Communism
Introduction:Communism (from
Latin: communis = "common") is a family of economic and political ideas and
social movements related to the establishment of an
egalitarian,
classless, or
stateless society based on
common ownership and control of the
means of production and property in general, as well as the name given to such a society.
[1][2][3] The term "Communism", usually spelled with the capital letter C, is also often used to refer to a
Communist state, a
form of government in which the
state operates under a
one-party system and declares allegiance to
Marxism-Leninism or a derivative thereof, even if the party does not actually claim that the society has already reached
communism.
Forerunners of communist ideas existed in antiquity and particularly in the 18th and early 19th century
France, with thinkers such as
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the more radical
Gracchus Babeuf. Radical egalitarianism then emerged as a significant political power in the first half of 19th century 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 intellectual movements, which are the direct ancestors of today's communism and
socialism – these two then newly minted words were almost interchangeable at the time – and of
anarchism or
anarcho-communism. The two most influential theoreticians of communism 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 organisations and firmly tied communism with the idea of
working class revolution conducted by the
exploited proletariat (or the working class). 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 proletariat. Communism in the
Marxist sense refers to a classless, stateless, and oppression-free society where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made
directly and 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 generations, henceforth known as
reformists or
social democrats, have slowly drifted away from the revolutionary views of Marx, instead arguing for a gradual parliamentary road to socialism; other communists, such as
Rosa Luxemburg or
Vladimir Lenin, continued to agitate and argue for
world revolution.
Birth of Communism:The ideal of egalitarian and collectivist society can be traced to antiquity.
Plato's
The Republic suggests collective education of children and control of possessions.
Spartacus, the leader of the somewhat successful
1st-century BCE slave uprising against the
Roman Republic inspired many later revolutionaries.
[4] Some Christian teachings such as the
Sermon on the Mount with its advocacy of shared possessions, have been interpreted politically as the underpinning of
Christian communism,
[5] and later of
liberation theology.
Early modern writers such as
Thomas More in his treatise
Utopia (1516) speculated about societies based on
common ownership of property. Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the
Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, through such thinkers as
Jean Jacques Rousseau. Later, following the upheaval of the
French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine.
[6] Gracchus Babeuf, in particular, espoused the goals of common ownership of land and total economic and political equality among citizens. During the early development of the
political 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 examined. The term "communism" was probably coined by the French utopist
Étienne Cabet for his communitarian social movement in 1839. In the following year 1840 the British leftist
John Goodwyn Barmby used this term for Babeuf's teachings. The word "socialism" came in use about 1840 and both terms were largely interchangeable at the time; the difference between the two terms was largely regional and cultural: In continental Europe "communism" was thought to be more radical and
secular than socialism, while British revolutionaries preferred "socialism".
[7]The early socialist movement, rather undifferentiated at the time, concentrated in the most industrialized European countries. In France with its revolutionary tradition lived
Henri de Saint-Simon, whose circle coined the term "exploitation of man by man";
Charles Fourier, the inventor of the word "feminism" and a propagator of communist communities; and
Louis Auguste Blanqui, author of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", who spent most of his life in prisons for his revolutionary actions. France saw also activities of early anarchists
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who asserted that "
Property is theft!", and the Russian nobleman
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin. In Great Britain, the
Chartist movement, named after the People's Charter published in 1838, demanded the equal civil right to vote for all men, including the lower classes. Among early English social reformers was the
utopian Robert Owen, the founder of the
cooperative movement and of the utopian community of
New Harmony. Founded in the U.S. state of Indiana in 1825, New Harmony collapsed after four years over internal quarrels, much like other similar undertakings.
[8]Around 1850, the modern political left began to emerge in
Germany and in
Italy.
Marxists call the period of communist theory leading to this "
utopian socialism", as opposed to their "
scientific socialism" or "scientific communism".
Theories of Communism:Marxism: Marxism, initially developed by German revolutionary philosophers
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels from 1840s into the 1890s, became the principal form of socialist thought during this time, and with few exceptions, it remained in this position well until the 1970s. Most influential leftist and
socially critical theories either develop Marxism further (e.g.,
social democracy,
Leninism,
Maoism and
Trotskyism), or completely drop Marxist ideology and do not set the creation of classless society as their aim (e.g., the modern
feminism,
New Labour,
environmentalism). Therefore the words Marxism and communism are usually understood as synonymous.
Marx and Engels considered
capitalism to be a system based on relentless
competition for profit, or
surplus value as they put it, among capitalists and capitalist states. In his
labour theory of value, Marx argued that this becomes possible by the
exploitation and the
oppression of workers. According to Marx, the main characteristic of human life in a class society is
alienation, while communism entails the full realisation of human freedom.
[10] Marx here follows
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of restraints but as action with content. Marx believed that communism would give people the power to appropriate the fruits of their labor while preventing them from exploiting others. 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 production.
Marxists hold that due to the innate antagonism and
class conflict between labour and capital, the inevitable process of revolutionary struggle can result in victory for the
proletariat, or the workers, and the establishment of a
communist society in which private ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence become the collective 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 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."
[12]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. As the masses of the people begin to overcome their
alienation and replace competition with social cooperation, this "lower phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which the antithesis between mental and physical labour 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
German workers in
Paris in 1836. This was initially a
utopian socialist and
Christian communist grouping devoted to the ideas of
Gracchus Babeuf. The League of the Just participated in the
Blanquist uprising of May 1839 in Paris.
[13] Hereafter expelled from France, the League of the Just moved to London 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.
[14] The birth conference was attended by
Friedrich Engels, who convinced the League to change its motto from All men are brethren
[15] to
Karl Marx's phrase, Working men of all countries, unite!. The Communist League held a second congress, also in London, in November and December 1847. Both Marx and Engels attended, and they were mandated to draw up a manifesto for the organization. This became the famous
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 founded the
International Workingmen's Association (IWA), better known as the
First International. It was an international
socialist organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different
left-wing political groups and
trade union organizations that were committed to the
working class and
class struggle. At its founding, it was an alliance of people from diverse groups, besides Marxists it included French
Mutualists,
Blanquists, English
Owenites, Italian
republicans, such American proponents of
individualist anarchism as
Stephen Pearl Andrews and
William B. Greene, followers of
Mazzini, and other socialists of various persuasions. Due to the wide variety of philosophies present in the First International, there was conflict from the start. The first objections to Marx's came from the Mutualists who opposed communism and
statism. However, shortly after
Mikhail Bakunin and his followers (called Collectivists while in the International) joined in 1868, the First International became polarised into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads. Perhaps the clearest differences between the groups emerged over their proposed strategies for achieving their visions of socialism. The anarchists grouped around Bakunin favoured (in
Kropotkin's words) "direct economical struggle against capitalism, without interfering in the political parliamentary agitation." Marxist thinking, at that time, focused on parliamentary activity. In 1872, the conflict in the First International 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
anarchist currents of socialism had distinct organisations, at various points including rival
'internationals'. In 1872, the organization was relocated to
New York City. The First International 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 attempt of socialists 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 organisation of
socialist and labour parties, was formed in
Paris on
July 14,
1889 with support of Engels (Marx was already dead at the time). At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated.
[16] The International continued the work of the dissolved
First International, though this time excluding the
anarcho-syndicalists, 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
International Women's Day. It initiated the international campaign for the
8-hour working day.
[17] The International's permanent executive and information body was the
International Socialist Bureau (ISB), based in
Brussels and formed after the International's Paris Congress of 1900.
Emile Vandervelde and
Camille 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 internationalist front against the war, instead generally supporting their respective nations' role.
French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) leader
Jean Jaurès's assassination, a few days before the beginning of the war, symbolised the failure of the
antimilitarist doctrine of the Second International.Although mostly Marxist, this loose federation of the world’s socialist parties included both openly
reformist organisations that saw a gradual implementation of reforms of capitalism to achieve socialism (forerunners of today's
social democrats), and revolutionary socialist parties that saw the need to openly smash the capitalist state structure through a workers' revolution in order to create a communist society (communists in the sense of the 20th century).
Marxism-Leninism: Marxism-Leninism is a
communist ideological stream that emerged as the mainstream tendency among the
Communist parties in the 1920s as it was adopted as the ideological foundation of the
Communist International during
Stalin's era.However, in various contexts, different (and sometimes opposing) political groups have used the term "Marxism-Leninism" to describe the ideology that they claimed to be upholding.Within 5 years of Lenin's death,
Joseph Stalin completed his rise to power in the
Soviet Union. According to G. Lisichkin, Marxism-Leninism as a separate ideology was compiled by
Stalin basically in his "The questions of Leninism" book
[1]. During the period of Stalin's rule in the
Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism was proclaimed the official ideology of the state
[2].Whether Stalin's practices actually followed the principles of
Karl Marx and Lenin is still a subject of debate among historians and political scientists
[3].
Trotskyists in particular believe that
Stalinism contradicted authentic Marxism and Leninism
[4], and they initially used the term "Bolshevik-Leninism" to describe their own ideology of anti-Stalinist (and later anti-Maoist) communism.
Left communists rejected "Marxism-Leninism" as an anti-Marxist current.[
citation needed]The term Marxism-Leninism is most often used by those who believe that Lenin's legacy was successfully carried forward by
Joseph Stalin (
Stalinists). However, it is also used by some who repudiate Stalin, such as the supporters of
Nikita Khrushchev[5].After the
Sino-Soviet split, communist parties of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China each claimed to be the sole intellectual heir to Marxism-Leninism. In China, they claim that Mao had "adapted Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions" evolved into the idea that he had updated it in a fundamental way applying to the world as a whole; consequently, the term "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought" (commonly known as
Maoism) was increasingly used to describe the official Chinese state ideology as well as the ideological basis of parties around the world who sympathized with the
Communist Party of China (such as the
Communist Party of the Philippines, Marxist-Leninist/Mao Zedong Thought, founded by
Jose Maria Sison in 1968). Following the death of Mao, Peruvian Maoists associated with the
Communist Party of Peru (Sendero Luminoso) subsequently coined the term
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, arguing that Maoism was a more advanced stage of Marxism.Following the
Sino-Albanian split, a small portion of Marxist-Leninists began to downplay or repudiate the role of
Mao Zedong in the
International Communist Movement in favor of the
Party of Labor of Albania and a stricter adherence to Stalin.In
North Korea, Marxism-Leninism was officially superseded in 1977 by
Juche, in which concepts of class and class struggle, in other words Marxism itself, play no significant role. However, the government is still sometimes referred to as Marxist-Leninist - or, more commonly, Stalinist - due to its political and economic structure (see
History of North Korea).In the other three "
communist states" existing today -
Cuba,
Vietnam, and
Laos - the ruling Parties hold Marxism-Leninism as their official ideology, although they give it different interpretations in terms of practical policy.
Stalin:A few years after Lenin's death,
Joseph Stalin won out 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 oppressive system of extensive government
spying,
extrajudicial punishment, and political "purging", or elimination of political opponents either by direct killing or through exile. His methods involved an extensive use of
propaganda to establish a
personality cult around him to maintain control over the nation'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 apply those ideas in ways fitting the changing needs of society, as with the transition from "socialism at a snail's pace" in the mid-twenties to the rapid industrialization of the
Five-Year Plans. Sometimes, although rarely, the compound terms "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism" (used by the
Brazilian MR-8), or teachings 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, considering Stalin a counter-revolutionary.The main contributions of Stalin to communist theory were the groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question,
[20], the theory of
Socialism in One Country as a correction of Marx's theory of
World revolution, and the theory of "
aggravation of the class struggle along with the development 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 agricultural 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 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 scientific superstructure",
[21] but at the expenses of forced
collectivization,
famine and terror.
[22]Maoism: Mao Zedong (
Simplified Chinese: 毛泽东;
Traditional Chinese: 毛澤東;
Wade-Giles: Mao Tse-tung;
Pinyin: Máo Zédōng)
pronunciation (
help·
info) (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was a
Chinese Communist leader. Mao led the
Communist Party of China (CPC) to victory against the
Kuomintang (KMT) in the
Chinese Civil War, and was the leader of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. Chairman Mao has been regarded as one of the most important figures in modern world history,
[1] and named by
Time Magazine as one of the
100 most influential people of the 20th century.
[2] He is officially held in high regard in China where he is known as a great revolutionary, political strategist, and military mastermind who defeated
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in the
Chinese Civil War, defeated the United States forces in the
Korean War, and then through his policies transformed the country into a
major world power armed with nuclear weapons. Additionally, Mao is viewed by many in China as a
poet,
philosopher, and
visionary.
[3] However, Mao remains a controversial figure to this day, with a contentious and ever-evolving legacy. Critics blame many of Mao's socio-political programs, such as the
Great Leap Forward and the
Cultural Revolution, for causing severe damage to the
culture,
society,
economy, and
foreign relations of China, as well as a probable death toll in the tens of millions.
[4] . The majority of the Chinese people regard Mao as the savior of the nation, who laid the military, political, economical, technological and cultural foundations of modern China.
Titoism :Titoism is an adaptation of
communist ideology named after
Josip Broz Tito, leader of the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, primarily used to describe the specific socialist system built in Yugoslavia after its refusal of the 1948 Resolution of the
Cominform, when the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia refused to take further dictates from the
Soviet Union. Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country, the means of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. During Tito’s era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and often in opposition to) the policies of the
Soviet Union.The term was originally meant as a
pejorative, and was labeled by Moscow as a heresy during the period of tensions between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia known as the
Informbiro period from 1948 to 1955.Unlike the rest of
East Europe, which fell under
Stalin's influence post-World War II, Yugoslavia, due to the strong leadership of Marshal Tito and the fact that the
Yugoslav Partisans liberated Yugoslavia with only limited help from the
Red Army, remained independent from Moscow. It became the only country in the
Balkans to resist pressure from Moscow to join the
Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" right up until the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout his time in office, Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's independence from Soviet Union, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership of the
Comecon and Tito's open rejection of many aspects of
Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this.The
Soviets and their
satellite states usually accused Yugoslavia of
Trotskyism and
Fascism, charges loosely based on Tito's samoupravljanje (
self-management) and the theory of
associated labor (
profit sharing policies and worker-owned industries initiated by him,
Milovan Đilas, and
Edvard Kardelj in 1950). In these, the Soviets saw (or pretended to see) the seeds of
Council Communism or even
Corporatism.The
propaganda attacks centered on the
caricature of Tito the Butcher [of the
Working Class], aimed to pinpoint him as a covert agent of Western
Imperialism. Tito was in fact welcomed by Western powers as an ally, but he never lost his communist credentials. The period was, however, marked by severe repression of opponents, people who expressed admiration for the Soviet state. Most notably, many dissidents were sent to the
penal camp on
Goli otok.
[1]Castroism: Castroism (castrismo in
Spanish) is a
communist ideology, lined with and created by, the Cuban revolutionary leader,
Fidel Castro. Castroism is influenced by many philosophers and politicians but particularly the theories of Cuban revolutionary
Jose Marti, and after 1961,
Karl Marx,
Freidrich Engels,
Vladimir Lenin and according to some, fellow
26th of July Movement partner
Che Guevara. Castroism's main focus is the practice and theory behind revolution and revolutionary government in
Cuba and promotes Cuban
nationalism, Latin American solidarity,
social justice and
democracy.Castroism's main principles were first expounded in his 1953 speech, History Will Absolve Me. Here he stressed the reinstatement of the
1940 Constitution of Cuba, and also of promoted a series of land and labor reforms. In this speech, he mentions little about
socialism and
communist ideologies and terminology, make no appearance. In this Castro also stated the need for Cuban nationalism, social equality and solidarity among the Cuban people. This speech strongly criticized the government of
Fulgencio Batista. In the aftermath of the
Cuban Revolution and his appointment as
Prime Minister of Cuba, Castro began to take a more active interest in the development of his political ideals. During this time, Castro did implement many socialist, but not explicitly
Marxist reforms of land and working rights, including the 1959, First Agrarian Reform. Soon afterwards, however, it was noted that Cuban officials had contacted
KGB operatives in
Mexico City. This was followed soon by over 500 Spanish-speaking advisors being sent to Cuba by the
Soviet Union. Over the following two years Castro built up his relationship with the USSR, buying oil from them, and exporting sugar and coffee. In 1960-61 Castro began to introduce
Marxist Leninist ideas into the, then developing theory of Castroism. Collectivization schemes and other communist practices were implemented, and Cuba was declared a socialist state with the Communist Party of Cuba as the leading force in society and state. In 1976, the Cuban government introduced the modern constitution of Cuba, which sought to institutionalize the Cuban Revolution, and its Marxist principles. It was based extensively on the constitutions of the Soviet Union and
Eastern Bloc countries. It introduced communist ideology, specifically Marxist Leninist, into the government of Cuba. It stipulated that health care and education provision ought to be free of charge, and that the state could restrict media and religious organizations within the island. This was the first time that explicitly Soviet principles had been incorporated into a major piece of Cuban legislation. In 2002, socialist ideals were declared ultimate and irrevocable, within the governance of the Island of Cuba. Even in modern times Castroism distinguishes itself from other communist ideologies, such as
Leninism or
Maoism, in that it supports a more socialist theory of governance and its focus on Latin American solidarity and Cuban nationalism, as well as the exportation of revolution to other countries. See
Angola and
Congo. This was demonstrated in recent times, when Fidel Castro attended numerous summits with the socialist leaders,
Schafik Handal,
Evo Morales,
Hugo Chavez and
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The development of Castroism is based upon the background of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro's years in power. It was largely shaped by a close involvement with the Soviet Union. Initially the Cuban revolutionaries received little if any support from the large communist states in Russia or the
People's Republic of China. However as the revolutionary government solidified and established a functioning government, other powers became more closely involved. In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union integrated Cuba into one of its network of
satellite states, thus providing opportunities for Cuba to export large amounts of sugar, coffee and other goods that Russia could not produce self sufficiently. As a result of this Cuba became embroiled in many of the conflicts between the Soviet Union and the
USA including the
Cuban missile crisis. This close relationship with the USSR, led to many policy decision within Cuba, relating to internal and foreign affairs.
Jucheism or Kimilsunism: The Juche Idea (pronounced
/ˈdʒutʃɛərː/) is the official state
ideology of
North Korea. It teaches that "man is the master of everything and decides everything," and that the Korean people are the masters of Korea's revolution. Juche is a component of Kimilsungism, North Korea's political system.
[1] The word literally means "main body" or "subject"; it has also been translated in North Korean sources as "independent stand" and the "spirit of self-reliance".
Kim Il-sung advanced Juche as a slogan in a December 28, 1955, speech titled "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work" in rejection of the policy of
de-Stalinization (bureaucratic self-reform) in the
Soviet Union. The Juche Idea itself gradually emerged as a systematic ideological doctrine under the political pressures of the
Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. The word "Juche" also began to appear in untranslated form in English-language North Korean works from around 1965. Kim Il-sung outlined the three fundamental principles of Juche in his April 14, 1965, speech “On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”. The principles are "independence in politics" (chaju), "self-sustenance in the economy" (charip) and "self-defense in national defense" (chawi). Current North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il officially authored the definitive statement on Juche in a 1982 document titled On the Juche Idea. He has final authority over the interpretation of the state ideology and incorporated the
Songun (army-first) policy into it in 1996. In 1972, Juche replaced
Marxism-Leninism in the revised North Korean constitution as the official state ideology, this being a response to the
Sino-Soviet split. Juche was nonetheless defined as a creative application of Marxism-Leninism. Kim Il-sung also explained that Juche was not original to North Korea and that in formulating it he only laid stress on a programmatic orientation that is inherent to all Marxist-Leninist states.After the 1991 collapse of the
Soviet Union, North Korea’s greatest economic benefactor, all reference to Marxism-Leninism was dropped in the revised 1998 constitution. But Marxist-Leninist phraseology remains in occasional use, for example,
socialism and
communism. The establishment of the
Songun doctrine in the mid-1990s, however, has formally designated the
military, not the
proletariat or
working class, as the main revolutionary force in North Korea.Many commentators, journalists, and scholars outside North Korea equate Juche with
Stalinism and call North Korea a Stalinist country. Some specialists have argued otherwise and have attempted to characterize the North Korean state as
corporatist (
Bruce Cumings),
fascist (
Brian Myers), guerrillaist (
Wada Haruki),
monarchist (
Dae Sook-suh),
neo-capitalist (
Andrei Lankov), and
theocratic (
Han S. Park,
Christopher Hitchens). Those who have made conditional arguments that North Korea is a Stalinist regime include
Charles Armstrong,
Adrian Buzo,
Chong-sik Lee, and
Robert Scalapino.Kim Il-sung's policy statements and speeches from the 1940s and 1950s confirm that the North Korean government accepted
Joseph Stalin's 1924 theory of
socialism in one country and its model of centralized autarkic economic development. Kim himself was a great admirer of Stalin. Following Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, the North Korean leader wrote an emotional obituary in his honor titled "Stalin Is the Inspiration for the Peoples Struggling for Their Freedom and Independence" in a special issue of the WPK newspaper
Rodong Sinmun (March 10, 1953), the opening of which reads: "Stalin has died. The ardent heart of the great leader of progressive mankind has ceased to beat. This sad news has spread over Korean territory like lightning, inflicting a bitter blow to the hearts of millions of people. Korean People's Army soldiers, workers, farmers, and students, as well as all residents of both South and North Korea, have heard the sad news with profound grief. The very being of Korea has seemed to bow down, and mothers who had apparently exhausted their tears in weeping for the children they had lost in the bombing of the [American] air bandits sobbed again."When a deceased Stalin's
cult of personality was denounced at the 1956
Twentieth Party Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, North Korean state authorities ended overt adulation of the Soviet leader. But the regime refused to follow the example of Soviet political reform, which it decried as
modern revisionism, or join the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), the major international trade organization of Marxist-Leninist states subordinated to the economic development of the Soviet Union. Presently, the North Korean government admits no connection between Juche and the ideas of Stalin, though occasional mention is made of his supposed political merits.Although the influence of
Mao Zedong is also not formally acknowledged in North Korea, WPK ideologists and speech writers began to openly use Maoist ideas, such as the concept of self-regeneration, in the 1950s and 1960s. Maoist theories of art also began to influence North Korean musical theater during this time. These developments occurred as a result of the influence of the Chinese Army's five-year occupation of North Korea after the Korean War, as well as during the Sino-Soviet split when Kim Il-sung sided with Mao against Soviet de-Stalinization. Kim attended middle school in Manchuria, he was conversant in Chinese, and he had been a guerrilla partisan in the
Communist Party of China from about 1931-1941. The postwar Kim Il-sung regime had also emulated Mao’s
Great Leap Forward, his theory of the
Mass line (qunzhong luxian), and the guerrilla tradition. Juche, however, does not exactly share the Maoist faith in the peasantry over the working class and the village over the city.After Mao's death, the policies of Maoist autarkic peasant-based socialism were phased out in China.
Deng Xiaoping launched the
Four Modernizations program in 1978 and opened China to sweeping economic reforms that incorporated elements of the
market economy.
Deng Xiaoping Theory was officially instituted in the 1980s. Despite relatively cordial Beijing-Pyongyang relations in this period, the North Korean regime was reluctant to adopt the Chinese open-door policy and model of economic modernization, because its leadership feared such reforms would compromise the Juche ideology and result in political destabilization and events similar to the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (Lee, p. 1998, 199). After the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and
Eastern Bloc between 1989 and 1991, with the consequent loss of economic aid, North Korea began to undertake cautious, experimental, and selective emulation of the Chinese model.The Joint Venture Law of 1984 was, however, among the first Deng-inspired North Korean attempts to attract foreign capital within the programmatic orientation of Juche doctrine. This was followed by emulation of the
Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. North Korea established its first capitalist
SEZ in 1991, the
Rajin-Sonbong Economic Special Zone. The 1998 Juche constitution was also written with provisions to defend private property and joint venture enterprises with capitalist countries, making possible the establishment of the Pyongyang-based Research Institute on Capitalism in 2000, and allowing for the price and wage reforms of July 1, 2002. Deng Xiaoping Theory accepts marketization of the Chinese economy as “
socialism with Chinese characteristics” or a “
socialist market economy,” and the North Korean Juche ideology rationalizes such reforms under the concept of “socialism of our style.”On the role of the
nation-state in Juche, according to Kim Il-sung’s “On the Questions of the Period of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (1967) and Kim Jong-il’s “On Preserving the Juche Character and National Character of the Revolution and Construction” (1997), the goal of revolution and construction under Juche is the establishment of
socialism and
communism within the national borders of North Korea. Contrary to the perspectives of classical
Marxism, Juche also maintains that Koreans are a blood-based national community, that the Korean nation-state will remain forever, and that Koreans will always live in Korea and speak Korean.Despite the
nationalism of Juche, North Korean
ideologists have argued that other countries can and should learn from Juche and adapt its principles to their national conditions. The North Korean government admits that Juche addresses questions previously considered in
classical Marxism and its subsequent developments in Soviet Marxism-Leninism, but now distances itself from and even repudiates aspects of these political philosophies. The official position as maintained in Kim Jong-il’s “The Juche Philosophy Is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy” (1996) is that Juche is a completely new ideology created by Kim Il-sung, who does not depend on the Marxist classics. As a result, the North Korean Constitution has no mention of Marxism-Leninism, but rather occupies its entire preamble with statements about Kim Il-sung.While advocating that Juche is tailored to the national peculiarities of North Korea, as opposed to conforming to the premises of classical Marxist
international socialism (i.e., the workers of the world have no nation and
workers of the world, unite), the North Korean government does make some reference to the classical internationalists
Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, their follower
Vladimir Lenin, and his successor
Joseph Stalin as creditable leaders of the socialist movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries before the advent of Juche in 1955. By contrast, Maoism is rarely mentioned, and Deng Xiaoping's
ideology for economic reform is basically suppressed in its entirety by the Kim Jong-Il regime. In addition, the writings of classical Marxism are generally forbidden for
lay readers in North Korea.
Main Aspects of Communism:
Class struggle: Class Struggle is the active expression of
class conflict looked at from any kind of
socialist perspective.
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, leading ideologists of
communism, wrote "The [written]
[1] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle".
[2]Marx's notion of class has nothing to do with
social class in the
sociological sense of upper, middle and lower classes (which are often defined in terms of quantitative income or wealth). Instead, in an age of
capitalism, Marx describes an economic class. Membership of a class is defined by one's relationship to the means of production, i.e., one's position in the social structure that characterizes capitalism. Marx talks mainly about two classes that include the vast majority of the population, the
proletariat and the
bourgeoisie. Other classes such as the
petty bourgeoisie share characteristics of both of these main classes. Labour (the
proletariat or workers) includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their
labor power and being paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They have little choice but to work for capital, since they typically have no independent way to survive.
Capital (the
bourgeoisie or capitalists) includes anyone who gets their income not from labor as much as from the
surplus value they appropriate from the workers who create wealth. The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their
exploitation of the workers (proletariat).
What Marx points out is that members of each of the two main classes have interests in common. These class or collective interests are in conflict with those of the other class as a whole. This in turn leads to conflict between individual members of different classes.An example of this would be a factory producing a commodity, such as the manufacture of widgets (a standard imaginary commodity in economics books). Some of the money received from selling widgets will be spent on things like raw materials and machinery (
constant capital) in order to build more widgets. Similarly, some money –
variable capital – is spent on
labor power. The capitalist would not be in business if not for the
surplus value, i.e., the money received from selling the widgets beyond that spent on constant and variable capital. The amount of this surplus value – profits, interest, and rent – depends on how much labor workers do for the wages or salaries they are paid.This surplus value is higher to the extent that workers spend time at work beyond what they're paid for and to the extent that they exert effort beyond the cost of their labor-time. Thus the capitalist would like as much "free time" (unpaid labor during official lunch breaks, after official closing time, etc.) and as much worker effort as possible. On the other hand, the workers would like to be paid for every minute they work under the capitalist's authority and would like to avoid unnecessary and unpaid effort. They would also prefer higher wages and benefits (such as health insurance, defined-benefit pensions, etc.) and less of a
dictatorial or
paternalistic attitude from employers. Working conditions must be safe and healthy, rather than dangerous.Not all class struggle is violent or necessarily radical (as with
strikes and
lockouts). Class antagonism may instead be expressed as low worker morale, minor sabotage and pilferage, and individual workers' abuse of
petty authority and hoarding of information. It may also be expressed on a larger scale by support for
socialist or
populist parties. On the employers' side, the use of union-busting legal firms and the lobbying for anti-union laws are forms of class struggle.Not all class struggle is a threat to capitalism, or even to the authority of an individual capitalist. A narrow struggle for higher wages by a small sector of the working-class (what is often called "economism") hardly threatens the status quo. In fact, by applying "
craft union" tactics of excluding other workers from skilled trades, an economistic struggle may even weaken the working class as a whole by dividing it. Class struggle becomes more important in the historical process as it becomes more general, as
industries are organized rather than crafts, as workers' class consciousness rises, and as they are organized as
political parties. Marx referred to this as the progress of the proletariat from being a class "in itself" (a position in the social structure) to being one "for itself" (an active and conscious force that could change the world).
Marx thought that this conflict was central to the social structure of capitalism and could not be abolished without replacing the system itself. Further, he argued that the objective conditions under capitalism would likely develop in a way that encouraged a proletariat organized collectively for its own goals to develop: the accumulation of surplus value as more means of production by the capitalists would allow them to become more and more powerful, encouraging overt class conflict. If this is not counteracted by increasing political and economic organization by workers, it would inevitably cause an extreme polarization of the classes, encouraging the
revolution that would destroy capitalism itself.The revolution would lead to a
socialist society in which the proletariat controlled the state, that is, "
the dictatorship of the proletariat". The original meaning of this term was a workers' democracy, not a
dictatorship in the modern sense of the word. For Marx, democracy under capitalism is a bourgeois dictatorship.Even after a revolution, the two classes would struggle, but eventually the struggle would recede and the classes dissolve. As class boundaries broke down, the state apparatus would wither away. According to Marx, the main task of any state apparatus is to uphold the power of the ruling class; but without any classes there would be no need for a state. That would lead to the
classless,
stateless communist society.Marx noted that other classes existed, but said that as time (and capitalism) moved forward, these other classes would disappear, and things would become stratified until only two classes remained, which would become more and more polarized as time went on. Other classes are:
the self-employed (petit bourgeoisie) — these are people who own their own means of production, thus work for themselves. Marx saw these people swept away by the march of capitalism, such as family farms being replaced by agribusiness, or many small stores run by their owners being replaced by a supermarket, and so forth.
managers, supervisors, white-collar staff, and security officers – these are intermediaries between capitalists and the proletariat. Since they are paid a wage, technically they are workers, but they represent a privileged stratum of the proletariat, typically serving the capitalists' interest.
the
lumpenproletariat – the chronically unemployed. These people have at most a tenuous connection to production. Since Marx, many states have tried to compensate for the difficulties experienced by workers due to
cyclical unemployment. Unfortunately there is also a growing
structural unemployment in which people are permanently dependent on welfare programs or employed relatives. These people form the lumpenproletariat, along with thieves and con artists of various kinds who depend on crime for their income. Marx saw the problem of unemployment growing more acute as capitalism went on, so this class would exist prior to the foreseen revolution. Marx deemed the lumpenproletariat as unimportant, and not playing a major role in the labor/capital class struggle. Since they would benefit in his view from a revolution, they would be on the side of the proletariat. But he saw them as unreliable, since they were likely to be mercenary in their attitudes. This view was revised by some followers of Marx such as
Mao Zedong, who saw a greater role for the lumpenproletariat in class struggle.
domestic servants, who often had a better standard of living than the proletariat, but who were considered by society as by nature dependent upon their literal masters, and so male servants were not considered worthy of receiving the vote.
peasants, who still represented a large part of the population well into the twentieth century. Capital for such workers — for example, a tractor or reaping machine — was in most countries for a long time unthinkable, so they were not considered some sort of rural proletarians. Trotsky's analysis of the peasant demonstrated this class to be divided in loyalty between the capitalist class and the proletariat, in that the wealthier land-owning peasants (
Kulak) had an interest in maintaining a capitalist system, while the poor landless peasants had interests more aligned with those of the proletariat; thus is why the peasant class could not lead a revolution. Trotsky's theory of
Permanent Revolution called for an alliance of the proletariat and peasant classes, with the proletariat leading the peasants. The peasants were to produce more in order to support the proletariat, and in return the proletariat would supply the peasants with farming machinery and equipment. The point was to mechanize farming in order to be able to sustain a higher proletarian population, while destroying the peasant class by turning them into proletariat. The people in charge of growing food were to become farm workers. This was accomplished in the
Soviet Union, although brutally, by the Stalinist bureaucratic caste, which contradicted the slower peaceful manner in which
collectivization was supposed to occur under the plans of
Lenin and
Trotsky.
Maoists believe that the peasants are the true proletariat and must take a leading role in the proletarian revolution.
According to
Michel Foucault, in the 19th century the
essentialist notion of the "
race" was incorporated by
racists,
biologists, and
eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "biological race" which was then integrated to "
state racism". On the other hand,
Marxists transformed the notions of the "race" and the "race struggle" into the concept of "class struggle". In a letter to Friedrich Engels in 1882 Karl Marx wrote: You know very well where we found our idea of class struggle; we found it in the work of the French historians who talked about the race struggle.
[3] For Foucault, the theme of social war provides overriding principle that connects class and race struggle.
[4] Moses Hess, an important theoretician of the early socialist movement, in his "Epilogue" to "
Rome and Jerusalem" argued that "the race struggle is primary, the class struggle secondary... With the cessation of race
antagonism, the class struggle will also come to a standstill. The equalization of all classes of society will necessarily follow the
emancipation of all the races, for it will ultimately become a scientific question of social economics."
[5] A recently emerging school of thought in the US holds the opposite to be true. The race struggle is less important, since racism is doomed to eventual extinction as people become better educated and more open minded. The primary struggle is that of class since labor of all races face the same problems and injustices. The main example given is the United States, which has the most politically weak working class of any developed nation, where race is a distraction that has kept labor divided and unorganized.
World communism: World communism, also known as international communism or global communism, is the terminal stage of development of the (future) history of communism in
Marxist theory. It has also usually been equated to the
Comintern (Communist International). This is the meaning that typically and historically has been meant by opponents of
communism. World communism is closely related and connected to
stateless communism.Marxist theory may treat world communism as utopian, but it is the transition to world communism that attracts attention. World communism is to be achieved by
world revolution, according to a theory that was popular in the period 1917 to around 1933 (at least). World communism is incompatible with the existence of
nation-states, so according to an older theory there will be an
abolition of the state preceding world communism.Abolition of the state is not incompatible with world revolution, but is not in itself a distinctively Marxist doctrine. It was held by various
socialist and
anarchist thinkers of the nineteenth century. An apparent alternative is a theory going back to
Karl Marx, speaking of the “
withering away of the state”.The crux here is a text of
Friedrich Engels, from his
Anti-Dühring. It is often cited as "The state is not 'abolished,' it withers away.” This is from the pioneer work of
historical materialism, a formulation of Marx’s idea of a
materialist conception of history. The withering away of the state is a graphic formulation, that has passed into cliché. The translation (Engels was writing in German) is also given as: “The state is not "abolished". It dies out.”
[1] Reference to the whole passage shows that this happens only after the proletariat has seized the means of production. There has been a revolution.The schematic is therefore revolution, transitional period, utopian period.For
Lenin the transitional period, which for Engels was reduced to a single act, has become extended and “obviously lengthy”.
[2]. In the same place he argues strongly that Marx’s conception of communist society is not utopian, but takes into account the heritage of what came before.This gives, at least roughly, the position on world communism as the Comintern was set up in 1919: world revolution is necessary for the setting up of world communism, but not immediately or clearly sufficient.
Stateless communism: Stateless communism, also known as pure communism, is the ideal, post-socialist stage of society which
Karl Marx predicted would inevitably follow the historical stages of
capitalism and
socialism. Stateless communism is closely related and connected to
world communism. Anarchists and Marxists both agree on the long-term desirability of a
stateless society. For Lenin, a classless society would be a wholly working class society, organised to produce according to socially managed goals. Such a society, Lenin suggested, would develop habits that would gradually make political representation unnecessary, as the radically democratic nature of the Soviets would lead citizens to come to agree with the representatives' style of management. Only in this environment, Lenin suggested, could the state wither away, ushering in a period of stateless communism. The administration of socialist economy is a direct function of the state in its struggle to overcome class oppositions. So here we have a difference in principle in the relation between "society" and the "state", between "politics" and "economics", between the "administration of people" and the "administration of things". In such conditions the development of productive forces and the victorious course of the class struggle systematically prepare the transition to the swallowing up of the political functions of the state in administrative and economic functions, i.e. the transition to classless and stateless communist society. Proletarian internationalism, also known as international socialism, is a
Marxist social class theory whose concept is that members of the
working class should act in solidarity towards working people in other countries on the basis of a common
class interest, rather than following their respective national governments. Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan,
Workers of all countries, unite!, the last line of
The Communist Manifesto. Early unionists learned that more members meant more power because by joining together the workers gained greater bargaining power. Thus, taken to an international level, it would further increase the power of the working class versus that of their bosses.Proletarian internationalism also claims itself to be a deterrent against wars amongst nations, because people with a common interest are less likely to take up arms against one another, however they are more likely to do so against the
ruling class that Marxists believe oppress workers. According to Marxist theory the
antonym of proletarian internationalism is
bourgeois nationalism.In contrast, some have perceived social realities to be quite different from proletarian internationalism. For example,
George Orwell believed that "in all countries the poor are more national than the rich." To this, Marxists might counter that while the rich may have historically had the awareness and education to recognize cross-national interest of class, the poor of those same nations likely have not had this advantage, and so have been fooled into "patriotism", failing to recognize that their own class interest exists and could be used to overthrow the ruling class order.
[1] Marxists would also point out that in times of revolutionary struggle (the most evident being the revolutionary periods of 1848, 1871, 1916-1923, etc) internationalism within the proletariat can overtake petty nationalisms as the realities of similar (concentred) class struggles occur in multiple nations at the same time and the workers of those nations find they have more in common with other workers than with their own bourgeiosie.
Communist Party: A
political party described as a communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of
communism through a communist form of
government. The name originates from the 1848 tract
Manifesto of the Communist Party by
Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels.
[1] The
Leninist concept of a communist party encompasses a larger political system and includes not only an
ideological orientation but also a wide set of organizational policies. A communist party is, at least according to Leninist theory, the
vanguard party of the working class, whether ruling or non ruling,
but when such a party is in power in a specific country, the party is said to be the highest authority of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin's theories on the role of a communist party were developed as the early 20th-century
Russian Social Democracy divided into
Bolshevik (meaning "majority") and
Menshevik (meaning "minority") factions. Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, argued that a revolutionary party should be a well-knit vanguard party with a centralized political command and a strict
cadre policy; the Menshevik faction, however, argued that the party should be a broad-based mass movement. The Bolshevik party, which eventually became the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, took power in Russia after the
October Revolution in 1917. With the creation of the
Communist International, the Leninist concept of party building was copied by emerging communist parties worldwide. There currently exist hundreds, if not thousands, of communist parties, large and small, throughout the world. Their success rates vary widely: some are growing; others are in decline. In five countries (the
People's Republic of China,
Cuba,
North Korea,
Laos, and
Vietnam) communist parties retain dominance over the state. See the
List of communist parties for details on the communist parties of today.
In theory, a communist
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 in many countries where communist parties were in government, 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 contemporary communist parties still hold to the democratic centralist tradition. Others have abandoned democratic centralism, often accompanied by a renouncing of
Marxism-Leninism overall.
As the membership of a communist party was to be limited to active cadres, there was a need for networks of separate organizations to mobilize mass support for the party. Typically communist parties have built up various front organizations, whose membership is often open to non-communists. In many countries the single most important front organization of the communist parties has been its youth wing. During the time of the Communist International the youth leagues were explicit communist organizations, using the name 'Young Communist League'. Later the youth league concept was broadened in many countries, and names like 'Democratic Youth League' were adopted.Other organizations often connected to communist parties include
trade unions, student, women's, peasant's and cultural organizations. Traditionally these mass organizations were politically subordinated to the political leadership of the party. However, in many contemporary cases mass organizations founded by communists have acquired a certain degree of independence. In some cases mass organizations have outlived the communist parties in question.At the international level, the Communist International organized various international front organizations (linking national mass organizations with each other), such as the
Young Communist International,
Profintern,
Krestintern,
International Red Aid,
Sportintern, etc.. These organizations were dissolved in the process of deconstruction of the Communist International. After the
Second World War new international coordination bodies were created, such as the
World Federation of Democratic Youth,
International Union of Students,
World Federation of Trade Unions,
Women’s International Democratic Federation and
World Peace Council.
A uniform naming scheme for communist parties was adopted by the Communist International. All parties were required to use the name 'Communist Party of (name of country)'. Today, there are plenty of cases where the old sections of the Communist International have retained those names. In other cases names have been changed. Common causes for the shift in naming were either moves to avoid state repression
[2] or as measures to indicate a broader political acceptance. A typical example of the latter was the renamings of various
East European communist parties after the Second World War, as staged 'mergers' of the local Social Democratic parties occurred.
[3] New names in the post-war era included '
Socialist Party', '
Socialist Unity Party', '
Popular Party', '
Workers Party' and '
Party of Labour'.The naming conventions of communist parties became more diverse as the international communist movement was fragmented due to the
Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. Those who sided with
China and/or
Albania in their criticism of the Soviet leadership, often added words like 'Revolutionary' or 'Marxist-Leninist' to distinguish themselves from the pro-Soviet parties.
Ctritisim:Some varieties of Marxist philosophy are strongly influenced by
G.W.F. Hegel, emphasizing totality and even
teleology: for example, the work of
Georg Lukács, whose influence extends to contemporary thinkers like
Fredric Jameson. Others consider "totality" merely another version of Hegel's "spirit," and thus condemn it as a crippling, secret idealism.
Theodor Adorno, a leading philosopher of the
Frankfurt School, who was strongly influenced by Hegel, tried to take a middle path between these extremes: Adorno contradicted Hegel's motto "the true is the whole" with his new version, "the whole is the false," but he wished to preserve
critical theory as a negative, oppositional version of the utopia described by Hegel's "spirit." Adorno believed in totality and human potential as ends to be striven for, but not as certainties.The status of
humanism in Marxist thought has been quite contentious. Many Marxists, especially Hegelian Marxists and also those committed to political programs (such as many
Communist Parties), have been strongly humanist. These humanist Marxists believe that Marxism describes the true potential of human beings, and that this potential can be fulfilled in collective freedom after the Communist revolution has removed capitalism's constraints and subjugations of humanity. The
Praxis school based its theory on the writings of the
young Marx, emphasizing the humanist and dialectical aspects thereof.However, other Marxists, especially those influenced by
Louis Althusser, are just as strongly
anti-humanist. Anti-humanist Marxists believe that ideas like "humanity," "freedom," and "human potential" are pure ideology, or theoretical versions of the bourgeois economic order. They feel that such concepts can only condemn Marxism to theoretical self-contradictions which may also hurt it politically.
Conclusion:The communist ideology in its Marxist stream is still alive and well.
Trotskyists amongst other Marxists continue to describe themselves as socialist and communist interchangeably. Many of them hold that since the Soviet Union after Stalin was nothing more than a
state capitalist country, its demise means nothing more than the failure of one style of capitalist organisation. Although small in numbers, Marxist socialists and communists continue to build their ranks in many countries such as the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain,
International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the US and the
New Anticapitalist Party in
France.
Marxist-Leninist stream of thought on the other hand has been damaged and further discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This has meant that many Communist parties worldwide have lost mass membership and shifted to the right, adopting
reformist and free market politics. Some Communist states such as the People's Republic of China and other Asian Communist states and Cuba, though have proven resistant. The Chinese version of reforms concentrated on support of market forces while effectively prohibiting Western-style
human rights and was able to both maintain the leading role of the Communist party and to quickly modernise the country. This, however, has created its own internal tensions and contradictions - as the Chinese working class has massively expanded in numbers, it has begun to do so in
class consciousness and class demands, all in odds with the wishes of the state establishment.This map shows the states which today are officially run by a Communist party:
People's Republic of China,
North Korea,
Laos,
Vietnam,
Cuba,
Nepal and
MoldovaBy 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 important in many countries. President
Vladimir Voronin of
Moldova is a member of the
Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, 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 combined population of more than 115 million. In
Nepal, communists hold a majority in the
parliament.
[28]The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and the People's Republic of China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a far lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. The People's Republic of China runs
Special Economic Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central government control. In fact, as of 2005, 70%
[29] of China's GDP came from the private sector, a figure that is larger when taking into account the
Chengbao system. China has continued its privatisation reforms since then. As a result, many observers argue that China has become a free-market capitalist economy
[30] and is no longer Communist in any way but in name. Several other Communist states have also attempted to implement market-based reforms, including Vietnam.Today, Marxist-Leninist and Maoist Communists are conducting armed insurgencies in
India,
Philippines,
Peru,
Bangladesh,
Iran,
Turkey, and
Colombia.
German battleship Schleswig-Holstein shelled a tiny Polish military outpost to spark the beginning of the war, which lasted for nearly six years and caused the deaths of more than 50 million people.
German battleship Schleswig-Holstein shelled a tiny Polish military outpost to spark the beginning of the war, which lasted for nearly six years and caused the deaths of more than 50 million people.