Historical Background To Animal Farm :: Animal Farm Essays

Karl Marx was a German scholar who lived in the nineteenth century. He spent most of his life studying, thinking and writing about history and economics. A many years of study, much of it spent in England, he believed that he understood more deeply than anyone who had ever lived before him why there is in umpire in the world.He utter that all injustice and inequality is a dissolvent of one underlying conflict in society. He called it a class struggle, that is, a conflict bet the class of heap who can afford to own money- producing businesses, whom he called capitalists or the bourgeosie, and the class of people who do not surplus money to buy businesses and who are therefore forced to work for wage whom he called workers.Marx said that, because it was always in the economic interest of capita to take advantage of or exploit workers, nothing could persuade capitalists change their ways. In other words, peaceful progess toward equality and socia justice was impossible. The only way to establish justice, he said, was for t workers to overthrow the capitalists by means of violent revolution. He urged workers around the world to revolt against their rulers. "Workers of the worl unite" he wrote. "You have nothing to lose but your chains."Another thing Marx taught was that organized religion, the churches, help capitalists to keep the workers quiet and obedient. Religion, according to Mar the opiate of the masses. The church tells working people to forget about th injustice they meet in their lives and to think instead of how wonderful it wi in the after- life when they go to heaven.Marx, with his colleague, Engels, spread his ideas in ii famous books, Capital and The Communist Manifesto.In the early years of the twentieth century, Russia was ready for the ide Marx. The Russian people were extremely discontented with their ruler, Tsar Nicholas II, who had little interest in regime and was neglecting the count badly. Making conditions even more mi serable for the people were the hardships the First World War and a particularly cold winter.By 1917, the Russian people were dread(a) enough to accept a revolution. fact, they got two for the price of one, the first in March when the Tsar was deposed and a provisional government was set up. Then in November a political called the Bolsheviks led a further rebellion which ousted the provisional government.