Rights and Responsibilities : A Communist Utopia
“To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any: for everyone as he is himself, so he hath a self-propriety... No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s...if I do, I am an encroacher and an invader upon another man's right. “
-John Locke (An Arrow Against All Tyrants) |
“None of the supposed rights of man, therefore, go beyond the egoistic man, man as he is, as a member of civil society; that is, an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accordance with his private caprice…”
-Karl Marx (On the Jewish Question) |
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The communist philosophy doesn’t acknowledge individual rights, so they became nonexistent in the Soviet Union. If loyalty was questioned, citizens were killed, eliminating the right of free speech. By closing privately run newspapers in 1918, Lenin took away the right to a free press. Because the government assumed the responsibility of creating a Communist utopia (believing the proletariat was incapable of doing so independently) it often lied to create the illusion of one. This inbalance of rights and responsibilities, allowed Stalin to have complete control over his people. |