Need an argumentative essay on Marxs Ideas. Needs to be 10 pages. Please no plagiarism.Download file to see previous pages... Karl Marx has been credited with influencing entire generations through hi

Need an argumentative essay on Marxs Ideas. Needs to be 10 pages. Please no plagiarism.

Karl Marx has been credited with influencing entire generations through his ideas. His ideas on communism and related matters have been a focal point for the way entire countries run their economies and politics in the social context more than anything. The book titled Assault on Ideology - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Political Thought, is an important volume in this regard.

This paper uses the book in question by James F Pontuso to analyse the role of Marx's ideas in people's lives, through a discussion of those very ideas that have been described in the book. This book is a statement of the various ideas laid down by Marx with a deep contextual discussion of how they affected the everyday man.

Comprehensive and detailed, the book presents a point of drama around which the discussion revolves.

To begin with, Pontuso has reflected on Solzhenitsyn - the man himself. A revolutionary and an unsung hero of the Second World War, Pontuso has portrayed Solzhenitsyn as one among important political figured and revolutionary leaders of the time like Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevara. Solzhenitsyn thrived at a time when Marxism was at its very peak and considered a workable and practical option by most nations around the world. Through his political thoughts, Solzhenitsyn endeavoured to perpetuate the idea of Marxism as a 'cancer'. His ideas were based on his particularly 'grim' description of East West relationship and that in itself was foresight enough for him to rally against Marxism. (Pontuso, 1990. Pp 1)

While Communism rose and spread its tentacles, especially in the USSR region during the rule of Khrushchev, it claimed many lives through its extremist ideas. Solzhenitsyn's voice gradually died out. Yet his ideals remained. (Pontuso, 1990. Pp 3)

A man who recognised subtle intricacies of lives in the various social strata, Solzhenitsyn understood the terror that undoubtedly came with the spread of Marxism. On an incident among many, of peasants being harassed and then being sent for execution in a certain Marx state, Solzhenitsyn commented on how Marxism had perpetuated itself into the lives of the most common man through a reign of terror. (Pontuso, 1990. Pp 9)

The space and cause of Communism was lost to arrests and killing paralleled only by derogatory statements made by leaders like Comrade Stalin, who is believed to have personified the reign of terror. An incident like one where Stalin was received at an occasion to thunderous applause comes to an unpleasant turn when the clapping is stopped after ten minutes by one man. The man in question was arrested and sent to a gruesome execution. Is this communism, asks Solzhenitsyn of the gory details of such reality and logic defying ideals that had come to rule an entire country. (Pontuso, 1990. Pp 10)

Terror had a special place in the communist country - whether in the arrests of innocent people or in the capture and torture of German soldiers. While Marxism had developed as an answer to the very German atrocities, it had come to place a special importance in the atrocities that were meted out to the most common man in order to reign with fear and mould with w whiplash of threats. Women and children were not spared and the reign of terror simply became an integral part of Marx ideas.

Leadership Style

In an effort to understand Stalin's compulsion as a leader to exercise gruesome tactics to control the people and the land he was ruling, Solzhenitsyn has tried to use the metaphor of differences within the political party's leadership. (Pontuso, 1990. Pp 31) He reasons that the use of Marxism through the use of terror inflicting ways had more to do with personal fear. This is what was reflected outside as well with the infliction of fear at every nook and corner. The Soviet government at that time was made of varying elements who wanted different things for the Soviet Union.