Why Communism is Defective, by Cal Reeves

When people hear the word “Communism,” a few things come to mind, Karl Marx, dictatorship, war, and innocent deaths. It is associated with these types of terms because these radical socialist governments usually do not work and result in horrible situations. Real communism as far as Karl Marx is concerned, is supposed to be a moneyless, classless, stateless social order, with common ownership for means of production, which in theory eventually leads to an almost modernized anarchist government. Then, everything in the country can just run and grow off of one another. For some reason he thought that dictatorship was the first stage to setting all of this into motion. Many Communist countries have not been able to get passed this first stage.

Today in our world there have been and there are a handful of communist countries. Many countries have fallen, while some still exist. China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam are the most popular Communist governments today. The most famous fallen country is the USSR. Many others have also fallen in Eastern Europe for many reasons like economic crashes, starvation, and collectivism. In a most of these countries, the government plays large roles in what people do in their everyday life. Which I would say is the first reason why communist countries generally do not last. Because some say the government that governs the best, is the one that governs the least. When governments become regulative in the lives of the people, it takes away from the freedom and privacy of its people. In return, it can cause many things like distrust in the government, and rebellion. Which history has showed then can cause innocent deaths of the people. Innocent deaths are one of the many ways these governments put fear in the people to make them do what they want, and make sure they do not ask any types of questions.

Like I mentioned before they all operate under a pure dictatorship. Which generally results in the country going in the direction of the person running it. There is also no congress, parliament, or any type of voting causing the people to not have any type of say what happens in their country. If the leader wants to go to war or invade another country, then that’s just what happens. This can cause other people from different countries to have much disgust for these communist countries because their main goals are generally to invade, expand, and spread communism. This can also cause the country to generate what little money they have away from the important things like education, and jobs for its entire people, which in the end could result in a better economy, and lower death rates because people will become educated and know how to fix major problems in the country.

Another main reason this system struggles is because the all the people have to provide for the county. Everything that they have to do is for the country. Agriculture and industry for example are two of the things that are government controlled. The people that run these companies and farms can barely afford to pay for anything because almost all of their products they have to just give to the government. Which can generally cause poverty and large famine. In the 1930’s and 40’s, many farmers in the Soviet Union died from starvation because they would farm crops then to government would come in and take what they thought was theirs, and feed there armies or export it to generate money for themselves.

           

Works Cited

www.advoidingthevoid.worldpress.com  

What is a Coup d’état? by Megan Assman

            In my Governments of the World class, we had a brief discussion about the definition of a coup d’état and were shown a few examples of it.  I do not feel that I fully understood what a coup d’état was, so I am using my second blog as a reason to do some in depth research and learn some examples of what this word really means.  I searched for an in-depth definition and I found just that in the Britannica encyclopedia which states: “coup d’état, also called Coup, the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. Unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social, economic, and political change, a coup is a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel. A coup rarely alters a nation’s fundamental social and economic policies, nor does it significantly redistribute power among competing political groups. Among the earliest modern coups were those in which Napoleon overthrew the Directory on Nov. 9, 1799 and in which Louis Napoleon dissolved the assembly of France’s Second Republic in 1851. Coups were a regular occurrence in various Latin American nations in the 19th and 20th centuries and in Africa after the countries there gained independence in the 1960s.”

            18 Brumaire refers to the coup d’état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the Consulate. In 1799, members of the Directory, a body of five directors that held executive power in France, conspired with Napoleon to take over the French government by means of a coup d’état.  It was successful, and Napoleon quickly asserted his superior intelligence and will over others. By 1802 he had full power and by 1804, he proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon I.  This period of European history from 1799 to 1815 is generally known as the Napoleonic Age. Not only did Napoleon gain power in France, but also much of continental Europe.

The Czechoslovak coup d’état of 1948 often called the Czech coup, was an event in late February of that year in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with the backing of the Soviets, assumed control over the government of Czechoslovakia and with this control ushered in over four decades of dictatorship under its rule. The coup’s significance extended far beyond the country’s boundaries, as it was a clear marker along the already full fledged Cold War. The West greeted the event with full shock and helped spur quick adoption of the Marshall Plan, the creation of a state in West Germany, vigorous measures were created to keep the Communists out of power in France and Italy, and steps toward mutual security that resulted in the establishment of NATO in a little over a year and the conclusive drawing of the Iron Curtain until the Autumn of Nations in 1989.

The Cuban Revolution was a civil war that took place in Cuba between December 2, 1956, and January 2, 1959. The guerilla forces led by Fidel Castro, fought against the government army, under Fulgencio Batista, a dictator who had got into power through a military coup in 1952.  With an armed militia of only 80 members, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul had sailed from Mexico to Cuba and landed on Las Coloradas beach, on the south coast of the island on December 2, 1956. They were defeated in the first military engagement with the government, but the surviving members penetrated the Cuban jungles of Sierra Maestra where they recruited more men, collected more weapons, and became better organized. The 80-member militia grew into thousands.  The civil war lasted three years.  Under the command of Camilo Cienfuegos, Juan Almeida Bosques, and Ernesto Guevara, they carried out surprise attacks on the government.  On December 30, 1958, Camilo Cienfuego defeated a unit of 300 men at the Battle of Yaguajay. On December 31, the very next day, three guerrilla units defeated Batista’s army again at the Battle of Santa Clara. Having heard of his defeat, Batista left the island of Cuba and went into exile to the Dominican Republic. Most of the Cuban people supported Castro’s revolution because he had promised them to bring back democracy and freedom to Cuba. However, Fidel Castro was a master of lies and aligned with the Soviet Union and the European Eastern block of communist nations, setting up a new dictatorship in Cuba, which would last many times longer than the one before it, subjecting the island extreme poverty.

 Sources

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/140445/coup-detat

http://historywarsweapons.com/

http://list25.com/25-most-violent-military-coups/