Portal:Communism

THE COMMUNISM PORTAL

Introduction

Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal') is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more authoritarian vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a socialist state, followed by the withering away of the state. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, communism is placed on the left-wing alongside socialism, and communist parties and movements have been described as radical left or far-left.

Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism encompasses a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those. All of these different ideologies generally share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system, and mode of production, that in this system there are two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat, who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie, a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.

Communism in its modern form grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe that argued capitalism caused the misery of urban factory workers. In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, first in the Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II. As one of the many types of socialism, communism became the dominant political tendency, along with social democracy, within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s. (Full article...)

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PKI leader D.N. Aidit speaking at election meeting, 1955
The Communist Party of Indonesia (Indonesian: Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) was a political party in Indonesia. With growing popular support and a membership of about 3 million by 1965, the PKI was the strongest communist party outside the Soviet Union and China. The party had a firm base in various mass organizations, estimates claim that the total membership of the party and its frontal organizations might have at its peak organized a fifth of the Indonesian population. In March 1962 PKI joined the government. PKI leaders Aidit and Njoto were named advisory ministers.

Following the military coup in 1965, between 300,000 and one million Indonesians were killed in the mass killings that followed as the new regime cracked down on PKI. A CIA study of the events in Indonesia assessed that "In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century...".

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Josip Broz Tito (Cyrillic script: Јосип Броз Тито, 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman. He was Secretary-General (later President) of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (1939–80), and went on to lead the World War II Yugoslav anti-fascist guerrilla movement, the Yugoslav Partisans (1941–45). After the war, he was the Prime Minister from 1943 to 1963 and later President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 until his death in 1980.

Tito was the chief architect of the "second Yugoslavia", a socialist, aspiring towards communist, federation that lasted from World War II until 1991. Despite being one of the founders of Cominform, he was also the first (and the only successful) Cominform member to defy Soviet hegemony. A backer of independent roads to socialism (sometimes referred to as "national communism" or "Titoism"), he was one of the main founders and promoters of the Non-Aligned Movement, and its first Secretary-General.

During his rule he suppressed nationalist sentiment and promoted the "brotherhood and unity" of the six Yugoslav nations. After Tito's death in 1980, tensions between the Yugoslav republics emerged and in 1991 the country disintegrated and went into a series of civil wars and unrest that lasted the rest of the decade and continue to impact most of the former Yugoslav republics to this day. He remains a controversial figure in the Balkans.

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Dutch communist leader Marcus Bakker speaking at rally, 1970.

Photo credit: Joost Evers

News related to communism

28 June 2024 – New People's Army rebellion
Philippine troops claim to have killed at least ten suspected communist guerrillas, including three commanders, near a village in Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija, Philippines. (ABC News)
27 June 2024 –
The Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party expels former defense ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe from the party following charges of corruption against them. (CNA)
19 June 2024 –
Human Rights Watch reports that China has changed the names of hundreds of villages inhabited by Uyghurs in order to reflect the ruling Communist Party's ideology. (DW)
22 May 2024 – 2024 Vietnamese presidential election
Security Minister Tô Lâm is elected President by the National Assembly, two months after the resignation of Võ Văn Thưởng amid the ruling Communist Party's anti-corruption campaign. (DW)
18 May 2024 –
The Communist Party of Vietnam nominates Minister of Public Security Tô Lâm as the next President after Võ Văn Thưởng resigned as President in March due to the party's anti-corruption campaign. (Al Jazeera)
16 May 2024 –
Permanent Member of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee's Secretariat Trương Thị Mai resigns after just over a year in office amid the Communist Party's anti-corruption campaign. (Xinhua)

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The very name of Novosti Press Agency is a beautiful example of the newspeak and reminds on either of Orwell's "Ministry of Truth" or "Evtushenko's "Ministry of Tenderness". The fact is, that there is no news as they are erroneously and non-marxistlike understood in the West-as reports about the current events. This sort of news could easily contradict the prophesies of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, and thus give a wrong and totally unscientific picture of reality.

Neihter is there any "press" in Novosti Press Agency, at least in the meaning of the word accepted in the West and related to journalistic profession. But it does not mean that the APN has no press. "Press is the most potent weapon of the Party", said the Friend and Tcacher of all the journalists Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin-and he was right. In the APN the word press is understood mainly as a technical term-printing press, or as an abstract term in a sentence: "The Soviet Press is the most truthfull press in the world", a slogan that decorates walls of many editorial offices in the USSR.

— Yuri Bezmenov (1939-1993)
No "Novosti" is Good News , 1985

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