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Communism

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

   Part of the Politics series on
   Communism

   History of communism
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   Schools of communism
   Marxism · Leninism
   Left communism
   Trotskyism · Autonomist Marxism
   Eurocommunism · Maoism
   Council communism
   Anarchist communism
   Christian communism
   Luxemburgism
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   Political Parties
   Communist League
   Communist International
   World Communist Movement
   International Communist Current
   Communist Workers International
   Fourth International
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   Related subjects
   Socialism
   Capitalism · Cold War
   Religious communism
   New Left · Planned economy
   Historical materialism
   Marxist philosophy
   Left communism
   Democratic centralism
   Soviet democracy
   New Economic Policy
   Anti-communism
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   Notable Communists
   Karl Marx · Friedrich Engels
   Vladimir Lenin · Leon Trotsky
   Rosa Luxemburg · Anton Pannekoek
   Antonio Gramsci · Antonio Negri
   Amadeo Bordiga · Che Guevara
   Herman Gorter · Georg Lukács
   Karl Korsch · Mansoor Hekmat
   Communism Portal

   Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless
   social organization, based upon common ownership of the means of
   production. It can be classified as a branch of the broader socialist
   movement. Early forms of human social organization have been described
   as ' primitive communism' by Marxists. However, communism as a
   political goal generally is a conjectured form of future social
   organization. There is a considerable variety of views among
   self-identified communists, including Maoism, Trotskyism, council
   communism, Luxemburgism, anarchist communism, Christian communism, and
   various currents of left communism, which are generally the more
   widespread varieties. However, various offshoots of the Soviet (what
   critics call the ' Stalinist') and Maoist interpretations of
   Marxism-Leninism comprise a particular branch of communism that has the
   distinction of having been the primary driving force for communism in
   world politics during most of the 20th century. The competing branch of
   Trotskyism has not had such a distinction.

   Karl Marx held that society could not be transformed from the
   capitalist mode of production to the communist mode of production all
   at once, but required a transitional period which Marx described as the
   revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. The communist society
   Marx envisioned emerging from capitalism has never been implemented,
   and it remains theoretical; Marx, in fact, commented very little on
   what communist society would actually look like. However, the term
   'Communism', especially when it is capitalized, is often used to refer
   to the political and economic regimes under communist parties that
   claimed to embody the dictatorship of the proletariat.

   In the late 19th century, Marxist theories motivated socialist parties
   across Europe, although their policies later developed along the lines
   of "reforming" capitalism, rather than overthrowing it. The exception
   was the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. One branch of this
   party, commonly known as the Bolsheviks and headed by Vladimir Lenin,
   succeeded in taking control of the country after the toppling of the
   Provisional Government in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1918, this
   party changed its name to the Communist Party, thus establishing the
   contemporary distinction between communism and other trends of
   socialism.

   After the success of the October Revolution in Russia, many socialist
   parties in other countries became communist parties, signaling varying
   degrees of allegiance to the new Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
   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 unique ideological path of communist development. Among the
   other countries in the Third World that adopted a pro-communist
   government at some point were Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, Laos,
   Angola, and Mozambique. By the early 1980s almost one-third of the
   world's population lived in Communist states.

   Since the early 1970s, the term " Eurocommunism" was used to refer to
   the policies of communist parties in western Europe, which sought to
   break with the tradition of uncritical and unconditional support of the
   Soviet Union. Such parties were politically active and electorally
   significant in France and Italy.

   There is a history of anti-communism in the United States, which
   manifested itself in the Sedition Act of 1918 and in the subsequent
   Palmer Raids, for example, as well as in the later period of
   McCarthyism. However, many regions of South America and Central America
   continue to have strong communist movements of various types.

   With the decline of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe from
   the late 1980s and the breakup of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991,
   communism's influence has decreased dramatically in Europe. However,
   around a quarter of the world's population still lives in Communist
   states, mostly in the People's Republic of China.

Early communism

   Karl Marx saw primitive communism as the original hunter-gatherer state
   of mankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was
   capable of producing surplus, did private property develop.

   In Western the history of Western thought, the idea of a society based
   on common ownership of property can be traced back to ancient times. In
   his 4th century BCE The Republic, Plato considers the idea of the
   ruling class sharing property. In the republic, the ruling or guardian
   classes are committed to an austere and communistic way of life, with
   the aim of devoting all of their time and efforts to public service.

   At one time or another, various small communist communities existed,
   generally under the inspiration of Scripture. In the medieval Christian
   church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders
   shared their land and other property. (See Christian communism) These
   groups often believed that concern with private property was a
   distraction from religious service to God and neighbour. (Encarta)

   Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of 16th century
   English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia (1516), More
   portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers
   administered it through the application of reason. (Encarta) In the
   17th century, communist thought arguably surfaced again in England. In
   17th-century England, the Diggers, a Puritan religious group known as
   advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. (Encarta) Eduard
   Bernstein, in his 1895 Cromwell and Communism argued that several
   groupings in the English Civil War, especially the Diggers espoused
   clear communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude
   to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.

   Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the
   Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean
   Jacques Rousseau in France. (Encarta) Later, following the upheaval of
   the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine.
   François Noël Babeuf, in particular, espoused the goals of common
   ownership of land and total economic and political equality among
   citizens. (Encarta)

   Various social reformers in the early 19th century founded communities
   based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist
   communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and
   philanthropic basis. (EB) Notable among them were Robert Owen, who
   founded New Harmony in Indiana (1825), and Charles Fourier, whose
   followers organized other settlements in the United States such as
   Brook Farm (1841–47). (EB) Later in the 19th century, Karl Marx
   described these social reformers as " utopian socialists" to contrast
   them with his program of " scientific socialism" (a term coined by
   Friedrich Engels). Other writers described by Marx as "utopian
   socialists" included Charles Fourier and Saint-Simon.

   In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of
   19th-century Europe. (Encarta) As the Industrial Revolution advanced,
   socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a
   new class of poor, urban factory workers who labored under
   often-hazardous conditions. (EB) Foremost among these critics were the
   German philosopher Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. (EB)
   In 1848 Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and
   popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.
   (EB) Engels, who lived in Manchester, observed the organization of the
   Chartist movement (see History of British socialism), while Marx
   departed from his university comrades to meet the proletariat in France
   and Germany.

The emergence of modern communism

Marxism

   Karl Marx
   Enlarge
   Karl Marx

   Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and
   the systems which they perceived to be responsible for the exploitation
   of workers. But whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term
   social reform, Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution was all
   but inevitable, and the only path to socialism.

   According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main
   characteristic of human life in class society is alienation; and
   communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human
   freedom. Marx here follows Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in conceiving
   freedom not merely as an absence of restraints but as action with
   content. (McLean and McMillan, 2003) They believed that communism
   allowed people to do what they want but also put humans in such
   conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish
   to have any need for exploitation. 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. (McLean and McMillan, 2003)

   Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary
   struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the
   establishment of a communist society in which private ownership is
   abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong
   to the community. Marx himself wrote little about life under communism,
   giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a
   communist society. It is clear that it entails abundance in which there
   is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake. In the
   popular slogan that was adopted by the communist movement, communism
   was a world in which each gave according to their abilities, and
   received according to their needs.' 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."

   Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a positive scientific
   theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way toward
   communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained
   why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about. (McLean and
   McMillan, 2003)

   In the late 19th century the terms "socialism" and "communism" were
   often used interchangeably. (Encarta) However, Marx and Engels argued
   that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully developed
   state, but would pass through a "first phase" in which most productive
   property was owned in common, but with some class differences
   remaining. The "first phase" would eventually give way to a "higher
   phase" in which class differences were eliminated, and a state was no
   longer needed. Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to refer to
   Marx and Engels' supposed "first phase" of communism and used the term
   "communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels' "higher phase" of
   communism.

   These later aspects, particularly as developed by Lenin, provided the
   underpinning for the mobilizing features of 20th century Communist
   parties. Later writers such as Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas
   modified Marx's vision by allotting a central place to the state in the
   development of such societies, by arguing for a prolonged transition
   period of socialism prior to the attainment of full communism.

Other currents

   Some of Marx's contemporaries espoused similar ideas, but differed in
   their views of how to reach to a classless society. Following the split
   between those associated with Marx and Mikhail Bakunin at the First
   International, the anarchists formed the International Workers
   Association. Anarchists argued that capitalism and the state were
   inseparable and that one could not be abolished without the other.
   Anarchist-communists such as Peter Kropotkin theorized an immediate
   transition to one society with no classes. Anarcho-syndicalism became
   one of the dominant forms of anarchist organization, arguing that labor
   unions, as opposed to Communist parties, are the organizations that can
   change society. Consequently, many anarchists have been in opposition
   to Marxist communism to this day.

   In the late 19th century Russian Marxism developed a distinct
   character. The first major figure of Russian Marxism was Georgi
   Plekhanov. Underlying the work of Plekhanov was the assumption that
   Russia, less urbanized and industrialized than Western Europe, had many
   years to go before society would be ready for proletarian revolution
   could occur, and a transitional period of a bourgeois democratic regime
   would be required to replace Tsarism with a socialist and later
   communist society. (EB)

The growth of modern Communism

   Vladimir Lenin following his return to Petrograd
   Enlarge
   Vladimir Lenin following his return to Petrograd

   In Russia, the 1917 October Revolution was the first time any party
   with an avowedly Marxist orientation, in this case the Bolshevik Party,
   seized state power. The assumption of state power by the Bolsheviks
   generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the
   Marxist movement. Marx believed 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 workers. It should be noted, however, that Marx had
   explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of
   bourgeois capitalism. Other socialists also believed that a Russian
   revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the West.

   The moderate socialist Mensheviks opposed Lenin's communist Bolsheviks'
   plan for socialist revolution before 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
   reform, 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 Communist Party and
   installed a single-party regime devoted to the implementation of
   socialist policies under Leninism. The Second International had
   dissolved in 1916 over national divisions, as the separate national
   parties that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the
   war, instead generally supporting their respective nation's role. Lenin
   thus created the Third International (Comintern) in 1919 and sent the
   Twenty-one Conditions, which included 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 SFIC
   (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 called for the uniting of
   workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the
   establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the
   development of a socialist 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 communism," 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 capitalism." The NEP lasted
   until 1928, when Joseph Stalin's personal fight for 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 members as the
   broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher
   members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party
   discipline.

   The Soviet Union and other countries ruled by Communist Parties are
   often described as ' Communist states' with ' state socialist' economic
   bases. (Scott and Marshall, 2005) This usage indicates that they
   proclaim that they have realized part of the socialist program by
   abolishing private control of the means of production and establishing
   state control over the economy; however, they do not declare themselves
   truly communist, as they have not established communal ownership of
   property.

   In the United States, anarchist communists Emma Goldman and Alexander
   Berkman were key figures on the left in the first two decades of the
   20th Century and were the target of early anti-communist repression,
   such as the Palmer Raids, which led to their deportation. (Marshall, p.
   500) Anarchist communism also played a major role in the Ukraine during
   the period following the Russian Revolution of 1917, establishing the
   Free Territory that was destroyed by the Red Army in 1920. (Ibid, ch.
   30) However, anarchist movements retained their strength elsewhere in
   Europe. The Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, for example,
   became one of the largest anarcho-syndicalist organisations in the
   world and played a major role in the revolutionary period of 1930s
   Spain and in the Spanish Civil War. (Ibid, ch. 29)

Stalinism

   The Stalinist version of socialism, with some important modifications,
   shaped the Soviet Union and influenced Communist Parties worldwide. It
   was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive
   program of industrialization and collectivization. The rapid
   development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet Union
   in the Second World War, maintained that vision throughout the world,
   even around a decade following Stalin's death, when the party adopted a
   program in which it promised the establishment of communism within
   thirty years.

   However, under Stalin's leadership, evidence emerged that dented faith
   in the possibility of achieving communism within the framework of the
   Soviet model. Stalin had created in the Soviet Union a repressive state
   that dominated every aspect of life. Later, growth declined, and
   rent-seeking and corruption by state officials increased, which dented
   the legitimacy of the Soviet system.

   Despite the activity of the Comintern, the Soviet Communist Party
   adopted the Stalinist theory of " socialism in one country" and claimed
   that, due to the " aggravation of class struggle under socialism," it
   was possible, even necessary, to build socialism in one country alone.
   This departure from Marxist internationalism was challenged by Leon
   Trotsky, whose theory of " permanent revolution" stressed the necessity
   of world revolution.

Trotskyism

   Trotsky and his supporters organized into the " Left Opposition," and
   their platform became known as Trotskyism. But Stalin eventually
   succeeded in gaining full control of the Soviet regime, and their
   attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from
   the Soviet Union in 1929. After Trotsky's exile, world communism
   fractured into two distinct branches: Stalinism and Trotskyism. Trotsky
   later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the
   Comintern, in 1938.

   Trotskyist ideas have continually found a modest echo among political
   movements in Latin America and Asia, especially in Argentina, Brazil,
   Mexico, Sri Lanka, and The Philippines. Many Trotskyist organisations
   are also active in more stable, developed countries in North America
   and Western Europe.

   However, as a whole, Trotsky's theories and attitudes were never
   reaccepted in worldwide mainstream Communist circles after Trotsky's
   expulsion, either within or outside of the Soviet bloc. This remained
   the case even after the Secret Speech and subsequent events exposed the
   fallibility of Stalinism and Maoism. Today, even given the fact that
   there are areas of the world where Trotskyist movements are rather
   large, Trotskyist movements have never coalesced in a mass movement
   that has seized state power.

Maoism

   After the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union's new leader,
   Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin's crimes and his cult of
   personality. He called for a return to the principles of Lenin, thus
   presaging some change in Communist methods. However, Khrushchev's
   reforms heightened ideological differences between the People's
   Republic of China and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly
   apparent in the 1960s. As the Sino-Soviet Split in the international
   Communist movement turned toward open hostility, China portrayed itself
   as a leader of the underdeveloped world against the two superpowers,
   the United States and the Soviet Union.

   Parties and groups that supported the Communist Party of China (CPC) in
   their criticism against the new Soviet leadership proclaimed themselves
   as 'anti-revisionist' and denounced the CPSU and the parties aligned
   with it as revisionist "capitalist-roaders." The Sino-Soviet Split
   resulted in divisions amongst communist parties around the world.
   Notably, the Party of Labour of Albania sided with the People's
   Republic of China. Effectively, the CPC under Mao's leadership became
   the rallying forces of a parallel international Communist tendency. The
   ideology of CPC, Mao Zedong Thought (generally referred to as
   'Maoism'), was adopted by many of these groups.

   After the death of Mao and the takeover of Deng Xiaoping, the
   international Maoist movement fell in disarray. One sector accepted the
   new leadership in China, a second renounced the new leadership and
   reaffirmed their commitment to Mao's legacy, and a third renounced
   Maoism altogether and aligned with the Albanian Party of Labour.

Other anti-revisionist currents

   After the ideological row between the Communist Party of China and the
   Party of Labour of Albania in 1978, the Albanians rallied a new
   separate international tendency. This tendency would demarcate itself
   by a strict defense of the legacy of Joseph Stalin and fierce criticism
   of virtually all other Communist groupings. The Albanians were able to
   win over a large share of the Maoists in Latin America, most notably
   the Communist Party of Brazil. This tendency has occasionally been
   labeled as 'Hoxhaism' after the Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha.

   After the fall of the Communist government in Albania, the pro-Albanian
   parties are grouped around an international conference and the
   publication 'Unity and Struggle'. Another important institution for
   them is the biannual International Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Fascist
   Youth Camp, which was initiated in 1970s.

   Under the leadership of Hardial Bains, general secretary of the
   Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) a small current emerged in
   the 1970s of Marxist-Leninist groups in several countries. This
   tendency aligned with Albania politically, but remained somewhat
   separate from the main pro-Albanian camp.

Cold War years

   By virtue of the Soviet Union's victory in the Second World War in
   1945, the Soviet Army had occupied nations in both Eastern Europe and
   East Asia; as a result, communism as a movement spread to many new
   countries. This expansion of communism both in Europe and Asia gave
   rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism.

   Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new
   nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern
   Europe. Governments modeled on Soviet Communism took power with Soviet
   assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary
   and Romania. A Communist government was also created under Marshal Tito
   in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of
   Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern.
   Titoism, a new branch in the world communist movement, was labeled "
   deviationist." Albania also became an independent Communist nation
   after World War II.

   By 1950 the Chinese Communists held all of Mainland China, thus
   controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where
   rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases led to
   actual fighting include the Korean Peninsula, Laos, many nations of the
   Middle East and Africa, and, especially, Vietnam (see Vietnam War).
   With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with
   nationalist and socialist forces against what they saw as Western
   imperialism in these poor countries.

Communism after the collapse of the Soviet Union

   In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and
   relaxed central control, in accordance with reform policies of glasnost
   (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Soviet Union did not
   intervene as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania,
   and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet
   Union itself dissolved.

   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. President Vladimir Voronin
   of Moldova is a member of the Communist Party of Moldova, but the
   country is not run under single-party rule. Communist parties, or their
   descendant parties, remain politically important in many European
   countries and throughout the Third World, particularly in India.

   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 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. Several other communist states have also
   attempted to implement market-based reforms, including Vietnam.
   Officially, the leadership of the People's Republic of China refers to
   its policies as " Socialism with Chinese characteristics."

   Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Eastern Europe was not
   achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the
   pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of
   the societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of a
   bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition
   press in its own interests. (Scott and Marshall, 2005) Marxist critics
   of the Soviet Union, most notably Trotsky, referred to the Soviet
   system, along with other Communist states, as " degenerated" or "
   deformed workers' states," arguing that the Soviet system fell far
   short of Marx's communist ideal. Trotskyists argued that the Soviet
   state was degenerated because the working class was politically
   dispossessed. The ruling stratum of the Soviet Union was held to be a
   bureaucratic caste, but not a new ruling class, despite their political
   control. They called for a political revolution in the USSR and
   defended the country against capitalist restoration. Others, like Tony
   Cliff, advocated the theory of state capitalism, which asserts that the
   bureaucratic elite acted as a surrogate capitalist class in the heavily
   centralized and repressive political apparatus.

   Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society
   ruled by a Communist Party and to any party aspiring to create a
   society similar to such existing nation-states. In the social sciences,
   societies ruled by Communist Parties are distinct for their single
   party control and their socialist economic bases. While anticommunists
   applied the concept of " totalitarianism" to these societies, many
   social scientists identified possibilities for independent political
   activity within them, and stressed their continued evolution up to the
   point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern
   Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

   Today, Marxist revolutionaries are conducting armed insurgencies in
   India, Nepal, Philippines and Colombia.

Criticism of communism

   A diverse array of writers and political activists have published
   criticism of communism, such as Soviet bloc dissidents Aleksandr
   Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel; social theorists Hannah Arendt, Raymond
   Aron, Ralf Dahrendorf, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Karl Wittfogel;
   economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman;
   historians and social scientists Robert Conquest, Stéphane Courtois,
   Richard Pipes, and R. J. Rummel; anti-communist leftists Ignazio
   Silone, George Orwell, Saul Alinsky, Richard Wright, Arthur Koestler,
   and Bernard-Henri Levy; novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand; and
   philosophers Leszek Kołakowski and Karl Popper. Some writers such as
   Courtois go beyond attributing the estimated tens of millions of deaths
   and other large-scale human rights abuses during the 20th century
   merely to the Communist regimes associated with these atrocities;
   rather, these authors present the events occurring in these countries,
   particularly under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, as an argument against
   Marxism itself. Some of the critics were former Marxists, such as
   Wittfogel, who applied Marx's concept of " Oriental despotism" to
   communist societies such as the Soviet Union, and Silone, Wright,
   Koestler (among other writers) who contributed essays to the book The
   God that Failed (the title refers not to the Christian God but Marxism
   itself).

   There have also been more direct criticisms of Marxism, such as
   criticisms of the labor theory of value or Marx's predictions.
   Nevertheless, Communist parties outside of the Warsaw Pact, such as the
   Communist parties in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa,
   differed greatly. Thus a criticism that is applicable to one such party
   is not necessarily applicable to another.

Comparing "Communism" to "communism"

   According to the 1996 third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage,
   communism and derived words are written with the lowercase "c" except
   when they refer to a political party of that name, a member of that
   party, or a government led by such a party, in which case the word
   "Communist" is written with the uppercase "C." Thus, one may be a
   communist (an advocate of communism) without being a Communist (a
   member of a Communist Party or another similar organization).

Suggested readings

     * Forman, James D., "Communism from Marx's Manifesto to 20th-Century
       Reality", New York, Watts. 1972. ISBN 0-531-02571-3
     * Furet, Francois, Furet, Deborah Kan (Translator), "The Passing of
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       University of Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN 0-226-27341-5
     * Daniels, Robert Vincent, "A Documentary History of Communism and
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       England, 1994, ISBN 0-874-51678-1
     * Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich, "Communist Manifesto", (Mass Market
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     * Dirlik, Arif, "Origins of Chinese Communism", Oxford University
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     * Beer, Max, "The General History of Socialism and Social Struggles
       Volumes 1 & 2", New York, Russel and Russel, Inc. 1957

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