Communism

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Part of
the series
on

Communism

Concepts

Marxist
philosophy
Marxian
economics
Historical
materialism
Surplus value
Mode of
production
Class
struggle
Classless
society
Proletarian
internationalism
Workers'
self-management
World
revolution

Aspects

Communist
state
Communist
party
Communist
revolution
Communist
symbolism
Communism and
religion
History of
communism

Variants

Marxism
Leninism
Trotskyism
Maoism
Luxemburgism
Titoism
Stalinism
Castroism
Guevarism
Hoxhaism
Juche
Left
communism
Council
communism
Anarchist
communism
Religious
communism
Christian
communism
Eurocommunism
World
communism
Stateless
communism
National
communism
Primitive
communism
Scientific
communism
List of
communist parties

Internationals

Communist
League
First
International
Second
International
Third
International
Fourth
International

Figures

Gracchus
Babeuf
Karl Marx
Friedrich
Engels
Peter
Kropotkin
Rosa
Luxemburg
Antonio
Gramsci
Vladimir
Lenin
Leon Trotsky
Joseph Stalin
Mao Zedong
Ho Chi
Minh
Josip Broz
Tito
Enver Hoxha
Che
Guevara

Related topics

Communist
world
Post-communism
Anti-communism
Criticisms of
communism
Criticisms
of communist party rule
Mass
killings under Communist regimes
Anti-capitalism
Cold
War
Democratic
centralism
Dictatorship
of the proletariat
Left-wing
politics
New Class · New Left
Workers
of the world, unite!

v · d · e

Communism is a sociopolitical movement
that aims for a classless and stateless society structured upon
common ownership of the
means of production,
free access to articles of consumption, and the end of wage labour and private property in the
means of production and real estate.[1]

In Marxist
theory, communism is a specific stage of historical development that
inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that
leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution
based on need and social relations based on freely
associated individuals.[2][3]
The exact definition of communism varies, and it is often mistakenly, in general
political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however, Marxist
theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to
communism. Leninists revised this theory
by introducing the notion of a vanguard party to lead
the proletarian revolution and to hold all political power after the revolution,
'in the name of the workers' and supposedly with worker
participation, in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism.

Communists such as council communists and
non-Marxist libertarian
communists and anarcho-communists, as
well as some Marxist-Leninists who
have progressively abandoned many of the basic assumptions of Leninism, oppose
the idea of a vanguard party and a transition stage, and advocate for the
construction of full communism to begin immediately upon the abolition of
capitalism. There is a very wide range of theories amongst those particular
communists in regards to how to build the types of institutions that would
replace the various economic engines (such as food distribution, education, and
hospitals) as they exist under capitalist systems—or even whether to do so at
all. Some of these communists have specific plans for the types of
administrative bodies that would replace the current ones, while always
qualifying that these bodies would be decentralised and worker-owned, just as
they currently are within the activist movements themselves. Others have no
concrete set of post-revolutionary blueprints at all, claiming instead that they
simply trust that the world's workers and poor will figure out proper modes of
distribution and wide-scale production, and also coordination, entirely on their
own, without the need for any structured "replacements" for capitalist state-based control.

In the modern lexicon of what many sociologists and political commentators
refer to as the "political mainstream", communism is often used to refer to the
policies of states run by communist parties,
regardless of the practical content of the actual economic system they may
preside over. Examples of this include the policies of the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam where the economic system incorporates "doi moi", the People's
Republic of China where the economic system incorporates "socialist market
economy", and the economic system of the Soviet Union which was
described as "state capitalist" by
some communists who increasingly opposed the post-Stalin era Soviet model as it
progressed over the course of the 20th century (e.g. Maoists, Trotskyists and libertarian
communists)—and even at one point by Vladimir Lenin
himself.[4]

Contents

1 Overview

2 As a social
movement

3 Terminology

4 Marxist schools of
communism

4.1 Marxism

4.2 Marxism-Leninism

4.2.1 Stalinism

4.2.2 Trotskyism

4.2.3 Maoism

4.2.4 Hoxhaism

4.3 Titoism

4.4 Eurocommunism

4.5 Council
communism

4.6 Luxemburgism

4.7 Prachanda
Path

5 Non-Marxist
schools

5.1 Anarcho-communism

5.2 Christian
communism

6 History

6.1 Early
communism

6.2 Growth of modern
communism

6.3 Cold War
years

6.4 Fear of
communism

6.5 After the dissolution
of the Soviet Union

7 Criticism

8 References

9 Further
reading

10 External
links

Overview

Communist theory generally states that the only way to solve the problems
existing within capitalism is for the working class, referred to
alternatively as 'the proletariat', who collectively constitute the main
producer of wealth in society, and who are perpetually exploited and
marginalised by the capitalist class, to
overthrow the capitalist system in a wide-ranging social revolution.
This revolution, in the theory of most individuals and groups espousing communist
revolution, usually involves an armed insurrection. The
revolution espoused can be explained by theorists in many different ways, and
usually depends on the environment in which the particular communism theory
originates; for example, the Chinese Revolution
was both described as, and ultimately involved, military combat between
the Chinese Red Army and
the Chinese Nationalist
army, while the Vietnamese
Revolution was largely guerilla warfare
between massive numbers of Vietnamese supporters of the Vietnam People's
Army and various Western armies, in
particular the final stage against the
United States
armed forces. The Cuban Revolution was
meanwhile essentially a coup d'etat that did not
involve intensive pitched battles or
wide-scale military conflict between Fulgencio Batista's
soldiers and those of Fidel Castro and Che
Guevara—in fact, Castro did not even believe a vanguard party was
necessary in Cuba's case to begin with, a view boosted by the fact that Batista,
by the time of the actual armed conflict between Cuban revolutionaries and his
soldiers, was significantly weak in terms of his administration's political
solvency.

No matter what specific form the communist revolution takes, its aim is for
the working class to replace the exploiter class
(usually bourgeoisie) as the ruling
class to establish a society without class divisions, called socialism, as a
prelude to attempting to achieve the final stage of communism.[1]

A variety of different forms of communism have developed, each based upon the
ideas of different political theorists, usually as additions or interpretations
of various forms of Marxism, the collective
philosophies of Karl Marx.[5]
Marxism-Leninism is the
synthesis of Vladimir Lenin's
contributions to Marxism, such as how a revolutionary party should be organised;
Trotskyism is Leon
Trotsky's conception of Marxism, influenced by Lenin, and meanwhile, Maoism is Mao
Zedong's interpretation of Marxism to suit the conditions of China at that
time, and is fairly heavy on the need for agrarian worker support as the
engine for the revolution, rather than workers in the urban areas, which were
still very small at that point.

Pure communism is a term
sometimes used to refer to the stage in history after socialism, although just
as many communists use simply the term "communism" to refer to that stage. The
classless, stateless society that is meant to characterise this communism is one
where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made in the
best interests of the whole of society—a sort of 'of, by, and for the working
class', rather than a rich class controlling the wealth and everyone else
working for them on a wage basis. In this communism the
interests of every member of society is given equal weight to the next, in the
practical decision-making process
in both the political and economic spheres of life. Karl Marx, as well as some
other communist philosophers, deliberately never provided a detailed description
as to how communism would function as a social system, nor the precise ways in
which the working class could or should rise up, nor any other material
specifics of exactly how to get to communism from capitalism. In the Communist
Manifesto, Marx does lay out a 10-point plan advising the redistribution
of land and production to begin the transition to communism, but he ensured that
even this was very general and all-encompassing. It has always been presumed
that Marx intended these theories to read this way specifically so that later
theorists in specific situations could adapt communism to their own localities
and conditions.

The origins of communism are debatable, and there are various historical
groups, as well as theorists, whose beliefs have been subsequently described as
communist. Some theorists have considered hunter-gatherer
societies to adhere to a form of primitive communism,
whilst historical figures like Plato and Thomas More have been
described as espousing early forms of the ideology. The communist movement as it
is known today largely took shape in the nineteenth century, when it was
developed.[5]
In the twentieth century, revolutions led to openly communist governments taking
power in many countries, leading to the creation of states like the Soviet
Union, the People's
Republic of China and the Republic of Cuba.

As a social
movement

In modern usage, the word communism is still often used to refer to the
policies of self-declared socialist governments comprising one-party states which
were single legal political party systems operating under centrally planned
economies and a state ownership of the means of production,
with the state, in turn, claiming that it represented the interests of the working
classes. A significant sector of the modern communist movement alleges that
these states never made an attempt to transition to a communist society, while
others even argue that they never achieved a legitimate socialism. Most of these
governments based their ideology on Marxism-Leninism, but
they did not call the system they had set up "communism", nor did they even
necessarily claim at all times that the ideology was the sole driving force
behind their policies: Mao Zedong, for example,
pursued New Democracy, and Lenin in the early 1920s enacted
war
communism; later, the Vietnamese enacted doi moi, and the
Chinese switched to Socialism
with Chinese characteristics. The governments labeled by other governments
as "communist" generally claimed that they had set up a transitional
socialist system. This system is sometimes referred to as state socialism or by
other similar names.

Communism as a political belief system and a social movement stands
in contrast to all this, and is often referred to as "the communist movement";
it exists independently of any particular theorist, just as various other social
theories and even religions can be interpreted
and espoused in radically divergent ways. In this sense, therefore, communism
can be thought of as, in many cases, a resistance movement
against capitalism, analogous to anarchism, social anarchism and
similar militant far-left
beliefs. Especially as compared to the somewhat stultified old equivalences of
the word "communism" with the "evil empire" and oppressive
dictatorships that used the language of communism largely to justify their own
existence and policies, communist beliefs on their own are often claimed by
their adherents to be a very positive, populist ideology endorsing "people
power" actions, ideas, and events, and of being categorically opposed
to oppression and alienation at the hands of any elite (see also the article on
far left, which is also known
as the "radical left"). Most such communists get personally offended, therefore,
when anti-communists
continually use the histories of communist states as
means by which to claim from the outset that the whole of communist ideas is
discredited and invalid.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, communists in certain areas of the world
continue to participate in, and sometimes even to have leadership positions in,
industrial unions.
Other places in the world have parliamentary
democracies with MPs in them who identify as communists and try to pass
left-leaning laws and bills. Sometimes a communist party within a
diverse parliament will hold a minority position but still be influential in the
overall governmental operations. Still other places have no participation by any
communists within any mainstream political discourse at all (a notable example
of this would be the Government
of the United States). The pink tide in Latin
America, meanwhile, has consisted of democratic elections that led to
communist and communist-inspired governments being elected in that area of the
world, such as in Bolivia and Venezuela, although the degree
to which these governments actually follow policies that are radical left enough to be
considered communist, is fiercely contested by the left more generally (the
governments themselves proclaim a "Socialism of
the 21st century"). Today, although communism is a less influential
political force compared to what it was in much of the twentieth century,[6]
there are still powerful communist and aligned socialist movements in many parts
of the world, notably continental Europe,
southern Asia (Southeast Asia, and Latin and South
America.

Additionally, since the economic crisis of
2008 there has been a resurgence of interest in communist theory and
theoreticians[citation
needed]. A diverse range of theories persist amongst prominent
globally known people such as Slavoj Zizek, Michael Parenti, Alain
Badiou and other radical left thinkers who
proclaim themselves communists; they and others like them are examples of
present-day well-known figures in the modern communist movement.

Terminology

In the schema of historical
materialism, communism is the idea of a free society with no division or
alienation, where mankind is free from oppression and scarcity. A communist
society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions. In Marxist theory, the
dictatorship
of the proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism and communism,
when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership from privatism to
collective ownership.[7]
In political science, the
term "communism" is sometimes used to refer to communist states, a form of government in
which the state operates under a one-party system and
declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism or a
derivative thereof.[citation
needed]

Marxist schools of
communism

Main article: List of
communist ideologies

“

Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself
to be this solution.

”

—Karl Marx, 1844[8]

Self-identified communists hold a variety of views, including Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism,
council communism, Luxemburgism, anarchist communism,
Christian communism,
and various currents of left communism. However,
the offshoots of the Marxist-Leninist
interpretations of Marxism are the most well-known
of these and had been a driving force in international
relations during the last quarter of the 19th century and most of the 20th
century up to around 1989 and what historians refer to as "the collapse of
communism."[9]
However, other forms of communism worldwide continue to exist in the ideologies
of various individual labor movement trade
unions worldwide, particularly in Europe and the Third
World, and also in communist parties that
continue to espouse the ultimate need for communist
revolution.

Most communists today tend to agree that the remaining communist states, such
as the People's
Republic of China, Vietnam and especially North
Korea (which has replaced Marxism-Leninism with
Juche as its
official ideology), have nothing to do with communism, whether as practiced
currently within leftist resistance movements and
parties, or in terms of the ideologies and programmes held by those
movements.[10][11][12][13]

Marxism

The Communist
Manifesto

Main article: Marxism

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to
capitalism and the systems which they perceived to be responsible for the
exploitation of workers. Whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx and
Engels believed that popular revolution was all but inevitable, and the only
path to socialism and communism.

According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of
human life in class society is alienation;
and communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom.[14]
Marx here follows Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of restraints
but as action with content.[15]
According to Marx, communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent,
obstacle, and goal. The agent is the common/working people; the obstacles are
class divisions, economic inequalities, unequal life-chances, and false consciousness;
and the goal is the fulfilment of human needs including satisfying work, and
fair share of the product.[16][17]

They believed that communism allowed people to do what they want, but also
put humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they
would not wish to exploit, or have any need to. Whereas for Hegel the unfolding
of this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for
Marx, communism emerged from material forces, particularly the development of
the means of
production.[15]

Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and
revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the
establishment of a communist society in
which private property and
ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence
belong to the community. (Private property and ownership, in this context, means
ownerships of the means of production,
not private possessions).[18]
Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most
general indication as to what constituted a communist society. It is clear that
it entails abundance in which there is little limit to the projects that humans
may undertake.[citation
needed] In the popular slogan that was adopted by the communist movement,
communism was a world in which each gave according to their abilities, and
received according to their needs. The German
Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the
communist future:

“

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of
activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society
regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do
one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the
afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I
have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or
critic."[19]

”

Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a theory of how society was
moving in a law-governed way towards communism, and, with some tension, a
political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required to bring
it about.[15]

In the late 19th century, the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often
used interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels argued that communism would not
emerge from capitalism in a fully developed state, but
would pass through a "first phase" in which most productive property was owned
in common, but with some class differences remaining. The "first phase" would
eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which class differences were
eliminated, and a state was no longer needed. Lenin frequently used the term
"socialism" to refer to Marx and Engels' supposed "first phase" of communism and
used the term "communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels' "higher phase"
of communism.[20]

These later aspects, particularly as developed by Vladimir Lenin, provided
the underpinning for the mobilizing features of 20th century communist
parties.

Marxism-Leninism

Leninism
is the political movement developed by Vladimir Lenin, which has become the
foundation for the organizational structure of most major communist parties.
Leninists advocate the creation of a vanguard party led by professional
revolutionaries in order to lead the working class revolution. Leninists believe
that socialism will not arise spontaneously through the natural decay of
capitalism and that workers are unable to organize and develop socialist
consciousness without the guidance of the Vanguard party. After taking power,
Vanguard parties seek to create a socialist state dominated by the Vanguard
party in order to direct social development and defend against
counterrevolutionary insurrection. The mode of industrial organization
championed by Leninism and Marxism-Leninism is the capitalist model of
scientific management pioneered by Fredrick Taylor.

Marxism-Leninism is a
version of Leninism merged with classical Marxism
adopted by the Soviet Union and most communist parties across the world today.
It shaped the Soviet Union and influenced communist parties worldwide. It was
heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization and
collectivisation.
Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the 'Eastern Bloc' (meaning communist
countries of Eastern and Central Europe), many communist parties of the world
today still lay claim to uphold the Marxist-Leninist banner. Marxism-Leninism
expands on Marxists thoughts by bringing the theories to what Lenin and other
Communists considered, the age of capitalist imperialism, and a renewed focus on
party building, the development of a socialist state, and
democratic centralism as an organizational principle.

Lenin adapted Marx's urban revolution to Russia's agricultural conditions,
sparking the "revolutionary nationalism of the poor".[21]
The pamphlet What is to
be Done? (1902), proposed that the (urban) proletariat can successfully
achieve revolutionary consciousness only under the leadership of a vanguard party of professional
revolutionaries—who can achieve aims only with internal democratic
centralism in the party; tactical and ideological policy decisions are
agreed via democracy, and every member must support and promote the agreed party
policy.

To wit, capitalism can be overthrown
only with revolution—because attempts
to reform capitalism from within (Fabianism) and from without
(democratic
socialism) will fail because of its inherent contradictions. The purpose of
a Leninist revolutionary vanguard party is the
forceful deposition of the
incumbent government; assume power (as agent of the proletariat) and establish a
dictatorship
of the proletariat government. Moreover, as the government, the vanguard
party must educate the proletariat—to
dispel the societal false consciousness
of religion
and nationalism that are
culturally instilled by the bourgeoisie in facilitating
exploitation. The
dictatorship of the proletariat is governed with a de-centralized direct democracy
practised via soviets (councils)
where the workers exercise political power (cf. soviet democracy); the
fifth chapter of State & Revolution, describes it:

". . . the dictatorship of the proletariat—i.e. the organisation of the
vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the
oppressors. . . . An immense expansion of democracy, which for
the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and
not democracy for the rich: . . . and suppression by force,
i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the
people—this is the change which democracy undergoes during the
transition from capitalism to communism."[22]

The Bolshevik government was
hostile to nationalism, especially to Russian nationalism,
the "Great Russian chauvinism", as an obstacle to establishing the proletarian
dictatorship.[23]
The revolutionary elements of Leninism—the disciplined vanguard party, a
dictatorship of the proletariat, and class war.

Stalinism

Stalinism was the political system of the
Soviet
Union and the countries within the Soviet sphere of
influence during the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The term
usually defines the style of a government rather than an ideology. The ideology
was officially Marxism-Leninism theory, reflecting that Stalin himself was not a
theoretician, in contrast to Marx and Lenin, and prided
himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet
Union and the future Socialist world. Stalinism is an interpretation of their
ideas, and a certain political regime claiming to apply those ideas in ways
fitting the changing needs of Soviet society, as with the transition from
"socialism at a snail's pace" in the mid-twenties to the rapid industrialization
of the Five-Year
Plans.

The main contributions of Stalin to communist theory were:

The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in
Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question,[24]
praised by Lenin.

Socialism in One
Country, stating that communists should attain socialism in their own
country as a prelude to internationalising.

The theory of aggravation
of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, a
theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as
necessary.

Trotskyism

Leon Trotsky reading The
Militant.

Trotskyism is the branch of Marxism that was developed by Leon
Trotsky. It supports the theory of permanent
revolution and world revolution
instead of the two stage theory and socialism in one
country. It supported proletarian
internationalism and another Communist revolution in the Soviet Union,
which, under the leadership of Stalin, Trotsky claimed had become a degenerated
worker's state, rather than the dictatorship
of the proletariat.

Trotsky and his supporters organized into the Left Opposition and
their platform became known as Trotskyism. Stalin eventually
succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to
remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in
1929. During Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured into two distinct
branches: Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism.[1]
Trotsky later founded the Fourth
International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern, in 1938.

Trotskyist ideas have continually found a modest echo among political movements
in some countries in Latin America and Asia, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Sri Lanka.
Many Trotskyist organizations are also active in more stable, developed
countries in North America and Western Europe. Trotsky's
politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in
declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution (rather than
socialism in one country) and unwavering support for a true dictatorship of the
proletariat based on democratic principles.

However, as a whole, Trotsky's theories and attitudes were never accepted in
worldwide mainstream Communist circles after Trotsky's expulsion, either within
or outside of the Soviet bloc. This remained
the case even after the Secret Speech and
subsequent events critics claim exposed the fallibility of Stalin.

Maoism

Maoism is the
Marxist-Leninist trend of Communism associated with Mao Zedong and was mostly
practiced within the People's
Republic of China. Khrushchev's reforms
heightened ideological differences between the People's
Republic of China and the Soviet Union, which became
increasingly apparent in the 1960s.

Parties and groups that supported the Communist Party of
China (CPC) in their criticism against the new Soviet leadership proclaimed
themselves as 'anti-revisionist' and denounced the CPSU and the parties
aligned with it as revisionist
"capitalist-roaders." The Sino-Soviet Split resulted in divisions amongst
communist parties around the world. Notably, the Party of Labour
of Albania sided with the People's
Republic of China. Effectively, the CPC under Mao's leadership became
the rallying forces of a parallel international Communist tendency.

Hoxhaism

Main article: Hoxhaism

Another variant of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism
appeared after the ideological row
between the Communist Party of
China and the Party of Labour
of Albania in 1978. The Albanians rallied a new separate international
tendency. This tendency would demarcate itself by a strict defence of the legacy
of Joseph Stalin and fierce criticism of virtually all other Communist groupings
as revisionism.
Critical of the United States, the Soviet
Union, and China, Enver Hoxha declared the
latter two to be social-imperialist
and condemned the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia by withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact in response.
Hoxha declared Albania to be the world's only Marxist-Leninist state after 1978.
The Albanians were able to win over a large share of the Maoists, mainly in Latin
America such as the Popular Liberation
Army, but also had a significant international
following in general. This tendency has occasionally been labelled as
'Hoxhaism' after him.

After the fall of the Communist government in Albania, the pro-Albanian
parties are grouped around an international
conference and the publication 'Unity and Struggle'.

Titoism

Elements of Titoism are characterized by
policies and practices based on the principle that in each country, the means of
attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that
particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. During
Tito's era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued
independently of (and often in opposition to) the policies of the Soviet
Union.

The term was originally meant as a pejorative, and was labelled
by Moscow as a heresy during the period of tensions between the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia known as the Informbiro period from
1948 to 1955.

Unlike the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, which fell
under Stalin's influence post–World War
II, Yugoslavia, due to the strong
leadership of Marshal Tito and the
fact that the Yugoslav Partisans
liberated Yugoslavia with only limited help from the Red Army, remained independent
from Moscow. It became the only country in the Balkans to resist pressure from
Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained
"socialist, but independent" right up until the collapse of Soviet socialism in
the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout his time in office, Tito prided
himself on Yugoslavia's independence from Russia, with Yugoslavia never
accepting full membership of the Comecon and Tito's open
rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious
manifestations of this.

Eurocommunism

Since the early 1970s, the term Eurocommunism was used to
refer to moderate, reformist communist parties in Western Europe. These parties
did not support the Soviet Union and denounced its policies. They were sometimes
Stalinist parties who had broken with the Soviet Union during the 1960s. Such
parties were politically active and electorally significant in Italy (PCI), France (PCF), and Spain (PCE).[citation
needed]

Council communism

Council communism is a
far-left movement originating
in Germany and
the Netherlands in the 1920s.
Its primary organization was the Communist
Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a
theoretical and activist position within both left-wing Marxism and libertarian
socialism.

The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of social democracy and Leninist
Communism, is that democratic workers' councils
arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working
class organisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the reformist and the Leninist ideologies, with
their stress on, respectively, parliaments and institutional
government (i.e., by applying social reforms), on the one hand, and vanguard parties and
participative democratic
centralism on the other).

The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be
managed by workers' councils
composed of delegates elected at workplaces
and recallable at any
moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run authoritarian "State socialism"/"State capitalism". They
also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists
believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party
dictatorship. Council communists support a worker's democracy, which they want
to produce through a federation of workers' councils. Council communism (and
other types of "anti-authoritarian
and Anti-leninist Marxism"
such as Autonomism) are often viewed
as being similar to Anarchism because they
criticize Leninist ideologies for being authoritarian and reject the idea of a
vanguard party.

Luxemburgism

Luxemburgism, based on the
writing of Rosa Luxemburg, is an
interpretation of Marxism which, while supporting
the Russian
Revolution, as Luxemburg did, agrees with her criticisms of the politics of
Lenin and Trotsky; she did
not see their concept of "democratic
centralism" as democracy.

The chief tenets of Luxemburgism are commitment to democracy and the necessity of
the revolution taking place as soon as possible. In this regard, it is similar
to Council Communism, but
differs in that, for example, Luxemburgists do not reject elections by principle. It
resembles anarchism in its insistence
that only relying on the people themselves as opposed to their leaders can avoid
an authoritarian society, but
differs in that it sees the importance of a revolutionary party, and mainly the
centrality of the working class in the
revolutionary struggle. It resembles Trotskyism in its opposition
to the totalitarianism of Stalinist government while
simultaneously avoiding the reformist politics of modern Social Democracy, but
differs from Trotskyism in arguing that Lenin and Trotsky also made undemocratic
errors.

Luxemburg's idea of democracy, which Stanley Aronowitz
calls "generalized democracy in an unarticulated form", represents
Luxemburgism's greatest break with "mainstream communism", since it effectively
diminishes the role of the communist party, but is in fact very similar to the
views of Karl
Marx ("The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the
working classes themselves"). According to Aronowitz, the vagueness of
Luxembourgian democracy is one reason for its initial difficulty in gaining
widespread support. However, since the fall of the Soviet Union, Luxemburgism
has been seen by some socialist thinkers as a way to avoid the totalitarianism of
Stalinism. Early on, Luxemburg attacked undemocratic tendencies present in the
Russian Revolution.

Prachanda Path

Prachanda, giving a speech at
the Nepalese city of Pokhara.

Prachanda Path refers to the ideological line of the Communist
Party of Nepal (Maoist). This thought does not make an ideological break
with Marxism,
Leninism and
Maoism but it is
an extension of these ideologies totally based on home-ground politics of Nepal. The doctrine
came into existence after it was realized that the ideology of Marxism, Leninism
and Maoism could not be practiced completely as it was done in the past. And an
ideology suitable, based on the ground reality of Nepalese politics was adopted
by the party.

After five years of armed struggle, the party realized that none of the
proletarian revolutions of the past could be carried out on Nepal's context. So
moving further ahead than Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, the party determined its
own ideology, Prachanda Path.

Having analyzed the serious challenges and growing changes in the global
arena, the party started moving on its own doctrine. Prachanda Path in essence
is a different kind of uprising, which can be described as the fusion of a
protracted people's war strategy which was adopted by Mao in China and the Russian
model of armed revolution. Most of the Maoist leaders think that the adoption of
Prachanda Path after the second national conference is what nudged the party
into moving ahead with a clear vision ahead after five years of 'people's
war'.

Senior Maoist leader Mohan
Vaidya alias Kiran says, 'Just as Marxism was born in Germany, Leninism in
Russia and Maoism
in China and
Prachanda Path is Nepal's identity of revolution. Just as Marxism has three
facets- philosophy, political economy and
scientific socialism, Prachanda Path is a combination of all three totally in
Nepal's political context.' Talking about the party's philosophy, Maoist
chairman Prachanda says, 'The party
considers Prachanda path as an enrichment of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism.'
After the party brought forward its new doctrine, the government was trying to
comprehend the new ideology, Prachanda Path.

See also: 'People's Revolution' In
Nepal

Non-Marxist
schools

The dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism, but non-Marxist
versions of communism (such as Christian communism
and anarchist communism)
also exist.

Anarcho-communism

Main article: Anarchist
communism

Peter Kropotkin, main
theorist of anarcho-communism

Anarchist communism (also known as libertarian communism) is a theory of anarchism
which advocates the abolition of the state, private property, and
capitalism in favour of common ownership of the
means of
production,[25][26]
direct democracy and a
horizontal network of voluntary
associations and workers' councils
with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "from
each according to his ability, to each according to his need".[27][28]

Anarcho-communism differs from marxism rejecting its view about the need for
a State Socialism phase before building communism. The main anarcho-communist
theorist Peter Kropotkin argued
"that a revolutionary society should “transform itself immediately into a
communist society,”, that is, should go immediately into what Marx had regarded
as the “more advanced,” completed, phase of communism."[29]
In this way it tries to avoid the reappearence of "class divisions and the need
for a state to oversee everything".[29]

Some forms of anarchist communism such as insurrectionary
anarchism are egoist and strongly
influenced by radical individualism,[30][31][32]
believing that anarchist communism does not require a communitarian nature at
all. Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the
opposition between the individual and society[33][34][35]

To date in human history, the best known examples of an anarchist
communist society, established around the ideas as they exist today, that
received worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon, are the
anarchist territories during the Spanish Revolution
and the Free Territory during the
Russian
Revolution. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish Anarchists
during the Spanish Revolution
within the Spanish Civil War,
starting in 1936 anarchist communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the
Levante and Andalusia, as well as in the stronghold of Anarchist Catalonia
before being brutally crushed by the combined forces of the authoritarian
regime that won the war, Hitler, Mussolini, Spanish Communist Party
repression (backed by the USSR) as well as economic and armaments blockades from
the capitalist countries and the Spanish Republic itself. During the Russian
Revolution, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked to
create and defend—through the Revolutionary
Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine—anarchist communism in the Free
Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 before being conquered by the Bolsheviks
in 1921.

Christian
communism

Christian communism
is a form of religious communism centred on Christianity. It is a theological
and political theory based upon the view that the teachings of Jesus Christ urge
Christians to support communism as the ideal social system.
Christian communists trace the origins of their practice to teachings in the New
Testament, such as this one from Acts of the
Apostles at chapter 2 and verses 42, 44, and 45:

42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine
and in fellowship ... 44 And all
that believed were together, and had all things in common; 45
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every
man had need. (King James
Version)

Christian communism can be seen as a radical form of Christian socialism.
Also, because many Christian communists have formed independent stateless
communes in the past, there is also a link between Christian communism and Christian anarchism.
Christian communists may or may not agree with various parts of Marxism.

Christian communists also share some of the political goals of Marxists, for
example replacing capitalism with socialism, which should in
turn be followed by communism at a later point in the future. However, Christian
communists sometimes disagree with Marxists (and particularly with Leninists) on
the way a socialist or communist society should be organized.

History

Communist (red) and formerly
Communist (orange) countries of the world.

Main article: History of
communism

"Communism differs from all previous
movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of
production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all
natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of
their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united
individuals."

— Karl Marx,
The German
Ideology, 1845[36]

Early communism

Further information: Primitive
communism, Religious
communism, and Utopian
socialism

The idea of a classless society first emerged in Ancient Greece.[37]
Plato in his The Republic
described it as a state where people shared all their property, wives, and
children:

“

the private and individual is altogether banished from life and
things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have
become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men
express praise and fell joy and sorrow on the same occasions[37]

”

—Plato, The
Republic

Karl Heinrich Marx saw primitive communism
as the original, hunter-gatherer state of
humankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of
producing surplus, did private
property develop.

In the history of
Western thought, certain elements of the idea of a society based on common
ownership of property can be traced back to ancient times .[citation
needed] Examples include the Spartacus slave revolt in
Rome.[38]
The 5th century Mazdak movement in what is now Iran has been described
as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes
and the clergy, criticizing the institution of private property and for striving
for an egalitarian society.[39]

At one time or another, various small communist communities existed,
generally under the inspiration of Scripture.[40]
In the medieval Christian church, for
example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared
their land and other property (see religious communism
and Christian
communism). These groups often believed that concern with private property was a
distraction from religious service to God and neighbour.[citation
needed]

Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of 16th century
English writer Thomas More. In his treatise
Utopia (1516), More
portrayed a society based on common ownership of
property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason.[citation
needed] In the 17th century, communist thought arguably surfaced
again in England. In 17th century England, a Puritan religious group
known as the Diggers advocated the abolition
of private ownership of land.[41]
Eduard Bernstein, in
his 1895 Cromwell and Communism[42]
argued that several groupings in the English Civil War,
especially the Diggers espoused clear
communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's
attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[43]

Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of
Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques
Rousseau in France.[citation
needed] Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution,
communism emerged as a political doctrine.[44]
François Noël
Babeuf, in particular, espoused the goals of common ownership of land and
total economic and political equality among citizens.[citation
needed]

Various social reformers in the early 19th century founded communities based
on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they
replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis.[40]
Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in
Indiana (1825), and Charles Fourier, whose
followers organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm
(1841–47).[40]
Later in the 19th century, Karl Marx described these social reformers as "utopian socialists" to
contrast them with his program of "scientific
socialism" (a term coined by Friedrich Engels).
Other writers described by Marx as "utopian socialists" included Saint-Simon.

In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th
century Europe. As the Industrial
Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of
the proletariat—a new class of
urban factory workers who laboured under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost
among these critics were the German
philosopher Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and
Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their
famous pamphlet The Communist
Manifesto.[40]
Engels, who lived in Manchester, observed the
organization of the Chartist movement (see History of
British socialism), while Marx departed from his university comrades to
meet the proletariat in France and Germany.[citation
needed]

Growth of modern
communism

Vladimir Lenin after his
return to Petrograd.

The maximum territorial extent of countries influenced by the
Soviet Union, after the Cuban Revolution of
1959 and before the official Sino–Soviet
split of 1961.

Main article: History of
communism

In the late 19th century, Russian Marxism developed a distinct character. The
first major figure of Russian Marxism was Georgi Plekhanov.
Underlying the work of Plekhanov was the assumption that Russia, less urbanized
and industrialized than Western Europe, had many years to go before society
would be ready for proletarian revolution to occur, and a transitional period of
a bourgeois democratic regime would be required to replace Tsarism with a socialist and later
communist society. (EB)[citation
needed]

In Russia, the 1917 October
Revolution was the first time any party with an avowedly Marxist
orientation, in this case the Bolshevik
Party, seized state power. The
assumption of state power by the Bolsheviks generated a great deal of practical
and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that
socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most
advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of the poorest
countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and
a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might
be able to skip the stage of bourgeoisie capitalism.[45]
Other socialists also believed that a Russian revolution
could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the West.

The moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenin's
Bolshevik plan for socialist
revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks'
successful rise to power was based upon the slogans "peace, bread, and land" and
"All power to the Soviets", slogans which tapped the massive public desire for
an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the
peasants' demand for land reform, and popular
support for the Soviets.[citation
needed]

The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when
the Bolsheviks changed their name to Communist Party and installed a single party regime
devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under Leninism.[citation
needed] The Second
International had dissolved in 1916 over national divisions, as the separate
national parties that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the
war,
instead generally supporting their respective nation's role. Lenin thus created
the Third International
(Comintern) in 1919 and sent the Twenty-one
Conditions, which included democratic
centralism, to all European socialist parties
willing to adhere. In France, for example, the majority of the French
Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party split in 1921 to form the
French Section of the
Communist International (SFIC).[citation
needed] Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the
objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their
program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which
would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship
of the proletariat as well as the development of a socialist economy.
Ultimately, if their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless
society, with the withering away
of the state.[citation
needed]

Self-proclaimed socialist countries within the
Marxist-Leninist or Maoist definition in 1980. Color-coding indicates communist
alignment with the Soviet Union (red), China (yellow), or independent status
(black).

During the Russian Civil War
(1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized all
productive property and imposed a policy of war communism, which
put factories and railroads under strict government control, collected and
rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois management of industry. After three
years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion,
Lenin declared the New Economic Policy
(NEP) in 1921, which was to give a "limited place for a limited time to
capitalism." The NEP lasted until 1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved
party leadership, and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan spelled the
end of it. Following the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks formed in 1922 the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, from the
former Russian Empire.

Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the communist parties were organized
on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they
were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members
of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.[46]

After World War II, Communists
consolidated power in Central and Eastern Europe, and in
1949, the Communist Party of
China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong established the People's
Republic of China, which would later follow its own ideological path of
Communist development.[citation
needed] Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique were among the
other countries in the Third World that adopted or
imposed a pro-Communist government at some point. By the early 1980s almost
one-third of the world's population lived in Communist states,
including the former Soviet Union and People's
Republic of China.

Communist states such as the Soviet Union and China succeeded in becoming
industrial and technological powers, challenging the capitalists' powers in the
arms race
and space race and military
conflicts.

Cold War years

USSR postage stamp depicting the communist state
launching the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1.

By virtue of the Soviet Union's victory in the Second World War in 1945,
the Soviet
Army had occupied nations not only in Central and Eastern Europe, but also
in East
Asia; as a result, communism as a movement spread to many new countries.
This expansion of communism both in Europe and Asia gave rise to a few different
branches of its own, such as Maoism.[47]

Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations
into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Central and Eastern Europe.
Governments modelled on Soviet Communism took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Communist government
was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia,
but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia
from the Cominform, which had replaced
the Comintern. Titoism, a new branch in the
world communist movement, was labelled deviationist. Albania also
became an independent Communist nation after World War II.[48]

By 1950, the Chinese
Communists held all of Mainland China, thus
controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising
Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases led to actual fighting
through conventional and guerrilla warfare
include the Korean War, Laos, many nations of the Middle
East and Africa, and notably succeeded in
the case of the Vietnam War against the military
power of the United States and its allies. With varying degrees of success,
Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist
forces against what they saw as Western imperialism in these poor
countries.

Fear of communism

A 1947 propaganda book published by
the Catechetical Guild Educational Society warning of the dangers of a communist
revolution.

Main article: Red Scare

With the exception of the contribution in World War II by the Soviet
Union, China, and the Italian
resistance movement, communism was seen as a rival, and a threat to western
democracies and capitalism for most of the twentieth century.[49]
This rivalry peaked during the Cold War, as the world's two
remaining superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, polarized most of
the world into two camps of nations. This was characterized in the West as
The Free World vs. Behind the Iron Curtain. It supported the
spread of their economic and political systems, capitalism vs. communism, and
strengthened their military powers. As a result, the camps developed new weapon
systems, stockpiled nuclear weapons, and
competed in space exploration.

Near the beginning of the Cold War, on February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin
accused 205 Americans working in the State
Department of being card-carrying communists.[50]
The fear of communism in the U.S. spurred McCarthyism, aggressive
investigations and the red-baiting, blacklisting,
jailing and deportation of persons suspected of following communist or other
left-wing ideologies. Many famous actors and writers were placed on a blacklist
from 1950 to 1954, which meant they would not be hired and would be subject to
public disdain.[49]

After
the dissolution of the Soviet Union

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev
became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in accordance
with reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).
The Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary all
abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet Union
dissolved.

By the beginning of the 21st century, states controlled by communist parties
under a single-party system include the People's
Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and informally North
Korea. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically
important in many countries. President Dimitris
Christofias of Cyprus is a member of the Progressive
Party of Working People, but the country is not run under single-party rule.
In South Africa, the Communist
Party is a partner in the ANC-led
government. In India, communists lead the
governments of three states,
with a combined population of more than 115 million. In Nepal, communists hold a majority
in the parliament.[51]
In Brazil, the PCdoB is a
part of the parliamentary coalition led by the ruling democratic socialist
Workers' Party and is represented in the executive cabinet of
Dilma Rousseff.

The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist
legacy; it, along with Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree Cuba, has reduced
state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Chinese economic
reforms started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping; since then,
China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just
6% in 2001.[52]
The People's Republic of China runs Special Economic
Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central government
control. Several other communist states have also attempted to implement
market-based reforms, including Vietnam.

A tableau in a communist
rally in Kerala,
India, of a young
farmer and worker.

A Communist demonstration in Red Square, Moscow, July
2009.

Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Central and Eastern Europe was
not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the
pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of the
societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of a bureaucratic
stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in its own
interests. (Scott and Marshall, 2005) Marxist critics of the Soviet Union, most
notably Trotsky, referred to the Soviet
system, along with other Communist states, as "degenerated"
or "deformed workers'
states", arguing that the Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist
ideal and he claimed the working class was
politically dispossessed. The ruling stratum of the Soviet Union was held to be
a bureaucratic caste, but not a new ruling
class, despite their political control. Anarchists who adhere to Participatory
economics claim that the Soviet Union became dominated by powerful
intellectual elites who in a capitalist system crown the proletariat's labour on
behalf of the bourgeoisie.

Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled
by a communist party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to
such existing nation-states. In the social sciences,
societies ruled by communist parties are distinct for their single party control
and their socialist economic bases. While some social and political
scientists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to
these societies, others identified possibilities for independent political
activity within them,[53][54]
and stressed their continued evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the
Soviet Union and its allies in Central Europe during the
late 1980s and early 1990s.[citation
needed]

Today, Marxist revolutionaries are conducting armed insurgencies in India, Philippines, Peru, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey, and Colombia.[citation
needed]

Criticism

Main articles: Criticisms of
communism, Anti-communism, and Mass
killings under Communist regimes

See also Criticisms of
Marxism and Criticisms of
socialism for a discussion of objections to socialism in general.

Some of the primary criticisms of socialism and by extension communism are distorted or
absent price signals,[55][56]
slow or stagnant technological advance,[57]
reduced incentives,[58][59][60]
reduced prosperity,[61][62]
feasibility,[55][56][57]
and its social and political effects.[63][64][65][66][67][68]

Part of this criticism extends to the policies adopted by one-party states ruled
by communist parties (known as "communist states"). Some
scholars are specially focused on their human rights records which
are claimed to be responsible for famines, purges and warfare resulting in
deaths far in excess of previous empires, capitalist or other regimes.[69][70][71]
The Council of Europe in
Resolution
1481 and international declarations such as the Prague
Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the Declaration
on Crimes of Communism have condemned some of the actions that resulted in
these deaths as crimes.

Stéphane Courtois
argues that Communism and National Socialism
are slightly different totalitarian systems, and
that communism is responsible for the murder of around 100 million people in the
20th century. He also argues that Nazi repressive methods were largely adopted
from Soviet methods.[72]

References

Notes

^ a
b
c
"Communism". Columbia Encyclopedia. 2008. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/communism.aspx. Retrieved 29 November 2009.

^ Critique
of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx.

^ Full
Communism: The Ultimate Goal: http://www.economictheories.org/2009/05/full-communism-ultimate-goal.html
Archived 29 July 2011 at WebCite

^ Lenin's Collected Works Vol. 27, p. 293, quoted by Aufheben Archived 25
October 2009 at WebCite

^ a
b
Holmes 2009. p.
01.

^ Holmes 2009. p.
xii.

^ "Critique of the Gotha Programme—IV". Critique of the
Gotha Programme. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-18.

^ Private Property and Communism by Karl Marx, Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

^
"Communism". The Columbia
Encyclopedia (6th ed.). 2007. http://www.bartleby.com/65/co/communism.html. [dead
link]

^
"China's Transition to a Market Economy: How Far Across the
River?" (in English). Berkely.edu. http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~yqian/how%20far%20across%20the%20river.pdf. Retrieved 20 May 2011.

^
"The Winners And Losers In Chinese Capitalism – Gady Epstein –
Beijing Dispatch – Forbes" (in English). Forbes. Archived from the original on 2011-07-29. http://blogs.forbes.com/gadyepstein/2010/08/31/the-winners-and-losers-in-chinese-capitalism/. Retrieved 20 May 2011.

^
"Communism Is Dead, But State Capitalism Thrives – Great
Speculations – Buys, holds, and hopes – Forbes" (in English). Forbes. Archived from the original on 2011-07-29. http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2010/03/22/communism-is-dead-but-state-capitalism-thrives/. Retrieved 20 May 2011.

^
"Eastday
– China is already a market economy – Long Yongtu, Secretary General of Boao
Forum for Asia". Eastday. Archived from the
original on 2011-07-29. http://english.eastday.com/e/ICS/u1a4035916.html. Retrieved 20 May 2011.

^ Stephen
Whitefield. "Communism." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed.
Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University
Press, 2003.

^ a
b
c
McLean and McMillan, 2003.

^ Ball and
Dagger 118

^ Terence
Ball and Richard Dagger. "Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal." Pearson Education,
Inc.:2006.

^
Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels; Philip Gasper (1
October 2005). The Communist manifesto: a road map to history's most
important political document. Haymarket Books. pp. 60–63. ISBN 978-1-931859-25-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=KP639MoNBMMC&pg=PA60. Retrieved 12 April 2011.

^ Karl Marx,
(1845). The German
Ideology, Marx-Engels Institute, Moscow. ISBN
978-1-57392-258-6. Sources available at The German Ideology at www.marxists.org.

^ See Chapter 5 of Vladimir Lenin's The State and Revolution"
(1917).

^ Faces
of Janus p. 133.

^ Hill,
Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971) Penguin
Books:Londonp. 86.

^ Harding,
Neil (ed.) The State in Socialist Society, second edition (1984) St.
Antony's College: Oxford, p. 189.

^ ""Marxism and the National Question"".
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm.

^
From Politics Past to Politics Future: An Integrated Analysis
of Current and Emergent Paradigms Alan James Mayne Published 1999 Greenwood
Publishing Group 316 pages ISBN 0-275-96151-6. Books.google.com. 1999.
ISBN 978-0-275-96151-0. http://books.google.com/?id=6MkTz6Rq7wUC&pg=PA131&dq=Communist+anarchism+belives+in+collective+ownership. Retrieved 2010-09-20.

^ Anarchism for Know-It-Alls By Know-It-Alls For Know-It-Alls,
For Know-It-Alls Published by Filiquarian Publishing, LLC., 2008 ISBN
1-59986-218-2, 978-1-59986-218-7 72 pages. Books.google.com. 2008-01.
ISBN 978-1-59986-218-7. http://books.google.com/?id=jeiudz5sBV4C&pg=PA14&dq=Communist+anarchism+believes+in+common+ownership#PPA13,M1. Retrieved 2010-09-20.

^ Fabbri,
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^ Makhno,
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of the Libertarian Communists". 1926. Constructive Section: available here http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/platform/constructive.htm
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^
Christopher Gray, Leaving the Twentieth Century, p. 88.

^
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^
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^ "Communism
is the one which guarantees the greatest amount of individual liberty—provided
that the idea that begets the community be Liberty, Anarchy...Communism
guarantees economic freedom better than any other form of association, because
it can guarantee wellbeing, even luxury, in return for a few hours of work
instead of a day's work." "Communism and Anarchy" by [[Peter Kropotkin Archived 29 July 2011 at WebCite

^ This other
society will be libertarian communism, in which social solidarity and free
individuality find their full expression, and in which these two ideas develop
in perfect harmony.Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists by
Dielo Truda (Workers' Cause) Archived 29 July
2011 at WebCite

^ "I see the
dichotomies made between individualism and communism, individual revolt and
class struggle, the struggle against human exploitation and the exploitation
of nature as false dichotomies and feel that those who accept them are
impoverishing their own critique and struggle.""MY
PERSPECTIVES" by Willful Disobedience Vol. 2, No. 12 Archived 29 July 2011 at WebCite

^ The German
Ideology, Volume 1 of German Ideology & Selections from Pts 2
& 3, by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and
Christopher John Arthur, International Publishers Co, 1970, ISBN
978-0-7178-0302-6, pg 86

^ a
b
Richard Pipes Communism:
A History (2001) ISBN
978-0-8129-6864-4, pages 3–5.

^ "Historical
Background for Spartacus". Vroma.org. Archived from the
original on 2011-07-29. http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/spartacus.html. Retrieved 2009-10-18.

^ The
Cambridge History of Iran Volume 3, The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Period, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, Parts
1 and 2, p1019, Cambridge
University Press (1983)

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"Communism." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia
Britannica Online.

^
"Diggers' Manifesto". Archived from the
original on 2011-07-29. http://www.rogerlovejoy.co.uk/philosophy/diggers/diggers3.htm. Retrieved 2011-07-19.

^ "Eduard Bernstein: Cromwell and Communism (1895)". http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1895/cromwell/.

^ Eduard
Bernstein, (1895). Kommunistische und demokratisch-sozialistische
Strömungen während der englischen Revolution, J.H.W. Dietz, Stuttgart. OCLC 36367345 Sources available at Eduard Bernstein: Cromwell and Communism (1895) at
www.marxists.org.

^
"Communism" A Dictionary of Sociology. John Scott and Gordon
Marshall. Oxford University Press 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford
University Press.

^ Marc
Edelman, "Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the 'Peripheries of
Capitalism'" – book reviews. Monthly
Review, Dec., 1984. Late
Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the "Peripheries of Capitalism." - book
reviews Monthly Review

^ Norman
Davies. "Communism" The Oxford Companion to World War II. Ed. I. C.
B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot. Oxford
University Press, 2001.

^
"Glossary of Terms: Ma". Marxists
Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm#maoism. Retrieved 3 June 2011.

^
"Kushtetuta e
Republikës Popullore Socialiste të Shqipërisë : [miratuar nga Kuvendi
Popullor më 28. 12. 1976. – SearchWorks (SULAIR)"] (in Albanian). Archived from the original on 2011-07-29. http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1880822. Retrieved 3 June 2011.

^ a
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Georgakas, Dan (1992). "The Hollywood Blacklist".
Encyclopedia of the American Left. University of Illinois
Press.

^ Adams, John G. (1983). Without Precedent. New
York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-393-01616-1.

^ "Nepal's election The Maoists triumph Economist.com".
Economist.com. 2008-04-17. Archived from the
original on 2011-07-29. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11057207&fsrc=nwl. Retrieved 2009-10-18.

^ Fighting Poverty: Findings and Lessons from China’s Success
(World Bank). Retrieved August 10, 2006. Archived 29 July
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Communist Politics". World Politics (World Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3)
18 (3): 435–451. doi:10.2307/2009764. JSTOR 2009764. ?UNIQ3ab34e171166e61b-HTMLCommentStrip7c7dfbc41ccbeb7000000002

^ J. Arch Getty (1985).
Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered:
1933–1938. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33570-6.

^ a
b
Von Mises, Ludwig
(1990) (PDF). Economic calculation
in the Socialist Commonwealth. Ludwig von
Mises Institute. http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf. Retrieved 2008-09-08.

^ a
b
F. A. Hayek, (1935), "The Nature and History of the Problem" and "The Present
State of the Debate," om in F. A. Hayek, ed. Collectivist Economic
Planning, pp. 1–40, 201–43.

^ a
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^ Zoltan J.
Acs & Bernard Young. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Global
Economy. University of Michigan Press, page 47, 1999.

^ Mill, John
Stuart. The Principles of Political Economy, Book IV, Chapter 7.

^ John
Kenneth Galbraith, The Good Society: The Humane Agenda, (Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1996), 59–60."

^
Hans-Hermann Hoppe. A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism http://www.mises.org/etexts/Soc&Cap.pdf[dead
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^ Ludwig von Mises,
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^ F.A.
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^ Friedrich Hayek (1944). The Road to Serfdom.
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^ Bellamy, Richard (2003). The Cambridge History of
Twentieth-Century Political Thought. Cambridge University Press.
p. 60. ISBN 978-0-521-56354-3.

^
Self, Peter. Socialism. A Companion to Contemporary Political
Philosophy, editors Goodin, Robert E. and Pettit, Philip. Blackwell
Publishing, 1995, p.339 "Extreme equality overlooks the diversity of
individual talents, tastes and needs, and save in a utopian society of
unselfish individuals would entail strong coercion; but even short of this
goal, there is the problem of giving reasonable recognition to different
individual needs, tastes (for work or leisure) and talents. It is true
therefore that beyond some point the pursuit of equality runs into
controversial or contradictory criteria of need or merit."

^ Socialism Archived 29 July
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^ Rosefielde, Steven
(2009). Red
Holocaust. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-77757-5.

^ Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen. Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing
Assault on Humanity. PublicAffairs, 2009. ISBN
978-1-58648-769-0 p. 54: "...in the past century communist regimes, led
and inspired by the Soviet Union and China, have killed more people than any
other regime type."

^ Benjamin
A. Valentino. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth
Century. Cornell
University Press, 2004. p.73 ISBN
978-0-8014-3965-0

^ Courtois, Stéphane, ed (1999). The Black Book of
Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press.
p. 9. ISBN 978-0-674-07608-2.

Holmes, Leslie (2009). Communism:
A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN 978-0-19-955154-5.

Further reading

Forman, James D., "Communism From Marx's Manifesto To 20th century
Reality", New York, Watts. 1972. ISBN
978-0-531-02571-0

Furet, Francois,
Furet, Deborah Kan (Translator), "The Passing of An Illusion: The Idea of
Communism In the Twentieth Century", University of
Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN
978-0-226-27341-9

Daniels, Robert Vincent, "A Documentary History of Communism and the
World: From Revolution to Collapse", University Press of New
England, 1994, ISBN
978-0-87451-678-4

Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Communist
Manifesto", (Mass Market Paperback – REPRINT), Signet Classics, 1998, ISBN
978-0-451-52710-3

Dirlik, Arif, "Origins of Chinese Communism", Oxford University Press,
1989, ISBN
978-0-19-505454-5

Beer, Max, "The General History of
Socialism and Social Struggles Volumes 1 & 2", New York, Russel and
Russel, Inc. 1957

Adami, Stefano, 'Communism', in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies,
ed. Gaetana Marrone – P.Puppa, Routledge, New York- London, 2006

Pons. Silvio Pons & Service, Robert, "A Dictionary of 20th century
Communism" (2010)

Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin,
Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane
Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror,
Repression, Harvard
University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN
978-0-674-07608-2

Anne Applebaum,
foreword, Paul Hollander,
introduction and editor, From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal
Accounts of Political Violence And Repression in Communist Studies,
Intercollegiate Studies Institute (April 17, 2006), hardcover, 760 pages, ISBN
978-1-932236-78-1

Alexandre Zinoviev,
The Reality of Communism (1980), Publisher Schocken, 320p, 1984

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