Portal:Communism

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THE COMMUNISM PORTAL

Introduction

Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal') is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more authoritarian vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a socialist state, followed by the withering away of the state. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, communism is placed on the left-wing alongside socialism, and communist parties and movements have been described as radical left or far-left.

Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism encompasses a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those. All of these different ideologies generally share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system, and mode of production, that in this system there are two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat, who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie, a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.

Communism in its modern form grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe that argued capitalism caused the misery of urban factory workers. In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, first in the Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II. As one of the many types of socialism, communism became the dominant political tendency, along with social democracy, within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s. (Full article...)

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Cover of the Communist Manifesto’s initial publication in February 1848 in London
The Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) is a short 1848 book written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League's purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the problems of capitalism, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.

The book contains Marx and Engels' Marxist theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism, and then eventually communism.

Selected biography

Salawati Daud was an Indonesian politician and a member of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). Salawati Daud was married to a government official from Maros, a guerrilla stronghold during the Indonesian War of Independence. She travelled to Jakarta, trying to convince the republican government to support the guerrilla struggle.

Salawati Daud became the first female mayor in Indonesia, being elected mayor of Makassar in 1949.> As mayor, she confronted Dutch commander Captain Raymond "Turk" Westerling. In 1955 she was elected to parliament (on a PKI list) and moved to Jakarta. Salawati Daud became a prominent leader of the women's movement Gerwani. She was one of many Gerwani leaders imprisoned after the 1965 military takeover.

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Progressive Labor Party supporters rally.

Photo credit: Jim Winstead

News related to communism

21 March 2024 –
President of Vietnam Võ Văn Thưởng resigns after just over a year in office amid the Communist Party's anti-corruption campaign, making him the shortest-serving president in Vietnamese history. (Reuters) (Al Jazeera) (Bloomberg)

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It must be said that the attitude of the crooks to us politicals had completely changed. They say that only twenty years ago the crooks used to call us fascists, rob us on prisoner transports and in transit cells, terrorize us in the camps, and so on. But now these same crooks used to volunteer to help me with my sacks of books on convoys and share their smokes and grub with me. They used to ask us to tell them what we were in jail for and what we wanted. They read the text of my sentence with enormous interest, and the only thing they couldn't believe was what we did all this for nothing, and not for money. They were absolutely astonished that people could go to prison just like that, deliberately and not for gain. In Vladimir Prison our relations with them were those of good neighbors: they constantly turned to us for answers to their questions, advice, and even help. We were the ultimate arbiters of all their quarrels, and we would help them to write complaints and explain the laws to them. And, of course, they questioned us endlessly on politics.

In prison even crooks read the newspapers, listen to the radio and-perhaps for the first time in their lives-get to thinking: Why is life such a mess in the Soviet Union? The overwhelming majority of them are violently anti-Soviet, and the word "Communist" is virtually an insult. Because of their lack of literacy and solidarity, they are incapable of sticking up for their rights. The administration takes advantage of their feuds and sets them against one another. Whenever a prison officer wants to break one of them, he does it by transferring him to a cell where the inmates hate his guts. Then it is merely a question of who would kill whom, and whoever did the murder would be sentenced to be shot.

— Vladimir Bukovsky (1942)
To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter , 1978

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