Imagine

Dear god. Some people here are just plain out stupid. Apologies to begin with, and I know this is a great way to get yourself hated in one post. Communism has never existed, the USSR was not Communist. Nor was China, Cuba, Korea or any other example anyone might throw at me.

The song is fairly obviously about Communism. It is asking people to imagine certain things, and those things are what a Communist state is created upon. Communism is not a system of government, so to speak, but an economic system. Marx believed that a society was shaped from the economics it was built upon, and that to have a "utopian" society, you needed an economic system that was fair for all people. Hence Communism being the economic system that would bring about Socialism. Capitalist countries like ours, if you look at them, are hideous places. The wealth divide is sickening, we live on the toils of third world countries, we massacre people in wars, we live in relative boredom and insecurity, and corporations commit murder and crime relatively freely. Capitalism destroys lives. Socialists, and those who have fought for socialism, are people deserving of respect not contempt. They wished to change the society out of the war-ridden, exploitation based, capitalist world we currently live within. There have been some victories along the way; trade unions, minimum wage, workers rights. Not everyone who says they are a communist is a communist, and the same is true in reverse. Communism, unfortunately, has become known as a label applied to totalitarian societies and regimes like Russia. I feel sorry for Russia, as the days in 1917 could have yielded so much. The revolution, arguably, in Russia did very much go along the lines of a proletarian revolution, despite Russia having a relatively small working class and extensive peasantry. The Bolsheviks didn't immediately go about organising a brutal regime as history might want you to believe. The brutality came later. There was little time to implement many of the measures needed to implement communism, though Lenin did achieve some of them. Several former Russian occupied territories were granted independance. Russia was invaded though by the capitalist nations who were afraid what the revolution could mean, and though they won, it had damaged the revolution extensively. Lenin brought about several authoritarian and militaristic measures, including the cheka, later to become the KGB. After his death, there was still hope, until Stalin sabotaged the whole thing, had Trotsky exiled, and assumed control. What Stalin pursued was rapid industrialisation to catch up with the west, using extremely authoritarian measures, and becoming increasingly imperialist in outlook. It wasn't Communism. Christ, Trotsky spent the rest of his life critically attacking the USSR in his writings, as did George Orwell, who was also a socialist (though I wouldn't say he was a Marxist). The only thing the USSR did for Communism was keep the ideology alive. It did not practice it. The nature of the USSR was a great asset to the Western Capitalist powers, because they could happily preach that communism led to totalitarianism, and with its collapse that communism didn't work. Most people bought it, and still buy into that. It has become "fact" and has been passed down that way. Oh, and the idea of Communism wasn't even created by Marx or Engels. The idea had been around much longer, and depicted a way of life based upon people living in independant communes where everything was shared out. Marx/Engels adapted it to suit the collective nature of capitalism and the way the world had proceeded. At any rate, people who lived in the USSR or any other of the so called "Communist" countries, were not nearly as miserable or unhappy as our governments would have you believe. I think someone earlier on explained that better than me. Lenin was not some evil villain, nor was Trotsky, whose ideas most of the modern revolutionary left are based upon, including the party I belong too. Communism/Socialism can work, and personally, I believe that one day it will be neccessary to implement it more than ever. I hope we will do so then, and not resort to racist divisions like what happened in the economic collapse of Germany so many years ago. Human nature is not selfish, at least not to the extent where people do not care for each other. People can easily live within a communist system, caring for each other. We are very much a product of the society we live within, and as our societies become increasingly obsessed with posessions, as do we.

Anyway, back to the song. Definately about socialism.