- Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownership of the means of production. It can be classified as a branch of the broader socialist movement.
- Various offshoots of the Soviet and Maoist interpretations of Marxism-Leninism comprise a particular branch of communism that has the distinction of having been the primary driving force for communism in world politics during most of the 20th century.
- Karl Marx held that society could not be transformed from the capitalist mode of production to the communist mode of production all at once but required a transitional period which Marx described as the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. The communist society, which Marx envisioned emerging from capitalism, has never been implemented, and it remains theoretical; Marx, in fact, commented very little on what acommunist society would actually look like. However, the term ‘Communism’, especially when it is capitalized, is often used to refer to the political and economic regimes under communist parties that claimed to embody the dictatorship of the proletariat.
- In the late 19th century, Marxist theories motivated socialist parties across Europe, although their policies later developed along the lines of “reforming” capitalism, rather than overthrowing it. The exception was the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. One branch of this party, commonly known as the Bolsheviks and headed by Vladimir Lenin, succeeded in taking control of the country after the toppling of the Provisional Government in the Russian Revolution 1917. In 1918, this party changed its name to the Communist Party, thus establishing the contemporary distinction between communism and other trends of socialism.
- After the success of the October Revolution in Russia, many socialist parties in other countries became communist parties, signaling varying degrees of allegiance to the new Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After World War II, Communists consolidated power in 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 unique ideological path of communist development. Among the other countries in the Third World that adopted a pro-communist government at some point were Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, Laos, Angola, and Mozambique. By the early 1980s almost one-third of the world’s population lived in Communist states.
Early Communism
- Karl Marx saw primitive communism as the original hunter-gatherer state of mankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of producing surplus, did private property develop.
- In the history of Western thought, the idea of a society based on common ownership of property can be traced back to ancient times. In his 4th century BCE The Republic, Plato considers the idea of the ruling class sharing property. In the republic, the ruling or guardian classes are committed to an austere and communistic way of life, with the aim of devoting all of their time and efforts to public service.
- At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture. In the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and other property. These groups often believed that concern with private property was a distraction from religious service to God and neighbour. Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France.
- 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 poor, urban factory workers who labored 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.
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. But 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.
- 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.
- Marx here follows Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of restraints but as action with content. 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 have any need for exploitation. 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(dialectical materialism), particularly the development of the means of production.
- 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 ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community. 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. 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.”
- Marx’s lasting vision was to add this vision to a positive scientific theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way toward communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about.
- 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 give way to 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.
