This has nothing in common with traditional Polish values (Cienski 2017). Billington. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). During the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin suggested that a monument be dedicated to More, alongside other important Western thinkers. 
It was a result of the declaration number 142- of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. From 1917 to 1922, Leninism was the Russian application of Marxian economics and political philosophy as effected and realized by the Bolsheviks, the vanguard party who led the fight for the political independence of the working class. Like a degenerated workers' state, a deformed workers' state cannot be said to be a state that is transitioning to socialism. MarxismLeninism remained after de-Stalinization whereas Stalinism did not. [59] The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia (modern-day 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 striving to create an egalitarian society. [44], According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist societypositive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc.
Transitional Justice and the Politics of Commemoration", "Anti-Communism and the Hundreds of Millions of Victims of Capitalism", "100 Years of Communismand 100 Million Dead", "Advocating for the Cause of the 'Victims of Communism' in the European Political Space: Memory Entrepreneurs in Interstitial Fields", "Anti-Communism: It's High Time to Diagnose and Counteract", "Erasure of the Common: From Polish Anti-Communism to Universal Anti-Capitalism", "A Tale of 'Two Totalitarianisms': The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism", "Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation and Purification in Post-Socialist Spaces", "One Recipe for a More Equal World: Mass Death", Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union, Bibliography of the Post Stalinist Soviet Union, "MarxismLeninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism", International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, "The Long-Term Effects of Communism in Eastern Europe", "Marx on the Russian Mir, and misconceptions by Marxists", "The True Levellers Standard Advanced, the Diggers' Manifesto", "The True Levellers Standard Advanced: Or, The State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&oldid=1099065182, Articles with Russian-language sources (ru), Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from June 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2021, Articles needing additional references from January 2022, All articles needing additional references, Articles needing additional references from February 2022, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from June 2021, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the New International Encyclopedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 18 July 2022, at 20:52. "[200], Anti-communism developed as soon as communism became a conscious political movement in the 19th century, and anti-communist mass killings have been reported against alleged communists, or their alleged supporters which were committed by anti-communists and political organizations or governments which opposed communism. In the ideal state described in Platos Republic, the governing class of guardians devotes itself to serving the interests of the whole community. Citing outdated voter-rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the BolshevikLeft Socialist-Revolutionaries government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. 1922", "MY PERSPECTIVES Willful Disobedience Vol. [99], Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in China in 1949 as the Nationalists headed by the Kuomintang fled to the island of Taiwan. [32][g] Historian Andrzej Paczkowski summarized communism as "an ideology that seemed clearly the opposite, that was based on the secular desire of humanity to achieve equality and social justice, and that promised a great leap forward into freedom. [130] Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxism thought that emerged after the death of Marx and which became the official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until World War I in 1914. [95] Despite communism in the name, it had nothing to do with communism, with strict discipline for workers, strike actions forbidden, obligatory labor duty, and military-style control, and has been described as simple authoritarian control by the Bolsheviks to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology. The Marxist communist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people. Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and now better known as historical materialism, to analyze and critique the development of class society and especially of capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic economic, social and political change. The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. [256] Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as "a battleground." Hudis, Peter; Vidal, Matt, Smith, Tony; Rotta, Toms; Prew, Paul, eds. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in 1936 anarcho-communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante, and Andalusia, and in the stronghold of Revolutionary Catalonia, before being brutally crushed. [73], In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. There were also many developments in libertarian Marxism, especially during the 1960s with the New Left. [79][nb 3] The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (majority) plan for socialist revolution before the capitalist mode of production was more fully developed. ", "3. Gerstle argues that organized labor in the US was strongest when the threat of communism reached its peak, and the decline of both organized labor and the welfare state coincided with the collapse of communism. While ended in a military stalemate, it gave Mao the opportunity to identify and purge elements in China that seemed supportive of capitalism. Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a far-left[3][4][5] philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order based on the idea of common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchangeallocating products to everyone in the society. These reforms are described by scholars as progress, and by some left-wing critics as a regression to capitalism, or as state capitalism, but the ruling parties describe it as a necessary adjustment to existing realities in the post-Soviet world in order to maximize industrial productive capacity. The Church in Jerusalem. [70][71] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Abb de Mably, Jean Meslier, tienne-Gabriel Morelly, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Fall of Communism, there was a split between those hardline Communists, sometimes referred to in the media as neo-Stalinists, who remained committed to orthodox MarxismLeninism, and those, such as The Left in Germany, who work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism,[120] while other ruling Communist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social-democratic parties. [] In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster". Although the term communism did not come into use until the 1840sit is derived from the Latin communis, meaning shared or commonvisions of a society that may be considered communist appeared as long ago as the 4th century bce. [149], Stalinism represents Stalin's style of governance as opposed to MarxismLeninism, the socioeconomic system and political ideology implemented by Stalin in the Soviet Union and later adapted by other states based on the ideological Soviet model, such as central planning, nationalization, and one-party state, along with public ownership of the means of production, accelerated industrialization, pro-active development of society's productive forces (research and development), and nationalized natural resources. Dowlah, Alex F.; Elliott, John E. (1997). Especially prominent in France, Italy, and Spain, communists of this nature sought to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union and its Communist party during the Cold War. [131] As a term, orthodox Marxism represents the methods of historical materialism and of dialectical materialism, and not the normative aspects inherent to classical Marxism, without implying dogmatic adherence to the results of Marx's investigations. In periods of deep crisis, the resistance of the oppressed can culminate in a proletarian revolution which, if victorious, leads to the establishment of the socialist mode of production based on social ownership of the means of production, "To each according to his contribution", and production for use. Communism is thus a form of socialisma higher and more advanced form, according to its advocates. However, over the years others have made contributionsor corruptions, depending on ones perspectiveto Marxist thought. These states are considered deformed because their political and economic structures have been imposed from the top (or from outside) and because revolutionary working class organizations are crushed. Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolutionrather than socialism in one countryand support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles. [181] Bordigism is a Leninist left-communist current named after Amadeo Bordiga, who has been described as being "more Leninist than Lenin", and considered himself to be a Leninist. In the teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The two most prominent militants were Marshall Lin Biao of the army and Mao's wife Jiang Qing. "[45], While it originates from the works of Marx and Engels, Marxism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. [157] Three common Maoist values are revolutionary populism, being practical, and dialectics. Communism is a political and economic system that seeks to create a classless society in which the major means of production, such as mines and factories, are owned and controlled by the public. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. First Persecution. Communism may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for the community"; this semantic constitution has led to numerous usages of the word in its evolution. [162][179][180], Left communists represent a range of political movements distinct from MarxistLeninists, whom they largely view as merely the left-wing of capital, from anarcho-communists, some of whom they consider to be internationalist socialists, and from various other revolutionary socialist tendencies, such as De Leonists, whom they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances. [18][nb 2] Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s. [102] The two nations were at sword's point by 1960. [122][123], China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy, and along with Laos, Vietnam, and to a lesser degree Cuba, has decentralized state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Millions of people were accused, humiliated, stripped of power and either imprisoned, killed or most often sent to work as farm laborers. According to Marxian crisis theory, communism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity. [182], Anarcho-communism is a libertarian theory of anarchism and communism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production;[183][184] 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";[185][186] anarcho-communism differs from Marxism in that it rejects its view about the need for a state socialism phase prior to establishing communism.
[97] Trotskyism overtook the left communists as the main dissident communist current, while more libertarian communisms, dating back to the libertarian Marxist current of council communism, remained important dissident communisms outside the Soviet Union. For a while, Mao was in the shadows, but he returned to center stage and purged Deng and his allies in the Cultural Revolution (19661976). Bible", "III. Although the term communism did not come into use until the 1840s, societies that may be considered communist were described as long ago as the 4th century BCE, when Plato wrote the Republic. Some authors have connected killings in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao Zedong's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia on the basis that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot; in all cases, killings were carried out as part of a policy of an unbalanced modernization process of rapid industrialization. ", while on the political right, there are "the committed anti-totalitarians, both east and west, insisting that all experiments with Marxism will always and inevitably end with the gulag. "[63] This link was highlighted in one of Karl Marx's early writings; Marx stated that "[a]s Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty. [273], Conservatives, liberals, and social democrats all view 20th-century Communist states as unqualified failures, which according to Jodi Dean, limits the scope of discussion around political alternatives to capitalism and neoliberalism. 222, Erik, Cornell. Prior to becoming associated with its more modern conception of an economic and political organization, it was initially used in designating various social situations. This new and better society is called socialist society. The higher estimates have been criticized by several scholars as ideologically motivated and inflated; they are also criticized for being inaccurate due to incomplete data, inflated by counting any excess death, making an unwarranted link to communism, and the grouping and body-counting itself. Its adherents claim that as a unified, coherent higher stage of Marxism, it was not consolidated until the 1980s, first being formalized by the Peruvian communist party Shining Path in 1982. The movement spread into the military, urban workers and the Communist Party leadership itself. [39] Council communism and left-communism, inspired by the November Revolution in Germany and the proletarian revolutionary wave, arose in response to developments in Russia and are critical of self-declared constitutionally socialist states. He used these terms completely interchangeably. Within Leninism, democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the communist party. [150] According to Engels, state property by itself is private property of capitalist nature[a] unless the proletariat has control of political power, in which case it forms public property. [152], Trotskyism, developed by Leon Trotsky in opposition to Stalinism,[153] is a Marxist and Leninist tendency that supports the theory of permanent revolution and world revolution rather than the two-stage theory and Stalin's socialism in one country. [nb 7] Some authors posit that there is a Communist death toll, whose death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them, ranging from lows of 1020 million to highs over 100 million. In the Moscow Trials, many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Alexei Rykov, and Nikolai Bukharin, were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed.[98][97]. Neptune has winds that blow faster than the speed of sound, with gusts reaching 1,500 mph. While in exile, Trotsky continued his campaign against Stalin, founding in 1938 the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern. As summarized by Janzen Rod and Max Stanton, the Hutterites believed in strict adherence to biblical principles, church discipline, and practiced a form of communism.
[10][11][12] Communism, while sometimes used as a synonym of socialism, is mainly a specific, yet distinct, form of socialism. [1][26] Walter Scheidel stated that despite wide-reaching government actions, Communist states failed to achieve long-term economic, social and political success. [137], An important concept in Marxism is socialization versus nationalization. However, none of these meet the true definition of communism. The communist movement has faced opposition since it was founded and the opposition to it has often been organized and violent. Plants were built in remote locations, despite the lack of technical experts, managers, transportation or needed facilities. [94], War communism was the first system adopted by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War as result of the many challenges. [265][266] Works such as The Black Book of Communism and Bloodlands legitimized debates on the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism,[264][267] and by extension communism, and the former work in particular was important in the criminalization of communism. MarxismLeninism is a political ideology developed by Joseph Stalin. Most scholars write about individual events, and make estimates of any deaths like any other historical event; some events are categorized by a Communist state's particular era, such as Stalinist repression, Most genocide scholars do not lump Communist states together, and do not treat genocidical events as a separate subjects, or by regime-type, and compare them to genocidical events which happened under vastly different, The Cambodia case is particular because it is different from the emphasis Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China gave to.
