Not to be confused with Communalism or Communitarianism.
For other uses, see Communism (disambiguation).
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Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement,[1] 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.[3][4][5] A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state (or nation state).[7][8][9]
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.[10] 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.[11][12][note 1]
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.[20][note 2] 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.[22] According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power,[23] and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.[24][25][26]
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.[1] In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power,[27][note 3] 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.[33] 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.[34]
During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived under Communist governments. These governments were characterized by one-party rule by a communist party, the rejection of private property and capitalism, state control of economic activity and mass media, restrictions on freedom of religion, and suppression of opposition and dissent. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, several previously Communist governments repudiated or abolished Communist rule altogether.[1][35][36] Afterwards, only a small number of nominally Communist governments remained, such as China,[37] Cuba, Laos, North Korea,[note 4] and Vietnam.[44] With the exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule.[1] The decline of communism in the late 20th century has been attributed to the inherent inefficiencies of communist economies and the general trend of communist governments towards authoritarianism and bureaucracy.[1][44][45]
While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to communism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, several scholars posit that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism.[46][47] Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between anti anti-communism and anti-communism.[48] Many authors have written about mass killings under communist regimes and mortality rates,[note 5] such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin,[note 6] which remain controversial, polarized, and debated topics in academia, historiography, and politics when discussing communism and the legacy of Communist states.[66][67]
^ abcdefgBall, Terence; Dagger, Richard, eds. (2019) [1999]. "Communism". Encyclopædia Britannica (revised ed.). Retrieved 10 June 2020.
^"Communism". World Book Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. Chicago: World Book. 2008. p. 890. ISBN 978-0-7166-0108-1.
^Ely, Richard T (1883). French and German socialism in modern times. New York: Harper & Brothers. pp. 35–36. OCLC 456632. All communists without exception propose that the people as a whole, or some particular division of the people, as a village or commune, should own all the means of production – land, houses, factories, railroads, canals, etc.; that production should be carried on in common; and that officers, selected in one way or another, should distribute among the inhabitants the fruits of their labor.
^Bukharin, Nikolai; Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni (1922) [1920]. "Distribution in the communist system" (PDF). The ABC of Communism. Translated by Paul, Cedar; Paul, Eden. London, England: Communist Party of Great Britain. pp. 72–73, § 20. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
^Steele (1992), p. 43: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption."
^Engels, Friedrich (2005) [1847]. "Section 18: What will be the course of this revolution?". The Principles of Communism. Translated by Sweezy, Paul. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive. Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.
^Bukharin, Nikolai; Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni (1922) [1920]. "Administration in the communist system" (PDF). The ABC of Communism. Translated by Paul, Cedar; Paul, Eden. London, England: Communist Party of Great Britain. pp. 73–75, § 21. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
^Kurian, George, ed. (2011). "Withering Away of the State". The Encyclopedia of Political Science. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. doi:10.4135/9781608712434. ISBN 978-1-933116-44-0. Retrieved 3 January 2016 – via SAGE Publishing.
^"Communism - Non-Marxian communism". Britannica. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
^Kinna, Ruth (2012). Berry, Dave; Kinna, Ruth; Pinta, Saku; Prichard, Alex (eds.). Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–34. ISBN 9781137284754.
^March, Luke (2009). "Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream?" (PDF). IPG. 1: 126–143 – via Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
^George & Wilcox 1996, p. 95 "The far left in America consists principally of people who believe in some form of Marxism-Leninism, i.e., some form of Communism. A small minority of extreme leftists adhere to "pure" Marxism or collectivist anarchism. Most far leftists scorn reforms (except as a short-term tactic), and instead aim for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system including the U.S. government."
^"Left". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 April 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2022. ... communism is a more radical leftist ideology.
^"Radical left". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 16 July 2022. Radical left is a term that refers collectively to people who hold left-wing political views that are considered extreme, such as supporting or working to establish communism, Marxism, Maoism, socialism, anarchism, or other forms of anticapitalism. The radical left is sometimes called the far left.
^March, Luke (2009). "Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream?" (PDF). IPG. 1: 126 – via Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The far left is becoming the principal challenge to mainstream social democratic parties, in large part because its main parties are no longer extreme, but present themselves as defending the values and policies that social democrats have allegedly abandoned.
^March, Luke (2012). Radical Left Parties in Europe (E-book ed.). London: Routledge. p. 1724. ISBN 978-1-136-57897-7.
^Cosseron, Serge (2007). Dictionnaire de l'extrême gauche [Dictionary of the far left] (in French) (paperback ed.). Paris: Larousse. p. 20. ISBN 978-2-035-82620-6. Retrieved 19 November 2021 – via Google Books.
^March, Luke (2009). "Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream?" (PDF). IPG. 1: 129 – via Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
^March, Luke (September 2012). "Problems and Perspectives of Contemporary European Radical Left Parties: Chasing a Lost World or Still a World to Win?". International Critical Thought. 2 (3). London: Routledge: 314–339. doi:10.1080/21598282.2012.706777. S2CID 154948426.
^Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl (1969) [1848]. "Bourgeois and Proletarians". The Communist Manifesto. Marx/Engels Selected Works. Vol. 1. Translated by Moore, Samuel. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 98–137. Retrieved 1 March 2022 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
^Newman 2005; Morgan 2015.
^Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl (1969) [1848]. "Bourgeois and Proletarians". The Communist Manifesto. Translated by Moore, Samuel. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Retrieved 1 March 2022 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
^Gasper, Phillip (2005). The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document. Haymarket Books. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-931859-25-7. Marx and Engels never speculated on the detailed organization of a future socialist or communist society. The key task for them was building a movement to overthrow capitalism. If and when that movement was successful, it would be up to the members of the new society to decide democratically how it was to be organized, in the concrete historical circumstances in which they found themselves.
^Steele (1992), pp. 44–45: "By 1888, the term 'socialism' was in general use among Marxists, who had dropped 'communism', now considered an old fashioned term meaning the same as 'socialism'. ... At the turn of the century, Marxists called themselves socialists. ... The definition of socialism and communism as successive stages was introduced into Marxist theory by Lenin in 1917 ..., the new distinction was helpful to Lenin in defending his party against the traditional Marxist criticism that Russia was too backward for a socialist revolution."
^Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First (7th ed.). South-Western College Pub. p. 118. ISBN 0-618-26181-8. Under socialism, each individual would be expected to contribute according to capability, and rewards would be distributed in proportion to that contribution. Subsequently, under communism, the basis of reward would be need.
^Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-8047-7566-3. According to nineteenth-century socialist views, socialism would function without capitalist economic categories – such as money, prices, interest, profits and rent – and thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science. While some socialists recognized the need for money and prices at least during the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialists more commonly believed that the socialist economy would soon administratively mobilize the economy in physical units without the use of prices or money.
^Smith, Stephen (2014). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 3.
^"IV. Glossary". Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington. Retrieved 13 August 2021. ... communism (noun) ... 2. The economic and political system instituted in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Also, the economic and political system of several Soviet allies, such as China and Cuba. (Writers often capitalize Communism when they use the word in this sense.) These Communist economic systems often did not achieve the ideals of communist theory. For example, although many forms of property were owned by the government in the USSR and China, neither the work nor the products were shared in a manner that would be considered equitable by many communist or Marxist theorists.
^Diamond, Sara (1995). Roads to Dominion: Right-wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. Guilford Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-8986-2864-7. Retrieved 23 August 2021 – via Google Books.
^Courtois, Stéphane; et al. (Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Panné, Jean-Louis; Werth, Nicolas) (1999) [1997]. "Introduction". In Courtois, Stéphane (ed.). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. pp. ix–x, 2. ISBN 978-0-674-07608-2. Retrieved 23 August 2021 – via Google Books.
^Wald, Alan M. (2012). Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left. University of North Carolina Press. p. xix. ISBN 978-1-4696-0867-9. Retrieved 13 August 2021 – via Google Books.
^Silber, Irwin (1994). Socialism: What Went Wrong? An Inquiry into the Theoretical and Historical Sources of the Socialist Crisis(PDF) (hardback ed.). London: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745307169 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
^Darity, William A. Jr., ed. (2008). "Communism". International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 2 (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 35–36. ISBN 9780028661179.
^Newman 2005, p. 5: "Chapter 1 looks at the foundations of the doctrine by examining the contribution made by various traditions of socialism in the period between the early 19th century and the aftermath of the First World War. The two forms that emerged as dominant by the early 1920s were social democracy and communism."
^"Communism". Encarta. Archived from the original on 29 January 2009. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
^Dunn, Dennis (2016). A History of Orthodox, Islamic, and Western Christian Political Values. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 126–131. ISBN 978-3319325668.
^Frenkiel, Émilie; Shaoguang, Wang (15 July 2009). "Political change and democracy in China" (PDF). Laviedesidees.fr. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 September 2017. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
^Dae-Kyu, Yoon (2003). "The Constitution of North Korea: Its Changes and Implications". Fordham International Law Journal. 27 (4): 1289–1305. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
^Park, Seong-Woo (23 September 2009). "Bug gaejeong heonbeob 'seongunsasang' cheos myeong-gi" 북 개정 헌법 '선군사상' 첫 명기 [First stipulation of the 'Seongun Thought' of the North Korean Constitution] (in Korean). Radio Free Asia. Archived from the original on 17 May 2021. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
^Seth, Michael J. (2019). A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 159. ISBN 9781538129050. Archived from the original on 6 February 2021. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
^Fisher, Max (6 January 2016). "The single most important fact for understanding North Korea". Vox. Archived from the original on 6 March 2021. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
^Worden, Robert L., ed. (2008). North Korea: A Country Study(PDF) (5th ed.). Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-8444-1188-0. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 July 2021. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
^Schwekendiek, Daniel (2011). A Socioeconomic History of North Korea. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. p. 31. ISBN 978-0786463442.
^ abLansford 2007, pp. 9–24, 36–44.
^Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Chomsky (1986); Howard & King (2001); Fitzgibbons (2002)
^Wolff, Richard D. (27 June 2015). "Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees". Truthout. Archived from the original on 11 March 2018. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
^Ghodsee, Sehon & Dresser 2018.
^Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (1999). "Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data. Not the Last Word". Europe-Asia Studies. 51 (2): 315–345. doi:10.1080/09668139999056. ISSN 0966-8136. JSTOR 153614.
^Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2000). "The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and Its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest". Europe-Asia Studies. 52 (6): 1143–1159. doi:10.1080/09668130050143860. ISSN 0966-8136. JSTOR 153593. PMID 19326595. S2CID 205667754.
^Lansford 2007, pp. 24–25.
^Getty, J. Arch (22 January 1987). "Starving the Ukraine". The London Review of Books. Vol. 9, no. 2. pp. 7–8. Retrieved 13 August 2021.
^Marples, David R. (May 2009). "Ethnic Issues in the Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine". Europe-Asia Studies. 61 (3): 505–518. doi:10.1080/09668130902753325. JSTOR 27752256. S2CID 67783643.
^Davies, Sarah; Harris, James (2005). "Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas". Stalin: A New History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–5. ISBN 978-1-139-44663-1.
^Ellman, Michael (2002). "Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies. 54 (7): 1172. doi:10.1080/0966813022000017177. S2CID 43510161.
^Cite error: The named reference Karllson & Schoenhals 2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Hoffman, Stanley (Spring 1998). "Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression) by Stéphane Courtois". Foreign Policy. 110 (Special Edition: Frontiers of Knowledge): 166–169. doi:10.2307/1149284. JSTOR 1149284.
^Paczkowski 2001.
^Rosefielde, Steven (2010). Red Holocaust. London: Routledge. p. xvi. ISBN 978-0-415-77757-5 – via Google Books.
^Suny, Ronald Grigor (2007). "Russian Terror/ism and Revisionist Historiography". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 53 (1): 5–19. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.2007.00439.x. ... [leaves out] most of the 40-60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible.
^Getty, J. Arch; Rittersporn, Gábor; Zemskov, Viktor (October 1993). "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence" (PDF). The American Historical Review. 98 (4): 1017–1049. doi:10.2307/2166597. JSTOR 2166597. Retrieved 17 August 2021 – via Soviet Studies.
^Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (March 1999). "Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data. Not the Last Word" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies. 51 (2): 340–342. doi:10.1080/09668139999056. JSTOR 153614. Retrieved 17 August 2021 – via Soviet Studies.
^Snyder, Timothy (27 January 2011). "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 17 August 2021. See also p. 384 of Snyder's Bloodlands.
^Cite error: The named reference Ghodsee 2014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Neumayer 2018 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).
Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal') is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist...
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