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Comunist

Comunist

:This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. For issues regarding Communist organizations, see the Communist party article. For issues regarding Communist Party-run states, see Communist state. Communism refers to a theoretical system of social organization and a political movement based on common ownership of the means of production. As a political movement, communism seeks to establish a classless society. A major force in world politics since the early 20th century, modern communism is generally associated with The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, according to which the capitalist profit-based system of private ownership is replaced by a communist society in which the means of production are communally owned, such as through a gift economy. Often this process is said initiated by the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie (see Marxism), passes through a transitional period marked by the preparatory stage of socialism (see Leninism). Pure communism has never been implemented, it remains theoretical: communism is, in Marxist theory, the end-state, or the result of state-socialism. The word is now mainly understood to refer to the political, economic, and social theory of Marxist thinkers, or life under conditions of Communist party rule. 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 Workers' 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 of 1917. In 1918, this party changed its name to the Communist Party; thus establishing the contemporary distinction between communism and socialism. After the success of the October Revolution in Russia, many socialist parties in other countries became communist parties, owing allegiance of varying degrees to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (see Communist International). After World War II, regimes calling themselves communist took power in Eastern Europe. In 1949 the Communists in China, led by Mao Zedong, came to power and established the People's Republic of China. Among the other countries in the Third World that adopted a Communist form of government at some point were Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, and Mozambique. By the early 1980s, almost one-third of the world's population lived under Communist states. Communism never became a popular ideology in the United States, either before or after the establishment of the Communist Party USA in 1919. Since the early 1970s, the term "Eurocommunism" was used to refer to the policies of Communist Parties in Western Europe, which sought to break with the tradition of uncritical and unconditional support of the Soviet Union. Such parties were politically active and electorally significant in France and Italy. With the collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe from the late 1980s and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Communism's influence has decreased dramatically in Europe, but around a quarter of the world's population still lives under Communist Party rule.

Marxism

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and 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 G.W.F. Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of constraints but as action having moral content. Not only does communism allow people to do what they want but it puts humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to have need for exploitation. Whereas for Hegel, the unfolding of this ethnical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material, especially 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 his abilities, and received according to his 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. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm] 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. Some of Marx's contemporaries, such as Mikhail Bakunin, espoused similar ideas, but differed in their views of how to reach to a harmonic society with no classes. To this day there has been a split in the workers movement between Marxists (communists) and anarchists. The anarchists are against, and wish to abolish, every state organisation. Among them, anarchist-communists such as Peter Kropotkin believed in an immediate transition to one society with no classes, while anarcho-syndicalists believe that labor unions, as opposed to Communist parties, are the organizations that can help usher this society.

The growth of modern Communism

Soviet Marxism

In Russia, the modern world's first effort to build socialism or communism on a large scale, following the 1917 October Revolution, led by Lenin's Bolsheviks, raised significant theoretical and practical debates on communism among Marxists themselves. Marx's theory had presumed that revolutions would occur where capitalist development was the most advanced and where a large working class was already in place. Russia, however, was the poorest country in Europe, with an enormous, illiterate peasantry and little industry. Under these circumstances, it was necessary for the communists, according to Marxian theory, to create a working class itself. Nevertheless, some socialists believed that a Russian revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the west. For this reason, the socialist Mensheviks had opposed Lenin's communist Bolsheviks in their demand for socialist revolution before capitalism had been established. In seizing power, the Bolsheviks found themselves without a program beyond their pragmatic and politically successful slogans "peace, bread, and land," which had tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War and the peasants' demand for land reform. The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies. The revolutionary Bolsheviks broke completely with the non-revolutionary social democratic movement, withdrew from the Second International, and formed the Third International, or Comintern, in 1919. 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, their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state. In the early 1920s, the Soviet Communists formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 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. In 1918-1920, in the middle of the Russian Civil War, the new regime nationalized all productive property. When mutiny and peasant unrest resulted, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP). However, Joseph Stalin's personal fight for leadership spelled the end of the NEP, and he used his control over personnel to abandon the program. The Soviet Union and other countries ruled by Communist Parties are often described as 'Communist states' with 'state socialist' economic bases. This usage indicates that they proclaim that they have realized part of the socialist program by abolishing private control of the means of production and establishing state control over the economy; however, they do not declare themselves truly communist, as they have not established communal ownership.

Stalinism

The Stalinist version of socialism, with some important modifications, 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 collectivization. The rapid development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, maintained that vision throughout the world, even around a decade following Stalin's death, when the party adopted a program in which it promised the establishment of communism within thirty years. However, under Stalin's leadership, evidence emerged that dented faith in the possibility of achieving communism within the framework of the Soviet model. Stalin had created in the Soviet Union a repressive state that dominated every aspect of life. After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev admitted the enormity of the repression that took place under Stalin. Later, growth declined, and rent-seeking and corruption by state officials increased, which dented the legitimacy of the Soviet system. Despite the activity of the Comintern, the Soviet Communist Party adopted the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country" and claimed that, due to the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism," it was possible, even necessary, to build socialism in one country alone. This departure from Marxist internationalism was challenged by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution" stressed the necessity of world revolution.

Trotskyism

Trotsky and his supporters organized into the "Left Opposition," and their platform became known as Trotskyism. But Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining full control of the Soviet regime, and their attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. After Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured in two distinct branches: Stalinism and Trotskyism. Trotsky later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern, in 1938. Though some follow Trotskyism today, Trotsky's theories were never reaccepted in Communist circles in the Soviet bloc, even after Stalin's death; and Trotsky's interpretation of communism has not been successful in leading a political revolution that would overthrow a state. However, Trotskyist ideas have occasionally found an echo among political movements in countries experiencing social upheavals (such is the case of Alan Woods' Trotskyist Committee for a Marxist International, which has had contact with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela), most parties are active in politically stable, developed countries (such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany). It is noteworthy that Trotskyists groups that contribute with pro-capitalist parties have not escaped criticism as opportunists from other Trotskyists which are loathe to do so (see Trotskyism).

Cold War years

As the Soviet Union won important allies by victory in the Second World War in Eastern Europe, communism as a movement spread to a number of new countries, and gave rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism. Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern Europe. Governments modeled on Soviet Communism were formed in Albania, 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, and Titoism, a new branch in the world communist movement, was labeled "deviationist." By 1950 the Chinese Communists held all of China except Taiwan, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases actual fighting include Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and, especially, Vietnam (see Vietnam War). With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against Western imperialism in these poor countries.

Maoism

After the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin's crimes and his cult of personality. He called for a return to the principles of Lenin, thus presaging some change in Communist methods. However, Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological differences between China and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly apparent in the 1960s and 1970s. As the Sino-Soviet Split in the international Communist movement turned toward open hostility, Maoist China portrayed itself as a leader of the underdeveloped world against the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with Maoism gaining recognition worldwide as a new branch of Marxism.

Collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism today

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 itself dissolved. By the beginning of the 21st century, Communist parties hold power in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova is a member of the Communist Party of Moldova, but the country is not run under one-party leadership. However, China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Communist parties, or their descendent parties, remain politically important in many European countries and throughout the Third World, particularly in India. Theories within Marxism as to why communism in 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. Marxist critics of the Soviet Union referred to the Soviet system, along with other Communist states, as "state capitalism," arguing that Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal. They argued that the state and party bureaucratic elite acted as a surrogate capitalist class in the heavily centralized and repressive political apparatus. 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 anticommunists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, many social scientists identified possibilities for independent political activity within them, and stressed their continued evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, Marxist revolutionaries are active in India, Nepal, and Colombia.

"Communism" or "communism"?

According to the 1996 third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, communism and derived words are written with the lowercase "c" except when they refer to a political party of that name, a member of that party, or a government led by such a party, in which case the word "Communist" is written with the uppercase "C".

Criticism of communism

:Main article: Criticisms of communism. A diverse array of writers and political activists have published anticommunist work, such as Soviet bloc dissidents Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel; economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman; and historians and social scientists Hannah Arendt, Robert Conquest, Daniel Pipes and R. J. Rummel, to name a few. Some writers such as Conquest go beyond attributing large-scale human rights abuses to Communist regimes, presenting events occurring in these countries, particularly under Stalin, as an argument against the ideology of Communism itself. It should be noted that these are criticisms of Communist parties and states they have ruled, rather than criticisms of communism as such. It should also be noted that many Communist parties outside of the Warsaw Pact (i.e. Communist parties in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa) differed greatly, therefore no single criticism fits all.

See also


- Communist state
- Anti-communism
- Criticisms of communism
- Post-Communism

Schools of communism


- Anarchist communism
- Council communism
- De Leonism
- Eurocommunism
- Hoxhaism
- Juche
- Left communism
- Luxembourgism
- Marxism
- Marxism-Leninism
- Maoism
- Stalinism
- Trotskyism

Organizations and people


- Communist Party
- List of Communist parties
- List of Communists

Further reading


- Fernando Claudin, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform (1975)
- Pipes, Richard, "Communism", London, (2001), ISBN 0-297-64688-5

External links

Online resources for original Marxist literature


- [http://www.marxists.org Marxists Internet Archive]
- [http://www.libcom.org/library Libertarian Communist Library]
- [http://www.marxist.net Marxist.net]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm?title= Theses on Feuerbach]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm?title= Principles of Communism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm?title= The Communist Manifesto]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm?title= The Civil War in France]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm?title= Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1896/960126.htm Reform or Revolution?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm?title= What is to be Done?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep/index.htm?title= One Step Forward, Two Steps Back]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/two-tact/index.htm?title= Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm?title= Materialism and Empirio-Criticism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm?title= The Right of Nations to Self-Determination]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm?title= Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm?title= The State and Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/index.htm?title= The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/index.htm?title= The Tasks of the Proletariat In Our Revolution] Category:Communism Category:Political theories Category:Society Category:Economic ideologies zh-min-nan:Kiōng-sán-chú-gī ko:공산주의 ms:Komunisme ja:共産主義 simple:Communism

Communist party

In modern usage, a communist party is a political party which promotes communism, a sociopolitical philosophy based on the particular interpretation of Marxism put forth by Vladimir Lenin. Communist parties today may or may not formally use the term "communist" in their name. Even if they do, not all follow a strict interpretation of any of the main 'schools' of communism (chiefly Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism or Trotskyism). The original Communist Parties first started to be widely established across the world in the early 20th century, after the creation of the Communist International by the Russian Bolsheviks. Communist parties have held power in 21 nations throughout history, first and most notably in the Soviet Union. As of 2005, parties that profess adherence to communist ideology govern Cuba, the Peoples' Republic of China, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea. In the case of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the adoption of a so-called "socialist market economy" — formally known as "socialism with Chinese characteristics" — has led many communists and communist parties worldwide to argue that it has either partially or completely abandoned communism for capitalism and market society, a charge which the CPC vigorously denies. The Communist Party of Vietnam's adoption of doi moi has led to similar allegations from critics, as have recent Communist Party of Cuba policies dating from during and after the Special Period of the 1990s. In North Korea, Marxism has been officially "superseded" by the ideology of Juche. In July 2002, North Korea started running an experiment with capitalism in the Kaesŏng Industrial Region. A small number of other areas have been designated as Special Administrative Regions, or regions where free-market policies are allowed, including Sinŭiju along the China-North Korea border. Meanwhile, in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, the Communist Party was elected back into power. However, as of 2004, this nominally communist government has not distinguished itself in any significant way from the capitalist government which preceded it. There are currently hundreds, if not thousands, of communist parties, large and small, in existence today throughout the world. Their success rates vary widely: some are growing; others are in decline. See the List of Communist Parties and the World Communist Movement for details on today's communist parties.

History of Communist Parties

Early Communist groups

The first international Marxist organization was called the Communist League, advocates of the principles put forth in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto and inspired by the example of the Paris Commune. The group dissolved in 1852 after breaking into factional quarrels. The Bolshevik party seized power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In March, 1918, the party changed its name to "All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", and was generally known as "The Communist Party" from that point on. Many other Communist parties, especially in Europe, were created in the 1910s and 1920s as the result of factional splits within most of the socialist parties that existed at the time. Some factions advocated the creation of socialism through existing legal channels, while others advocated armed revolution and the ejection of the bourgeois from power through the use of force. The revolutionary groups usually called themselves communists, while those who wanted a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism kept the names socialists or social democrats. Shortly after the split, more differences between the two sides began to emerge. During the 1920s, communists supported the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism, while the socialists supported only Marxism and rejected Leninism. This rift grew even wider as both sides started to develop separate branches of their own. Most mainsteam social democrats had abandoned Marxism by the 1950s. Trotskyism and several other branches of self-proclaimed revolutionary Marxism contend that, under the influence of Stalinism, the Soviet-influenced Communist Parties drifted far away from the original Marxist-Leninist position during the same period. In contrast, Anti-Revisionists, who also self-identify as revolutionary Marxists, say that the Soviet Union broke with true socialism with Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech of 1956. The latter subsequently supported the 1949 Chinese Revolution, Mao Zedong, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, though most abandoned support of China as it became clear (in their view) that Deng Xiaoping's "socialism with Chinese characteristics" pursued in the late 1970s and early 1980s signalled a return to capitalism.

Stalin-era Communist Parties

Following Stalin's orders, the Communist International was dissolved in 1943. In the period between 1945 and 1949, following the end of World War II, Moscow-controlled Communist parties such as the Polish Polish United Workers' Party and the German Socialist Unity Party were put in power throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe, creating the Eastern bloc. The Communist Party of the United States was considered within the political mainstream during the 1930s and 1940s, but the advent of the Cold War got it declared illegal for a time and led to McCarthyism, a vigorous anti-Communist political repression movement in America during the 1950s which effectively destroyed the American Communist Party's influence.

Non-Soviet controlled Communist governments

In Yugoslavia, communist guerrillas liberated the country from Nazi occupation and established a government without Soviet assistance. As a result, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was not controlled from Moscow. Indeed, it opposed the Soviet Union vigorously on a number of major policy points, leading to Stalin's excommunication of the Yugoslav communist government from the Soviet bloc. In 1949, Chinese communists ended a civil war that had raged for decades, and established the People's Republic of China. Shortly thereafter, another communist party, the Workers Party of Korea, came to power in North Korea and was backed by the new communist Chinese government during the Korean War. Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong entertained major differences of vision, however, precipitating the Sino-Soviet split between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China in the early 1960s. Albania was liberated by communist partisans in a similar fashion, but it developed in a very different way from Yugoslavia. The Albanian government sided with the Soviet Union early on, then took the side of the Communist Party of China in the Sino-Soviet split.

Western European Communist Parties after the war

Members of communist parties were persecuted in many countries in the early Cold War period, when anticommunist sentiment was fueled by Western governments as part of their Cold War strategy. Nevertheless, in capitalist countries such as Italy and France, large Communist Parties gathered lots of popular support and played a prominent part in politics throughout the post-war decades. They developed a variant of Communist ideology known as Eurocommunism. This called for a socialist planned economy under the administration of a democratic government, and a multi-party system of free elections. This was a clear break with the Soviet line, but many of these parties continued to maintain good, or at least diplomatic, relations with the Soviet Union.

Third world Communist parties

In the third world, communist parties became quite popular in some areas because they promised the overthrow of governmental structures that many people considered oppressive, and a higher standard of living for the poor. Often, communists played the dominant role in struggles for independence against colonial powers. The resulting wars usually became enmeshed into the Cold War, with the Soviet Union supporting communist forces and the United States supporting anti-communist ones. The two superpowers waged wars by proxy, as in, for example, the Vietnam War, where American troops fought local communists; or in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where Soviet troops fought mujahideen forces supported by the United States which sought to overthrow the pro-Soviet Communist government of Afghanistan. Vietnam and Laos are still ruled by Communist Parties.

Cuba

After Fidel Castro's nationalistic revolt in Cuba, he was snubbed by President Eisenhower, who went out to play golf on the day he was scheduled to meet with Castro, and assigned Vice President Richard Nixon to meet with Castro instead. Castro was extremely annoyed at the slight, and entered into negotiations with the Soviet Union. Castro aligned with the Soviets and declared himself a communist shortly afterward. Cuba survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with careful market-oriented reforms and strategic alliances, known as the "Special Period," the Communist Party of Cuba remains in power as of 2005. Some question, however, how Castro's personal health will fare in the near future, and it remains to be seen if his party will remain in power after his death.

Post-Soviet Eastern bloc Communists

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, communist parties lost their power monopolies in most of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In many places, communist parties re-organized themselves as new socialist or social democratic organizations (though some have remained orthodox late-Soviet era communist). Many of the communist parties in those countries and their various successor organizations remain highly influential in local government elections and political struggles throughout the former Eastern bloc.

Structure of Communist parties

:See: democratic centralism. In theory, a party congress would elect a Central Committee to execute the will of the Congress between meetings. The Central Committee would elect a much smaller Politburo to elect a general secretary and handle day-to-day operations. In practice, the flow of power often became the reverse: the Politburo became self-perpetuating, and controlled the composition of the Central Committee, which in turn controlled the party congresses. Some modern communist parties still hold to the democratic centralist tradition. Others have abadoned democratic centralism, often accompanied by a renouncing of Marxism-Leninism overall, and instead pursue a structure more in common with social democracy, advocating welfare-statism such as is found in Scandinavia and most parts of Western Europe. The doctrine of ruling communist parties was typically that all property would belong to the state as the transition to a communist society (see socialism and state capitalism), and that the state would highly regulate all commerce in the country in the meantime. This policy stopped companies from driving each other out of business and in turn kept unemployment low.

See also


- List of Communist Parties
- Communism
- World Communist Movement
- Trotskyism
- Maoism
- Marxism
- Marxism-Leninism
- Titoism
- Euro Communism
- Communist State
- Anti-Communism Category:Communism
- zh-min-nan:Kiōng-sán-tóng ko:공산당 ja:共産党

Communist state

:This article is about one-party states governed by Communist parties. For information regarding communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, or as a popular movement, see the main Communism article. A Communist state is a term for a state governed by a single political party which declares its allegiance to the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It is claimed by some that this term is technically an oxymoron because Communism's ultimate goal is the creation of a classless society, without a state. Marxist-Leninists, however, consider such a state a necessary transitional phase and a means for the proletariat to establish power beforehand in what they call a Socialist state. The term "Communist state" originated from the fact that most of such states are or were run by Communist parties. However most of these states called themselves socialist (such as in the name Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), since in Marxist political theory, socialism is the intermediate stage in reaching communism.

Definition of a "Communist state"

:See also: Socialist republic A "Communist State" is defined as a state ruled by a Communist Party. But the term Communism as defined by Marx is a classless and stateless utopian society where the resources and means of production are owned by communities rather than by individuals and provides for equal sharing of all freedoms, all work and all benefits. The intermediate stage of Socialism is meant to create a 'new man' who voluntarily acts in the best interest of the community. In an ever stricter sense of Communism, there is no ownership, not even by communities, and everyone works according to their ability, and takes according to their needs of their own volition. Certain socialists and social democrats reject historical "Communist states", viewing them as representing a distortion or rejection of socialist values. Trotskyists, communists who follow the ideology of Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, became especially opposed to the official ideology of the Soviet Union following Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power. Trotsky criticized the Soviet Union under Stalin as a degenerated workers state and, following World War II, Trotskyists coined the term deformed workers state to refer to the governments in Eastern Europe as well as other Communist states that arose. Other communists went even further; anarchist communists and left- / council communists went very far in their critique of marxism-leninism and the communist (pseudo-)parties and they were often a driving part in uprisings against the communist states, for example the Hungarian revolution. Alternative terms for a "Communist state" include Communist Party-run state and Marxist-Leninist state. These terms are not used by Marxist-Leninists, who describe them as Socialist states, or societies in the transition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They consider the term Communist state an oxymoron. Libertarian socialists and communists, left communists and anarchists often use terms such as "state socialism" or "state capitalism".

Historical examples

As noted in the introduction, a "Communist state" is a state where a Communist Party holds power within the context of a single-party system of government. In this definition, 'Communist State' and Democracy are mutually exclusive. Thus, a country where a Communist party is part of the government is not automatically a "Communist state." Furthermore, the historical states of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Slovak Soviet Republic and Bavarian Soviet Republic were short-lived revolutionary entities that are difficult to define as Communist states, because the status of non-Communist political parties and movements within them remained unclear. Communist governments have typically arisen during times of general political instability. Most have come to power through revolutions led by Communist parties. Several of these parties operated illegally for a long period of time before the revolution, and developed disciplined and effective structures, together with a cadre of committed leaders able to mobilize elements of society dissatisfied with the current government. The support base of the communists typically consisted of poor laborers, intellectuals, and, especially in the case of China, peasants. Following a successful revolution, the Communist Party took on the goal of building a new society.

Early examples of communist societies

:See also: Communism: Other forms of communism Societies based on communism and ideologies similar to communism have existed throughout history, and many exist today, but it was not until the 20th century that highly organized Communist Parties based on Marxist-Leninist ideology gave rise to Communist states. Information regarding early, traditional and/or religious forms of communism (as well as information on other socialist societies in the Marxist meaning of the word, such as the Paris Commune) is to be found in the Communism article. Many researchers prefer to use the term communalism to distinguish various communal societies from communism, which is generally associated with Marxism.

20th century

communalism In the 20th century, a number of Communist Parties based on Marxist-Leninist ideology established governments in various countries. In those countries, the aforementioned Communist parties made themselves the only legal political parties. The history of Communist states is often closely related to the history of non-Communist governments, and to the history of the Communist movement in general. As such, the following historical account is not restricted to Communist states: Following the October Revolution in 1917, which established what later became the Soviet Union, there was a revolutionary wave throughout Europe. Communist revolutions, uprisings or attempted uprisings took place in many European countries. However, Russian Communists, engaged in the Russian Civil War, were unable to provide any significant support to communist movements outside Russia. Eventually, in the first decades after the Russian revolution, only five revolutions outside Russia were able to take power, and these for short periods of time. They resulted in the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic in 1918, the Bavarian Soviet Republic from November 1918 until May 3 1919, the Slovak Soviet Republic in 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, and the Persian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1920 to 1921. All of them were soon abolished, and with the defeat of the Red Army in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, the Russian Communists were forced to abandon any plans of military aid to Communist movements in Europe. On the other side of the world, Mongolia had been a protectorate of the Russian Empire from 1912 until 1919, when the Chinese took control during the Russian Civil War. The Russian monarchist White Army took control in 1921, but was driven out by the Red Army that same year. Mongolia was not absorbed into the Soviet Union, but was renamed the People's Republic of Mongolia and became the Soviet Union's first satellite state in 1924. From 1924 until World War II, there were no successful Communist revolutions, and no more Communist states were established. Most of the Communist states in the world were established in the aftermath of World War II in Eastern Europe, either in countries which were liberated from the Nazis by the Soviet Red Army and subsequently occupied by Soviet troops, or in countries where Communist-led partisans succeeded in driving out the Nazis and taking power themselves. The Red Army arranged for the establishment of Communist governments in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania, which became Soviet satellites. Communist partisans established Communist governments which were initially pro-Soviet in Albania and Yugoslavia. Furthermore, in East Asia, the Red Army joined the war against Japan and established a Communist state in North Korea. With extensive Soviet military aid, Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War and established the People's Republic of China in 1949. The First Indochina War led to the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in northern Vietnam in 1954. Later, the Vietnam War ended with the takeover of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese Army and the establishment of a unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975. The broader Indochina conflict also saw Communist states established in Laos and Cambodia in 1975, though the latter government (known as Democratic Kampuchea) was toppled in a Vietnamese invasion and denounced by Vietnam and its Communist allies. (see Khmer Rouge) In 1959, the Cuban Revolution eventually led to the first Communist state being established in the Western Hemisphere, the Republic of Cuba. Some also call Nicaragua under the Sandinista National Liberation Front and Grenada under the New Jewel Movement "Communist States" as both nations came under Marxist military junta control in 1979. A civil war led to the establishment of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in southern Yemen in 1969. For several years, Communist states also existed in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Benin, Somalia, and the Republic of the Congo, although these were short-lived. By the early 1980s, nearly one third of the world's population in 25 nations was ruled by Communist governments (due largely to the size of Russia and China). There have been several wars or military conflicts between Communist states: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Prague spring, the Ogaden War, the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, the Sino-Soviet border conflict, and the Sino-Vietnamese War. However, due to internal economic problems, foreign entanglements, and pressures for reform, the Soviet Union itself was growing increasingly unstable. In the late 1980s, Eastern Europe grew increasingly unstable as people rose up against their governments, and in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. None of the Eastern European Communist governments survived these events. As of 2005, there are five Communist states in the world: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Despite a common Communist ideology, they possess certain distinct characteristics, both politically and economically.

Communist theories and ideologies of government

:See also the articles on Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism and Maoism. Communist states base themselves on a form of Marxist-Leninist ideology. All historical Communist states that existed for significant periods of time during the 20th century had their roots in either Soviet-inspired Marxism-Leninism or Maoism. Whether these states were faithful to Marxism is a matter of dispute. Trotskyists have been vocal communist opponents of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet Union, and Maoism on the grounds that they were perversions of Marxism-Leninism and communist ideals. Marxism holds — among other things — that human history has had and will have a developmental structure, alternating between slow development of technology/economy (and the according philosophy/religion) and short periods of rapid change in technology and economy (as well as philosophy and, sometimes, religion.) The short periods of rapid change take place immediately after revolutions of one kind or another. Marx envisioned communism as the final evolutionary phase of society at which time the state would have withered away. He specified that the workers should rise up to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism, a transitional stage during which the state is to gain control over all means of production on behalf of the proletariat. Marx theorized that socialism would give way to communism, a classless society in which full collective ownership has been attained and the state no longer plays a role. Communist states have never actually claimed to have reached communism. They described themselves as socialist states in which the working people's will was represented through the Communist Party and (affiliated) mass organizations. This is because Marxist theory says a society cannot advance from capitalism to communism overnight. A transitional stage is needed. (see dictatorship of the proletariat). Leninist theory, developed by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, emphasises the role of a well-organized group of revolutionaries in planning and carrying out the transition to socialism. According to Leninism, a Communist party must be organized along the principles of democratic centralism in order to maximize efficiency. Leninism departs from original Marxist theory in arguing that the revolution will not begin in the most advanced capitalist countries, but in poor, underdeveloped countries where the capitalist ruling class is weakest. From there, the revolution would need to spread quickly to the advanced industrialized nations, who would provide the underdeveloped country with the resources necessary to build socialism. With these principles in mind, right after the Russian Revolution, Lenin argued that the success of socialism in Russia depended on the victory of socialist revolutions in other countries (most notably the German Revolution.) However, all the socialist revolutions that flared up across Europe in the years 1918-1922 were crushed. Russia found itself alone in its attempt to build socialism. Lenin did not live long enough to formulate a solution to this problem. Instead, the role fell on his successors, the most notable of whom were Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Trotsky proposed his thesis of the "permanent revolution," while Stalin proposed "socialism in one country." Over the following years, Stalin gradually succeeded in eliminating his ideological opponents (including Trotsky) and taking over the Soviet government. He upheld and implemented the idea of "socialism in one country," which argued that socialism could and should be built in the Soviet Union without the help of other nations. Throughout the 1930s, Stalin created the State and Party structure on which all subsequent Communist states were to be based. Power was centralized in his hands, and democratic centralism was gradually removed from the decision-making process of the Communist Party (a process which culminated in the Great Purge.) Later, the ideology of Mao Zedong in the People's Republic of China (Maoism) diverged from traditional Stalinism by emphasizing the peasantry over the urban proletariat in both the revolution and post-revolutionary development. Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform (often focusing on collective farming or state farms.) While they promote collective ownership of the means of production, Communist governments have been characterized by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the ruling Communist Party. Dissident communists have characterized the Soviet model as state socialism or state capitalism. Further, critics have often claimed that a Stalinist or Maoist system of government creates a new ruling class, usually called the nomenklatura.

Relationship between party and state

Political scientists have developed the concept of the Communist state to reflect claims made by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and others that the revolutionary state must be led by the dictatorship of the proletariat, in which the working class is represented by the Communist Party. In practice, according to this theory, state and the party are effectively identical, and govern all aspects of the society. In the Soviet Union for example, the General Secretary of the Communist Party did not necessarily hold a state office. Instead party members answerable to or controlled by the party held these posts, often as honorific posts as a reward for their long years of service to the party. On other occasions, having governed as General Secretary, the party leader might assume a state office in addition. For example, Mikhail Gorbachev initially did not hold the presidency of the Soviet Union, that office being given as an honor to a former Soviet Foreign Minister. Within Communist states there have rarely been restrictions on state power, resulting in state structures which are either totalitarian or authoritarian. Marxist-Leninist ideology views restrictions on state power to be an unnecessary interference in the goal of reaching communism. Dissident communists have argued that a state with absolute power naturally becomes corrupt and is thus incapable of moving society toward communism. Communist states have maintained a large secret police apparatus to closely monitor the population and silence those deemed "enemies of the state." Arrest, torture, "reeducation," and summary execution are all methods that have been employed. Some political scientists have argued that there are deep similarities between Communist states and fascist ones and that both are examples of totalitarian states. The nature of each individual Communist state differs widely both between countries and within each individual state. States that incorporate the policies and techniques of the orthodox Stalinist state of the 1930s are characteristically more totalitarian, impoverished, militaristic, and static, as can be seen in North Korea and Communist Albania. States such as China have benefitted from market reforms introduced by the Communist Party, but attempts to dramatically reform the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev contributed to its collapse as the Communist Party was unable to maintain its grip on power. The People's Republic of China and to a lesser extent Vietnam and Laos have all moved toward market reforms after the command economy failed to produce necessary development.

Criticism and advocacy

:See also: Criticisms of communism Advocates of Communism praise Communist parties for running countries that have sometimes leapt ahead of contemporary "capitalist" countries, offering guaranteed employment, health care and housing to their citizens. Critics of communism typically condemn Communist states by the same criteria, claiming that all lag far behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development and living standards. Central economic planning has in certain instances produced dramatic advances, including rapid development of heavy industry during the 1930s in the Soviet Union (a belated industrialisation) and later in their space program. Another example touted by Communists is the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cuba. Early advances in the status of women were also notable, especially in Islamic areas of the Soviet Union. See Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia: 1919–1929, Princeton University Press, 1974, hardcover, 451 pages, ISBN 069107562X. Critics however cite counter-examples: the failure of the Soviet Union to achieve the same kind of development in agriculture (forcing the Soviet Union to become a net importer of cereals after the Second World War), as well as the continued poverty of other Communist states such as Laos, Vietnam or Maoist China. Indeed, they point out that China only achieved high rates of growth after introducing Capitalist economic reforms — a sign, claim the critics, of the superiority of Capitalism. The rigid execution of economic plans has had negative results, such as the 5 year plans in the Soviet Union, the total focus on agrarian reform at the expense of industrialisation in China and the plans to achieve an enormous sugar production at all cost in Cuba in the 1960's, which left the rest of the economy in shambles. Other claims include generous social and cultural programs, often administered by labor organizations. Universal education programs have been a strong point, as has the generous provision of universal health care. This is illustrated by the high levels of literacy enjoyed by Eastern Europeans (in comparison, for instance, with Southern Europe), Cubans or Chinese. Critics charge that Communist compulsory education was replete with pro-Communist propaganda and censored opposing views. Critics also note that the Communist states do not compare favourable when comparing states with similar culture and economic development before the Communist takeover. Examples include North Korea vs. South Korea; China vs. Hong Kong and Taiwan; and East Germany vs. West Germany. Critics also point out that some Communist states have been involved in the destruction of cultural heritage: Romania (planned destruction of historical centres of most towns — partially achieved in Bucarest), China (repression of Tibetan culture, destructions during the Cultural Revolution) and the Soviet Union (destruction, abandon or reconversion of religious buildings) are the most cited examples. Also pointed out are environmental disasters which, critics claim, were due to the Communist governments in place. The most cited example is the disappearance of the Aral Sea in today's Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which is believed to have been caused by the diversion of the waters of its two affluent rivers for cotton production. This is, however, at least partly due to the belated industrialisation in the Soviet Union. The Soviet practice of making it illegal to quit one's job, to hire a dissident, or to hire relatives, is regarded by the critics as tantamount to slavery. In the Soviet Union scientific research was at a high level, as illustrated by the space program and the fact that one third of the world's scientific literature was written in Russian. Critics, however, argue that the Communist states corrupted science. One example is censorship and revisionism of history. Others are Lysenkoism and Japhetic theory. Many of the Communist states used an extensive network of civilian informants to spy on their own population. Critics argue that this created a society where no one could trust other citizens, who might report real or fabricated criticism of the Communist system to the secret police. Another objection is the practice in some Communist states of classifying internal critics of the system as having a mental disease and incarcerating them in mental hospitals. The personality cults of many of the leaders of Communist states and the fact that in some cases the leadership of the state has become inherited has also been criticized. Critics argue that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Prague spring, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution were imperialistic wars where military force crushed popular uprisings against the Communist system. Extensive historical research has documented large scale human rights violations that occurred in these states, particularly during the regimes of Stalin and Mao, but starting immediately after the October Revolution during the regime of Lenin and to have continued to occur in all communist states during their existence. Most prominent being deaths due to executions, forced labor camps, genocides of certain ethnic minorities, and mass starvations caused by either government mismanagement or deliberately. The exact number of deaths caused by these regimes is disputed, but extensive historical research shows at least tens of millions (see, e.g., the estimates reached in The Black Book of Communism and the references below). Other widespread criticism concern the documented lack of freedom of speech in Communist Party regimes, religious and ethnic persecutions, lack of democracy and systematic use of torture. And although the birth control program in China may have averted a demographic disaster, it was also a violation of human rights. The restriction of emigration has also been criticized, the most prominent example being the Berlin Wall. Others find this approach simplistic, noting that executions, forced labor camps, the repression of ethnic minorities, and mass starvation were patterns in both Russian and Chinese history before their respective Communist takeovers. Critics argue that past evils in an old regime cannot be used to justify new ones; otherwise supporters of Hitler could justify his deeds by pointing to past human rights crimes by the German Empire in Africa. Also, communists may argue that (Capitalist) western countries have gathered much of their wealth through exploitation of workers, slavery and imperialism. Many Marxists and some Marxist-Leninists argue that most Communist states do not actually adhere to Marxism but rather to a version heavily influenced by Leninism and Stalinism, which sharply diverges in practice from the humanistic philosophy of Marxist revolutionaries. This critique is common, for example, amongst democratic socialists and some critical theorists who hold that Marxism is correct as a social and historical theory, but that it can only be implemented within a multiparty democracy. Trotskyites similarly argue that the bureaucratic and repressive nature of Communist states differs from Lenin's vision of the socialist state. Some Marxists (for example Milovan Djilas, James Burnham) described Communist states as systems in which a new powerful class of party bureaucrats emerged, exercised complete control over the means of production, and exploited the working class. This new ruling class is usually called the nomenklatura.

List of current Communist states

The following countries are generally considered to be "Communist states" according to the way the term has been generally used since World War II as they are states in which a ruling Communist Party has a monopoly on political power. The degree to which these states are socialist is a matter of contention due to differing definitions of socialism but it is generally acknowledged that they are Soviet-style systems emulating the former Soviet Union. Even so, there is a wide degree of variation from the People's Republic of China, on one end, which follows market socialism, to North Korea, which follows a system similar to Stalinism and practices a rigid command economy. Current Communist states and their ruling parties are:
- People's Republic of China (since 1949); Communist Party of China
- Republic of Cuba (Cuban Revolution in 1959, socialist state declared in 1961); Communist Party of Cuba
- Lao People's Democratic Republic (since 1975); Lao People's Revolutionary Party
- Democratic People's Republic of Korea (since 1948); Korean Workers' Party
- Socialist Republic of Vietnam (since 1976); Communist Party of Vietnam See also: List of Communist parties

Defunct Communist states

Defunct Communist states and their ruling parties (where applicable):
- Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (1918–1922) founded as a result of the October Revolution by the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party. Incorporated into:
  - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991) — Communist Party of the Soviet Union
  - See also Republics of the Soviet Union for various Soviet republics, some of them short-lived, which were eventually included into the USSR.
- Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Jan 1918–Apr 1918) in the south of Finland only — Social Democratic Party of Finland.
- Alsace Soviet Republic (November 1918)
- Slovak Soviet Republic (1918–1919)
- Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919) — Hungarian Communist Party
- Bavarian Soviet Republic also known as the Munich Soviet Republic (1919) — Independent Socialist Party
- Galician Soviet Socialist Republic (July 9 1920 - September 21 1920), created in Soviet occupied territory during the Polish-Soviet War.
- Persian Soviet Socialist Republic also known as the Soviet Republic of Gilan (June 1920–September 1921)
- Mongolian People's Republic (1924–1992) — Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party
- Hunan Soviet (ca 1927) — Chinese Communist Party
- Chinese Soviet Republic also known as the "Jiangxi Soviet" (1931–1934) — led by Mao Zedong's faction of the Chinese Communist Party
- Finnish Democratic Republic also known as the Terijoki Government (1939–1940), established in parts of Finland occupied by the Soviet Union during the Winter War — Communist Party of Finland
- Poland (1944–1989; name changed to "People's Republic of Poland" in 1952) — Polish United Workers Party
- Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Democratic Federal 1945–1946; Federal People's Republic 1946–1963;Socialist Federal Republic 1963–1992) — League of Communists of Yugoslavia
- People's Socialist Republic of Albania (People's Republic 1946–1976; People's Socialist Republic 1976–1991) — Albanian Party of Labour
- People's Republic of Bulgaria (1946–1990) — Communist Party of Bulgaria
- Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) (1946–1976) — Communist Party of Vietnam (incorporated into Socialist Republic of Vietnam)
- Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia (People's Republic 1948–1960; Socialist Republic 1960–1990) — Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- German Democratic Republic (1949–1990) — Socialist Unity Party of Germany
- Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) — Hungarian Workers Party (until 1956), Hungarian Socialist Workers Party
- Socialist Republic of Romania (People's Republic 1947–1965; Socialist Republic 1965–1989) — Romanian Communist Party (Romanian Workers' Party prior to 1965)
- People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (1969–1990) — Yemeni Socialist Party
- People's Republic of Congo (1970–1992; Communist rule 1969–1992) — Parti Congolais du Travail (Congolese Labour Party), only legal party 1979–1991
- Somali Democratic Republic (1969–1991; officially declared socialist in 1970) — Supreme Revolutionary Council or SRC from 1969–1976; Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party from 1976–1991
- People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (Communist rule 1974–1991, People's Democratic Republic formally established in 1987) — Workers' Party of Ethiopia also called Ethiopian Workers' Party
- People's Republic of Benin (1975–1990; Marxism abandoned 1989, one party rule until 1990) — Parti du Revolutionare Popular du Benin (Popular Revolutionary Party of Benin) or PRPB
- Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (1975–1976) — Communist Party of Vietnam (incorporated into Socialist Republic of Vietnam)
- Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) — Khmer Rouge
- People's Republic of Angola (1975–1992) — Movimento Popular da Libertação de Angola -Partido de Trabalho (Popular Liberation Movement of Angola-Labour Party) popularly known as the MPLA
- People's Republic of Mozambique (1975–1990) — Frente da Libertação de Moçambique (Liberation Front of Mozambique) popularly known as FRELIMO
- Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1978–1992) — People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
- People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979–1989) — Kampuchea People's Revolutionary Party
- Grenada, People's Revolutionary Government of (1979–1983) — New Jewel Movement, where "Jewel" stands for Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education, and Liberation Sometimes the Paris Commune (1870–1871) is also classified as a Communist state, since Karl Marx described it as a living example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

See also


- Coordinatorism
- Single-party state

References and further reading


- Andrew G. Walder (ed.) Waning of the Communist State: Economic Origins of the Political Decline in China & Hungary (University of California Press, 1995) hardback. (ISBN 0520088514)
- Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Panne, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stephane Courtois, Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, September, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0674076087
- Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pages, ISBN 0767900561
- Slavenka Drakulic, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, W. W. Norton (1992), hardcover, ISBN 0393030768; trade paperback, Harpercollins (1993), ISBN 0060975407 Women of communist Yugoslavia.

References on human rights violations by Communist states


- Becker, Jasper (1998) Hungry Ghosts : Mao's Secret Famine. Owl Books. ISBN 0805056688.
- Conquest, Robert (1991) The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford University Press ISBN 0195071328.
- Conquest, Robert (1987) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195051807.
- Courtois,Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674076087.
- Hamilton-Merritt, Jane (1999) Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253207568.
- Jackson, Karl D. (1992) Cambodia, 1975–1978 Princeton University Press ISBN 069102541X.
- Kakar, M. Hassan (1997)Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 University of California Press. ISBN 0520208935.
- Khlevniuk, Oleg & Kozlov, Vladimir (2004) The History of the Gulag : From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series) Yale University Pres. ISBN 0300092849.
- Natsios, Andrew S. (2002) The Great North Korean Famine. Institute of Peace Press. ISBN 1929223331.
- Nghia M. Vo (2004) The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam McFarland & Company ISBN 0786417145.
- Pipes, Richard (1995) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0679761845.
- Rummel, R.J. (1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560009276.
- Rummel, R.J. (1996). Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers ISBN 1560008873.
- Rummel, R.J. & Rummel, Rudolph J. (1999). Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Lit Verlag ISBN 3825840107.
- Todorov, Tzvetan & Zaretsky, Robert (1999). Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0271019611.
- Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103220.

External links

Official Websites


- [http://www.cubaweb.cu/ Cubaweb]
- [http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html Granma Internacional]
- [http://www.korea-dpr.com/ DPR Korea]

Other Websites


- [http://www.marxists.org/ Marxist Internet Archive]

Critical


- [http://www.angelfire.com/de/Cerskus/english/saitai.html Crimes of Soviet Communists]
- [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM How many did the communist regimes murder?]
- [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/COUBLA.html The Black Book of Communism]
- [http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/comfaq.htm Museum of Communism FAQ]
- [http://humphrys.humanists.net/communism.html Communism]
- Category:Forms of government Category:Communism category:Lists of countries

Means of production

The means of production are physical, non-human, inputs used in production. This includes factories, machines, tools and materials, along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital - in other words, the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital or labor. When used in contemporary terms, "means of production" usually applies to land or commons being converted to natural resources, and to that infrastructural capital which is not owned strictly in common but is applied to make "goods". Marx's analysis (see below) does not distinguish between infrastructural and natural means of production, but this distinction could be introduced.

Marxist concept

The analysis of people's relationships with the means of production is one element that stands at the basis of Marxism. Karl Marx focused on labor questions. He considered it a reification to treat labor as just another "factor" in production; it implied an inversion of means and ends, so that people were effectively used as things. The working classes are the principal productive forces of society, since their labor creates and conserves material wealth. The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, comprises people who own and trade in means of production as capital assets, and who hire workers to work for them, using those means of production. The bourgeois as property owner can obtain a profit from the work of his employees because the value of output exceeds the outlay on wages and materials. Therefore, the bourgeois obtains a surplus value from the work of his employees. In the Marxist view, this constitutes exploitation of the workers. Marx's terms are often employed in economic analysis by socialists who advocate public ownership of some (or all) means of production. The affinity between labor movement causes and this advocacy is very strong - and often shared by social democrats, socialists, communists and greens. Marx's analysis in particular helped to make clear the key differences between human capital and "labor" or "human resources" - which earlier political economy favoring labor value (e.g. that of David Ricardo) had not done. Marxists define economic systems in terms of how the means of production are used, and which social class controls them. Thus, in capitalism, the means of production are controlled by the bourgeoisie (the "capitalists" - the owners of capital), while in socialism they are controlled by the people's elected representatives and in communism they are controlled collectively by the people themselves.

Green economics

Some green economists, notably Brian Milani, draw parallels between Marx's treatment of labor and natural capital, accepting Marx's view that land is a means, but not a simple factor, of production. Others go further to argue that land, more fully regarded as natural capital must be seen as a sort of "lumpenproletariat" performing ecological work. Still others, including many following neoclassical economics, argue that nothing that is alive (land, labor) and therefore negentropic can be counted as a "means" for anything else that is alive and negentropic - and reject the Marxist terms of reference entirely. There is thus a dispute on convergence between the idea of "means of production" and the modern general notion of capital; Marx's analysis has been important in refining the factors of production wherein individual and natural (alive, natural, creative) actors are kept separate from instructional, social, infrastructural and financial (unliving, entropic, imitative "means") "factors", at least to some degree - notably in the analyses of Natural Capitalism and some macro-economics which study the choice (by people) to do work, or take recreation.

Baldassari and Acquisti

In the analysis of Baldassari and Acquisti, any living actor may choose to use or not use a "means", but an unliving "factor" can only take orders from above, robotically, without any capacity to question. Or, indeed, any capacity to take or choose to do harm. There is thus a clear distinction between a "means", including autonomous intellectual capital, and a "factor" whose detailed choices are defined by passive instructional capital and limits of infrastructural capital. This analysis avoids however the problem of individual capital or "enterprise" or "ingenuity", and how choices to act or not act work in the large to define roles or rules. Some theorists emphasize the "driving down" of decision-making power "closer to the customer" as making the roles of bourgeois and proletarian more alike. Whether true or false, however, this would not affect the basic idea of means of production; rather, it would simply render it ambiguous where means begin and factors end. In particular, the role of those who employ only financial capital and do not directly use the other factors of production remains distinct. The most significant feature of capitalism, in the Marxist analysis, is the fact that the ruling class monopolizes the means of protection, thus of property law enforcement, which keeps the financial capital valuable and convertible into the means of production (all other forms of capital).

Feminist analysis

There are parallels in analysis by modern feminist economists, notably Marilyn Waring who argues that women's work has been systematically devalued and undervalued, while education and training sufficient to use the "means" deemed most valuable by society have traditionally gone to men. She sarcastically parallels two very different ideas of "value" by focusing on village women in a developing nation whose day is defined by the search for clean water and dry firewood, and a man in a U.S. missile silo, whose day is defined by waiting for orders to destroy the Soviet Union. She argues, in general, that woman is to man as lumpen is to proletariat, but does not use those terms herself, evidently to avoid offending the Marxists.

See also


- Mode of production
- Productive forces
- Relations of production
- gross fixed capital formation
- property Category:Marxist theory Category:Production

20th century

The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begins with the year 1. The 20th century is also sometimes known as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0" year and named accordingly ("1960s", etc.). However, a number of arguments have been used to justify the common usage. One was advanced, erroneously, by Stephen Jay Gould. He claimed that the first decade had only nine years, thus contradicting the definition of decade equaled 10 years. Another argument is that the astronomical year numbering system for years does have a year zero, the year normally known as 1 BC. In 2000 the International Organization for Standardization clarified ISO 8601 to use the astronomical year numbering system, which could be interpreted as retrospectively endorsing all the people who had celebrated the new century a few months earlier. The term is also used to describe various periods that overlap with the calendar definition, most notably the Short twentieth century, which claims that the 20th Century spanned from 1914 to 1989, rendering the pre-WWI 1900s into the 19th Century and putting the 1990s at the beginning of the 21st Century. Indeed, the part of the 20th Century before World War I is quite identical to the late 1800s culturally and technologically and the 1990s decade pointed in many ways (such as the rise of the Internet) to the 21st Century and is seen by some as not being truly a part of the 20th Century.

Overview

The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovations. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage and became an influence on the lives of everyday people. War reached an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication; in the Second World War (1939-1945) alone, approximately 57 million people died, mainly due to massive improvements in weaponry. The trends of mechanization of goods and services and networks of global communication, which were begun in the 19th century, continued at an ever-increasing pace in the 20th. In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace. As the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy said: :What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal. Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century and for the first time, any individual could influence the course of history no matter their background. Arguably, the 20th century re-shaped the face of the planet in more ways than any previous century.
- Death rates
- Infant mortality
- Infectious disease
- Life expectancy
- Maternal death rates
- Battles Scientific discoveries such as relativity and quantum physics radically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was much more complex than they had previously believed, and dashing the hopes at the end of the preceding century that the last few details of knowledge were about to be filled in. For a more coherent overview of the historical events of the century, see The 20th century in review. The 20th century has sometimes been called, both within and outside the United States, the American Century, though this is a controversial term.

Important developments, events and achievements

Science and technology


- The assembly line