Communism: Where did it go wrong?

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx remarks on how the labor force of the world, or Proletarians, have to rise up against the rich minority, or Bourgeois, of their nations to gain social power. The methodology Marx suggests is to adopt Communism. After sighting a brief history of the trend of a rich minority abusing the poor majority, Marx then compares the needs of the Proletarians to the attributes of Communism, thus strengthening his argument by showing a commonality between the two. After introducing counter-points to his argument and disproving them, Marx concludes with a cry to the Proletarians to rise up around the world to start not a national revolution, but a global one.

After reading Marx's writing, I could not help but think “If Communism was made to benefit the labor force as equals and respected parts of society, then why does the middle class in many communist countries become taken advantage of by the dictators that run them? What went wrong with Soviet Communism? Or Chinese Communism? I propose that the error had originated from Marx's own works. Though Marx does go into detail about how the economic side of Communism should be handled, the political end is left up to interpretation, or more accurately, manipulation. Marx had said it himself in The Communist Manifesto that wealth is social power. In politics, social power drives political policies and procedure. By only touching on the political ramifications of Communism, Marx had left way too much up for interpretation. I could state how things “could have been different...” or “If only Marx had...”, but the truth is that these key details were left out of Marx's argument based on his chosen focus on economics. If Communism is going to work, a “The Communist Manifesto Part 2” will be needed. As for now, the “Great Idea” of Communism is only an incomplete one.