Though this book is only about 40 pages long, I found it to be as difficult to read as it is historically significant. (So please don't dock me for its length!) The book its self was written by Karl Marx mainly, but was co-written by Fredrick Engels. Throughout the book, Marx describes his thought of what would be a near-perfect government, or lack thereof. He talks about past and current forms of governments, and how they've failed or triumphed, but usually how they've failed. He writes a lot about the bourgeoisie, which is a big, complicated word used to describe the upper-class of a capitalist society, and how communism would create an almost perfect world - where everyone is equal and there are no higher powers. As I read the book, I couldn't help but feel like his ideas of a perfect world were impossible, because in order for there to be true communism, there would have to be no physical disabilities amongst people, no crime, no social classes, and no racism, unfortunately, all these things will almost always exist in our society; so the idea of communism is really just a dream. Though I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone under the age of 18, (because it's really boring and uses words that I had to Google a lot) I think that this is a pretty important book to read, because the more people read it, the more likely our society will eventually become communist, which would actually be a great thing, because as Marx describes in this book, communism would benefit everyone by making everyone equal, and therefore would be no wars, no homeless people, and overall no problems. I personally thought the book was awesome, it taught me a lot about communism, and after reading it, I understood the book
Animal Farm a lot more, and it has given me some serious advantages when I get in arguments about whether or not communism is a good thing. So, before you blame everything on communism like a lot of Americans would, read this book to give yourself a decent education of what communism originated from.
4 comments:
nice job charlaaaaaayyy!! i was astounded at school when you were having the conversation with me at lunch about communism. i might consider this book in a while. seems really interesting. also, it would be nice to have a true opinion on the subject, not just what i hear everyone else say.
Charlie, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I wanted to let you know that I thought you did a wonderful job--considering you are 14 and can't vote, nor have a hand in your government. When you consider what historical events this book created (a.k.a. Hilter's rise to power, Stalin, etc) its easy to see why people read or don't read it. Pretty powerful stuff, hey?
But isn't it true that almost every single communist government has failed and impoverished their people? In the last century weren't Communist governments responsible for the murders of nearly 100 million of their own citizens? Ii that truly a "perfect government"? I'll have to talk to you in school Charlie. Don't mind me though... I'm like... fourteen so I don't know everything. ;)
^Well yeah, like I said in my review, it's unfortunate that it's really just an imagination and not a realistic probability. Communism would be pretty cool for a little island or something with only a few hundred people, because it could be detached from the rest of the world and thrive almost better than the capitalistic governments you see all over the world today. Pretty schnazzy reading though!
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