Communism is a
social
structure and
political
ideology in which
property is commonly
controlled. Communism (written with a capital C) is a modern
political movement that aims to overthrow
capitalism via revolution to create a
classless society where all goods are publicly
owned.
Karl Marx posited that communism
would be the final stage in
human society,
which would be achieved through a
proletarian revolution and only
becoming possible only after a socialist stage develops the
productive forces, leading to a superabundance of goods and
services.
"Pure communism" in the Marxian sense refers to a classless,
stateless and oppression-free society where decisions on what to
produce and what policies to pursue are made
democratically, allowing every member of
society to participate in the
decision-making process in both the
political and economic spheres of life. In modern usage, communism
is often used to refer to
Bolshevism or
Marxism-Leninism and the policies
of the various
communist states
which had government ownership of all the means of production and
centrally planned economies.
Communist regimes have historically been authoritarian, repressive,
and coercive governments concerned primarily with preserving their
own power.
As a political ideology, communism is usually considered to be a
branch of
socialism; a broad group of
economic and
political
philosophies that draw on the various political and
intellectual movements with origins in the work oftheorists of the
Industrial Revolution and the
French Revolution."Socialism."
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
Columbia University Press. 03 Feb.
2008./www.reference.com/browse/columbia/socialis>. Communism
attempts to offer an alternative to the
problems with the
capitalist market
economy and the legacy of
imperialism and
nationalism.
Marx states that the only way to solve these problems is for the
working class (proletariat), who according to Marx are the main
producers of wealth in society and are exploited by the
Capitalist-class (
bourgeoisie), to
replace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class in order to establish a
free society, without class or racial
divisions. The dominant forms of communism, such as
Leninism,
Stalinism,
Maoism and
Trotskyism are based on
Marxism, but non-Marxist versions of communism (such
as
Christian communism and
anarcho-communism) also
exist.
Karl Marx never provided a detailed description as to how communism
would function as an economic system, but it is understood that a
communist economy would consist of common ownership of the means of
production, culminating in the negation of the concept of
private ownership of capital, which
referred to the means of production in Marxian terminology.
Terminology
In the schema of
historical
materialism, communism is the idea of a free society with no
division or alienation, where mankind is free from oppression and
scarcity. A communist society would have no governments, countries,
or class divisions. In
Marxist
theory, the
dictatorship of the
proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism and
communism, when the government is in the process of changing the
means of ownership from
privatism, to
collective ownership.In
political
science, the term "communism" is sometimes used to refer to
communist states, a
form of government in which the
state operates under a
one-party system and declares allegiance
to
Marxism-Leninism or a derivative
thereof.
Marxist schools of communism
Self-identified communists hold a variety of views, including
Marxism-Leninism,
Trotskyism,
council
communism,
Luxemburgism,
anarchist communism,
Christian communism, and various
currents of
left communism. However,
the offshoots of the
Marxist-Leninist interpretations of
Marxism are the most well-known of these and
have been a driving force in
international relations during most
of the 20th century.
Marxism
Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism
and the systems which they perceived to be responsible for the
exploitation of workers. But whereas earlier socialists often
favored longer-term
social reform,
Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution was all but
inevitable, and the only path to the socialist state.
According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main
characteristic of human life in
class
society is
alienation; and communism is
desirable because it entails the full realization of
human freedom. Marx here follows
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of restraints but as
action with content. According to Marx, Communism's outlook on
freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal. The agent is the
common/working people; the obstacles are class divisions, economic
inequalities, unequal
life-chances, and
false consciousness; and the
goal is the fulfillment of human needs including satisfying work,
and fair share of the product. They believed that communism allowed
people to do what they want, but also put humans in such conditions
and such relations with one another that they would not wish to
exploit, or have any need to. Whereas for Hegel the unfolding of
this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of
ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material forces,
particularly the development of the
means of production.
Marxism holds that a process of
class
conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for
the
proletariat and the establishment of
a
communist society in which
private ownership is abolished over time and the means of
production and subsistence belong to the community. Marx himself
wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most
general indication as to what constituted a communist society. It
is clear that it entails abundance in which there is little limit
to the projects that humans may undertake. In the popular slogan
that was adopted by the
communist
movement, communism was a world in which each gave according to
their abilities, and received according to their needs.
The German Ideology
(1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the communist
future:
"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive
sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch
he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes
it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to
hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the
evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without
ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."
Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a theory of how
society was moving in a law-governed way toward communism, and,
with some tension, a political theory that explained why
revolutionary activity was required to bring it about.
In the late 19th century, the terms "socialism" and "communism"
were often used interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels argued
that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully
developed state, but would pass through a
"first phase" in which most productive property was owned in
common, but with some class differences remaining. The "first
phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which class
differences were eliminated, and a state was no longer needed.
Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to refer to Marx and
Engels' supposed "first phase" of communism and used the term
"communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels' "higher phase" of
communism.
These later aspects, particularly as developed by Lenin, provided
the underpinning for the mobilizing features of 20th century
Communist parties. Later writers such as
Louis Althusser and
Nicos Poulantzas modified Marx's vision by
allotting a central place to the state in the development of such
societies, by arguing for a prolonged transition period of
socialism prior to the attainment of full communism.
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism is a version of socialism adopted by the Soviet
Union and most Communist Parties across the world today. It shaped
the Soviet Union and influenced Communist Parties worldwide. It was
heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive
program of
industrialization and
collectivization.
Historically, under the ideology of Marxism-Leninism the rapid
development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet
Union in the Second World War occurred alongside a third of the
world being lead by Marxist-Leninist inspired parties. Despite the
fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries, many communist
Parties of the world today still lay claim to uphold the
Marxist-Leninist banner. Marxism-Leninism expands on Marxists
thoughts by bringing the theories to what Lenin and other
Communists considered, the age of capitalist imperialism, and a
renewed focus on party building, the development of a
socialist state, and democratic centralism
as an organizational principle.
Lenin adapted Marx’s urban revolution to Russia’s agricultural
conditions, sparking the “revolutionary nationalism of the poor”.
The pamphlet
What is
to be Done? (1902), proposed that the (urban)
proletariat can successfully achieve
revolutionary consciousness only under the leadership of a
vanguard party of
professional revolutionaries —
who can achieve aims only with internal
democratic centralism in the party;
tactical and ideological policy decisions are agreed via democracy,
and every member must support and promote the agreed party
policy.
To wit,
capitalism can be overthrown only
with
revolution — because attempts to
reform capitalism from within (
Fabianism) and from without (
democratic socialism) will fail because
of its inherent contradictions. The purpose of a Leninist
revolutionary
vanguard party is the
forceful
deposition of the
incumbent government; assume power (as agent of the proletariat)
and establish a
dictatorship of the
proletariat government. Moreover, as the government, the
vanguard party must
educate the
proletariat — to dispel the societal
false consciousness of
religion and
nationalism
that are culturally instilled by the
bourgeoisie in facilitating
exploitation. The dictatorship of the
proletariat is governed with a de-centralized
direct democracy practised via
soviets (councils) where the workers
exercise political power (cf.
soviet
democracy); the fifth chapter of
State &
Revolution, describes it:
“. . . the dictatorship of the proletariat — i.e. the
organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class
for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. . . . An immense
expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy
for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the
rich: . . . and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from
democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people — this
is the change which democracy undergoes during the
transition from capitalism to communism.”
The Bolshevik government was hostile to nationalism, especially to
Russian nationalism, the “Great
Russian chauvinism”, as an obstacle to establishing the proletarian
dictatorship. The revolutionary elements of Leninism — the
disciplined vanguard party, a dictatorial state, and class war —
are the influences of the
anarchist
Sergey Nechayev and the nineteenth
century
Narodnik (“People”) movement (of
whom Alexandr Ulyanov, Lenin’s elder brother, was a member), thus
“the morals of the Bolshevik party owed as much to
Nechayev as they did to Marx”; hence his
social class qualifications of the
kulaks and the
bourgeoisie as “parasites”, “insects”,
“leeches”, “bloodsuckers”, and the
GULAG penal
labour camp system — ideologic considerations present in Leninism,
but not in
Marxism.
Stalinism
"Stalinism" refers to the political system of the Soviet Union
, and the countries within the Soviet sphere of influence, during the
leadership of Joseph Stalin. The term usually defines the
style of a government rather than an ideology. The ideology was
"
Marxism-Leninism theory",
reflecting that Stalin himself was not a theoretician, in contrast
to
Marx and
Lenin, and prided himself on maintaining the
legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Union and the
future Socialist world. Stalinism is an interpretation of their
ideas, and a certain political regime claiming to apply those ideas
in ways fitting the changing needs of society, as with the
transition from "socialism at a snail's pace" in the mid-twenties
to the rapid industrialization of the
Five-Year
Plan.
The main contributions of Stalin to communist theory were:
Trotskyism
Trotsky and his supporters organized into the
Left Opposition and their platform
became known as
Trotskyism.
Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime
and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in
Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. During Trotsky's
exile, world communism fractured into two distinct branches:
Marxism-Leninism and
Trotskyism. Trotsky later founded the
Fourth International, a Trotskyist
rival to the
Comintern, in 1938.
Trotskyist
ideas have continually found a modest echo among political movements in some countries in
Latin America and Asia, especially in Argentina
, Brazil
, Bolivia
and Sri Lanka
. Many Trotskyist organizations are also
active in more stable, developed countries in
North America and
Western Europe. Trotsky's politics differed
sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring
the need for an international proletarian revolution (rather than
socialism in one country) and unwavering support for a true
dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic
principles.
However, as a whole, Trotsky's theories and attitudes were never
accepted in worldwide mainstream Communist circles after Trotsky's
expulsion, either within or outside of the
Soviet bloc. This remained the case even after
the
Secret Speech and subsequent
events critics claim exposed the fallibility of
Stalin.
Some criticize Trotskyism as incapable of using concrete analysis
on its theories, rather resorting to phrases and abstract
notions.
Maoism

This poster shows Mao Zedong as
continuing the legacy set by former Communist leaders.
Maoism is
the Marxist-Leninist trend of Communism associated with Mao Zedong and was mostly practiced within the
People's
Republic of China
. Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological
differences between the People's Republic of China
and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly
apparent in the 1960s. As the
Sino-Soviet Split in the
international Communist movement turned
toward open hostility, China portrayed itself as a leader of the
underdeveloped world against the two superpowers, the United States
and the Soviet Union.
Parties and groups that supported the
Communist Party of China (CPC) in
their criticism against the new Soviet leadership proclaimed
themselves as 'anti-revisionist' and denounced the CPSU and the
parties aligned with it as
revisionist "capitalist-roaders." The
Sino-Soviet Split resulted in divisions amongst communist parties
around the world. Notably, the
Party of Labour of Albania sided
with the People's Republic of China. Effectively, the CPC under
Mao's leadership became the rallying forces of a parallel
international Communist tendency. The ideology of CPC,
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought (generally referred to as
'Maoism'), was adopted by many of these groups.
After Mao's death and his replacement by
Deng Xiaoping, the international Maoist
movement diverged. One sector accepted the new leadership in China;
a second renounced the new leadership and reaffirmed their
commitment to Mao's legacy; and a third renounced Maoism altogether
and aligned with
Albania.
Hoxhaism
Another variant of
anti-revisionist
Marxism-Leninism appeared after the
ideological row between the
Communist Party of China
and the
Party of Labour of
Albania in 1978. The Albanians rallied a new separate
international tendency. This tendency would demarcate itself by a
strict defense of the legacy of Joseph Stalin and fierce criticism
of virtually all other Communist groupings as
revisionism. Critical of the United
States, Soviet Union, and China,
Enver
Hoxha declared the latter two to be
social-imperialist and condemned the
Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia by withdrawing from the
Warsaw Pact in response. Hoxha declared Albania
to be the world's only Marxist-Leninist state after 1978. The
Albanians were able to win over a large share of the Maoists,
mainly in
Latin America such as the
Popular Liberation Army, but
also had a significant
international
following in general. This tendency has occasionally been
labeled as 'Hoxhaism' after him.
After the fall of the Communist government in Albania, the
pro-Albanian parties are grouped around an
international conference and the publication 'Unity and
Struggle'.
Titoism
Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices
based on the principle that in each country, the means of attaining
ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that
particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another
country.
During Tito’s era, this specifically meant
that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and
often in opposition to) the policies of the Soviet Union
.
The term was originally meant as a
pejorative, and was labeled by Moscow as a heresy
during the period of tensions between the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia known as the
Informbiro period from 1948 to 1955.
Unlike the
rest of East Europe, which fell under
Stalin's influence post-World War II,
Yugoslavia
, due to the strong leadership of Marshal Tito and the fact that the Yugoslav Partisans liberated Yugoslavia
with only limited help from the Red Army,
remained independent from Moscow. It became the only country
in the
Balkans to resist pressure from
Moscow to join the
Warsaw Pact and
remained "socialist, but independent" right up until the collapse
of Soviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout
his time in office, Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's
independence from Russia, with Yugoslavia never accepting full
membership of the
Comecon and Tito's open
rejection of many aspects of
Stalinism as
the most obvious manifestations of this.
Eurocommunism
Since the early 1970s, the term
Eurocommunism was used to refer to moderate,
reformist Communist parties in western Europe. These parties did
not support the Soviet Union and denounced its policies.
Such
parties were politically active and electorally significant in
Italy
(PCI),
France
(PCF), and
Spain
(PCE).
Council communism
Council
communism is a far-left movement
originating in Germany
and the
Netherlands
in the 1920s. Its primary organization was
the
Communist Workers
Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a
theoretical and activist position within both left-wing
Marxism and
libertarian socialism.
The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of
social democracy and
Leninist Communism, is that democratic
workers' councils arising in the factories
and municipalities are the natural form of working class
organisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both
the
reformist and the Leninist
ideologies, with their stress on, respectively,
parliaments and
institutional government (i.e., by
applying social reforms), on the one hand, and
vanguard parties and participative
democratic centralism on the
other).
The core principle of council communism is that the
government and the
economy should be managed by
workers' councils composed of
delegates elected at workplaces and
recallable at any moment. As such, council
communists oppose
state-run authoritarian "
State socialism"/"
State capitalism". They also oppose the
idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe
that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party
dictatorship. Council communists support a worker's democracy,
which they want to produce through a federation of workers'
councils. Council communism (and other types of "
anti-authoritarian and
Anti-leninist Marxism" such as
Autonomism) are often viewed as being similar to
Anarchism because they criticize Leninist
ideologies for being authoritarian and reject the idea of a
vanguard party.
Luxemburgism
Luxemburgism, based on the writing of
Rosa Luxemburg, is an interpretation of
Marxism which, while supporting the
Russian Revolution, as Luxemburg
did, agrees with her criticisms of the politics of
Lenin and
Trotsky; she did not
see their concept of "
democratic
centralism" as democracy.
The chief tenets of Luxemburgism are commitment to
democracy and the necessity of the revolution
taking place as soon as possible. In this regard, it is similar to
Council Communism, but differs in
that, for example, Luxemburgists don't reject
elections by principle. It resembles
anarchism in its insistence that only relying on
the people themselves as opposed to their leaders can avoid an
authoritarian society, but differs in
that it sees the importance of a revolutionary party, and mainly
the centrality of the
working class in
the revolutionary struggle. It resembles
Trotskyism in its opposition to the
totalitarianism of
Stalinist government while simultaneously avoiding
the reformist politics of modern
Social
Democracy, but differs from Trotskyism in arguing that Lenin
and Trotsky also made undemocratic errors.
Luxemburg's idea of democracy, which
Stanley Aronowitz calls
"
generalized democracy in an unarticulated form",
represents Luxemburgism's greatest break with "mainstream
communism", since it effectively diminishes the role of the
Communist Party, but is in fact very
similar to the views of
Karl Marx
("
The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by
the working classes themselves"). According to Aronowitz, the
vagueness of Luxembourgian democracy is one reason for its initial
difficulty in gaining widespread support.
However, since the
fall of the Soviet
Union
, Luxemburgism has been seen by some socialist
thinkers as a way to avoid the totalitarianism of Stalinism. Early
on, Luxemburg attacked undemocratic tendencies present in the
Russian Revolution:
Juche
In 1992,
Juche replaced
Marxism-Leninism in the revised North
Korean constitution as the official state ideology, this being a
response to the
Sino-Soviet split.
Juche was
originally defined as a creative application of Marxism-Leninism,
but after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union
(North Korea’s greatest economic benefactor), all
reference to Marxism-Leninism was dropped in the revised 1998
constitution. The establishment of the
Songun doctrine in the mid-1990s has formally
designated the
military, not the
proletariat or
working
class, as the main revolutionary force in North Korea. All
reference to communism had been dropped in the 2009 revised
constitution.
According to Kim Jong-il's
On the Juche Idea, the
application of Juche in state policy entails the following:
- The people must have independence (chajusong) in
thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in
defense.
- Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and
employ them fully in revolution and construction.
- Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the
situation of the country.
- The most important work of revolution and construction is
molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to
constructive action.
Prachandapath
Prachanda Path refers to the ideological line of the
Communist Party of
Nepal .
This thought doesn't make an ideological
break with Marxism,Leninism and Maoism but it is
an extension of these ideologies totally based on home-ground
politics of Nepal
. The
doctrine came into existence after it was realized that the
ideology of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism couldn't be practiced
completely as it were done in the past. And an ideology suitable,
based on the ground reality of Nepalese politics was adopted by the
party.
After five years of armed struggle, the party realized that none of
the proletarian revolutions of the past could be carried out on
Nepal’s context. So moving further ahead than Marxism, Leninism and
Maoism, the party determined its own ideology, Prachanda
Path.
Having
analyzed the serious challenges and growing changes in the global arena
, the party started moving on its own
doctrine. Prachanda Path in essence is a different kind of
uprising, which can be described as the fusion of a protracted
people’s war strategy which was adopted by
Mao in China and the Russian model of armed
revolution. Most of the Maoist leaders think that the adoption of
Prachanda Path after the second national conference is what nudged
the party into moving ahead with a clear vision ahead after five
years of ‘people’s war’.
Senior Maoist leader Mohan Vaidya alias Kiran says, ‘Just as
Marxism was born in Germany, Leninism in Russia and Maoism in China
and Prachanda Path is Nepal’s identity of revolution. Just as
Marxism has three facets- philosophy,
political economy and scientific
socialism, Prachanda Path is a combination of all three totally in
Nepal’s political context.’ Talking about the party’s philosophy,
Maoist chairman
Prachanda says, ‘The party
considers Prachanda path as an enrichment of Marxism, Leninism and
Maoism.’ After the party brought forward its new doctrine, the
government was trying to comprehend the new ideology, Prachanda
Path.
see also: 'People's Revolution'
In Nepal
Non-Marxist schools
The dominant forms of communism, such as
Leninism,
Trotskyism and
Maoism, are based on
Marxism, but non-Marxist versions of communism (such
as
Christian communism and
anarchist communism) also exist
and are growing in importance since the
fall of the Soviet Union.
Anarcho-communism
Some of Marx's contemporaries espoused similar ideas, but differed
in their views of how to reach to a classless society. Following
the split between those associated with Marx and
Mikhail Bakunin at the
First International,
the anarchists formed the
International Workers
Association. Anarchists argued that capitalism and the state
were inseparable and that one could not be abolished without the
other.
Anarchist-communists such
as
Peter Kropotkin theorized an
immediate transition to one society with no classes.
Anarcho-syndicalism became one of the
dominant forms of
anarchist organization,
arguing that
labor unions, as opposed to
Communist parties, are the organizations that can change society.
Consequently, many anarchists have been in opposition to Marxist
communism to this day.
Anarchist communists propose that the freest form of
social organisation would be a society
composed of
self-governing communes with collective use of the
means of production, organized
by
direct democracy, and related to
other communes through
federation.
However, some anarchist communists oppose the majoritarian nature
of direct democracy, feeling that it can impede individual liberty
and favor
consensus
democracy.
Christian communism
Christian communism is a form of religious communism centered on
Christianity. It is a theological and political theory based upon
the view that the
teachings of Jesus Christ
urge Christians to support communism as the ideal
social system. Christian communists trace
the origins of their practice to teachings in the
New Testament, such as this one from
Acts of the Apostles at chapter 2 and
verses 42, 44, and 45:
42 And they continued steadfastly
in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship [...]
44 And all that believed were together, and
had all things in common; 45 And sold
their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every
man had need.
(King James
Version)
Christian communism can be seen as a radical form of
Christian socialism. Also, due to the
fact that many Christian communists have formed independent
stateless communes in the past, there is also a link between
Christian communism and
Christian
anarchism. Christian communists may or may not agree with
various parts of
Marxism.
Christian communists also share some of the political goals of
Marxists, for example replacing capitalism with
socialism, which should in turn be followed by
communism at a later point in the future. However, Christian
communists sometimes disagree with Marxists (and particularly with
Leninists) on the way a socialist or
communist society should be organized.
History
Early communism
Karl Heinrich Marx saw
primitive
communism as the original,
hunter-gatherer state of humankind from
which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of
producing
surplus, did private
property develop.
In the
history of Western
thought, certain elements of the idea of a society based on
common ownership of property can be traced back to
ancient times . Examples include the
Spartacus slave
revolt in Rome.
The fifth century
Mazdak movement in what is now Iran
has been
described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges
of the noble classes and the clergy, criticizing the institution of
private property and for striving for an egalitarian
society.
At one time or another, various small communist communities
existed, generally under the inspiration of
Scripture. In the
medieval Christian
church, for example, some
monastic
communities and
religious orders
shared their land and other property (see
religious communism and
Christian communism). These groups often
believed that concern with
private
property was a distraction from religious service to God and
neighbor.
Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of
16th century English writer
Thomas More. In his treatise
Utopia (1516), More portrayed a society
based on
common ownership of
property, whose rulers administered it through the application of
reason. In the 17th century, communist thought arguably surfaced
again in England. In 17th century England, a
Puritan religious
group known as the
Diggers advocated the
abolition of private ownership of land.
Eduard Bernstein, in his 1895
Cromwell
and Communism argued that several groupings in the
English Civil War, especially the
Diggers espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals,
and that
Oliver Cromwell's attitude
to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.
Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the
Age of Enlightenment of the
18th century, through such thinkers as
Jean Jacques Rousseau in France.
Later, following the upheaval of the
French Revolution, communism emerged as a
political doctrine.
François Noël Babeuf, in
particular, espoused the goals of common ownership of land and
total economic and political equality among citizens.
Various social reformers in the early 19th century founded
communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous
communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a
rational and philanthropic basis.
Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New
Harmony
in Indiana (1825), and Charles Fourier, whose followers organized
other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm
(1841–47). Later in the 19th century, Karl
Marx described these social reformers as "
utopian socialists" to contrast them with
his program of "
scientific
socialism" (a term coined by
Friedrich Engels). Other writers described
by Marx as "utopian socialists" included
Saint-Simon.
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of
19th century Europe. As the
Industrial Revolution advanced,
socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the
proletariat — a new class of urban factory
workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost
among these critics were the
German philosopher Karl
Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels
offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in
their famous pamphlet
The
Communist Manifesto.
Engels, who lived in Manchester
, observed the organization of the Chartist movement (see History of British
socialism), while Marx departed from his university
comrades to meet the proletariat in France and
Germany.
Growth of modern communism
In the late 19th century, Russian Marxism developed a distinct
character. The first major figure of Russian Marxism was
Georgi Plekhanov. Underlying the work of
Plekhanov was the assumption that Russia, less urbanized and
industrialized than Western Europe, had many years to go before
society would be ready for proletarian revolution to occur, and a
transitional period of a bourgeois democratic regime would be
required to replace
Tsarism with a socialist
and later communist society. (EB)
In Russia, the
1917 October
Revolution was the first time any party with an avowedly
Marxist orientation, in this case the
Bolshevik Party, seized
state power. The assumption of state
power by the Bolsheviks generated a great deal of practical and
theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that
socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the
most advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of
the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely
illiterate
peasantry and a minority of
industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be
able to skip the stage of bourgeoisie capitalism. Other socialists
also believed that a
Russian
revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in
the West.
The moderate
Mensheviks opposed Lenin's
Bolshevik plan for
socialist
revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The
Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans
"peace, bread, and land" and "All power to the Soviets", slogans
which tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian
involvement in the
First World War, the
peasants' demand for
land reform, and
popular support for the
Soviets.
The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after
1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party
and installed a
single party
regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under
Leninism. The
Second International had dissolved in
1916 over national divisions, as the separate national parties that
composed it did not maintain a unified front against the
war, instead generally supporting their
respective nation's role. Lenin thus created the
Third International (Comintern) in 1919
and sent the
Twenty-one
Conditions, which included
democratic centralism, to all European
socialist parties willing to
adhere. In France, for example, the majority of the
French Section of
the Workers' International (SFIO) party split in 1921 to form
the
French Section of the
Communist International (SFIC). Henceforth, the term
"Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded
under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the
uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be
followed by the establishment of a
dictatorship of the
proletariat as well as the development of a
socialist economy. Ultimately, if their
program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society,
with the
withering away of
the state.
During the
Russian Civil War
(1918–1922), the Bolsheviks
nationalized all productive property and
imposed a policy of
war
communism, which put factories and railroads under strict
government control, collected and rationed food, and introduced
some bourgeois management of industry. After three years of war and
the 1921
Kronstadt rebellion,
Lenin declared the
New Economic
Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give a "limited place for a
limited time to capitalism." The NEP lasted until 1928, when
Joseph Stalin achieved party
leadership, and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan
spelled the end of it.
Following the Russian Civil War, the
Bolsheviks formed in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), or Soviet
Union
, from the former Russian Empire
.
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Communist parties were
organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as
the broad base; they were made up only of elite
cadres approved by higher members of the party as
being reliable and completely subject to
party discipline.
After
World War II, Communists consolidated
power in Eastern Europe, and in 1949,
the Communist Party of
China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong
established the People's Republic of China
, which would later follow its own ideological path
of Communist development. Cuba
, North Korea
, Vietnam
, Laos
, Cambodia
, Angola
, and
Mozambique
were among the other countries in the Third World that adopted or imposed a
pro-Communist government at some point. Although never
formally unified as a single political entity, by the early 1980s
almost one-third of the world's population lived in Communist states, including the former
Soviet
Union
and People's Republic of China
. By comparison, the
British Empire had ruled up to one-quarter of
the world's population at its greatest extent.
Communist states such as the Soviet Union and China succeeded in
becoming industrial and technological powers, challenging the
capitalists' powers in the
arms race and
space race and military conflicts.
Cold War years
By virtue of the Soviet Union's victory in the
Second World War in 1945, the
Soviet Army had occupied nations in both
Eastern Europe and
East
Asia; as a result, communism as a movement spread to many new
countries. This expansion of communism both in Europe and Asia gave
rise to a few different branches of its own, such as
Maoism.
Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new
nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern
Europe.
Governments modeled on Soviet Communism took
power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria
, Czechoslovakia
, East
Germany
, Poland
, Hungary
and Romania
. A Communist government was also created
under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led
to the expulsion of Yugoslavia
from the Cominform, which
had replaced the Comintern.
Titoism, a new branch in the world communist
movement, was labeled
deviationist.
Albania
also became an independent Communist nation after
World War II.
By 1950, the
Chinese
Communists held all of
Mainland
China, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world.
Other
areas where rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in
some cases led to actual fighting through conventional and guerrilla warfare include the Korean War, Laos
, many
nations of the Middle East and Africa, and notably succeeded in the case of the
Vietnam War against the military power of the United States and its
allies. With varying degrees of success, Communists
attempted to unite with
nationalist and
socialist forces against what they saw as
Western imperialism in these poor countries.
Fear of communism
With the exception of the Soviet Union's, China's and the
Italian resistance movement's
great contribution in
World War II,
communism was seen as a rival, and a threat to western democracies
and capitalism for most of the twentieth century. This rivalry
peaked during the
Cold War, as the world's
two remaining superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union,
polarized most of the world into two camps of nations
(characterized in the West as "The Free World" vs. "Behind the Iron
Curtain"); supported the spread of their economic and political
systems (capitalism and democracy vs. communism); strengthened
their military power, developed new weapon systems and stockpiled
nuclear weapons; competed with each
other in space exploration; and even fought each other through
proxy client nations.
Near the
beginning of the Cold War, on February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin
accused 205 Americans working in the State
Department
of being "card-carrying Communists". The
fear of communism in the U.S. spurred aggressive investigations and
the
red-baiting,
blacklisting, jailing and deportation of people
suspected of following Communist or other left-wing ideology. Many
famous actors and writers were put on a "blacklist" from 1950 to
1954, which meant they would not be hired and would be subject to
public disdain.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union
In 1985,
Mikhail Gorbachev became
leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in
accordance with reform policies of
glasnost
(openness) and
perestroika
(restructuring).
The Soviet Union did not intervene as
Poland
, East Germany
, Czechoslovakia
, Bulgaria
, Romania
, and Hungary
all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In
1991, the Soviet Union itself dissolved.
By the
beginning of the 21st century, states controlled by Communist
parties under a single-party system include the People's
Republic of China
, Cuba
, Laos
, Vietnam
, and informally North Korea
. Communist parties, or their descendant
parties, remain politically important in many countries.
President
Dimitris Christofias of
Cyprus
is a member
of the Progressive
Party of Working People, but the country is not run under
single-party rule. In
South
Africa, the
Communist Party is a partner in
the
ANC-led government.
In
India
, communists lead the governments of three states, with a combined
population of more than 115 million. In Nepal
, communists
hold a majority in the parliament.
The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the
Maoist legacy; and the People's Republic of China, Laos, Vietnam,
and, to a far lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the
economy in order to stimulate growth. The People's Republic of
China runs
Special Economic
Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from
central government control.
Several other communist states have also attempted to implement
market-based reforms, including Vietnam.
Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Eastern Europe was
not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements
as the pressure of external capitalist states, the relative
backwardness of the societies in which the revolutions occurred,
and the emergence of a bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested
or diverted the transition press in its own interests. (Scott and
Marshall, 2005) Marxist critics of the Soviet Union, most notably
Trotsky, referred to the
Soviet system, along with other
Communist states, as "
degenerated" or "
deformed workers' states", arguing
that the Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal and
he claimed the
working class was
politically dispossessed. The ruling stratum of the Soviet Union
was held to be a bureaucratic
caste, but not a
new
ruling class, despite their
political control. Anarchists who adhere to
Participatory economics claim that
the Soviet Union became dominated by powerful intellectual elites
who in a capitalist system crown the proletariat’s labor on behalf
of the bourgeoisie.
Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any
society ruled by a Communist Party and to any party aspiring to
create a society similar to such existing
nation-state. In the
social sciences, societies ruled by
Communist Parties are distinct for their single party control and
their socialist economic bases. While some social and
political scientists applied
the concept of "
totalitarianism" to
these societies, others identified possibilities for independent
political activity within them, and stressed their continued
evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union
and its allies in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s and early
1990s.
Today,
Marxist revolutionaries are conducting armed insurgencies in
India
, Philippines
, Peru
, Bangladesh
, Iran
, Turkey
, and
Colombia
.
Criticism
A diverse array of writers and political activists have published
criticism of communism, such
as:
- Soviet bloc dissidents Lech
Wałęsa, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn and Václav
Havel;
- Social theorists Hannah Arendt,
Raymond Aron, Ralf Dahrendorf, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Karl Wittfogel;
- Economists Ludwig von Mises,
Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman;
- Historians and social scientists Robert Conquest, Stéphane Courtois, Richard Pipes, and R. J. Rummel;
- Anti-Stalinist leftists
Ignazio Silone, George Orwell, Saul
Alinsky, Richard Wright,
Arthur Koestler, and Bernard-Henri Levy;
- Russian-born novelist and philosopher Ayn
Rand
- Philosophers Leszek
Kołakowski and Karl Popper.
Part of this criticism is on the policies adopted by one-party
states ruled by Communist parties (known as "
Communist states"). Critics are specially
focused on their economic performance compared to market based
economies. Their
human rights records
are thought to be responsible for the flight of refugees from
communist states, and are alleged to be responsible for famines,
purges and warfare resulting in deaths far in excess of previous
empires, capitalist or Axis regimes.
Some writers, such as Courtois, argue that the actions of Communist
states were the inevitable (though sometimes unintentional) result
of Marxist principles; thus, these authors present the events
occurring in those countries, particularly under Stalin and Mao, as
an argument against Marxism itself.
Some critics were former Marxists, such
as Wittfogel , who applied Marx's concept of "Oriental despotism" to Communist states
such as the Soviet
Union
, and Silone, Wright, Koestler (among other writers)
who contributed essays to the book The God that Failed (the title
refers not to the Christian God but to
Marxism)
There have also been more direct
criticisms of Marxism, such as
criticisms of the
labor theory of
value or
Marx's predictions.
Nevertheless, Communist parties outside of the
Warsaw Pact, such as the Communist parties in
Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, differed
greatly.
Economic criticisms of communal and/or government property are
described under
criticisms of
socialism.
References
- Stephen Whitefield. "Communism." The Concise Oxford
Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan.
Oxford University Press, 2003.
- McLean and McMillan, 2003.
- Ball and Dagger 118
- Terence Ball and Richard Dagger. "Political Ideologies and the
Democratic Ideal." Pearson Education, Inc.:2006.
- Karl Marx, (1845). The German Ideology, Marx-Engels
Institute, Moscow. ISBN 978-1-57392-258-6. Sources available at
The German Ideology at www.marxists.org.
- Faces of Janus p. 133.
- Hill, Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution
(1971) Penguin Books:Londonp. 86.
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second edition (1984) St. Antony's College: Oxford, p. 189.
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133
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p.24.
- Volgovonov, D, Lenin, A New Biography The Free Press,
p. 243.
- "Marxism and the National Question"
- This poster has been jokingly referred to as "The History of
Shaving" Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster
Pages-Ideological Foundations
- http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSEO253213
- Marshall, Peter. "Demanding the Impossible — A History of
Anarchism" p. 9. Fontana Press, London, 1993 ISBN
978-0-00-686245-1
- Puente,
Isaac. "Libertarian Communism". The Cienfuegos
Press Anarchist Review. Issue 6 Orkney 1982.
- Graeber,
David and Grubacic, Andrej. Anarchism, Or The Revolutionary
Movement Of The Twenty-first Century.
- The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 3, The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Period,
edited by Ehsan Yarshater, Parts 1 and 2, p1019,
Cambridge University Press
(1983)
- "Communism." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006.
Encyclopædia Britannica
Online.
- Eduard Bernstein: Cromwell and Communism
(1895)
- Eduard Bernstein, (1895). Kommunistische und
demokratisch-sozialistische Strömungen während der englischen
Revolution, J.H.W. Dietz, Stuttgart. Sources available at
Eduard Bernstein: Cromwell and Communism (1895)
at www.marxists.org.
- "Communism" A Dictionary of Sociology. John Scott and
Gordon
Marshall. Oxford University Press 2005. Oxford Reference
Online. Oxford University Press.
- Marc Edelman, "Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the
'Peripheries of Capitalism'" - book reviews. Monthly Review, Dec.,
1984. Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the
"Peripheries of Capitalism." - book reviews Monthly Review Find
Articles at BNET at www.findarticles.com.
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Davies. "Communism" The Oxford Companion to World War
II. Ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot. Oxford University Press,
2001.
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- Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panne, Jean-Louis
Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane
Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes,
Terror, Repression, Harvard
University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN
978-0-674-07608-2
- Wittfogel, Karl Oriental Despotism, Vintage, 1981
- Crossman, Richard, ed., The God That Failed.
Harper & Bros, 1949
Further reading
- Reason in Revolt: Marxism and Modern Science By Alan Woods
and Ted Grant
- Forman, James D., "Communism from Marx's Manifesto to 20th
century Reality", New York, Watts. 1972. ISBN
978-0-531-02571-0
- Books on Communism, Socialism and Trotskyism
- Furet, Francois, Furet,
Deborah Kan (Translator), "The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of
Communism in the Twentieth Century", University of Chicago Press,
2000, ISBN 978-0-226-27341-9
- Daniels, Robert Vincent, "A Documentary
History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse",
University Press of New
England
, 1994, ISBN 978-0-87451-678-4
- Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, "Communist Manifesto",
(Mass Market Paperback - REPRINT), Signet Classics, 1998, ISBN
978-0-451-52710-3
- Dirlik, Arif, "Origins of Chinese Communism", Oxford University
Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-19-505454-5
- Beer, Max, "The General History
of Socialism and Social Struggles Volumes 1 & 2", New York,
Russel and Russel, Inc. 1957
- Adami, Stefano, 'Communism', in Encyclopedia of Italian
Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana
Marrone - P.Puppa, Routledge, New York- London, 2006
External links