Communism

Communism (from Latin communis 'common, universal')[1][2] is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement,[1] whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and an authoritarian socialist, vanguardist, or party-driven approach to establish a socialist state, which is expected to wither away.[10] Communist parties have been described as radical left or far-left.[11][12][note 1] There are many variants of communism, such as anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought (including Leninism and its offshoots), and religious communism. These ideologies share the analysis that the current order of society stems from the capitalist economic system and mode of production; they believe that there are two major social classes, that the relationship between them is exploitative, and that it can only be resolved through social revolution.[20][note 2] The two classes are the proletariat (working class), who make up most of the population and sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie (owning class), a minority that derives profit from employing the proletariat through private ownership of the means of production.[20] According to this, a communist revolution would put the working class in power,[22] and establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a socialist mode of production.[23][24][25]

Modern communism grew out of the aftermath of the French Revolution.[26][1] In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels offered a new definition of communism in The Communist Manifesto. In the 20th century, Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism came to power,[27][note 3] first in the Soviet Union with the 1917 Russian Revolution, then in Eastern Europe, Asia, and other regions after World War II.[33] By the 1920s, communism had become one of the two dominant types of socialism in the world, the other being social democracy.[34] For most of the 20th century, a third of the world's population lived under Communist governments. These were characterized by one-party rule, rejection of private property and capitalism, state control of economic activity and mass media, restrictions on freedom of religion, and suppression of opposition. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, many governments abolished Communist rule.[1][35][36] Only a few nominally Communist governments remain, such as China,[37] Cuba, Laos, North Korea,[note 4] and Vietnam.[44] Except North Korea, these have allowed more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule.[1] Communism's decline has been attributed to economic inefficiency and to authoritarianism and bureaucracy within Communist governments.[1][44][45]

While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the first nominally Communist state led to communism's association with the Soviet economic model, several scholars argue that in practice this model functioned as a form of state capitalism.[46][47] Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between anti anti-communism and anti-communism.[48] Authors have written about mass killings under communist regimes and mortality rates,[note 5][note 6] which remain controversial, polarized, and debated topics in academia, historiography, and politics when discussing communism and the legacy of Communist states.[66][page needed][67][page needed]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Ball & Dagger 2019.
  2. ^ "Communism". World Book Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. Chicago: World Book. 2008. p. 890. ISBN 978-0-7166-0108-1.
  3. ^ Ely, Richard T (1883). French and German socialism in modern times. New York: Harper & Brothers. pp. 35–36. OCLC 456632. All communists without exception propose that the people as a whole, or some particular division of the people, as a village or commune, should own all the means of production – land, houses, factories, railroads, canals, etc.; that production should be carried on in common; and that officers, selected in one way or another, should distribute among the inhabitants the fruits of their labor.
  4. ^ Bukharin, Nikolai; Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni (1922) [1920]. "Distribution in the communist system" (PDF). The ABC of Communism. Translated by Paul, Cedar; Paul, Eden. London, England: Communist Party of Great Britain. pp. 72–73, § 20. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 February 2025. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  5. ^ Steele (1992), p. 43: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption."
  6. ^ Engels, Friedrich (2005) [1847]. "Section 18: What will be the course of this revolution?". The Principles of Communism. Translated by Sweezy, Paul. Archived from the original on 9 February 2025. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive. Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.
  7. ^ Bukharin, Nikolai; Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni (1922) [1920]. "Administration in the communist system" (PDF). The ABC of Communism. Translated by Paul, Cedar; Paul, Eden. London, England: Communist Party of Great Britain. pp. 73–75, § 21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 February 2025. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  8. ^ Kurian, George (2011). "Withering Away of the State". In Kurian, George (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Political Science. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. doi:10.4135/9781608712434. ISBN 978-1-933116-44-0. Retrieved 3 January 2016 – via SAGE Publishing.
  9. ^ "Communism - Non-Marxian communism". Britannica. Archived from the original on 11 February 2025. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
  10. ^ Kinna, Ruth (2012). Berry, Dave; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Prichard, Alex (eds.). Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–34. ISBN 9781137284754.
  11. ^ March 2009, pp. 126–143.
  12. ^ George & Wilcox 1996, p. 95
    "The far left in America consists principally of people who believe in some form of Marxism-Leninism, i.e., some form of Communism. A small minority of extreme leftists adhere to "pure" Marxism or collectivist anarchism. Most far leftists scorn reforms (except as a short-term tactic), and instead aim for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system including the U.S. government."
  13. ^ "Left". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 April 2009. Archived from the original on 5 February 2025. Retrieved 22 May 2022. ... communism is a more radical leftist ideology.
  14. ^ "Radical left". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 10 February 2025. Retrieved 16 July 2022. Radical left is a term that refers collectively to people who hold left-wing political views that are considered extreme, such as supporting or working to establish communism, Marxism, Maoism, socialism, anarchism, or other forms of anticapitalism. The radical left is sometimes called the far left.
  15. ^ March 2009, p. 126: "The far left is becoming the principal challenge to mainstream social democratic parties, in large part because its main parties are no longer extreme, but present themselves as defending the values and policies that social democrats have allegedly abandoned."
  16. ^ March, Luke (2012). Radical Left Parties in Europe (E-book ed.). London: Routledge. p. 1724. ISBN 978-1-136-57897-7.
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  18. ^ March 2009, p. 129.
  19. ^ March, Luke (September 2012). "Problems and Perspectives of Contemporary European Radical Left Parties: Chasing a Lost World or Still a World to Win?". International Critical Thought. 2 (3). London: Routledge: 314–339. doi:10.1080/21598282.2012.706777. ISSN 2159-8312. S2CID 154948426.
  20. ^ a b Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl (1969) [1848]. "Bourgeois and Proletarians". The Communist Manifesto. Marx/Engels Selected Works. Vol. 1. Translated by Moore, Samuel. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 98–137. Archived from the original on 14 February 2025. Retrieved 1 March 2022 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  21. ^ Newman 2005; Morgan 2015.
  22. ^ Gasper, Phillip (2005). The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document. Haymarket Books. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-931859-25-7. Marx and Engels never speculated on the detailed organization of a future socialist or communist society. The key task for them was building a movement to overthrow capitalism. If and when that movement was successful, it would be up to the members of the new society to decide democratically how it was to be organized, in the concrete historical circumstances in which they found themselves.
  23. ^ Steele (1992), pp. 44–45: "By 1888, the term 'socialism' was in general use among Marxists, who had dropped 'communism', now considered an old fashioned term meaning the same as 'socialism'. ... At the turn of the century, Marxists called themselves socialists. ... The definition of socialism and communism as successive stages was introduced into Marxist theory by Lenin in 1917 ..., the new distinction was helpful to Lenin in defending his party against the traditional Marxist criticism that Russia was too backward for a socialist revolution."
  24. ^ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First (7th ed.). South-Western College Pub. p. 118. ISBN 0-618-26181-8. Under socialism, each individual would be expected to contribute according to capability, and rewards would be distributed in proportion to that contribution. Subsequently, under communism, the basis of reward would be need.
  25. ^ Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-8047-7566-3. According to nineteenth-century socialist views, socialism would function without capitalist economic categories – such as money, prices, interest, profits and rent – and thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science. While some socialists recognized the need for money and prices at least during the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialists more commonly believed that the socialist economy would soon administratively mobilize the economy in physical units without the use of prices or money.
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  28. ^ "IV. Glossary". Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington. Archived from the original on 8 December 2024. Retrieved 13 August 2021. ... communism (noun) ... 2. The economic and political system instituted in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Also, the economic and political system of several Soviet allies, such as China and Cuba. (Writers often capitalize Communism when they use the word in this sense.) These Communist economic systems often did not achieve the ideals of communist theory. For example, although many forms of property were owned by the government in the USSR and China, neither the work nor the products were shared in a manner that would be considered equitable by many communist or Marxist theorists.
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  34. ^ Newman 2005, p. 5: "Chapter 1 looks at the foundations of the doctrine by examining the contribution made by various traditions of socialism in the period between the early 19th century and the aftermath of the First World War. The two forms that emerged as dominant by the early 1920s were social democracy and communism."
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  45. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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  66. ^ Ghodsee 2014.
  67. ^ Neumayer 2018.


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