Communism Essay

Communism Essay Free Online Research Papers Communism Essay Political Science Paper â€Å"Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.† Fredrick Engers seeks to explain how communism is the solution to free the proletariat in his book call The Principles of Communism. Beginning in the last half of the eighteenth century when England was in the middle of an industrial revolution, proletariats have been deprived of their independence. A proletariat is a person of the class which lives entirely from the sale of its own labor. They are poor and propertyless and are forced to work under harsh working conditions for a class of big capitalists called bourgeoisie. Fredrick Engers states that if competition is abolished, there is no privately owned property, money is centralized, and there is an equal obligation for all citizens, the proletariat will be lead to victory and liberation. One of the key aspects of communism is the abolition of competition. The central power must take control of all production and industry because all branches of business compete with each other. When these businesses compete, they push the proletariats to work harder and faster so that they can produce more and gain more income than other businesses. The proletariat class grows larger and the majority of the population suffers. Soon, the middle class of specialized handicraftsmen is gone. If there are no competing business owners then there will be no strict owners who need the proletariats, which will therefore lead to freedom of the hardworking bottom class. Communism’s most significant characteristic is the abolition of private property. Engers thinks that we should practice the communal ownership of goods. The management of large corporations comes with the idea of private property. The bourgeoisie own the factories and hire large amounts of proletariats. If proletariats are to be liberated there must be no bourgeoisie who can own their own private property. The centralization of money and all credit is another important factor of communism. The money must be kept in a national bank at the hands of the bank. The same amount of money will go to each person so that nobody is richer or in a higher class. There will be nobody with more power who can tell others what to do. The centralization of money and credit will ultimately lead to the liquidation of the bourgeoisie and proletariat classes because nobody will have more money or power over anyone. Communism can only work if there is an equal obligation on all members of society. Every person must work and do the job that they are assigned. From the work they do, they will earn the money and property that they need. If everyone is expected to work under the same conditions with no strict managers, the proletariats will be freed from their lives of being poor and weakened by the bourgeoisie. In conclusion, Fredrick Engers was right when he stated that â€Å"communism of the doctrine of conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.† Today, the problem between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is growing larger. If society rids itself of competition, abolishes private property, puts all money and credit into a national bank, and creates an obligation to work for all members of society then the proletariat will be liberated. Ultimately, if countries today begin to move into communist societies, the proletariat class will soon disappear. Research Papers on Communism EssayAssess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 Europe19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraQuebec and CanadaThe Effects of Illegal ImmigrationAppeasement Policy Towards the Outbreak of World War 2PETSTEL analysis of IndiaTwilight of the UAWAnalysis of Ebay Expanding into AsiaHip-Hop is ArtResearch Process Part One

Robert Lynds Essay on the Pleasures of Ignorance

Robert Lynds Essay on the Pleasures of Ignorance Born in Belfast, Robert Lynd moved to London when he was 22 and soon  became a popular and prolific essayist, critic, columnist, and poet. His essays are characterized by humor, precise  observations, and a lively, engaging style. From Ignorance To Discovery Writing under the pseudonym of Y.Y., Lynd contributed a weekly literary essay to the New Statesman magazine from 1913 to 1945. The Pleasures of Ignorance is one of those many essays. Here he offers examples from nature to demonstrate his thesis that out of ignorance we get the constant  pleasure of discovery. The Pleasures of Ignorance by Robert Lynd (1879-1949) 1 It is impossible to take a walk in the country with an average townsman- especially, perhaps, in April or May- without being amazed at the vast continent of his ignorance. It is impossible to take a walk in the country oneself without being amazed at the vast continent of ones own ignorance. Thousands of men and women live and die without knowing the difference between a beech and an elm, between the song of a thrush and the song of a blackbird. Probably in a modern city the man who can distinguish between a thrushs and a blackbirds song is the exception. It is not that we have not seen the birds. It is simply that we have not noticed them. We have been surrounded by birds all our lives, yet so feeble is our observation that many of us could not tell whether or not the chaffinch sings, or the colour of the cuckoo. We argue like small boys as to whether the cuckoo always sings as he flies or sometimes in the branches of a tree- whether [George] Chapman drew on his fancy or his knowl edge of nature in the lines: When in the oaks green arms the cuckoo sings,And first delights men in the lovely springs. Ignorance And Discovery This ignorance, however, is not altogether miserable. Out of it we get the constant pleasure of discovery. Every fact of nature comes to us each spring, if only we are sufficiently ignorant, with the dew still on it. If we have lived half a lifetime without having ever even seen a cuckoo, and know it only as a wandering voice, we are all the more delighted at the spectacle of its runaway flight as it hurries from wood to wood conscious of its crimes, and at the way in which it halts hawk-like in the wind, its long tail quivering, before it dares descend on a hill-side of fir-trees where avenging presences may lurk. It would be absurd to pretend that the naturalist does not also find pleasure in observing the life of the birds, but his is a steady pleasure, almost a sober and plodding occupation, compared to the morning enthusiasm of the man who sees a cuckoo for the first time, and, behold, the world is made new.2  And, as to that, the happiness even of the naturalist depends in so me measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each bright particular with his eyes. He wishes with his own eyes to see the female cuckoo- rare spectacle!- as she lays her egg on the ground and takes it in her bill to the nest in which it is destined to breed infanticide. He would sit day after day with a field-glass against his eyes in order personally to endorse or refute the evidence suggesting that the cuckoo does lay on the ground and not in a nest. And, if he is so far fortunate as to discover this most secretive of birds in the very act of laying, there still remain for him other fields to conquer in a multitude of such disputed questions as whether the cuckoos egg is always of the same colour as the other eggs in the nest in which she abandons it. Assuredly the men of science have no reason as yet to weep over their lost ignorance. If they seem to know everything, it is only because you and I know almost nothing. There will always be a fortune of ignorance waiting for them under every fact they turn up. They will never know what song the Sirens sang to Ulysses any more than Sir Thomas Browne did. The Cuckoo Illustration 3  If I have called in the cuckoo to illustrate the ordinary mans ignorance, it is not because I can speak with authority on that bird. It is simply because, passing the spring in a parish that seemed to have been invaded by all the cuckoos of Africa, I realised how exceedingly little I, or anybody else I met, knew about them. But your and my ignorance is not confined to cuckoos. It dabbles in all created things, from the sun and moon down to the names of the flowers. I once heard a clever lady asking whether the new moon always appears on the same day of the week. She added that perhaps it is better not to know, because, if one does not know when or in what part of the sky to expect it, its appearance is always a pleasant surprise. I fancy, however, the new moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are familiar with her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming in of spring and the waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted to find an early primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the services of the year to look for it in March or April rather than in October. We know, again, that the blossom precedes and not succeeds the fruit of the apple tree, but this does not lessen our amazement at the beautiful holiday of a May orchard. The Pleasure Of Learning 4At the same time there is, perhaps, a special pleasure in re-learning the names of many of the flowers every spring. It is like re-reading a book that one has almost forgotten. Montaigne tells us that he had so bad a memory that he could always read an old book as though he had never read it before. I have myself a capricious and leaking memory. I can read Hamlet itself and The Pickwick Papers as though they were the work of new authors and had come wet from the press, so much of them fades between one reading and another. There are occasions on which a memory of this kind is an affliction, especially if one has a passion for accuracy. But this is only when life has an object beyond entertainment. In respect of mere luxury, it may be doubted whether there is not as much to be said for a bad memory as for a good one. With a bad memory one can go on reading Plutarch and The Arabian Nights all ones life. Little shreds and tags, it is probable, will stick even in the worst memory, just as a succession of sheep cannot leap through a gap in a hedge without leaving a few wisps of wool on the thorns. But the sheep themselves escape, and the great authors leap in the same way out of an idle memory and leave little enough behind. The Pleasure Of Asking Questions 5And, if we can forget books, it is as easy to forget the months and what they showed us, when once they are gone. Just for the moment I tell myself that I know May like the multiplication table and could pass an examination on its flowers, their appearance and their order. Today I can affirm confidently that the buttercup has five petals. (Or is it six? I knew for certain last week.) But next year I shall probably have forgotten my arithmetic, and may have to learn once more not to confuse the buttercup with the celandine. Once more I shall see the world as a garden through the eyes of a stranger, my breath taken away with surprise by the painted fields. I shall find myself wondering whether it is science or ignorance which affirms that the swift (that black exaggeration of the swallow and yet a kinsman of the humming-bird) never settles even on a nest, but disappears at night into the heights of the air. I shall learn with fresh astonishment that it is the male, and not the female, cuckoo that sings. I may have to learn again not to call the campion a wild geranium, and to rediscover whether the ash comes early or late in the etiquette of the trees. A contemporary English novelist was once asked by a foreigner what was the most important crop in England. He answered without a moments hesitation: Rye. Ignorance so complete as this seems to me to be touched with magnificence; but the ignorance even of illiterate persons is enormous. The average man who uses a telephone could not explain how a telephone works. He takes for granted the telephone, the railway train, the linotype, the aeroplane, as our grandfathers took for granted the miracles of the gospels. He neither questions nor understands them. It is as though each of us investigated and made his own only a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the days work is regarded by most men as a gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate. We rev el in speculations about anything at all- about life after death or about such questions as that which is said to have puzzled Aristotle, why sneezing from noon to midnight was good, but from night to noon unlucky. One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge. The great pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen. One envies so inquisitive a man as [Benjamin] Jowett, who sat down to the study of physiology in his sixties. Most of us have lost the sense of our ignorance long before that age. We even become vain of our squirrels hoard of knowledge and regard increasing age itself as a school of omniscience. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realised at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing. * Originally appearing in  The New Statesman, The Pleasures of Ignorance by Robert Lynd served as the lead essay in his collection  The Pleasures of Ignorance  (Riverside Press and Charles Scribners Sons, 1921)