Communism vs. Liberalism

Communism vs. Liberalism
The farther and farther this class drove on through the semester, the more I heard the phrase repeated “what if there is no answer to the question?” In both On Liberty and the Communist Manifesto I feel they address this phrase, just in their own words. There is no one size fits all answer and now I am starting to understand that is truthful. Everyone believes that people are different; they think different, they act different, and they want different things. If that is the case, why should we have a universal government that is “supposed to fit everyone” when we all have different needs and wants. Throughout all of the class discussion that have been had this semester talking about answers and one-size fits all solutions, I just now started to realize what it all meant.
In On Liberty by John Stuart Mill he often addresses the fact that people are different. In his essay he quotes “One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam engine has character.” Which means people should be free to have their own ideas and use them to better the world. Mill also spoke about how he believed in educating people of the ideas of the human experience, but he also believed we should be able to bounce off on those ideas and interpret those ideas how they see fit to their way of thinking. When he talks about this idea that everyone should know the knowledge of the human experience, he is basically speaking about parents should not have the choice to keep their kids from not being educated. He states that everyone should have to be educated no matter what; they need to know the ideas and the past of the human struggle so they can learn from the past. Because the mistakes that people have made in the past can be corrected by how you handle similar or the same situations in the future.
Mill also talks about how unpopular beliefs can be taught and exist throughout the world and how it is ok for people to believe these things and express them. But at the same time he believes it should be unlawful to act upon these beliefs for the greater good of the people. Especially if these beliefs are a “nuisance” to people or they could possibly cause harm to somebody. This is Mill’s opinion on this policy which essentially describes freedom of speech in our government, and the unlawfulness of the nuisance describes our Clear and Present Danger Doctrine. Now when I sit down and think about this subject more and more I disagree with what Mill’s opinion is. Why should it be illegal to act on an “unpopular” opinion just because it does not fall in with what the majority of the population believes. Who is to say that the opinion that the majority of the population hold is the “right” opinion, and no I do not mean “right” like conservative! This is just like the discussion held in our class, how does one person decide what is actually correct or incorrect (right or wrong).
There is no such thing as one person knowing what is right and what is wrong, I mean as we grow up we always have some type of morals. Our morals might differ completely from somebody in a different place or from a different family, but there are still morals. From these morals we derive what we think is wrong and right while we are growing up, but who is to say that our way is wrong and their way is right. Nobody really knows that a certain view or opinion is correct, but we measure it by popular opinions. For example, if 75/100 people believed that a zebra was white with black stripes and the other 25 people believed that a zebra was black with white stripes. The 75 people would be “right” because it is the popular opinion that holds throughout everybody.
Mediocrity, which is the word that Mill describes how our modern society pushes people. He says we avoid individualization in our new modern times and push towards the mediocre things. Mill discusses the major importance of liberty in society to help out individuality, and he says that liberty is essential to social progress. I agree with this opinion of Mill because freedom is good for people but I do think that some restraints need to be placed on our freedoms to keep us from harm and bad situations.
Now on the complete other hand, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote about the complete opposite ideas. They talked about how liberalism was a complete and utter failure. He talks about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat class wars, and how no matter what the situation was one of the classes was oppressed. The bourgeoisie were always the oppressor and the proletariats were always the oppressed, and Marx explains how this will always happen due to liberalism. He explains there will almost always be a class war due to the freedom of the government. Accordingly, his solution is to create a classless society with the government owning much of everything. That way the freedom of competition and capitalism is gone and there is no problem between classes. By wanting this he pretty much wants to make everyone “equal.” I understand his point of view somewhat where the elimination of classes would solve a lot of problems and eliminate the hierarchy of income we have in the world today. I mean we consider people that make larger amounts of money in today’s world royalty; we worship them and want to be them. But if you look at it most of those people worked hard to get where they are at in life. Even though that their fortune and businesses can be passed down through family and bloodlines almost exactly like royalty.
In the end of it all The Communist Manifesto and On Liberty are almost on complete different ends of the spectrum when it comes to their opinions but yet I do not exactly agree with either one. Honestly when one sits down to think about our government why does everything have to be one side or the other answer, can we not compromise and combine more than one type of government to get something that better fits the people. After all the government is supposed to benefit the people, not just throw out a one size fits all answer that only benefits a portion of the population.

Works Cited
Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, et al. The Federalist. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005. Print.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Communist Manifesto. New York: International Publishers, 1948. Print.
Stuart Mill, John. On Liberty. New York: Oxford, 1991. Print.

Cited: Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, et al. The Federalist. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005. Print. Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Communist Manifesto. New York: International Publishers, 1948. Print. Stuart Mill, John. On Liberty. New York: Oxford, 1991. Print.