|
|
Marx
Karl Marx May 15, 1818 - March 14, 1883
He was an educated man - fluent in French, German, and English. He graduated from the University of Berlin in 1841 majoring in history and philosophy. He had hopes of becoming a professor, but his political views were so contrary to society at the time he ended up editing and writing for a radical newspaper. He was banished from Germany, and later France, and had to live out his days in London, England from 1849 to his death in 1883. He married his long time love, Jenny von Westphalen in 1842, and had six children with her. Three of his children died while they were young.
His most famous written material is "Manifesto of the Communist Party" which is the document that Lenin, Stalin, our three dictators, and so many more people based their regimes from. An excerpt from this document is as follows:
"The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties (the poorest class of working people): Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy (capitalists; property owners; the wealthy) conquest of political power by the proletariat."
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class."
I think most dictators forgot to read this last paragraph:
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
I think Marx would roll over in his grave if he knew that men would some day twist his writings to be the foundation of their own obscure and demented form of leadership and government. There was no "free development of all" in any of these dictators' regimes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stalin
Stalin, Joseph
December 21, 1879 - March 5, 1953
Stalin succeeded Lenin as head of the Soviet Communist Party in 1924, and with his political power he started a ruthless campaign ousting his opponents until he became the "supreme leader" by the end of the decade. He not only continued the oppressive reforms started by Lenin, but he pushed them to the extreme. During this period called the "Great Purge" Stalin executed anyone who dared to stand in his path. Up until WWII he would reign with a campaign of terror, flamed by the secret police, targeting scientists, priests, artists, intellectuals, and even his own Red Army. Those not arrested and harassed were killed.
All told approximately 20 million people died under Stalin's regime including 14 million who were needlessly starved to death. One million were executed for political offenses, 9.5 million were deported, exiled, or sent to work camps with many of the five million sent to the Gulag never returning alive. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
