World communism

World communism, also known as global communism or international communism, is a form of communism placing emphasis on an international scope rather than being individual communist states. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless, moneyless, stateless, and nonviolent, which may be achieved through an intermediate-term goal of either a voluntary association of sovereign states as a global alliance, or a world government as a single worldwide state.

A series of internationals have proposed world communism as a primary goal, including the First International, the Second International, the Third International (the Communist International or Comintern), the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, Maoist Internationalist Movement, the World Socialist Movement, and variant offshoots. The methods and political theories of each International remain distinct in their pursuit of the global communist society.

During the early years of the Stalin era (1927-1953), the theory of socialism in one country flew in the face of the generally accepted practice of Marxism at the time, and became part of the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. According to Joseph Stalin and his supporters it was naïve to think the world revolution was imminent in the 1920s–1930s after the USSR's failure to conquer Poland in 1919 and the defeat of the People's State of Bavaria. With the rise in socialist states post-WWII various splits occurred, namely the Tito-Stalin split, the Mao-Khrushchev split, and the Sino-Albanian split, further exacerbating the prospect of a soon-to-be worldwide revolution, alongside nationalistic tendencies in countries such as Romania and North Korea fomenting a non-aligned front.

The end of the Cold War, with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is often regarded as the fall of communism. Nevertheless, the international communist tendencies remain among Maoists, Trotskyists, left communists, and some present-day Russian communists among others seeking to further refine and revise the theory of dialectical materialism.