What was Joseph Stalin's inspiration for communism?

Answer 1

Stalin's father focused and intensified Stalin's Marxist revolutionary beliefs but not directly. His father had been a cobbler whose business went bad and went to work for a local shoe factory. This is classic Marxian theory where the individual artisan becomes a simple factory worker because of capitalism.

In an article Stalin wrote decrying capitalism, he used as an example a successful cobbler who was put out business by the competition of a local shoe factory. The cobbler then went to work in the very factory that had put him out of business. Stalin points out that that cobbler now had aspects of a proletarian.

The cobbler is obviously his father. Stalin used him to show the evils of capitalism. Stalin felt his father had been put out of business not by any lack of skill, but because of the forces of capitalism.

Stalin's father became a drunk who neglected his family obligations eventually abandoning them. Stalin became a dedicated Marxist early in life, partly because he saw that what had happened to his father was exactly what Karl Marx had said capitalism would do.

Answer 2

A lesson in how easily Western intellectuals can be fooled by dictators claiming to be men of the people.

Answer 3

The book Mein Kamph written by Karl Marx.

Answer 4

Lenin

Answer 5

Karl Marx