Karl Marx, A Communist Philosopher And Visionary - 1989 Words

Once, a spectre haunted Europe, that spectre was known as Communism. Terrible wages, diseased cities, chronic poverty, and inadequate suffrage defined life for Europe’s industrial working class for much of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The demands of industrial capitalism drove the economic agenda which propagated the horrific maladies that plagued Europe’s poor. The advances of machinery and retooling of â€Å"production processes† generated higher â€Å"profits from producing things,† when compared to the previous models of capitalism. In this world the boot of capitalist greed seemed to crush the throats of the average worker. The laborers of capitalism found themselves doomed to destitution without any meaningful†¦show more content†¦Although a number of communist states once existed the number has dwindled significantly. The â€Å"world revolution† that Marx assumed would come to fruition never fully mate rialized, which by Marxist logical implied the proletariat uprising to topple capitalism has yet to occur. After the dissolution of Soviet Union in the 1990s and the economic opening of communist systems in the People Republic of China and the Soviet Union in 1978 and the mid-1980s respectively, it appeared that Marx’s ideological movement would only haunt the annals of history. However, even after the supposed death of â€Å"true† communism and Marxist systems, has capitalism truly triumphed over socialism and communism? Although it may appear capitalism is the obvious winner, this interpretation is overly simplistic, if not wrong. Capitalist societies instituted socialist and communist principles and policies into their own systems. The governments once responsible for the suppression of their citizens’ freedoms have progressed closer to the economic and societal systems proposed by communists such as Marx. A deviation away from the industrial capitalist structure that Marx knew is not only achievable, it is arguably already been achieved in some countries, wi thout Marx’s hypothesized bloody and violent â€Å"revolution.† Marx refused to acknowledge the permeation of the capitalist system with socialist