Communism

Communism is the political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production and the natural resources of a society.

While the term communism did appear until the 1840’s, the idea has existed for a very long time, appearing as long ago as the 4th century BCE. Our modern-day perception of communism is mainly based off of the philosophies of Karl Marx.

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, and revolutionary who lived in the 19th century. In 1848, he published Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, more commonly known as The Communist Manifesto, with Friedrich Engels, another German philosopher. This political pamphlet summarizes Marx and Engels’ theories concerning the nature of society and politics, stating that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. It also describes how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism. Towards the end of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels call for the “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”, which sparked many communist revolutions around the world. The Manifesto is considered one of the world’s most influential political documents.

During the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, staged a coup d'état against the Duma’s provisional government and seized power in Russia. Lenin built upon Marx’s ideologies and implemented Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union. Lenin’s death in 1924 allowed Joseph Stalin to take over the party. In the late 1920’s, Stalin began to consolidate his power by intimidating and discrediting his rivals. In the mid-1930’s, he purged the party and the general populace, either exiling dissidents to Siberia or executing them. The means of governing and related policies implemented by Stalin are called Stalinism. Stalinist policies and ideas as developed in the Soviet Union included rapid industrialization, the theory of Socialism in One Country Stalinism, a totalitarian state, collectivization of agriculture, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stalinism is a variant of Marxism-Leninism.

In the modern-day world, communism remains politically important in multiple countries. However, the People’s Republic of China is the only global superpower still ruled by a communist party. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, and the official Chinese version of communism is called Maoism, which is quite different from Karl Marx’s original ideas.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx

https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Communist-Manifesto

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