Onhell said:
Marx's writings wrung very true to these people and they were tired of the oppression. It was mostly a European movement, but Marx's vision was global and only if communism was global would it succeed.
Interestingly enough, Marxism and other historical interpretations and approaches have recently been rejected by a rising movement of scholars, mostly in Latin America and India. While they agree with Marxists' calls for telling history from the perspective of the oppressed/working classes, they dismiss its very premises as Western and ignorant of the different human conditions which thrive in the so-called developing world. The movement is headed by historians like Florencia Mallon, Gyan Prakash, and Ranajit Guha, and collectively labelled as the "Subaltern Studies School" though it's such a diverse bunch that it isn't really a cohesive school of thought in the way Marxist theory has become. It's quite interesting, really, that the "third world" is wanting to devise their own methods for their own history, and rejecting the very premises upon which western thought is based.
Just thought I'd share that...it's not exactly relevant to the topic, but not much is around here.
Genghis Khan said:
There is one major thing about communism that I cannot but find troubling, to say the least. Correct me if I'm wrong, but did not Marx, in essence, say that the government will need to grow larger before it grows smaller and finally disintegrates. The government growing larger part, I could never trust. At my age and experience, I'd have to shut off all my senses and brain to believe that [any] government that grows larger will be ruling for the benefit of the people.
Not exactly. The revolution Marx envisioned is supposed to be spontaneous; the system of government itself has very little to do with it. It has much more to do with wealth distribution and modes of production. To reduce it to simple terms (not because I don't think you can't understand it - you're pretty bright
. I'm just lazy and getting ready for bed!), here's how it'll happen:
People's connection to the product of their labour will eventually be reduced to zero. Once they have nothing left except their labour itself, everyone will rise up and bring in a new era.
In the feudal stage of society, while dirt poor, each individual (peasant), more or less, directly owned the fruits (and vegetables!) of his labour.
As society moved into industrial capitalism, the factory owners controlled the final product and paid a wage to the workers (proletariats).
When this wage falls so low in relation to the cost of day-to-day living and whatnot, the revolution will happen, and the third stage will emerge - Communism.
(reductionist summary, I know...see above!)
To bring this back (sort of) to the topic at hand, the reason, according to Marxist theory, that the revolution in 1917 in Russia didn't bring in a communist society in anything except name is that Russia was, with the exception of a few factories in Moscow and Petrograd, still essentially a feudal society, with peasants tied to the land and connected to the fruits of their labours. This is why Lenin needed to modify Marxism to even have any sort of uprising - they needed a "vanguard of the proletariat" to lead the revolution because it would never happen spontaneously in a feudal society.
Furthermore, the reason the revolutions didn't happen in an industrial country is, according to Marxist theory, because they're still in the highest stages of industrial Capitalism, called by Lenin "Imperialism". Instead of the proletariat in Britain or France rising up and overthrowing the established orders, those countries were able to "let off steam" by sending people to (and drawing wealth from) overseas colonies - but they basically just delayed the inevitable.
The most interesting case, I think, is the lack of a Marxist revolution in America during the late 19th Century. It was, in the post-bellum period, the world's leading industrial nation. The proletariat was oppressed, and wealth was increasingly concentrated int eh hands of the few. Yet no Revolution occurred. Frederick Jackson Turner, the most influential American historian of the period, offered the idea that America's frontier - the idea that there was something "new" just over the horizon - functioned as the root of American democratic spirit, and therefore the guard against communist uprisings. This is why he, a child of privilege, wrote his panic-stricken and now famous "Frontier in American History" in which he argues that by 1900 the frontier was gone - Everything between California and New York was filled up. And now, he argued, America was screwed and doomed to being sucked into the same geo-political realities as Europe.
Wow. That was much longer than I intended. But that's the VERY essentialist and reductionist outline of Marxist theory and revolutions and whatnot. I hope it makes sense. I'd recommend reading some of Marx's writings, they still are the best source for a grounding in this stuff even though the fundamental tenets under which they were written no longer apply to us today. (For that, consult the so-called "Neo-Marxist" school of thought - which is REALLY cool for what it can tell us about terrorism and jihad)
By the way, why do you still insist on calling me 'Mongol'. 
This means that I have no rationalization left for the lousy lyrics. Oh, how will I handle this now? Steve actually wrote a bad song. 
<*this is supposed to be an emotionally broken Smiley*>