Historical Background to Animal Farm
Uploaded by Admin on Jan 22, 1999
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 injustice in the world.
He said that all injustice and inequality is a result of one underlying conflict in society. He called it a 'class struggle', that is, a conflict bet the class of people 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 two 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 governing and was neglecting the count badly. Making conditions even more miserable for the people were the hardships the First World War and a particularly cold winter.
By 1917, the Russian people were desperate 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...