Rousseau and Marx French Educator Term Paper

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Rousseau believed that a sovereign should rule the people, yet the State should be directed by the general will of the people and if some did not wish to go along with the rest they should be forced to do so by everyone else and "be forced to be free." Rousseau was a not really a Communist at heart, and believed that man should have a sovereign to act upon the will of the people. Marx, however, thought it would be best for the workers to rise up and take away the property, factories and property owned by the few in the ruling class in the name of Communism. Marx believed that Communists should "openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions," in the Communist revolution. "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains," he said in Section III, "Position of the Communists" (Marx, 191).

Rousseau's ideas lasted and were influential well beyond the Age of Enlightenment. His phrase "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" inspired oppressed countrymen to rise up and revolt against their masters (Fiero, 1998, 139). Marx, too, rallied the people to his theories with the cry "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

As Marx's ideas fueled the Russian Revolution, Rousseau's writings helped inspire France to start an armed rebellion against being dominated by a tyrant. The working class people of the French Revolution stormed the Bastille with his battle cry on their lips, protested oppressive armies seeking to keep them poor and without rights, and controlled the course of the Reign of Terror.

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This revolution took down the French government and guillotined Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, their king and queen. The Russian Revolution toppled the tsar in a bloody social and economic war, resulting in the Bolshevik party led by Vladimir Lenin forming the Soviet Union in 1922-3. In both the French and Russian revolutions, violence and extremism turned an enlightened philosophy based on reason and equality into an era filled with death. As it had in France, the long battle for the rights of the working man turned bitter and violent in Russia, as Stalin took over and, violating their own Marxist beliefs, formed new classes and forced the mass of people into servitude.

In conclusion, Marx and Rousseau agreed on the idea that man's original innocent nature had been changed by civilization, that a ruling authority was not good for the masses and that a revolution based on equality of all would be good for all. They disagreed on what kind of authority should rule (a sovereign or the proletariat), how the revolution should take place (by reason or by force), and what the result should be (by returning to nature, or by giving the working man equal pay and privilege).

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