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In the United States, communism is widely used as a pejorative term as part of a Red Scare, much like socialism, and mainly in reference to authoritarian socialism and Communist states. The emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to the term's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the Soviet-type economic planning model.
- Overview
- Historical background
Communism is a political and economic system that seeks to create a classless society in which the major means of production, such as mines and factories, are owned and controlled by the public. There is no government or private property or currency, and the wealth is divided among citizens equally or according to individual need. Many of communism’s tenets derive from the works of German revolutionary Karl Marx, who (with Friedrich Engels) wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848). However, over the years others have made contributions—or corruptions, depending on one’s perspective—to Marxist thought. Perhaps the most influential changes were proposed by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, who notably supported authoritarianism.
Leninism
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Which countries are communist?
At one time about one-third of the world's population lived under communist governments, most notably in the republics of the Soviet Union. Today communism is the official form of government in only five countries: China, North Korea, Laos, Cuba, and Vietnam. However, none of these meet the true definition of communism. Instead, they can be said to be in a transitional stage between the end of capitalism and the establishment of communism. Such a phase was outlined by Karl Marx, and it came to include the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. While all five countries have authoritarian governments, their commitment to abolishing capitalism is debatable.
Read more below: Communism today
Although the term communism did not come into use until the 1840s—it is derived from the Latin communis, meaning “shared” or “common”—visions of a society that may be considered communist appeared as long ago as the 4th century bce. In the ideal state described in Plato’s Republic, the governing class of guardians devotes itself to serving the interests of the whole community. Because private ownership of goods would corrupt their owners by encouraging selfishness, Plato argued, the guardians must live as a large family that shares common ownership not only of material goods but also of spouses and children.
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Other early visions of communism drew their inspiration from religion. The first Christians practiced a simple kind of communism—as described in Acts 4:32–37, for example—both as a form of solidarity and as a way of renouncing worldly possessions. Similar motives later inspired the formation of monastic orders in which monks took vows of poverty and promised to share their few worldly goods with each other and with the poor. The English humanist Sir Thomas More extended this monastic communism in Utopia (1516), which describes an imaginary society in which money is abolished and people share meals, houses, and other goods in common.
Other fictional communistic utopias followed, notably City of the Sun (1623), by the Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella, as did attempts to put communist ideas into practice. Perhaps the most noteworthy (if not notorious) of the latter was the theocracy of the Anabaptists in the Westphalian city of Münster (1534–35), which ended with the military capture of the city and the execution of its leaders. The English Civil Wars (1642–51) prompted the Diggers to advocate a kind of agrarian communism in which the Earth would be “a common treasury,” as Gerrard Winstanley envisioned in The Law of Freedom (1652) and other works. The vision was not shared by the Protectorate led by Oliver Cromwell, which harshly suppressed the Diggers in 1650.
It was neither a religious upheaval nor a civil war but a technological and economic revolution—the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries—that provided the impetus and inspiration for modern communism. This revolution, which achieved great gains in economic productivity at the expense of an increasingly miserable working class, encouraged Marx to think that the class struggles that dominated history were leading inevitably to a society in which prosperity would be shared by all through common ownership of the means of production.
- Public ownership structures are easily manipulated by others. Because there is no private ownership involved with communism, the public nature of all properties creates a higher risk of abuse.
- Most employment opportunities are in the agricultural sector. Communist governments restrict trade and commerce unless the needs of the State require additional resources.
- Individual rights are not a top priority under Communist rule. The goal of Communism, and socialism to some extent, is to increase the well being of the entire community.
- Opposition is not permitted in Communism unless the central authority authorizes it. Only one entity, the oversight state, controls the agenda, messaging, and performance of society under Communist rule.
Jul 10, 2023 · Like the term "primitive" usually has a very negative connotation and was regularly used to justify colonialism and exploitation by the more "civilized" societies. Hobbes et al apparently even went so far to describe the "state of nature" (so his idea of primitive societies) as a war man against man and that only the absolute monarchy and the submission to a leviathan has provided them with ...
Communism is a political and economic system that seeks to create a classless society in which the major means of production, such as mines and factories, are owned and controlled by the public. There is no government or private property or currency, and the wealth is divided among citizens equally or according to individual need.
Jun 30, 2024 · Communism is an ideology that advocates a classless system in which the means of production are owned communally. Prominent examples include China and the Soviet Union.
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Oct 14, 2024 · A communist might be a member of a Communist party, which is a political party, or a member of a group of people who want to play a role in government. The opening of the 2014 convention of the ...
