e world claimed to be Marxist, including countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America (Fienberg 2).Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seized power when he led the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution and ruled the Soviet Union until his death in 1924 (Remnick). One of Lenin's chief advisors was a man by the name of Trotsky. After Lenin's death, a power struggle ensued between Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. When Stalin won, he immediately started executing and exiling those who opposed him. Trotsky was forced to flee the Soviet Union and was later assassinated (Leone 46). Somehow, between Marx's writings and Stalin's regime, communism had chanted from a system of beliefs for those without power to a system of beliefs brutally imposed on the working class by the government (Fienberg 6).While writing his thoughts on the perfect society in 1948, Karl Marx published his famous "Ten Planks of Communism." Marx stated that any country that had all ten planks in practice was a communistic state. The tenth and final plank calls for "Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc." (Courageous Lion). Stated more clearly, the tenth plank advocates free government education and a combination of schools with the marketplace. In the United States, citizens are taxed to send children to free public schools, and schools often have some program that connects the classroom to the workplace. The NEA, Outcome Based "Education," and The Department of Education itself all fall under Marx's tenth plank of the Communist Manifesto (Courageous Lion).According to Marx, the perfect Communistic society is atheistic. In the USSR, religion was banished from all curricula and banned from all public roles (Fienberg). American schools are put in an interesting position. Due to the First Amendment, all children have the right to practi...
