Is communism the greatest economic and political success ever, or a total disaster? This essay proposes to explain briefly about the definition and history of communism, and compare the advantages with the disadvantages.

Communists believe that communism has many advantages. One of the advantages they expected is that the people in communist countries would live in a classless society, in which equality among the entire population is guaranteed. This means that there would be no rich or poor since everyone would have an equal income, reducing the chance of complaints and strikes regarding fairness. Communism also provides people with economic security, and the government has control over the labor. These factors allow everyone to have a job and access to education, health care, social protection and other basic needs. Government ownership of land, factories, capital, and transportation also exists in a communist country, allowing the entire group to decide the best ways to produce goods more efficiently. Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee, started to use a series of five year plans in 1928 to try to industrialize the country. The result was that within twenty years, the Soviet Union transformed from one of the poorest and undeveloped countries in the world into a country that possessed the second largest industrial power in the world. This proved Marx’s prediction that under a centrally planned economy, industrial and agricultural production would be a success. However, a centrally planned economy has also turned out to be very inefficient in many ways.

        Communism has also been shown to have many disadvantages when it is put into action. Since the factories and businesses in the entire country are controlled by only one group, the government, there is no competition from other groups or individuals. Due to this, the planned economy reacts slowly to the changes in demands of the consumers. When the reaction time to the demands of the consumers is slowed down, the price will some times not reflect the actual cost of the product, leading to the waste of natural resources and labor. Another disadvantage of communism is that once it is put into practice, the motivation to work is taken away from all the workers. This is because no matter how hard the workers work and what they do, they will still receive the same wages, and their living conditions will stay the same. Once a country is under the control of a communist party, the leaders usually have a higher living standard compared to the average citizen. The fact is that most of them have access to more comfortable housing, better health care, government cars and other special privileges shared only by a small portion of the population. This is totally contrary to one of the main beliefs of communism: equality among the people. Due to the fact that almost all communists believe that violence is the only solution to bring about change, many innocent people have died during the revolutions, and many structures, machines, and technologies have been damaged or destroyed. In fact, nearly 55 million people were killed due to the various communist famines alone, and a total of 100 million men, women and children were killed due to communist related event!

        This essay has just taken a look at both the up and down sides of communism. Communism has played an important role in providing changes in many of the world’s poor and undeveloped countries, making them some of the most powerful countries in the world as Karl Marx predicted. However millions of innocent lives have been lost due to events related to communism. This just leads to another question: Did communism really become what Karl Marx thought it would be, a saver of the proletariats, or did it just create a society full of unfairness, chaos, and blood?