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...)

Selected article

PCOT leaders in Jemmal
The Workers' Party (Arabic: حزب العمال), formerly the Tunisian Workers' Communist Party (Arabic: حزب العمال الشيوعي التونسي, Ḥizb al-‘Ummāl ash-Shuyū‘ī at-Tūnisī ; French: Parti communiste des ouvriers de Tunisie, PCOT), is a Marxist-Leninist political party in Tunisia. Its general secretary is Hamma Hammami. After their involvement in the uprising against Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, PCOT held their first conference as a legal party on July 22–24, with up to 2000 persons attending.

In the 2011 Constituent Assembly election, the candidates of PCOT's electoral formation ran by the name "Revolutionary Alternative" (Arabic: البديل الثوري al-badīl ath-thawrī; French: Alternative révolutionaire) and won 3 of the 217 seats, in Sfax, Kairouan and Siliana. In July 2012, the PCOT decided to remove the word "communist" from its name to avoid the stereotype associated with this term.

Selected biography

Santiago Carrillo in 2006
Santiago José Carrillo Solares (18 January 1915 – 18 September 2012) was a Spanish politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) from 1960 to 1982. Born in Gijón, Asturias province, Carrillo was the son of the prominent Socialist leader Wenceslao Carrillo and wife María Rosalía Solares Martínez. When he was six years old, his family moved to Madrid. After attending school, he began to work in El Socialista, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) newspaper at the age of 13. At the same time, he joined the Socialist Union, the Workers' General Union and the Socialist Youth.

In 1932, he joined the Executive Commission of the Socialist Youth and became editor of its newspaper, Renovación. Carrillo was on the left wing of the organisation. In 1933, as the Socialist Youth was becoming more radical, Carrillo was elected as General Secretary. From October 1934 to February 1936 he was jailed, due to his participation in the failed 1934 leftist coup (Carrillo was a member of the National Revolutionary Committee).

Did you know...

Selected image

Photo credit: Tomatejc

News related to communism

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)

Related portals

Related Wikiprojects

Related featured content

Participate!

Everyone is welcome to participate in WikiProject Socialism, where editors collaborate to improve all aspects related to socialism on Wikipedia.

Selected quote

1. The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object, actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. In The Essence of Christianity, he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.

2. The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

3. The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

— Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Theses on Feuerbach , 1845

Subcategories

Want to find an article related to communism? Try browsing through any of the main categories below:
Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Communism-related topics

General

Variations of Communism

Organizations and ruling parties, past and present

Personalities

Present and former Socialist states (under the direction of Communist parties)

Ideology and tactics

Structure

Marxian economics topics

Historical events

Military topics

Artists and writers

Influential works

Anti-communism

Communism-related lists

Things you can do

Communism in non-English Wikipedias

Articles:

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals


© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search