society: "Active participation of the widest masses in the illegal press will not diminish because a "dozen" professional revolutionaries centralise the secret functions connected with this work; on the contrary, it will increase tenfold..."