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...)
The Communist Party of Peru (Spanish: Partido Comunista del Perú), more commonly known as the Shining Path (Spanish: Sendero Luminoso), is a communist militant group in Peru. When it first launched the internal conflict in Peru in 1980, its stated goal was to replace the bourgeois democracy with "New Democracy". The Shining Path believed that by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducing cultural revolution, and eventually sparking world revolution, they could arrive at pure communism. Their representatives said that existing socialist countries were revisionist, and they claimed to be the vanguard of the world communist movement. The Shining Path's ideology and tactics have been influential among other Maoist insurgent groups, notably the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and other Revolutionary Internationalist Movement-affiliated organizations.
The Shining Path is classified by the Peruvian government, the U.S., the European Union, and Canada as a terrorist organization. Since the capture of its leader Abimael Guzmán in 1992, the Shining Path has declined in activity.
H. N. Goshal (Burmese: သခင်ဘတင်, IPA:[θəkʰɪ̀ɴba̰tɪ̀ɴ]; also known as Thakin Ba Tin, d. 1967) was a communist politician and trade union leader in Burma, of Bengali origin. Goshal was one of the foremost leaders of the Communist Party of Burma and the most prominent theoretician of the party for several years. During the height of the Cultural Revolution (which had repercussions in the Communist Party of Burma) Goshal was marginalized and killed in an inner-party purge.
Goshal graduated from Rangoon University. In August 1939, Goshal took part in the founding of the Communist Party of Burma. He was a member of the Bengali cell of the party. During the Japanese occupation, Goshal fled to India. During the early days of the Communist Party of Burma, Goshal played an important role as a liaison between the Burmese party and the Communist Party of India (through its Bengal Provincial Committee). After the death of Thakin Ba Hein, Goshal became the head of the All Burma Trade Union Congress. Goshal's activities were mainly concentrated to Rangoon, organizing the largely Indian working class there.
...that Moscow City Hall, built in the 1890s to the tastes of the Russian bourgeoisie, was converted by Communists into the Central Lenin Museum after its rich interior decoration had been plastered over.
They must not be confused with the (repressive) State apparatus. Remember that in Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc., which constitute what I shall in future call the Repressive State Apparatus. Repressive suggests that the State Apparatus in question ‘functions by violence’ – at least ultimately (since repression, e.g. administrative repression, may take non-physical forms).
I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions. I propose an empirical list of these which will obviously have to be examined in detail, tested, corrected and re-organized. With all the reservations implied by this requirement, we can for the moment regard the following institutions as Ideological State Apparatuses (the order in which I have listed them has no particular significance):
the religious ISA (the system of the different churches),
the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’),
the family ISA,
the legal ISA,
the political ISA (the political system, including the different parties),
the trade-union ISA,
the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.),
the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).
I have said that the ISAs must not be confused with the (Repressive) State Apparatus. What constitutes the difference?
As a first moment, it is clear that while there is one (Repressive) State Apparatus, there is a plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses. Even presupposing that it exists, the unity that constitutes this plurality of ISAs as a body is not immediately visible.
As a second moment, it is clear that whereas the unified – (Repressive) State Apparatus belongs entirely to the public domain, much the larger part of the Ideological State Apparatuses (in their apparent dispersion) are part, on the contrary, of the private domain. Churches, Parties, Trade Unions, families, some schools, most newspapers, cultural ventures, etc., etc., are private.
