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Communism Part of the Politics series on Communism Basic concepts Marxist philosophy Class struggle Proletarian internationalism Communist party Communist state Ideologies Marxism · Leninism Trotskyism Maoism · Hoxhaism Deng Xiaoping Theory Juche Left communism Council communism · Titoism Castroism Anarchist communism Religious communism Christian communism Eurocommunism National communism Internationals Communist League First International Second International Third International Cominform Fourth International ICMLPO (International Newsletter) ICMLPO (Unity & Struggle) People Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Vladimir Lenin Joseph Stalin Leon Trotsky Mao Zedong Enver Hoxha Kim Il-Sung Josip Broz Tito Fidel Castro Che Guevara Ho Chi Minh Related topics Anarchism · Anti-capitalism Anti-communism Communist state Communist symbolism Criticisms of communism Democratic centralism Dictatorship of the proletariat History of communism Left-wing politics Luxemburgism New Class · New Left Post-Communism Primitive communism Communism and religion Socialism · Stalinism Socialist economics Soviet Union Communism Portal Politics portal Communism (from Latin communis = "com- mon") is a socioeconomic structure and polit- ical ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in gen- eral.[1][2][3] In political science, the term "communism" is sometimes used to refer to communist states, a form of government in which the state operates under a one-party From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 1 system and declares allegiance to Marxism- Leninism or a derivative thereof, even if the party does not actually claim that it has already developed communism. Forerunners of communist ideas existed already since antiquity and then in particular in the 18th and early 19th century France, with thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and even more radical Gracchus Babeuf. The egalitarianism then emerged as a significant political power in the first half of 19th cen- tury in Western Europe. In the world shaped by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, the newly established political left included many various political and intel- lectual movements, which are the direct an- cestors of today’s communism and socialism – these two then newly minted words were al- most interchangeable in the time – and of an- archism or anarcho-communism. The two by far most influential theoreticians of commun- ism of the 19th century were Germans Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto (1848), who also helped to form the first openly communist political organizations and firmly tied com- munism with the idea of revolution conduc- ted by the exploited working class. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human society, which would be achieved after an intermediate stage called the revolutionary dictatorship of the prolet- ariat. Communism in the Marxian sense refers to a classless, stateless and oppression-free society where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made democratically, allowing every member of society to participate in the decision-making process in both the political and economic spheres of life. Some "revisionist" Marxists of the following gener- ations, henceforth known as socialists or so- cial democrats, slowly drifted away from the radical views of Marx after his death in 1883; other communists, like Vladimir Lenin, con- tinued to prepare world revolution. The communist left, led by Vladimir Lenin, successfully came to power in Russia (1917), disrupted by the World War I. After years of civil war (1917–1921), international isolation and internal struggle in the Communist party, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin emerged as a new global superpower on the victorious side of the World War II. In the five years after the World War, communist re- gimes were established in many states of Central and Eastern Europe and in China. Communism began to spread its influence in the Third World while continuing to be a sig- nificant political force in many Western coun- tries. International relations between Soviets and the West, led by USA, quickly worsened after the end of the war and there began the Cold war, a continuing state of conflict, ten- sion and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and those coun- tries’ respective allies. The "Iron curtain" between West and East then divided Europe and world from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s. Despite many communist successes like the victorious Vietnam War (1959-1975) or the first human spaceflight (1961), the communist regimes were in the long term un- able to keep up with the West. People under communist regimes showed their discontent in events like the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Prague Spring of 1968 or Polish Solid- arity movement in early 1980s. Since 1985, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to implement market and democratic reforms under devices like perestroika ("re- structuring") and glasnost ("transparency"). His reforms sharpened internal conflicts in the communist regimes and quickly led to Re- volutions of 1989, a total collapse of European communist regimes outside of Soviet Union, which dissolved itself two years later, in 1991. Some communist regimes out- side of Europa survive till now, the most im- portant of them is People’s Republic of Ch- ina, trying to introduce market reforms without rapid democratization. Birth See also: History of communism The ideal of egalitarian and collectivist soci- ety can be traced into antiquity. Plato’s The Republic suggests collective education of children and control of possessions. Leader of a slave uprising Spartacus inspired many social revolutionaries later on.[4] Also Christi- an teachings like the Sermon on the Mount were interpreted politically in the sense of Christian communism or as underpinning of monasticism with its sharing of possession.[5] Early modern writers like Thomas More in his treatise Utopia (1516) dreamed about so- cieties based on common ownership of property. Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 2 Gracchus Babeuf the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, fol- lowing the upheaval of the French Revolu- tion, communism emerged as a political doc- trine.[6] Gracchus Babeuf, in particular, es- poused the goals of common ownership of land and total economic and political equality among citizens. During the early development of the polit- ical Left in the first decades of 19th century, the germs of communism – together with those of socialism, Christian utopianism, anarchism, trade-unionism and feminism – differentiated and were theoretically ex- amined. The term "communism" was prob- ably coined by the French utopist Étienne Ca- bet for his communitarian social movement in 1839. In the following year 1840 the British leftist John Goodwyn Barmby used this word for Babeuf’s teachings. Also the word "social- ism" came in use about 1840 and both words were largely interchangeable in this time; the difference between the two terms was rather regional and cultural: In continental Europe "communism" was thought to be more radical and atheist than socialist while British athe- ists preferred the word "socialism".[7] The Left, rather undifferentiated in the time, concentrated in the most industrialized European countries. In France with its re- volutionary tradition lived for example Henri de Saint-Simon, whose circle coined the term "exploitation of man by man"; Charles Henri de Saint-Simon Fourier, the inventor of the word "feminism" and a propagator of communist communities; Louis Auguste Blanqui, author of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", who spent most of his life in prisons for his revolution- ary actions. France saw also activities of fath- ers of anarchism Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who asserted that "Property is theft!", and the Russian nobleman Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin. In Great Britain, there was also the Chartist movement here, named after the People’s Charter published in 1838, which demanded equal civil right to vote for all men including the unprivileged. Among the early English social reformers was Robert Owen, the founder of cooperative movement and of the utopist community New Harmony. New Harmony, founded in US state Indiana in 1825, was a typical example of communist so- cial experiment of the time, and collapsed after four years for unsolvable internal quar- rels like many other similar undertakings.[8] Around 1850, the modern political Left emerged also in Germany and in Italy. Marx- ists call this early stage of communist theory "utopian socialism" while their own views as "scientific socialism" or "scientific commun- ism".[9] From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 3 Robert Owen From Marx to the World War I. Marxism, the by far most important commun- ist theory, was created by Karl Marx a Friedrich Engels around 1850. The philo- sopher Leszek Kołakowski calls the years from Marx’s death until the October Revolu- tion in 1917 as the "Golden Age" of Marxism, compared to the breakdown under Stalin.[10] Marxism See also: List of communist ideologies Maxism, developed by Marx and Engels from 1840s into the 1890s, became the principal form of Leftist thought during the lives of its fathers, and with the exception of USA it re- mained in this position well until 1960s. Most of other influential Leftist and socially critical theories either develop Marxism further (e.g., classical social democracy, Leninism and Maoism), or completely drop the term "com- munism" and do not try to create a new class- less society (e.g., the modern Feminism, New Labour, Environmentalism). Therefore the words "Marxism" and "Communism" are of- ten understood as synonymous. Marx and Engels saw capitalism as based on the exploitation of workers. According to Karl Marx The Communist manifesto, London 1848 Marx, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation, while From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 4 communism entails the full realization of hu- man freedom.[11] Marx here follows Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in conceiving free- dom not merely as an absence of restraints but as action with content.[12] Marx believed that communism would give people the power to appropriate the fruits of their labor while preventing them from exploiting oth- ers. Whereas for Hegel the unfolding of this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material forces, particularly the development of the means of produc- tion.[12] Marxism holds that a process of class con- flict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the establish- ment of a communist society in which private ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence become the property of society. Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a communist society. The German Ideology (1845) was one of Marx’s few writ- ings to elaborate on the communist future: "In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accom- plished in any branch he wishes, so- ciety regulates the general produc- tion and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and anoth- er 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, herds- man or critic."[13] In the late 19th century, the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often used interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels argued that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully developed state, but would pass through a lower phase in which productive property was owned in common but people would be allowed to take from the social wealth only to the extent of their contribution to the production of that wealth. The "lower phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which the an- tithesis between mental and physical labor has disappeared, people enjoy their work, and goods are produced in abundance, allowing people to freely take according to their needs. Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to refer to Marx and Engels’ "lower phase" of communism and used the term "communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels’ "higher phase" of communism. First international organizations The first Marxist international organization was the Communist League. It was founded originally as the League of the Just by Ger- man workers in Paris in 1836. This was ini- tially a utopian socialist and Christian com- munist grouping devoted to the ideas of Gracchus Babeuf. The League of the Just par- ticipated in the Blanquist uprising of May 1839 in Paris[14]. Hereafter expelled from France, the League of the Just moved to Lon- don where by 1847 numbered about 1,000. Wilhelm Weitling’s 1842 book, Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom, which criticized private property and bourgeois society, was one of the bases of its social theory. The Communist League was created in London in June 1847 out of a merger of the League of the Just and of the fifteen-man Communist Correspondence Committee of Bruxelles, headed by Karl Marx[15]. The birth confer- ence was attended by Friedrich Engels, who convinced the League to change its motto from All men are brethren[16] to Karl Marx’s phrase, Working men of all countries, unite!. The Communist League held a second con- gress, also in London, in November and December 1847. Both Marx and Engels atten- ded, and they were mandated to draw up a manifesto for the organisation. This became The Communist Manifesto. The League was ended formally in 1852. In 1864 in a workmen’s meeting held in Saint Martin’s Hall, London there was foun- ded the International Workingmen’s Associ- ation (IWA), better known as the First Inter- national. It was an international socialist or- ganization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class and class struggle. At its founding, it was an alliance of people from di- verse groups, besides Marxists it included French Mutualists, Blanquists, English Owen- ites, Italian republicans, such American pro- ponents of individualist anarchism as Steph- en Pearl Andrews and William B. Greene, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 5 Mikhail Bakunin followers of Mazzini, and other socialists of various persuasions. Due to the wide variety of philosophies present in the First Interna- tional, there was conflict from the start. The first objections to Marx’s came from the Mu- tualists who opposed communism and stat- ism. However, shortly after Mikhail Bakunin and his followers (called Collectivists while in the International) joined in 1868, the First In- ternational became polarised into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads. Perhaps the clearest differences between the groups emerged over their pro- posed strategies for achieving their visions of socialism. The anarchists grouped around Bakunin favoured (in Kropotkin’s words) "dir- ect economical struggle against capitalism, without interfering in the political parlia- mentary agitation." Marxist thinking, at that time, focused on parliamentary activity. For example, when the new German Empire of 1871 introduced manhood suffrage, many German socialists became active in the Marx- ist Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1872, the conflict in the First Interna- tional climaxed with a final split between the two groups at the Hague Congress. This clash is often cited as the origin of the long- running conflict between anarchists and Marxists. From then on, the Marxist and an- archist currents of socialism had distinct or- ganisations, at various points including rival ’internationals’. In 1872, the organization was relocated to New York City. The First In- ternational disbanded four years later, at the 1876 Philadelphia conference. In the last years of the First International there was a short-lived but important first at- tempt of Left-wing politicians to seize power, the Paris Commune, a government that briefly ruled Paris, from March 28 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the final split between anarchists and socialists had taken place, and therefore it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class. Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune contributed to the break between those two political groups. Second International The Socialist International better known as the Second International (1889–1916), a Marxist organization of socialist and labour parties, was formed in Paris on July 14, 1889 with support of Engels (Marx was already deat at the time). At the Paris meeting deleg- ations from 20 countries participated.[17] The International continued the work of the dis- solved First International, though excluding the still-powerful anarcho-syndicalist move- ment and unions, and was in existence until 1916. Among the Second International’s most famous actions were its (1889) declaration of May 1 as International Workers’ Day and its (1910) declaration of March 8 as Internation- al Women’s Day. It initiated the international campaign for the 8-hour working day.[18] The International’s permanent executive and in- formation body was the International Social- ist Bureau (ISB), based in Brussels and formed after the International’s Paris Con- gress of 1900. Emile Vandervelde and Ca- mille Huysmans of the Belgian Labour Party were its chair and secretary. Lenin was a member of the International from 1905. The Second International dissolved during World War I, in 1916, as the separate national parties that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the war, instead gener- ally supporting their respective nations’ role. French Section of the Workers’ International From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 6 Friedrich Engels (SFIO) leader Jean Jaurès’s assassination, a few days before the beginning of the war, symbolized the failure of the antimilitarist doctrine of the Second International. Although mostly Marxist, the loose federa- tion of the world’s socialist parties included both openly reformist type organizations that saw a gradual implementation of reforms of capitalism to achieve socialism (foreruners of today’s Socialists and Social democrats) and revolutionary parties that saw the need to openly smash the capitalist state structure and create communism, that is the Commun- ists in the sense of the 20th century. Communists in power Lenin and the birth of the Soviet Union See also: History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–1927) In Russia, the 1917 October Revolution was the first time any party with an avowedly Marxist orientation, in this case the Bolshev- ik Party, seized state power. The assumption of state power by the Bolsheviks generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate Left to right: Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Lev Kamenev. within the Marxist movement. Marx pre- dicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial work- ers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeoisie capitalism.[19] Other socialists also believed that a Russian revolution could be the pre- cursor of workers’ revolutions in the West. The moderate Mensheviks opposed Len- in’s Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution be- fore capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks’ successful rise to power was based upon the slogans "peace, bread, and land" and "All power to the Soviets", slogans which tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the peasants’ demand for land re- form, and popular support for the Soviets. The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Com- munist Party and installed a single party re- gime devoted to the implementation of social- ist policies under Leninism. Lenin created the Third International (Comintern) in 1919 and sent the Twenty-one Conditions, which in- cluded democratic centralism, to all European socialist parties willing to adhere. In France, for example, the majority of the SFIO socialist party split in 1921 to form the French Communist Party (French Section of the Communist International). Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 7 The red star and hammer and sickle, common symbols of communism. called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the pro- letariat as well as the development of a so- cialist economy. Ultimately, if their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state. During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized all productive property and imposed a policy of war com- munism, which put factories and railroads under strict government control, collected and rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois management of industry. After three years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give a "limited place for a limited time to capital- ism." The NEP lasted until 1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved party leadership, and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan spelled the end of it. Following the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks formed in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire. Following Lenin’s democratic centralism, the Communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of mem- bers as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher mem- bers of the party as being reliable and com- pletely subject to party discipline.[20] Stalin Few years after Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin won over his chief rival Leon Trotsky and in 1928 emerged as the sole leader of the Soviet Union, the position he held until his death in 1953. He is connected with Stalinism, an op- pressive system of extensive government spy- ing, extrajudicial punishment, and political "purging", or elimination of political oppon- ents either by direct killing or through exile. His methods involved an extensive use of pro- paganda to establish a personality cult around him to maintain control over the na- tion’s people and to maintain political control for the Communist Party. Stalinism usually defines the style of a government rather than an ideology. The ideology was Marxism-Leninism, reflecting that Stalin prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Union and the future Socialist world. Stalinism is an interpretation of their ideas, and a certain political regime claiming to ap- ply those ideas in ways fitting the changing needs of society, as with the transition from "socialism at a snail’s pace" in the mid-twen- ties to the rapid industrialization of the Five- Year Plans. Sometimes, although rarely, the compound terms "Marxism-Leninism-Stalin- ism" (used by the Brazilian MR-8), or teach- ings of Marx/Engels/Lenin/Stalin, are used to show the alleged heritage and succession. Simultaneously, however, many people who profess Marxism or Leninism view Stalinism as a perversion of their ideas; Trotskyists, in particular, are virulently anti-Stalinist, con- sidering Stalin a counter-revolutionary. The main contributions of Stalin to com- munist theory were the groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin’s 1913 work Marxism and the National Question,[21], the theory of Socialism in One Country as a correction of Marx’s theory of World revolution, and the theory of "aggrava- tion of the class struggle along with the de- velopment of socialism", a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents. At the end of the 1920s Stalin launched a wave of radical economic policies, which completely overhauled the industrial and ag- ricultural face of the Soviet Union. This came to be known as the Great Turn as Russia turned away from the near-capitalist New Economic Policy. The NEP had been From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 8 implemented by Lenin in order to ensure the survival of the state following seven years of war (1914-1921, World War I from 1914 to 1917, and the subsequent Civil War) and had rebuilt Soviet production to its 1913 levels. It "modernized the Soviet Union, transforming a peasant society into an industrial state with a literate population and a remarkable sci- entific superstructure."[22] but at the ex- penses of forced collectivization, famine and terror.[23] Cold War A map of countries who declared themselves to be socialist states under the Marxist-Len- inist (red satelites of USSR, black other states) or Maoist definition (yellow) during Cold War After World War II, Communists consolidated power in Eastern Europe, and in 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China, which would later follow its own ideo- logical path of Communist development. Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambod- ia, Angola, and Mozambique were among the other countries in the Third World that adop- ted or imposed a pro-Communist government at some point. Although never formally uni- fied as a single political entity, by the early 1980s almost one-third of the world’s popula- tion lived in Communist states, including the former Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China. By comparison, the British Empire had ruled up to one-quarter of the world’s population at its greatest extent.[24] Communist states such as Soviet Union and China succeeded in becoming industrial and technological powers, challenging the capitalists’ powers in the arms race and space race and military conflicts. The split between Communist and Capital- ist worlds resulted in the Cold War, an con- tinuing state of conflict, tension and competi- tion that existed primarily between the Un- ited States and the Soviet Union and those countries’ respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s. Throughout this period, the conflict was expressed through military coalitions, espionage, weapons development, invasions, propa- ganda, and competitive technological devel- opment, which included the space race. The conflict included costly defense spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and numerous proxy wars; the two super- powers never fought one another directly. The Soviet Union created an Eastern Bloc of countries that it occupied, annexing some as Soviet Socialist Republics and maintaining others as Satellite states that would later form the Warsaw Pact. The United States and various western European countries began a policy of "containment" of communism and forged many alliances to this end, including later NATO. In the Third world the Soviet Union fostered Communist revolutionary movements, which the United States and many of its allies opposed and, in some cases, attempted to "rollback". Many countries were prompted to align themselves with the coun- tries that would later either form NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War saw periods of both heightened tension and relative calm as both sides sought détente. Direct military attacks on adversaries were deterred by the potential for mutual assured destruction us- ing deliverable nuclear weapons. The relations between the Soviet Union and its satelited were described by the so- called Brezhnev Doctrine which was an- nounced to justify the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to terminate the Prague Spring, an attack similar to earli- er Soviet military interventions, such as the invasion of Hungary in 1956. These interven- tions were meant to put an end to liberaliza- tion efforts and uprisings that had the poten- tial to compromise Soviet hegemony inside the Eastern bloc, which was considered by the Soviets to be an essential defensive and strategic buffer in case hostilities with the West were to break out. It meant that limited independence of communist parties was al- lowed, but no country would be allowed to leave the Warsaw Pact, disturb a nation’s communist party’s monopoly on power, or in any way compromise the strength of the Eastern bloc. Implicit in this doctrine was that the leadership of the Soviet Union re- served, for itself, the right to define "social- ism" and "capitalism". The principles of the From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 9 doctrine were so broad that the Soviets even used it to justify their military intervention in the non-Warsaw Pact nation of Afghanistan in 1979. Crisis The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The United States under President Ronald Reagan increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on the Soviet Union, which was already suf- fering from severe economic stagnation. In the second half of the 1980s, newly appoin- ted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev intro- duced the perestroika and glasnost reforms. The weakening of the central power en- abled revolutions of 1989, sometimes called the "Autumn of Nations",[25] a revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern Europe in late 1989, ending in the overthrow of Soviet-style communist states within the space of a few months.[26] The political upheaval began in Poland,[27] continued in Hungary, and then led to a surge of mostly peaceful revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. Ro- mania was the only Eastern-bloc country to overthrow its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.[28] The Revolutions of 1989 greatly altered the balance of power in the world and marked (together with the subsequent col- lapse of the Soviet Union) the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Post-Cold War era. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power, though Russia retained much of the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal. On the other side, People’s Republic of China and other Asian Communist states and Cuba proved resistant. The Chinese version of reforms concentrated on support of market forces while effectively prohibiting Western- style human rights and was able both main- tain the leading role of the Communist party and quickly modernize the country. By the beginning of the 21st century, states controlled by Communist parties under a single-party system include the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically import- ant in many countries. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova is a member of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, This map shows the states which today are officially run by a Communist party alone: People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam and Cuba. and President Dimitris Christofias of Cyprus is a member of the Progressive Party of Working People, but the countries are not run under single-party rule. In South Africa, the Communist Party is a partner in the ANC- led government. In India, communists lead the governments of three states, with a com- bined population of more than 115 million. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in the par- liament.[29] The People’s Republic of China has reas- sessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and the People’s Republic of China, Laos, Vi- etnam, and, to a far lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in or- der to stimulate growth. The People’s Repub- lic of China runs Special Economic Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central government control. Several other communist states have also attempted to implement market-based reforms, includ- ing Vietnam. Today, Marxist revolutionaries are con- ducting armed insurgencies in India, Philip- pines, Peru, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey, and Colombia. References Notes [1] Morris, William (in English). News from nowhere. http://www.marxists.org/ archive/morris/works/1890/nowhere/ index.htm. Retrieved on January 2008. [2] "Communism". The Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed.). 2007. http://www.bartleby.com/65/co/ communism.html. [3] Colton, Timothy J. (2007). "Communism". Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia. http://encarta.msn.com/ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 10 encyclopedia_761572241/ Communism.html. [4] Wilkerson, Doxey A.. "An Epic Revolt". from Masses & Mainstream, March, 1952, pp 53-58. http://www.trussel.com/ hf/revolt.htm. Retrieved on 2008-02-13. [5] "Communism." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. [6] "Communism" A Dictionary of Sociology. John Scott and Gordon Marshall. Oxford University Press 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. [7] Williams, Raymond (1976). Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. Fontana. ISBN 0006334792. [8] MURAVCHIK, Joshua. Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, Chapter 2, ISBN 978-1893554450 [9] Engels, Friedrich. "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific". Marxists.org. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm. [10]Kolakowski, Leszek (2005). Main Currents of Marxism. W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-06054-3. [11]Stephen Whitefield. "Communism." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003. [12]^ McLean and McMillan, 2003. [13]Karl Marx, (1845). The German Ideology, Marx-Engels Institute, Moscow. ISBN 978-1-57392-258-6. Sources available at The German Ideology at www.marxists.org. [14]Marx and the Permanent Revolution in France: Background to the Communist Manifesto by Bernard Moss, p.10, in The Socialist Register, 1998 [15]Murray Rothbard, "Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist," p.166 [16]Volkov, G. N. (1979). The Basics of Marxist-Leninist Theory. Moskva: Progress Publishers. [17]Rubio, José Luis. Las internacionales obreras en América. Madrid: 1971. p. 42. [18]Rubio, José Luis. Las internacionales obreras en América. Madrid: 1971. p. 43 [19]Marc Edelman, "Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the ’Peripheries of Capitalism’" - book reviews. Monthly Review, Dec., 1984. Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the "Peripheries of Capitalism." - book reviews Monthly Review Find Articles at BNET at www.findarticles.com. [20]Norman Davies. "Communism" The Oxford Companion to World War II. Ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot. Oxford University Press, 2001. [21] "Marxism and the National Question" [22]Fredric Jameson, collected in Marxism Beyond Marxism (1996) ISBN 0-415-91442-6, page 43 [23]Robert Conquest Reflections on a Ravaged Century (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 101 [24]Hildreth, Jeremy (2005-06-14). "The British Empire’s Lessons for Our own". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB111870387824258558.html. [25]See various uses of this term in the following publications. The term is a play on a more widely used term for 1848 revolutions, the Spring of Nations. [26]E. Szafarz, "The Legal Framework for Political Cooperation in Europe" in The Changing Political Structure of Europe: Aspects of International Law, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 0-7923-1379-8. p.221. [27]Sorin Antohi and Vladimir Tismăneanu, "Independence Reborn and the Demons of the Velvet Revolution" in Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath, Central European University Press. ISBN 963-9116-71-8. p.85. [28]Piotr Sztompka, preface to Society in Action: the Theory of Social Becoming, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-78815-6. p. x. [29]Nepal’s election The Maoists triumph Economist.com Further reading • Reason in Revolt: Marxism and Modern Science By Alan Woods and Ted Grant • Forman, James D., "Communism from Marx’s Manifesto to 20th century Reality", New York, Watts. 1972. ISBN 978-0-531-02571-0 • Books on Communism, Socialism and Trotskyism • Furet, Francois, Furet, Deborah Kan (Translator), "The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Communism 11 Century", University of Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-226-27341-9 • Daniels, Robert Vincent, "A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse", University Press of New England, 1994, ISBN 978-0-87451-678-4 • Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, "Communist Manifesto", (Mass Market Paperback - REPRINT), Signet Classics, 1998, ISBN 978-0-451-52710-3 • Dirlik, Arif, "Origins of Chinese Communism", Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-19-505454-5 • Beer, Max, "The General History of Socialism and Social Struggles Volumes 1 & 2", New York, Russel and Russel, Inc. 1957 • Adami, Stefano, ’Communism’, in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone - P.Puppa, Routledge, New York- London, 2006 External links • European Parliament resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism • In Defense of Marxism • Comprehensive list of the leftist parties of the world • Anarchy Archives Includes the works of anarchist communists. • Libertarian Communist Library • Marxists Internet Archive • Marxist.net • The Mu Particle in "Communism", a short etymological essay by Wu Ming. • Open Society Archives, one of the biggest history of communism and cold war archives in the world. • Islam and Communism Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism" Categories: Communism, Economic ideologies, Political ideologies, Political culture This page was last modified on 20 May 2009, at 13:23 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) 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