Communism

{{Short description|Political and socioeconomic ideology}}
{{distinguish|Communalism (disambiguation){{!}}Communalism|Communitarianism}}<!-- Note: Communalism (disambiguation) is an intentional disambiguation link; see WP:INTDABLINK -->
{{other uses}}
{{pp-move}}
{{pp-semi-indef}}

{{use American English|date=August 2021}}
{{use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
{{communism sidebar|all}}
'''Communism''' (from [[Latin]] {{lang-la|communis|lit=common, universal|label=none}})<ref name="Ball & Dagger 2019">{{cite encyclopedia |editor1-last=Ball |editor1-first=Terence |editor2-last=Dagger |editor2-first=Richard |date=2019 |orig-date=1999 |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism |title=Communism |edition=revised |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |access-date=10 June 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Communism |encyclopedia=[[World Book Encyclopedia]] |volume=4 |location=Chicago |publisher=World Book |date=2008 |pages=890 |isbn=978-0-7166-0108-1}}</ref> is a [[Left-wing politics|left-wing]] to [[Far-left politics|far-left]] <!-- Please discuss on the talk page before changing --> [[sociopolitical]], [[Political philosophy|philosophical]], and [[Economic ideology|economic]] [[ideology]] within the [[socialist movement]],{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}} 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ely |first=Richard T |title=French and German socialism in modern times |date=1883 |publisher=[[Harper & Brothers]] |location=New York |pages=35–36 |oclc=456632 |quote=All communists without exception propose that the people as a whole, or some particular division of the people, as a village or commune, should own all the means of production—land, houses, factories, railroads, canals, etc.; that production should be carried on in common; and that officers, selected in one way or another, should distribute among the inhabitants the fruits of their labor.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Bukharin |first1=Nikolai |title=[[The ABC of Communism]] |last2=Preobrazhensky |first2=Yevgeni |date=1922 |publisher=[[Communist Party of Great Britain]] |location=London, England |pages=72–73, § 20 |translator-last1=Paul |translator-first1=Cedar |chapter=Distribution in the communist system |author1-link=Nikolai Bukharin |author2-link=Yevgeni Preobrazhensky |access-date=18 August 2021 |orig-date=1920 |translator-last2=Paul |translator-first2=Eden |translator-link1=Cedar Paul |translator-link2=Eden Paul |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/ABC-of-Communism.pdf#page=67 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref><ref name="Steele p.43">{{harvp|Steele|1992|p=43}}: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption."</ref> A communist society would entail the absence of [[private property]] and [[social class]]es,{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}} and ultimately [[money]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Engels |first1=Friedrich |author1-link=Friedrich Engels |date=2005 |orig-date=1847 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm#18 |chapter=Section 18: What will be the course of this revolution? |title=[[The Principles of Communism]] |translator-first=Paul |translator-last=Sweezy |translator-link=Paul Sweezy |quote=Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain. |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> and the [[State (polity)|state]] (or [[world communism|nation state]]).<ref>{{cite book |author1-link=Nikolai Bukharin |last1=Bukharin |first1=Nikolai |author2-link=Yevgeni Preobrazhensky |last2=Preobrazhensky |first2=Yevgeni |date=1922 |orig-date=1920 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/ABC-of-Communism.pdf#page=67 |chapter=Administration in the communist system |pages=73–75, § 21 |title=[[The ABC of Communism]] |translator-link1=Cedar Paul |translator-last1=Paul |translator-first1=Cedar |translator-link2=Eden Paul |translator-last2=Paul |translator-first2=Eden |location=London, England |publisher=[[Communist Party of Great Britain]] |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Kurian |editor-first=George |year=2011 |chapter-url=http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/the-encyclopedia-of-political-science |chapter=Withering Away of the State |title=The Encyclopedia of Political Science |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=[[CQ Press]] |doi=10.4135/9781608712434 |isbn=978-1-933116-44-0 |access-date=3 January 2016 |via=[[SAGE Publishing]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Communism - Non-Marxian communism |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Non-Marxian-communism |access-date=13 May 2022 |website=Britannica}}</ref> 

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 socialism|libertarian socialist]] approach of [[communization]], [[revolutionary spontaneity]], and [[workers' self-management]], and a more [[authoritarian socialism|authoritarian]] [[vanguardist]] or [[communist party]]-driven approach through the development of a [[socialist state]], followed by the [[withering away of the state]].<ref name="Kinna 2012">{{cite book |last=Kinna |first=Ruth |author-link=Ruth Kinna |year=2012 |editor-last1=Berry |editor-first1=Dave |editor-last2=Kinna |editor-first2=Ruth |editor-link2=Ruth Kinna |editor-last3=Pinta |editor-first3=Saku |editor-last4=Prichard |editor-first4=Alex |title=Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red |location=London |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |pages=1–34 |isbn=9781137284754}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite journal |last=March |first=Luke |title=Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream? |url=https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/ipg/ipg-2009-1/10_a_march_us.pdf |journal=IPG |volume=1 |date=2009 |pages=126–143 |via=[[Friedrich Ebert Foundation]]}}</ref>{{Sfn|George|Wilcox|1996|p=95|ps=<br />"The far left in America consists principally of people who believe in some form of Marxism-Leninism, i.e., some form of Communism. A small minority of extreme leftists adhere to "pure" Marxism or collectivist anarchism. Most far leftists scorn reforms (except as a short-term tactic), and instead aim for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system including the U.S. government."}}{{refn|Communism is generally considered to be among the more radical ideologies of the [[political left]].<ref>{{cite web |date=15 April 2009 |title=Left |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/left |access-date=22 May 2022 |website=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |quote=... communism is a more radical leftist ideology.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Radical left |url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/radical-left |access-date=16 July 2022 |website=[[Dictionary.com]] |quote=Radical left is a term that refers collectively to people who hold left-wing political views that are considered extreme, such as supporting or working to establish communism, Marxism, Maoism, socialism, anarchism, or other forms of anticapitalism. The radical left is sometimes called the far left.}}</ref> Unlike [[far-right politics]], for which there is general consensus among scholars on what it entails and its grouping (e.g. various academic handbooks studies), [[far-left politics]] have been difficult to characterize, particularly where they begin on the [[political spectrum]], other than the general consensus of being to the left of a standard political left, and because many of their positions are not extreme,<ref>{{cite journal |last=March |first=Luke |title=Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream? |url=https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/ipg/ipg-2009-1/10_a_march_us.pdf |journal=IPG |volume=1 |date=2009 |page=126 |via=[[Friedrich Ebert Foundation]]|quote=The far left is becoming the principal challenge to mainstream social democratic parties, in large part because its main parties are no longer extreme, but present themselves as defending the values and policies that social democrats have allegedly abandoned.}}</ref> or because ''far-left'' and ''[[hard left]]'' are considered to be pejoratives that imply they are marginal.<ref>{{cite book |last=March |first=Luke |year=2012 |title=Radical Left Parties in Europe |edition=E-book |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=1724 |isbn=978-1-136-57897-7}}</ref> In regards to communism and communist parties and movements, some scholars narrow the far left to their left, while others include them by broadening it to be the left of mainstream socialist, social-democratic, and labourist parties.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cosseron |first=Serge |year=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EgQFAQAAIAAJ |title=Dictionnaire de l'extrême gauche |trans-title=Dictionary of the far left |edition=paperback |language=fr |location=Paris |page=20 |publisher=Larousse |isbn=978-2-035-82620-6 |access-date=19 November 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> In general, they agree that there are various subgroupings within far-left politics, such as the radical left and the extreme left.<ref>{{cite journal |last=March |first=Luke |title=Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream? |url=https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/ipg/ipg-2009-1/10_a_march_us.pdf |journal=IPG |volume=1 |date=2009 |page=129 |via=[[Friedrich Ebert Foundation]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=March |first=Luke |date=September 2012 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271926910 |title=Problems and Perspectives of Contemporary European Radical Left Parties: Chasing a Lost World or Still a World to Win? |journal=[[International Critical Thought]] |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=314–339 |doi=10.1080/21598282.2012.706777 |s2cid=154948426}}</ref>|group=note}}

[[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 [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|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]].<ref name="Marx & Engels 1848">{{cite book |last1=Engels |first1=Friedrich |author1-link=Friedrich Engels |last2=Marx |first2=Karl |author2-link=Karl Marx |date=1969 |orig-date=1848 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm |chapter=Bourgeois and Proletarians |title=[[The Communist Manifesto]] |translator-first=Samuel |translator-last=Moore |translator-link=Samuel Moore (translator) |location=Moscow |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |access-date=1 March 2022 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |series=Marx/Engels Selected Works |volume=1 |pages=98–137}}</ref>{{refn|Earlier forms of communism ([[utopian socialism]] and some earlier forms of [[religious communism]]), shared support for a [[classless society]] and [[common ownership]] but did not necessarily advocate [[revolutionary politics]] or engage in scientific analysis; that was done by Marxist communism, which has defined mainstream, modern communism, and has influenced all modern forms of communism. Such communisms, especially new religious or utopian forms of communism, may share the Marxist analysis, while favoring evolutionary politics, [[Localism (politics)|localism]], or [[reformism]]. By the 20th century, communism has been associated with [[revolutionary socialism]].{{sfnm|1a1=Newman|1y=2005|2a1=Morgan|2y=2015}}|group=note}} The two classes are the [[proletariat]], who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their [[Labour power|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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Engels |first1=Friedrich |author1-link=Friedrich Engels |last2=Marx |first2=Karl |author2-link=Karl Marx |date=1969 |orig-date=1848 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm |chapter=Bourgeois and Proletarians |title=[[The Communist Manifesto]] |translator-first=Samuel |translator-last=Moore |translator-link=Samuel Moore (translator) |location=Moscow |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |access-date=1 March 2022 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> According to this analysis, a [[communist revolution]] would put the working class in power,<ref>{{cite book |last=Gasper |first=Phillip |title=The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document |publisher=[[Haymarket Books]] |date=October 2005 |isbn=978-1-931859-25-7 |page=23 |quote=Marx and Engels never speculated on the detailed organization of a future socialist or communist society. The key task for them was building a movement to overthrow capitalism. If and when that movement was successful, it would be up to the members of the new society to decide democratically how it was to be organized, in the concrete historical circumstances in which they found themselves.}}</ref> and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a [[communist mode of production]].<ref name="Steele 1992, pp. 44–45">{{harvp|Steele|1992|pp=44–45}}: "By 1888, the term 'socialism' was in general use among Marxists, who had dropped 'communism', now considered an old fashioned term meaning the same as 'socialism'. ... At the turn of the century, Marxists called themselves socialists. ... The definition of socialism and communism as successive stages was introduced into Marxist theory by Lenin in 1917 ..., the new distinction was helpful to Lenin in defending his party against the traditional Marxist criticism that Russia was too backward for a socialist revolution."</ref><ref name="Gregory & Stuart 2003, p. 118">{{cite book |last1=Gregory |first1=Paul R. |last2=Stuart |first2=Robert C. |date=2003 |title=Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First |edition=7 |publisher=South-Western College Pub. |pages=118 |isbn=0-618-26181-8 |quote=Under socialism, each individual would be expected to contribute according to capability, and rewards would be distributed in proportion to that contribution. Subsequently, under communism, the basis of reward would be need.}}</ref><ref name="Bockman 2011, p. 20">{{cite book |last=Bockman |first=Johanna |title=Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-8047-7566-3 |page=20 |quote=According to nineteenth-century socialist views, socialism would function without capitalist economic categories – such as money, prices, interest, profits and rent – and thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science. While some socialists recognized the need for money and prices at least during the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialists more commonly believed that the socialist economy would soon administratively mobilize the economy in physical units without the use of prices or money.}}</ref>

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.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}} In the 20th century, several ostensibly [[Communist state|Communist governments]] espousing [[Marxism–Leninism]] and its variants came into power,<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Stephen |date=2014 |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism |location=Oxford, England |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=3}}</ref>{{refn|''Communism'' is capitalized by scholars when referring to [[Communist party]]-ruling states and governments, which are considered to be proper nouns as a result.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/Cold%20War%20&%20Red%20Scare/IV.html |title=IV. Glossary |website=Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest |publisher=[[University of Washington]] |access-date=13 August 2021 |quote=... communism (noun) ... 2. The economic and political system instituted in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Also, the economic and political system of several Soviet allies, such as China and Cuba. (Writers often capitalize Communism when they use the word in this sense.) These Communist economic systems often did not achieve the ideals of communist theory. For example, although many forms of property were owned by the government in the USSR and China, neither the work nor the products were shared in a manner that would be considered equitable by many communist or Marxist theorists.}}</ref> Following scholar [[Joel Kovel]], sociologist [[Sara Diamond (sociologist)|Sara Diamond]] wrote: "I use uppercase 'C' ''Communism'' to refer to actually existing governments and movements and lowercase 'c' ''communism'' to refer to the varied movements and political currents organized around the ideal of a classless society."<ref>{{cite book |last=Diamond |first=Sara |year=1995 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w1bqY-DxHMEC |title=Roads to Dominion: Right-wing Movements and Political Power in the United States |publisher=[[Guilford Press]] |page=8 |isbn=978-0-8986-2864-7 |access-date=23 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'' also adopted such distinction, stating that ''communism'' exists since millennia, while ''Communism'' (used in reference to [[Leninist]] and [[Marxist–Leninism|Marxist–Leninist]] communism as applied by Communist states in the 20th century) only began in 1917.<ref>{{cite book |last=Courtois |first=Stéphane |year=1999 |orig-date=1997 |chapter=Introduction |editor-last=Courtois |editor-first=Stéphane |collaboration=Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Panné, Jean-Louis; Werth, Nicolas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC |title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |pages=ix–x, 2 |isbn=978-0-674-07608-2 |access-date=23 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> [[Alan M. Wald]] wrote: "In order to tackle complex and often misunderstood political-literary relationships, I have adopted methods of capitalization in this book that may deviate from editorial norms practiced at certain journals and publishing houses. In particular, I capitalize 'Communist' and 'Communism' when referring to official parties of the Third International, but not when pertaining to other adherents of Bolshevism or revolutionary Marxism (which encompasses small-'c' communists such as Trotskyists, Bukharinists, council communists, and so forth)."<ref>{{cite book |last=Wald |first=Alan M. |year=2012 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OfgqsLNAo4cC |title=Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |page=xix |isbn=978-1-4696-0867-9 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> In 1994, [[Communist Party USA]] activist [[Irwin Silber]] wrote: "When capitalized, the International Communist Movement refers to the formal organizational structure of the pro-Soviet Communist Parties. In lower case, the international communist movement is a more generic term referring to the general movement for communism."<ref>{{cite book |last=Silber |first=Irwin |year=1994 |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/silber-socialism.pdf |title=Socialism: What Went Wrong? An Inquiry into the Theoretical and Historical Sources of the Socialist Crisis |edition=hardback |location=London, England |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |isbn=9780745307169 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>|group=note}} 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]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last=Darity |editor-first=William A. Jr. |date=2008 |title=Communism |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences]] |edition=2nd |volume=2 |location=New York City, New York |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan Reference USA]] |pages=35–36 |isbn=9780028661179}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Newman|2005|p=5|ps=: "Chapter 1 looks at the foundations of the doctrine by examining the contribution made by various traditions of socialism in the period between the early 19th century and the aftermath of the First World War. The two forms that emerged as dominant by the early 1920s were social democracy and communism."}} 

During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived under Communist governments. These governments were characterized by [[one-party rule]] by a communist party, the rejection of private property and capitalism, state control of economic activity and [[mass media]], [[State atheism|restrictions on]] [[freedom of religion]], and suppression of opposition and dissent. With the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] in 1991, several previously Communist governments repudiated or abolished Communist rule altogether.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}<ref>{{Cite web |date= |title=Communism |url=http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761572241/Communism.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090129124930/http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761572241/Communism.html |archive-date=29 January 2009 |access-date=15 June 2023 |website=[[Encarta]]}}</ref><ref name="Dunn">{{cite book |last=Dunn |first=Dennis |title=A History of Orthodox, Islamic, and Western Christian Political Values |date=2016 |publisher=[[Palgrave-Macmillan]] |isbn=978-3319325668 |location=Basingstoke |pages=126–131}}</ref> Afterwards, only a small number of nominally Communist governments remained, such as [[China]],<ref>{{cite web |last1=Frenkiel |first1=Émilie |last2=Shaoguang |first2=Wang |author2-link=Wang Shaoguang |date=15 July 2009 |title=Political change and democracy in China |website=Laviedesidees.fr |url=https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/pdf/20090715_entretienwang.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170909060743/https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/pdf/20090715_entretienwang.pdf |archive-date=9 September 2017 |access-date=13 January 2023}}</ref> [[Cuba]], [[Laos]], [[North Korea]],{{refn|While it refers to its leading ideology as ''[[Juche]]'', which is portrayed as a development of Marxism–Leninism, the status of North Korea remains disputed. Marxism–Leninism was superseded by ''Juche'' in the 1970s and was made official in 1992 and 2009, when constitutional references to Marxism–Leninism were dropped and replaced with ''Juche''.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dae-Kyu |first=Yoon |year=2003 |url=http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1934&context=ilj |title=The Constitution of North Korea: Its Changes and Implications |journal=[[Fordham International Law Journal]] |volume=27 |issue=4 |pages=1289–1305 |access-date=10 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224144030/https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1934&context=ilj |archive-date=24 February 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> In 2009, the constitution was quietly amended so that it removed all Marxist–Leninist references present in the first draft, and also dropped all references to communism.<ref>{{cite news|last=Park |first=Seong-Woo |date=23 September 2009 |url=https://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/first_millitary-09232009120017.html |script-title=ko:북 개정 헌법 '선군사상' 첫 명기 |title=Bug gaejeong heonbeob 'seongunsasang' cheos myeong-gi |trans-title=First stipulation of the 'Seongun Thought' of the North Korean Constitution |agency=[[Radio Free Asia]] |language=ko |access-date=10 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517045408/https://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/first_millitary-09232009120017.html |archive-date=17 May 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> ''Juche'' has been described by Michael Seth as a version of [[Korean ultranationalism]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Seth |first=Michael J. |year=2019 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GPm9DwAAQBAJ&q=%22juche%22+%22ultranationalism%22&pg=PA159 |title=A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |page=159 |isbn=9781538129050 |access-date=11 September 2020 |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206043439/https://books.google.com/books?id=GPm9DwAAQBAJ&q=%22juche%22+%22ultranationalism%22&pg=PA159 |url-status=live}}</ref> which eventually developed after losing its original Marxist–Leninist elements.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Fisher |first1=Max |date=6 January 2016 |url=https://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10724334/north-korea-history |title=The single most important fact for understanding North Korea |website=Vox |access-date=11 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210306090942/https://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10724334/north-korea-history |archive-date=6 March 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> According to ''North Korea: A Country Study'' by Robert L. Worden, Marxism–Leninism was abandoned immediately after the start of [[de-Stalinization]] in the Soviet Union and has been totally replaced by ''Juche'' since at least 1974.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Worden |editor-first=Robert L. |year=2008 |url=http://cdn.loc.gov/master/frd/frdcstdy/no/northkoreacountr00word/northkoreacountr00word.pdf |title=North Korea: A Country Study |edition=5th |location=Washington, D. C. |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |page=206 |isbn=978-0-8444-1188-0 |access-date=11 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210725073828/https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/frd/frdcstdy/no/northkoreacountr00word/northkoreacountr00word.pdf |archive-date=25 July 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> Daniel Schwekendiek wrote that what made North Korean Marxism–Leninism distinct from that of China and the Soviet Union was that it incorporated national feelings and macro-historical elements in the socialist ideology, opting for its "own style of socialism". The major Korean elements are the emphasis on traditional [[Confucianism]] and the memory of the traumatic experience of [[Korea under Japanese rule]], as well as a focus on autobiographical features of [[Kim Il Sung]] as a guerrilla hero.<ref>{{cite book |last=Schwekendiek |first=Daniel |date=2011 |title=A Socioeconomic History of North Korea |location=Jefferson |publisher=[[McFarland & Company]] |pages=31 |isbn=978-0786463442}}</ref>|group=note|name=NKorea}} and [[Vietnam]].{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=9–24, 36–44}} With the exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}} The decline of communism in the late 20th century has been attributed to the inherent inefficiencies of communist economies and the general trend of communist governments towards [[authoritarianism]] and [[bureaucracy]].{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=9–24, 36–44}}<ref name=":0" />

While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally [[Communist state]] led to communism's widespread association with the [[Soviet economic model]], several scholars posit that in practice the model functioned as a form of [[state capitalism]].<ref name="Chomsky, Howard, Fitzgibbons">{{harvp|Chomsky|1986}}; {{harvp|Howard|King|2001}}; {{harvp|Fitzgibbons|2002}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Wolff |first=Richard D. |author-link=Richard D. Wolff |date=27 June 2015 |title=Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees |url=http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31567-socialism-means-abolishing-the-distinction-between-bosses-and-employees |access-date=29 January 2020 |website=[[Truthout]] |archive-date=11 March 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180311070639/http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31567-socialism-means-abolishing-the-distinction-between-bosses-and-employees |url-status=dead}}</ref> Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between [[anti anti-communism]] and [[anti-communism]].{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} Many authors have written about [[mass killings under communist regimes]] and [[mortality rate]]s,{{refn|Scholars generally write about individual events, and make estimates of any deaths like any other historical event, favouring background context and country specificities over generalizations, ideology, and Communist grouping as done by other scholars; some events are categorized by a Communist state's particular era, such as Stalinist repression,<ref name="Wheatcroft 2000">{{cite journal |last=Wheatcroft |first=Stephen G. |author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft |date=1999 |title=Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data. Not the Last Word |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]] |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=315–345 |doi=10.1080/09668139999056 |issn=0966-8136 |jstor=153614}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Wheatcroft |first=Stephen G. |author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft |date=2000 |title=The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and Its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]] |volume=52 |issue=6 |pages=1143–1159 |doi=10.1080/09668130050143860 |issn=0966-8136 |jstor=153593 |pmid=19326595 |s2cid=205667754}}</ref> rather than a connection to all Communist states, which came to cover one-third the world's population by 1985.{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=24–25}} {{paragraph break}} Historians like [[Robert Conquest]] and [[J. Arch Getty]] mainly wrote and focused on the [[History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953)|Stalin era]]; they wrote about people who died in the [[Gulag]] or as a result of Stalinist repression, and discussed estimates about those specific events, as part of the excess mortality debate in [[Joseph Stalin]]'s Soviet Union, without connecting them to communism as a whole. They have vigorously debated, including on the [[Holodomor genocide question]],<ref name="Getty 7–8">{{cite magazine|last=Getty |first=J. Arch |author-link=J. Arch Getty |date=22 January 1987 |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v09/n02/j-arch-getty/starving-the-ukraine |title=Starving the Ukraine |magazine=The London Review of Books |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=7–8 |access-date=13 August 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Marples |first1=David R. |author1-link=David R. Marples |title=Ethnic Issues in the Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]] |date=May 2009 |volume=61 |issue=3 |pages=505–518 |doi=10.1080/09668130902753325 |jstor=27752256 |s2cid=67783643}}</ref> but the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]], the [[Revolutions of 1989]], and the release of state archives put some of the heat out of the debate.<ref name="Davies & Harris 2005, pp. 3–5">{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Sarah |last2=Harris |first2=James |year=2005 |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas|title=Stalin: A New History |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |pages=3–5 |isbn=978-1-139-44663-1}}</ref> Some historians, among them [[Michael Ellman]], have questioned "the very category 'victims of Stalinism'" as "a matter of political judgement" because mass deaths from famines are not a "uniquely Stalinist evil" and were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ellman |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Ellman |year=2002 |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]] |volume=54 |issue=7 |pages=1172 |doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177 |s2cid=43510161}}</ref> There exists very little literature that compares excess deaths under "the Big Three" of Stalin's Soviet Union, [[Mao Zedong]]'s China, and [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia, and that which does exist mainly enumerates the events rather than explain their ideological reasons. One such example is ''Crimes Against Humanity Under Communist Regimes – Research Review'' by [[Klas-Göran Karlsson]] and [[Michael Schoenhals]], a review study summarizing what others have stated about it, mentioning some authors who saw the origins of the killings in [[Karl Marx]]'s writings; the geographical scope is "the Big Three", and the authors state that killings were carried out as part of an unbalanced modernizing policy of rapid industrialization, asking "what marked the beginning of the unbalanced Russian modernisation process that was to have such terrible consequences?"{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}} {{paragraph break}} Notable scholarly exceptions are historian [[Stéphane Courtois]] and political scientist [[Rudolph Rummel]], who have attempted a connection between all Communist states. Rummel's analysis was done within the framework of his proposed concept of [[democide]], which includes any direct and indirect deaths by government, and did not limit himself to Communist states, which were categorized within the framework of [[totalitarianism]] alongside other regime-types. Rummel's estimates are on the high-end of the spectrum, have been criticized and scrutinized, and are rejected by most scholars. Courtois' attempts, as in the introduction to ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'', which have been described by some critical observers as a crudely [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] and [[Antisemitism|antisemitic]] work, are controversial; many reviewers of the book, including scholars, criticized such attempts of lumping all Communist states and different sociological movements together as part of a Communist death toll totalling more than 94 million.<ref name="ReferenceB">{{harvp|Harff|1996}}; {{harvp|Hiroaki|2001}}; {{harvp|Paczkowski|2001}}; {{harvp|Weiner|2002}}; {{harvp|Dulić|2004}}; {{harvp|Harff|2017}}</ref> Reviewers also distinguished the introduction from the book proper, which was better received and only presented a number of chapters on single-country studies, with no cross-cultural comparison, or discussion of [[mass killing]]s; historian [[Andrzej Paczkowski]] wrote that only Courtois made the comparison between communism and Nazism, while the other sections of the book "are, in effect, narrowly focused monographs, which do not pretend to offer overarching explanations", and stated that the book is not "about communism as an ideology or even about communism as a state-building phenomenon."{{sfn|Paczkowski|2001|pp=32–33}} More positive reviews found most of the criticism to be fair or warranted, with political scientist [[Stanley Hoffmann]] stating that "Courtois would have been far more effective if he had shown more restraint",<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hoffman |first=Stanley |author-link=Stanley Hoffmann |date=Spring 1998 |title=Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression) by Stéphane Courtois. |journal=[[Foreign Policy]] |volume=110 (Special Edition: Frontiers of Knowledge) |pages=166–169 |doi=10.2307/1149284 |jstor=1149284}}</ref> and Paczkowski stating that it has had two positive effects, among them stirring a debate about the implementation of totalitarian ideologies and "an exhaustive balance sheet about one aspect of the worldwide phenomenon of communism."{{sfn|Paczkowski|2001}} {{paragraph break}} A [[Soviet and communist studies]] example is [[Steven Rosefielde]]'s ''Red Holocaust'', which is controversial due to [[Holocaust trivialization]]; nonetheless, Rosefielde's work mainly focused on "the Big Three" (Stalin era, [[Mao era]], and the [[Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia]]), plus [[Kim Il Sung]]'s North Korea and [[Ho Chi Minh]]'s Vietnam. Rosefielde's main point is that Communism in general, although he focuses mostly on [[Stalinism]], is less genocidal and that is a key distinction from [[Nazism]], and did not make a connection between all Communist states or communism as an ideology. Rosefielde wrote that "the conditions for the Red Holocaust were rooted in Stalin's, Kim's, Mao's, Ho's and Pol Pot's siege-mobilized terror-command economic systems, not in Marx's utopian vision or other pragmatic communist transition mechanisms. Terror-command was chosen among other reasons because of legitimate fears about the long-term viability of terror-free command, and the ideological risks of market communism."<ref name=Rosefielde_2010>{{cite book |last=Rosefielde |first=Steven |author-link=Steven Rosefielde |year=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7_eMAgAAQBAJ |title=Red Holocaust |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=xvi |isbn=978-0-415-77757-5 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>|group=note|name=third}} such as [[excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin]],{{refn|Some authors, such as [[Stéphane Courtois]] in ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'', stated that Communism killed more than Nazism and thus was worse; several scholars have criticized this view.<ref>{{cite journal |volume=53 |issue=1 |pages=5–19 |last=Suny |first=Ronald Grigor |author-link=Ronald Grigor Suny |title=Russian Terror/ism and Revisionist Historiography |journal=[[Australian Journal of Politics & History]] |date=2007 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8497.2007.00439.x |quote=... [leaves out] most of the 40-60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible. |postscript=. Quote at p. 13.}}</ref> After assessing twenty years of historical research in Eastern European archives, lower estimates by the "revisionist school" of historians have been vindicated,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Getty |first1=J. Arch |author1-link=J. Arch Getty |last2=Rittersporn |first2=Gábor |last3=Zemskov |first3=Viktor |author3-link=Viktor Zemskov |date=October 1993 |url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf |title=Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence |journal=[[The American Historical Review]] |volume=98 |issue=4 |pages=1017–1049 |doi=10.2307/2166597 |jstor=2166597 |access-date=17 August 2021|via=Soviet Studies}}</ref> despite the popular press continuing to use higher estimates and containing serious errors.<ref name="Wheatcroft 1999">{{cite journal |last=Wheatcroft |first=Stephen G. |author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft |date=March 1999 |url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Secret_Police.pdf |title=Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data. Not the Last Word |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]] |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=340–342 |doi=10.1080/09668139999056 |jstor=153614 |access-date=17 August 2021 |via=Soviet Studies}}</ref> Historians such as [[Timothy D. Snyder]] stated it is taken for granted that Stalin killed more civilians than Hitler; for most scholars, excess mortality under Stalin was about 6 million, which rise to 9 million if foreseeable deaths arising from policies are taken into account. This estimate is less than those killed by Nazis, who killed more noncombatants than the Soviets did.<ref name="Snyder">{{cite magazine|last=Snyder |first=Timothy |author-link=Timothy D. Snyder |date=27 January 2011 |url=http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/01/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse |title=Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse? |magazine=The New York Review of Books |access-date=17 August 2021}} See also [https://archive.org/details/bloodlandseurope00snyd_814/page/n404 p. 384] of Snyder's ''[[Bloodlands]]''.</ref>|group=note|name=fourth}} which remain controversial, polarized, and debated topics in academia, historiography, and politics when discussing communism and the legacy of Communist states.{{r|Ghodsee 2014}}{{r|Neumayer 2018}}
{{toc limit|3}}

== Etymology and terminology ==
''Communism'' derives from the [[French language|French]] word {{lang|fr|communisme}}, a combination of the [[Latin]]-rooted word {{lang|la|communis}} (which literally means ''common'') and the suffix ''isme (''an act, practice, or process of doing something'')''.{{r|Harper 2020}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=-ism Definition & Meaning {{!}} Britannica Dictionary |url=https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/-ism |access-date=26 September 2023 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en-US}}</ref> Semantically, {{lang|la|communis}} can be translated to "of or for the community", while ''isme'' is a suffix that indicates the abstraction into a state, condition, action, or [[doctrine]]. ''Communism'' may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for the community"; this semantic constitution has led to numerous usages of the word in its evolution. Prior to becoming associated with its more modern conception of an economic and political organization, it was initially used to designate various social situations. ''Communism'' came to be primarily associated with [[Marxism]], most specifically embodied in ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'', which proposed a particular type of communism.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}<ref name="Morris">{{cite web |last=Morris |first=Emily |date=8 March 2021 |url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture-online/ask-expert/your-questions-answered/does-communism-work-if-so-why-not |title=Does communism work? If so, why not |website=Culture Online |publisher=[[University College London]] |access-date=13 August 2021}}</ref>

One of the first uses of the word in its modern sense is in a letter sent by [[Victor d'Hupay]] to [[Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne]] around 1785, in which d'Hupay describes himself as an {{lang|fr|auteur communiste}} ("communist author").<ref>{{cite journal |title=Quelques dates à propos des termes communiste et communisme |trans-title=Some dates on the terms communist and communism |first=Jacques |last=Grandjonc |author-link=:de:Jacques Grandjonc |journal=Mots |year=1983 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=143–148 |language=fr |doi=10.3406/mots.1983.1122}}</ref> In 1793, Restif first used {{lang|fr|communisme}} to describe a social order based on egalitarianism and the common ownership of property.<ref name="Hodges">{{cite book |first=Donald C. |last=Hodges |author-link=Donald C. Hodges |title=Sandino's Communism: Spiritual Politics for the Twenty-First Century |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Pu7zAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA36 |date=1 February 2014 |publisher=[[University of Texas Press]] |isbn=978-0-292-71564-6 |pages=7 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> Restif would go on to use the term frequently in his writing and was the first to describe communism as a [[Government#Forms|form of government]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://commoningtimes.org/texts/nancy-communism-the-word.pdf |title=Communism, the Word |last=Nancy |first=Jean-Luc |author-link=Jean-Luc Nancy |publisher=Commoning Times |year=1992 |access-date=11 July 2019}}</ref> [[John Goodwyn Barmby]] is credited with the first use of ''communism'' in English, around 1840.<ref name="Harper 2020">{{cite web |last=Harper |first=Douglas |date=2020 |url=https://www.etymonline.com/word/communist |title=Communist |website=[[Online Etymology Dictionary]] |access-date=15 August 2021}}</ref>

=== Communism and socialism ===
[[File:Hammer and Sickle and Star.svg|thumb|150px|The [[hammer and sickle]] is a common theme of [[communist symbolism]]. This is an example of a hammer and sickle and [[red star]] design from the [[flag of the Soviet Union]].]]
Since the 1840s, the term ''communism'' has usually been distinguished from ''[[socialism]]''. The modern definition and usage of the term ''socialism'' was settled by the 1860s, becoming predominant over alternative terms such as ''associationism'' ([[Fourierism]]), ''[[Mutualism (economic theory)|mutualism]]'', or ''[[co-operative]]'', which had previously been used as synonyms. Meanwhile, the term ''communism'' fell out of use during this period.<ref name="Williams 1985, p. 289">{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Raymond |title=Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society |edition=revised |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1985 |orig-date=1976 |isbn=978-0-1952-0469-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289 289] |chapter=Socialism |oclc=1035920683 |quote=The decisive distinction between socialist and communist, as in one sense these terms are now ordinarily used, came with the renaming, in 1918, of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) as the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). From that time on, a distinction of socialist from communist, often with supporting definitions such as social democrat or democratic socialist, became widely current, although it is significant that all communist parties, in line with earlier usage, continued to describe themselves as socialist and dedicated to socialism. |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289}}</ref>

An early distinction between ''communism'' and ''socialism'' was that the latter aimed to only socialize [[Production (economics)|production]], whereas the former aimed to socialize both production and [[Consumption (economics)|consumption]] (in the form of common access to [[final good]]s).{{r|Steele p.43}} This distinction can be observed in Marx's communism, where the distribution of products is based on the principle of "[[to each according to his needs]]", in contrast to a socialist principle of "[[to each according to his contribution]]".{{r|Gregory & Stuart 2003, p. 118}} Socialism has been described as a philosophy seeking distributive justice, and communism as a subset of socialism that prefers economic equality as its form of distributive justice.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ely |first=Richard T. |author-link=Richard T. Ely |title=French and German socialism in modern times |date=1883 |publisher=[[Harper (publisher)|Harper & Brothers]] |location=New York |pages=29–30 |oclc=456632 |quote=The central idea of communism is economic equality. It is desired by communists that all ranks and differences in society should disappear, and one man be as good as another ... The distinctive idea of socialism is distributive justice. It goes back of the processes of modern life to the fact that he who does not work, lives on the labor of others. It aims to distribute economic goods according to the services rendered by the recipients ... Every communist is a socialist, and something more. Not every socialist is a communist.}}</ref>

In 19th century Europe, the use of the terms ''communism'' and ''socialism'' eventually accorded with the cultural attitude of adherents and opponents towards [[religion]]. In European [[Christendom]], ''communism'' was believed to be the [[atheist]] way of life. In [[Protestant England]], ''communism'' was too [[phonetically]] similar to the Roman Catholic ''[[communion rite]]'', hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists.<ref>{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Raymond |author-link=Raymond Williams |title=Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society |edition=revised |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1985 |orig-date=1976 |isbn=978-0-1952-0469-8 |chapter=Socialism |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich}}</ref> [[Friedrich Engels]] stated that in 1848, at the time when ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'' was first published,<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Friedrich Engels |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |orig-date=1888 |date=2002 |title=Preface to the 1888 English Edition of the Communist Manifesto |publisher=[[Penguin Books|Penguin]] |pages=202}}</ref> socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not; the [[Owenism|Owenites]] in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves ''communists''. This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of [[Étienne Cabet]] in France and [[Wilhelm Weitling]] in Germany.<ref>{{cite book |last=Todorova |first=Maria |author-link=Maria Todorova |year=2020 |title=The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s–1920s |edition=hardcover |location=London |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Publishing]] |isbn=9781350150331}}</ref> While [[Liberal democracy|liberal democrats]] looked to the [[Revolutions of 1848]] as a [[democratic revolution]], which in the long run ensured [[liberty, equality, and fraternity]], Marxists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a [[bourgeoisie]] indifferent to the legitimate demands of the [[proletariat]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Gildea |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Gildea |year=2000 |chapter=1848 in European Collective Memory |editor-last1=Evans |editor-first1=Robert John Weston |editor-link1=R. J. W. Evans |editor-last2=Strandmann |editor-first2=Hartmut Pogge |editor-link2=Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann |title=The Revolutions in Europe, 1848–1849: From Reform to Reaction |edition=hardcover |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=207–235 |isbn=9780198208402}}</ref>

By 1888, Marxists employed the term ''socialism'' in place of ''communism'', which had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for the former. It was not until 1917, with the [[October Revolution]], that ''socialism'' came to be used to refer to a distinct stage between [[capitalism]] and communism. This intermediate stage was a concept introduced by [[Vladimir Lenin]] as a means to defend the [[Bolshevik]] seizure of power against traditional Marxist criticism that Russia's [[productive forces]] were not sufficiently developed for [[socialist revolution]].{{r|Steele 1992, pp. 44–45}} A distinction between ''communist'' and ''socialist'' as descriptors of political ideologies arose in 1918 after the [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]] renamed itself as the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], which resulted in the adjective ''Communist'' being used to refer to socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, [[Leninism]], and later in the 1920s those of [[Marxism–Leninism]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Busky |first=Donald F. |title=Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group|Praeger]] |location=Santa Barbara, California |date=2000 |isbn=978-0-275-96886-1 |page=9 |quote=In a modern sense of the word, communism refers to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.}}</ref> In spite of this common usage, [[Communist parties]] also continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism.{{r|Williams 1985, p. 289}}

According to ''The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx'', "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death."<ref name="Hudis et al. 2018">{{cite book |editor1-last=Hudis |editor1-first=Peter |editor2-last=Vidal |editor2-first=Matt |editor2-link=Matt Vidal |editor3-last=Smith |editor3-first=Tony |editor4-last=Rotta |editor4-first=Tomás |editor5-last=Prew |editor5-first=Paul |date=10 September 2018 |url=https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190695545 |title=The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx |chapter-url=https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190695545-e-50 |chapter=Marx's Concept of Socialism |last=Hudis |first=Peter |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-069554-5 |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001}}</ref> According to the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', "Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists' adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx."{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}

=== Associated usage and Communist states ===
In the United States, ''communism'' is widely used as a pejorative term as part of a [[Red Scare]], much like ''socialism'', and mainly in reference to [[authoritarian socialism]] and [[Communist state]]s. The emergence of the [[Soviet Union]] as the world's first nominally Communist state led to the term's widespread association with [[Marxism–Leninism]] and the [[Soviet-type economic planning]] model.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Busky |first=Donald F. |title=Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group|Praeger]] |location=Santa Barbara, California |date=2000 |isbn=978-0-275-96886-1 |pages=6–8 |quote=In a modern sense of the word, communism refers to the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. ... [T]he adjective democratic is added by democratic socialists to attempt to distinguish themselves from Communists who also call themselves socialists. All but communists, or more accurately, Marxist–Leninists, believe that modern-day communism is highly undemocratic and totalitarian in practice, and democratic socialists wish to emphasise by their name that they disagree strongly with the Marxist–Leninist brand of socialism.}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Communism |encyclopedia=The [[Columbia Encyclopedia]] |edition=6th |year=2007}}</ref> In his essay "Judging Nazism and Communism",<ref>{{cite journal |last=Malia |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Malia |date=Fall 2002 |title=Judging Nazism and Communism |journal=The National Interest |publisher=Center for the National Interest |issue=69 |pages=63–78 |jstor=42895560}}</ref> [[Martin Malia]] defines a "generic Communism" category as any Communist [[political party]] movement led by [[intellectual]]s; this [[umbrella term]] allows grouping together such different [[regime]]s as radical [[Soviet]] industrialism and the [[Khmer Rouge]]'s anti-urbanism.{{r|David-Fox 2004}} According to [[Alexander Dallin]], the idea to group together different countries, such as [[Democratic Republic of Afghanistan|Afghanistan]] and [[Hungarian People's Republic|Hungary]], has no adequate explanation.{{r|Dallin 2000}}

While the term ''Communist state'' is used by Western historians, political scientists, and news media to refer to countries ruled by Communist parties, these [[socialist states]] themselves did not describe themselves as communist or claim to have achieved communism; they referred to themselves as being a socialist state that is in the process of constructing communism.<ref>{{harvp|Wilczynski|2008|p=21}}; {{harvp|Steele|1992|p=45}}: "Among Western journalists the term 'Communist' came to refer exclusively to regimes and movements associated with the Communist International and its offspring: regimes which insisted that they were not communist but socialist, and movements which were barely communist in any sense at all."; {{harvp|Rosser|Barkley|2003|p=14}}; {{harvp|Williams|1983|p=[https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289 289]}}</ref> Terms used by Communist states include ''[[National-democratic state|national-democratic]]'', ''[[People's democracy (Marxism–Leninism)|people's democratic]]'', ''[[Socialist-leaning countries|socialist-oriented]]'', and ''[[Socialist state|workers and peasants']]'' states.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nation |first1=R. Craig |title=Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917–1991 |date=1992 |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |isbn=978-0801480072 |pages=85–86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WK18-OoR0pIC&pg=PA85 |access-date=19 December 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190801050439/https://books.google.ie/books?id=WK18-OoR0pIC&pg=PA85 |archive-date=1 August 2019 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>

== History ==
{{main|History of communism}}

=== Early communism ===
{{further|Pre-Marxist communism|Primitive communism|Religious communism|Scientific socialism|Utopian socialism}}
According to [[Richard Pipes]],<ref name="Pipes">{{cite book |author-link=Richard Pipes |last=Pipes |first=Richard |date=2001 |title=Communism: A History |isbn=978-0-8129-6864-4 |pages=3–5 |publisher=[[Random House Publishing]]}}</ref> the idea of a [[Classless society|classless]], [[egalitarian]] society first emerged in [[Ancient Greece]]. Since the 20th century, [[Ancient Rome]] has been examined in this context, as well as thinkers such as [[Aristotle]], [[Cicero]], [[Demosthenes]], [[Plato]], and [[Tacitus]]. Plato, in particular, has been considered as a possible communist or socialist theorist,<ref>{{cite book |last=Bostaph |first=Samuel |year=1994 |chapter=Communism, Sparta, and Plato |editor-last=Reisman |editor-first=David A. |title=Economic Thought and Political Theory |edition=hardcover |series=Recent Economic Thought Series |volume=37 |location=Dordrecht |publisher=[[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]] |pages=1–36 |doi=10.1007/978-94-011-1380-9_1 |isbn=9780792394334}}</ref> or as the first author to give communism a serious consideration.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Franklin |first=A. Mildred |date=9 January 1950 |title=Communism and Dictatorship in Ancient Greece and Rome |journal=The Classical Weekly |location=Baltimore, Maryland |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] |volume=43 |issue=6 |pages=83–89 |doi=10.2307/4342653 |jstor=4342653}}</ref> The 5th-century [[Mazdak]] movement in [[Persia]] (modern-day Iran) has been described as ''communistic'' for challenging the enormous privileges of the [[noble class]]es and the [[clergy]], criticizing the institution of [[private property]], and striving to create an egalitarian society.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Ehsan Yarshater |last=Yarshater |first=Ehsan |date=1983 |chapter-url=https://www.the-derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/mazdak.pdf |chapter=Mazdakism (The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Period) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080611075040/http://www.derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/mazdak.html |archive-date=11 June 2008 |access-date=10 June 2020 |title=[[The Cambridge History of Iran]] |volume=3 |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |pages=991–1024 (1019)}}</ref><ref name="Ermak 2019">{{cite book |title=Communism: The Great Misunderstanding |last=Ermak |first=Gennady |year=2019 |publisher=Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp |isbn=978-1-7979-5738-8}}</ref> At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of [[religious text]].{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=24–25}}

In the medieval [[Christian Church]], some [[monastic]] communities and [[religious order]]s shared their land and their other property. Sects deemed heretical such as the [[Waldensians]] preached an early form of [[Christian communism]].<ref name="Busky 2002 p. 33">{{cite book |last=Busky |first=D.F. |title=Communism in History and Theory: From Utopian socialism to the fall of the Soviet Union |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group|Praeger]] |series=[[ABC-CLIO]] ebook |issue=v. 3 |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-275-97748-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O-bi65fwN7kC&pg=PA33 |access-date=18 April 2023 |page=33 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref name="Boer 2019 p. 12">{{cite book |last=Boer |first=Roland |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L8KODwAAQBAJ&pg=PA12 |title=Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill]] |year=2019 |isbn=978-90-04-39477-3 |series=Studies in Critical Research on Religion |page=12 |author-link=Roland Boer |access-date=18 April 2023}}</ref> As summarized by historians Janzen Rod and Max Stanton, the [[Hutterites]] believed in strict adherence to biblical principles, church discipline, and practised a form of communism. In their words, the Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective. As an economic system, communism was attractive to many of the peasants who supported social revolution in sixteenth century central Europe."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Janzen |first1=Rod |last2=Stanton |first2=Max |title=The Hutterites in North America |date=18 July 2010 |edition=illustrated |location=Baltimore |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lgUbHUXmrvYC&pg=PA17 |page=17 |isbn=9780801899256 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> This link was highlighted in one of [[Karl Marx]]'s early writings; Marx stated that "[a]s Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty."<ref>{{cite book |title=Jesus in History, Legend, Scripture, and Tradition: A World Encyclopedia: A World Encyclopedia |last1=Houlden |first1=Leslie |last2=Minard |first2=Antone |publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]] |year=2015 |isbn=9781610698047 |location=Santa Barbara |page=357}}</ref> [[Thomas Müntzer]] led a large [[Anabaptist]] communist movement during the [[German Peasants' War]], which [[Friedrich Engels]] analyzed in his 1850 work ''[[The Peasant War in Germany]]''. The [[Marxist]] communist ethos that aims for unity reflects the [[Christian universalist]] teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people.<ref>{{cite book |last=Halfin |first=Igal |year=2000 |title=From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia |location=Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |publisher=[[University of Pittsburgh Press]] |page=46 |isbn=0822957043}}</ref>

[[File:Hans Holbein, the Younger - Sir Thomas More - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Thomas More]], whose ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]'' portrayed a society based on common ownership of property]]
Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer [[Thomas More]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Surtz |first=Edward L. |date=June 1949 |title=Thomas More and Communism |journal=PMLA |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=64 |issue=3 |pages=549–564 |doi=10.2307/459753 |jstor=459753 |s2cid=163924226}}</ref> In his 1516 [[treatise]] titled ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]'', More portrayed a society based on [[common ownership]] of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of [[reason]] and [[virtue]].<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Nandanwad |first=Nikita |date=13 December 2020 |url=https://retrospectjournal.com/2020/12/13/communism-virtue-and-the-ideal-commonwealth-in-thomas-mores-utopia/ |title=Communism, virtue and the ideal commonwealth in Thomas More's Utopia |magazine=Retrospect Journal |location=Edinburgh |publisher=[[University of Edinburgh]] |access-date=18 August 2021}}</ref> Marxist communist theoretician [[Karl Kautsky]], who popularized Marxist communism in Western Europe more than any other thinker apart from Engels, published ''Thomas More and His Utopia'', a work about More, whose ideas could be regarded as "the foregleam of Modern Socialism" according to Kautsky. During the [[October Revolution]] in Russia, [[Vladimir Lenin]] suggested that a monument be dedicated to More, alongside other important Western thinkers.<ref name="Papke 2016">{{cite journal |last=Papke |first=David |year=2016 |url=https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=utopia500 |title=The Communisitic Inclinations of Sir Thomas More |journal=Utopia500 |issue=7 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=Scholarly Commons}}</ref>

In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a [[Puritan]] religious group known as the [[Diggers]] advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. In his 1895 ''Cromwell and Communism'',{{sfn|Bernstein|1895}} [[Eduard Bernstein]] stated that several groups during the [[English Civil War]] (especially the Diggers) espoused clear communistic, [[agrarianist]] ideals and that [[Oliver Cromwell]]'s attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Elmen |first=Paul |date=September 1954 |title=The Theological Basis of Digger Communism |journal=Church History |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=23 |issue=3 |pages=207–218 |doi=10.2307/3161310 |jstor=3161310 |s2cid=161700029}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Juretic |first=George |date=April–June 1974 |title=Digger no Millenarian: The Revolutionizing of Gerrard Winstanley |journal=[[Journal of the History of Ideas]] |location=Philadelfia, Pennsylvania |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=263–280 |doi=10.2307/2708927 |jstor=2708927}}</ref> Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the [[Age of Enlightenment]] of the 18th century through such thinkers as [[Gabriel Bonnot de Mably]], [[Jean Meslier]], [[Étienne-Gabriel Morelly]], and [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] in France.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hammerton |first=J. A. |title=Illustrated Encyclopaedia of World History Volume Eight |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S4h68smTPGYC&pg=PA4979 |publisher=Mittal Publications |pages=4979 |id=GGKEY:96Y16ZBCJ04}}</ref> During the upheaval of the [[French Revolution]], communism emerged as a political doctrine under the auspices of [[François-Noël Babeuf]], [[Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne]], and [[Sylvain Maréchal]], all of whom can be considered the progenitors of modern communism, according to [[James H. Billington]].<ref name="Billington">{{cite book |last=Billington |first=James H. |year=2011 |title=Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=saTynFUNPD8C |publisher=[[Transaction Publishers]] |page=71 |isbn=978-1-4128-1401-0 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>

In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. Unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis.<ref name="britannica">{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Communism |date=2006 |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |via=Encyclopædia Britannica Online}}</ref> Notable among them were [[Robert Owen]], who founded [[New Harmony, Indiana]], in 1825, and [[Charles Fourier]], whose followers organized other settlements in the United States, such as [[Brook Farm]] in 1841.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}} In its modern form, communism grew out of the [[History of socialism|socialist movement]] in 19th-century Europe. As the [[Industrial Revolution]] advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the [[proletariat]]—a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]''.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}

=== Revolutionary wave of 1917–1923 ===
{{further|Revolutions of 1917–1923}}

{{multiple image
| align             = right
| total_width       = 300
| image1            = Lenin in 1920 (cropped).jpg
| caption1          = [[Vladimir Lenin]], founder of the [[Soviet Union]] and the leader of the [[Bolshevik party]]
| image2            = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg
| caption2          = [[Leon Trotsky]], founder of the [[Red Army]] and a key figure in the [[October Revolution]]
}}

In 1917, the [[October Revolution]] in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s [[Bolsheviks]], which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets]] in which the Bolsheviks had a majority.<ref>{{cite book |author1-link=Jerry F. Hough |last1=Hough |first1=Jerry F. |author2-link=Merle Fainsod |last2=Fainsod |first2=Merle |date=1979 |orig-date=1953 |title=How the Soviet Union is Governed |location=Cambridge and London |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |page=81 |isbn=9780674410305}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dowlah |first1=Alex F. |last2=Elliott |first2=John E. |date=1997 |title=The Life and Times of Soviet Socialism |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group|Praeger]] |page=18 |isbn=9780275956295}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author-link=David R. Marples |last=Marples |first=David R. |date=2010 |title=Russia in the Twentieth Century: The Quest for Stability |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=38 |isbn=9781408228227}}</ref> The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement, as Marx stated that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development; however, the [[Russian Empire]] was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry, and a minority of industrial workers. Marx warned against attempts "to transform my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophy theory of the {{lang|fr|arche générale}} imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself",<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wittfogel |first=Karl A. |date=July 1960 |title=The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution |journal=[[World Politics]] |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=487–508 |doi=10.2307/2009334 |jstor=2009334 |s2cid=155515389 |quote=Quote at p. 493.}}</ref> and stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule through the ''[[Obshchina]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |author-link=Marc Edelman |last=Edelman |first=Marc |date=December 1984 |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA3537723&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00270520&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E484b4f63 |title=Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the 'Peripheries of Capitalism' |journal=[[Monthly Review]] |volume=36 |pages=1–55 |access-date=1 August 2021 |via=Gale}}</ref>{{refn|While the [[Bolsheviks]] rested on hope of success of the 1917–1923 wave of proletarian revolutions in Western Europe before resulting in the [[socialism in one country]] policy after their failure, Marx's view on the ''mir'' was shared not by self-professed Russian Marxists, who were mechanistic [[Determinism|determinists]], but by the [[Narodniks]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Faulkner |first=Neil |year=2017 |url=https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/45628/625271.pdf |title=A People's History of the Russian Revolution |edition=hardback |location=London |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |pages=34, 177 |isbn=9780745399041 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=OAPEN}}</ref> and the [[Socialist Revolutionary Party]],<ref>{{cite book |last=White |first=Elizabeth |year=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lA_JBQAAQBAJ |title=The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1921–39 |edition=1st hardback |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page= |isbn=9780415435840 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]] |quote=''Narodniki'' had opposed the often mechanistic determinism of Russian Marxism with the belief that non-economic factors such as the human will act as the motor of history. The SRs believed that the creative work of ordinary people through unions and cooperatives and the local government organs of a democratic state could bring about social transformation. ... They, along with free soviets, the cooperatives and the ''mir'' could have formed the popular basis for a devolved and democratic rule across the Russian state.}}</ref> one of the successors to the Narodniks, alongside the [[Popular Socialists (Russia)|Popular Socialists]] and the [[Trudoviks]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/n/a.htm |title=Narodniks |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Marxism |publisher=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=18 August 2021}}</ref>|group=note}} The moderate [[Mensheviks]] (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (majority) plan for [[socialist revolution]] before the [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|capitalist mode of production]] was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, Bread, and Land", which tapped into the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in [[World War I]], the peasants' demand for [[land reform]], and popular support for the [[Soviet (council)|soviets]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Holmes |first=Leslie |title=Communism: a very short introduction |date=2009 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-157088-9 |location=Oxford, UK |pages=18 |oclc=500808890}}</ref> 50,000 workers had passed a resolution in favour of Bolshevik demand for transfer of power to the [[soviets]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Head |first1=Michael |title=Evgeny Pashukanis: A Critical Reappraisal |date=12 September 2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-135-30787-5 |pages=1–288 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PYGNAgAAQBAJ&dq=october+revolution+50+000+workers&pg=PT83 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Shukman |first1=Harold |title=The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution |date=5 December 1994 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-631-19525-2 |page=21 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ScabEAAAQBAJ&dq=october+revolution+50+000+workers&pg=PA21 |language=en}}</ref> Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as [[Universal access to education|universal education]], [[universal healthcare|healthcare]] and [[Women in Russia|equal rights for women]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Katherine H. |last2=Keene |first2=Michael L. |title=After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-5647-5 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oyaxYvSG6gAC&dq=lenin+universal+literacy+after+the+vote+was+won&pg=PA109 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Ugri͡umov |first1=Aleksandr Leontʹevich |title=Lenin's Plan for Building Socialism in the USSR, 1917–1925 |date=1976 |publisher=Novosti Press Agency Publishing House |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gXknAQAAMAAJ&q=lenin+universal+literacy |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |title=Lenin: A Political Life: Volume 1: The Strengths of Contradiction |date=24 June 1985 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-05591-3 |page=98 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ntiuCwAAQBAJ&q=universal+education&pg=PA98 |language=en}}</ref>

By November 1917, the [[Russian Provisional Government]] had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform, or convene the [[Russian Constituent Assembly]] to draft a constitution, leaving the soviets in ''[[de facto]]'' control of the country. The Bolsheviks moved to hand power to the [[Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies]] in the October Revolution; after a few weeks of deliberation, the [[Left Socialist-Revolutionaries]] formed a [[coalition government]] with the Bolsheviks from November 1917 to July 1918, while the right-wing faction of the [[Socialist Revolutionary Party]] boycotted the soviets and denounced the October Revolution as an illegal [[coup]]. In the [[1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election]], socialist parties totaled well over 70% of the vote. The Bolsheviks were clear winners in the urban centres, and took around two-thirds of the votes of soldiers on the Western Front, obtaining 23.3% of the vote; the Socialist Revolutionaries finished first on the strength of support from the country's rural peasantry, who were for the most part [[Single-issue politics|single issue voters]], that issue being land reform, obtaining 37.6%, while the Ukrainian Socialist Bloc finished a distant third at 12.7%, and the Mensheviks obtained a disappointing fourth place at 3.0%.<ref name="Dando 1966">{{cite journal |last=Dando |first=William A. |date=June 1966 |title=A Map of the Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917 |journal=[[Slavic Review]] |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=314–319 |doi=10.2307/2492782 |issn=0037-6779 |jstor=2492782 |s2cid=156132823}}</ref>

Most of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's seats went to the right-wing faction. Citing outdated voter-rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik–Left Socialist-Revolutionaries government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. The Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the [[Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union]], a committee dominated by Lenin, who had previously supported a [[multi-party system]] of free elections. After the Bolshevik defeat, Lenin started referring to the assembly as a "deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarianism."{{r|Dando 1966}} Some argued this was the beginning of the development of [[vanguardism]] as an hierarchical party–elite that controls society,<ref>{{cite book |last=White |first=Elizabeth |year=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFMuCgAAQBAJ |title=The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1921–39 |edition=1st hardback |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=9780415435840 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> which resulted in a split between [[anarchism and Marxism]], and [[Leninist]] communism assuming the dominant position for most of the 20th century, excluding rival socialist currents.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Franks |first=Benjamin |date=May 2012 |title=Between Anarchism and Marxism: The Beginnings and Ends of the Schism |journal=[[Journal of Political Ideologies]] |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=202–227 |doi=10.1080/13569317.2012.676867 |s2cid=145419232 |issn=1356-9317}}</ref>

Other communists and Marxists, especially [[social democrats]] who favored the development of [[liberal democracy]] as a prerequisite to [[socialism]], were critical of the Bolsheviks from the beginning due to Russia being seen as too backward for a [[socialist revolution]].{{r|Steele 1992, pp. 44–45}} [[Council communism]] and [[left communism]], inspired by the [[German Revolution of 1918–1919]] and the wide [[proletarian revolution]]ary wave, arose in response to developments in Russia and are critical of self-declared constitutionally [[socialist state]]s. Some left-wing parties, such as the [[Socialist Party of Great Britain]], boasted of having called the Bolsheviks, and by extension those [[Communist state]]s which either followed or were inspired by the Soviet Bolshevik model of development, establishing [[state capitalism]] in late 1917, as would be described during the 20th century by several academics, economists, and other scholars,{{r|Chomsky, Howard, Fitzgibbons}} or a [[command economy]].<ref name="The Soviet Union Has an Administered, Not a Planned, Economy, 1985">{{cite journal |last=Wilhelm |first=John Howard |year=1985 |title=The Soviet Union Has an Administered, Not a Planned, Economy |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies|Soviet Studies]] |volume=37 |issue=1 |pages=118–30 |doi=10.1080/09668138508411571}}</ref><ref name="Gregory 2004">{{cite book |last=Gregory |first=Paul Roderick |author-link=Paul Roderick Gregory |url=https://www.hoover.org/press-releases/political-economy-stalinism |title=The Political Economy of Stalinism |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-511-61585-6 |location=Cambridge |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511615856 |quote='Although Stalin was the system's prime architect, the system was managed by thousands of 'Stalins' in a nested dictatorship,' Gregory writes. 'This study pinpoints the reasons for the failure of the system—poor planning, unreliable supplies, the preferential treatment of indigenous enterprises, the lack of knowledge of planners, etc.—but also focuses on the basic principal agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate.' |postscript=. Quote is from Hoover Institution's press release about the book |access-date=12 August 2021 |via=[[Hoover Institution]]}}</ref><ref name="Ellman 2007">{{cite book |last=Ellman |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Ellman |title=Transition and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Mario Nuti |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-230-54697-4 |editor1-last=Estrin |editor1-first=Saul |location=London |page=22 |chapter=The Rise and Fall of Socialist Planning |quote=In the USSR in the late 1980s the system was normally referred to as the 'administrative-command' economy. What was fundamental to this system was not the plan but the role of administrative hierarchies at all levels of decision making; the absence of control over decision making by the population ... . |editor2-last=Kołodko |editor2-first=Grzegorz W. |editor2-link=Grzegorz Kołodko |editor3-last=Uvalić |editor3-first=Milica}}</ref> Before the Soviet path of development became known as ''socialism'', in reference to the [[two-stage theory]], communists made no major distinction between the [[socialist mode of production]] and communism;{{r|Hudis et al. 2018}} it is consistent with, and helped to inform, early concepts of socialism in which the [[law of value]] no longer directs economic activity. Monetary relations in the form of [[Exchange value|exchange-value]], [[Profit (economics)|profit]], [[interest]], and [[Wage labour|wage labor]] would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism.{{r|Bockman 2011, p. 20}}

While [[Joseph Stalin]] stated that the law of value would still apply to socialism and that the Soviet Union was ''socialist'' under this new definition, which was followed by other Communist leaders, many other communists maintain the original definition and state that Communist states never established socialism in this sense. Lenin described his policies as state capitalism but saw them as necessary for the development of socialism, which left-wing critics say was never established, while some [[Marxist–Leninists]] state that it was established only during the [[Stalin era]] and [[Mao era]], and then became capitalist states ruled by ''[[Revisionism (Marxism)|revisionists]]''; others state that Maoist China was always state capitalist, and uphold [[People's Socialist Republic of Albania]] as the only [[socialist state]] after the Soviet Union under Stalin,<ref name="Bland 1995">{{cite journal |last=Bland |first=Bill |date=1995 |orig-date=1980 |url=https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf |title=The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union |journal=Revolutionary Democracy Journal |access-date=16 February 2020}}</ref><ref name="Bland 1997">{{cite book |last=Bland |first=Bill |date=1997 |url=http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historymaotable.html |title=Class Struggles in China |edition=revised |location=London |access-date=16 February 2020}}</ref> who first stated to have achieved ''socialism'' with the [[1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=S. A. |year=2014 |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=126 |isbn=9780191667527 |quote=The 1936 Constitution described the Soviet Union for the first time as a 'socialist society', rhetorically fulfilling the aim of building socialism in one country, as Stalin had promised.}}</ref>

=== Communist states ===
==== Soviet Union ====
{{further|Communist state|Soviet Union}}
[[War communism]] was the first system adopted by the Bolsheviks during the [[Russian Civil War]] as a result of the many challenges.{{r|Peters 1998}} Despite ''communism'' in the name, it had nothing to do with communism, with strict discipline for workers, [[strike action]]s forbidden, obligatory labor duty, and military-style control, and has been described as simple [[authoritarian]] control by the Bolsheviks to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political [[ideology]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Himmer |first=Robert |year=1994 |title=The Transition from War Communism to the New Economic Policy: An Analysis of Stalin's Views |journal=[[The Russian Review]] |volume=53 |issue=4 |pages=515–529 |doi=10.2307/130963 |jstor=130963}}</ref> The Soviet Union was established in 1922. Before the [[Ban on factions in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|broad ban]] in 1921, there were several factions in the Communist party, more prominently among them the [[Left Opposition]], the [[Right Opposition]], and the [[Workers' Opposition]], which debated on the path of development to follow. The Left and Workers' oppositions were more critical of the state-capitalist development and the Workers' in particular was critical of [[bureaucratization]] and development from above, while the Right Opposition was more supporting of state-capitalist development and advocated the [[New Economic Policy]].<ref name="Peters 1998">{{cite journal |last=Peters |first=John E. |year=1998 |title=Book Reviews: The Life and Times of Soviet Socialism |journal=[[Journal of Economic Issues]] |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=1203–1206 |doi=10.1080/00213624.1998.11506129}}</ref> Following Lenin's [[democratic centralism]], the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite [[Cadre (politics)|cadres]] approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to [[party discipline]].<ref name="World War II 2001">{{cite book |first=Norman |last=Davies |author-link=Norman Davies |chapter=Communism |title=The Oxford Companion to World War II |editor1-first=I. C. B. |editor1-last=Dear |editor2-first=M. R. D. |editor2-last=Foot |editor2-link=M. R. D. Foot |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2001}}</ref> [[Trotskyism]] overtook the left communists as the main dissident communist current, while more [[libertarian communism]]s, dating back to the [[libertarian Marxist]] current of council communism, remained important dissident communisms outside the Soviet Union. Following Lenin's [[democratic centralism]], the Leninist 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 [[Great Purge]] of 1936–1938 was [[Joseph Stalin]]'s attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]]. In the [[Moscow trials]], many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the [[Russian Revolution]] or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including [[Lev Kamenev]], [[Grigory Zinoviev]], [[Alexei Rykov]], and [[Nikolai Bukharin]], were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sedov |first=Lev |date=1980 |url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/sedov/works/red/index.htm |title=The Red Book on the Moscow Trial: Documents |location=New York |publisher=New Park Publications |isbn=0-86151-015-1 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>{{r|World War II 2001}}

The devastation of [[World War II]] resulted in a massive recovery program involving the rebuilding of industrial plants, housing, and transportation as well as the demobilization and migration of millions of soldiers and civilians. In the midst of this turmoil during the winter of 1946–1947, the Soviet Union experienced the worst natural famine in the 20th century.<ref name="Gorlizki">{{Cite book |last=Gorlizki |first=Yoram |title=Cold peace: Stalin and the Soviet ruling circle, 1945-1953 |date=2004 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |others=O. V. Khlevni︠u︡k |isbn=978-0-19-534735-7 |location=Oxford |oclc=57589785}}</ref> There was no serious opposition to Stalin as the secret police continued to send possible suspects to the [[gulag]]. Relations with the United States and Britain went from friendly to hostile, as they denounced Stalin's political controls over eastern Europe and his [[Berlin Blockade]]. By 1947, the [[Cold War]] had begun. Stalin himself believed that capitalism was a hollow shell and would crumble under increased non-military pressure exerted through proxies in countries like Italy. He greatly underestimated the economic strength of the West and instead of triumph saw the West build up alliances that were designed to permanently stop or contain Soviet expansion. In early 1950, Stalin gave the go-ahead for [[North Korea]]'s invasion of [[South Korea]], expecting a short war. He was stunned when the Americans entered and defeated the North Koreans, putting them almost on the Soviet border. Stalin supported [[China]]'s entry into the [[Korean War]], which drove the Americans back to the prewar boundaries, but which escalated tensions. The United States decided to mobilize its economy for a long contest with the Soviets, built the [[hydrogen bomb]], and strengthened the [[NATO]] alliance that covered [[Western Europe]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Gaddis |first=John Lewis |title=The Cold War: A New History |date=2006 |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |author-link=John Lewis Gaddis}}</ref>

According to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after 1945 was to consolidate the nation's superpower status and in the face of his growing physical decrepitude, to maintain his own hold on total power. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression yet was also quite modern. At the top, personal loyalty to Stalin counted for everything. Stalin also created powerful committees, elevated younger specialists, and began major institutional innovations. In the teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death.{{r|Gorlizki}}

For most Westerners and [[anti-communist]] Russians, Stalin is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a [[mass murder]]er; for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder.<ref>{{Cite book |last=McDermott |first=Kevin |date=2006 |title=Stalin: Revolutionary in an Era of War |location=Basingstoke and New York |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |page=1 |isbn=978-0-333-71122-4}}</ref>

==== China ====
After the [[Chinese Civil War]], [[Mao Zedong]] and the [[Chinese Communist Party]] came to power in 1949 as the [[Nationalist government]] headed by the [[Kuomintang]] fled to the island of Taiwan. In 1950–1953, China engaged in a large-scale, undeclared war with the United States, South Korea, and United Nations forces in the [[Korean War]]. While the war ended in a military stalemate, it gave Mao the opportunity to identify and purge elements in China that seemed supportive of capitalism. At first, there was close cooperation with Stalin, who sent in technical experts to aid the industrialization process along the line of the Soviet model of the 1930s.{{sfn|Brown|2009|pp=179–193}} After Stalin's death in 1953, relations with Moscow soured—Mao thought Stalin's successors had betrayed the Communist ideal. Mao charged that Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]] was the leader of a "revisionist clique" which had turned against Marxism and Leninism and was now setting the stage for the restoration of capitalism.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gittings |first=John |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=259WHxBah2wC&pg=PA40 |title=The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2006 |isbn=9780191622373 |page=40 |author-link=John Gittings}}</ref> The two nations were at sword's point by 1960. Both began forging alliances with communist supporters around the globe, thereby splitting the worldwide movement into two hostile camps.<ref>{{cite book |last=Luthi |first=Lorenz M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dl4TRDxqexMC&pg=PA94 |title=The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2010 |isbn=978-1400837625}}</ref>

Rejecting the Soviet model of rapid urbanization, Mao Zedong and his top aide [[Deng Xiaoping]] launched the [[Great Leap Forward]] in 1957–1961 with the goal of industrializing China overnight, using the peasant villages as the base rather than large cities.{{sfn|Brown|2009|pp=316–332}} Private ownership of land ended and the peasants worked in large collective farms that were now ordered to start up heavy industry operations, such as steel mills. Plants were built in remote locations, due to the lack of technical experts, managers, transportation, or needed facilities. Industrialization failed, and the main result was a sharp unexpected decline in agricultural output, which led to mass famine and millions of deaths. The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. Political economist [[Dwight H. Perkins (economist)|Dwight Perkins]] argues: "Enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster."<ref>{{cite book |last=Perkins |first=Dwight Heald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cVywAAAAIAAJ |title=China's economic policy and performance during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath |publisher=[[Harvard Institute for International Development]] |year=1984 |page=12 |author-link=Dwight H. Perkins (economist)}}</ref> Put in charge of rescuing the economy, Deng adopted pragmatic policies that the idealistic Mao disliked. For a while, Mao was in the shadows but returned to center stage and purged Deng and his allies in the [[Cultural Revolution]] (1966–1976).<ref>{{cite book |last=Vogel |first=Ezra F.|title=[[Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China]] |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |year=2011 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=3IaR-FxlA6AC&pg=PA40 40]–[https://books.google.com/books?id=3IaR-FxlA6AC&pg=PA42 42] |author-link=Ezra Vogel}}</ref>

The [[Cultural Revolution]] was an upheaval that targeted intellectuals and party leaders from 1966 through 1976. Mao's goal was to purify communism by removing pro-capitalists and traditionalists by imposing [[Maoist]] orthodoxy within the [[Chinese Communist Party]]. The movement paralyzed China politically and weakened the country economically, culturally, and intellectually for years. Millions of people were accused, humiliated, stripped of power, and either imprisoned, killed, or most often, sent to work as farm laborers. Mao insisted that those he labelled [[Revisionism (Marxism)|revisionists]] be removed through violent [[class struggle]]. The two most prominent militants were Marshall [[Lin Biao]] of the army and Mao's wife [[Jiang Qing]]. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming [[Red Guard]] groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a "[[capitalist road]]", most notably [[Liu Shaoqi]] and [[Deng Xiaoping]]. During the same period, Mao's [[personality cult]] grew to immense proportions. After Mao's death in 1976, the survivors were rehabilitated and many returned to power.{{sfn|Brown|2009}}{{page needed|date=June 2022}}

Mao's government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, [[Laogai|prison labour]], and mass executions.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Johnson |first=Ian |author-link=Ian Johnson (writer) |date=5 February 2018 |title=Who Killed More: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao? |url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/02/05/who-killed-more-hitler-stalin-or-mao/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205193203/https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/02/05/who-killed-more-hitler-stalin-or-mao/ |archive-date=5 February 2018 |access-date=18 July 2020 |website=The New York Review of Books}}</ref><ref name=":6">{{cite book |last=Fenby |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/modernchinafallr00fenb/page/351/mode/2up |title=Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present |publisher=[[Penguin Group]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0061661167 |pages=351 |author-link=Jonathan Fenby}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Schram |first=Stuart |author-link=Stuart R. Schram |date=March 2007 |title=Mao: The Unknown Story |journal=[[The China Quarterly]] |issue=189 |pages=205 |doi=10.1017/s030574100600107x |s2cid=154814055}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Evangelista |first=Matthew A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9IAfLDzySd4C&q=80+million |title=Peace Studies: Critical Concepts in Political Science |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |year=2005 |isbn=978-0415339230 |pages=96 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> Mao has also been praised for transforming China from a [[semi-colony]] to a leading world power, with greatly advanced literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education, and life expectancy.<ref name="Bottelier">{{Cite book |last=Bottelier |first=Pieter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YMhUDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA131 |title=Economic Policy Making In China (1949–2016): The Role of Economists |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2018 |isbn=978-1351393812 |pages=131 |quote=We should remember, however, that Mao also did wonderful things for China; apart from reuniting the country, he restored a sense of natural pride, greatly improved women's rights, basic healthcare and primary education, ended opium abuse, simplified Chinese characters, developed pinyin and promoted its use for teaching purposes. |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Pantsov |first1=Alexander V. |url= |title=Mao: The Real Story |last2=Levine |first2=Steven I. |date=2013 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=978-1451654486 |location= |page=574}}</ref><ref name="Galtung">{{cite book |last1=Galtung |first1=Marte Kjær |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qqqDBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA189 |title=49 Myths about China |last2=Stenslie |first2=Stig |date=2014 |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |isbn=978-1442236226 |page=189}}</ref><ref name="PopulationStudies2015">{{cite journal |last1=Babiarz |first1=Kimberly Singer |last2=Eggleston |first2=Karen |display-authors=etal. |date=2015 |title=An exploration of China's mortality decline under Mao: A provincial analysis, 1950–80 |journal=[[Population Studies (journal)|Population Studies]] |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=39–56 |doi=10.1080/00324728.2014.972432 |pmc=4331212 |pmid=25495509 |quote=China's growth in life expectancy at birth from 35–40 years in 1949 to 65.5 years in 1980 is among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history.}}</ref>

=== Cold War ===
{{further|Cold War|Eastern Bloc}}
[[File:Communist_Block.svg|thumb|300x300px|States that had communist governments in red, states that the [[Soviet Union]] believed at one point to be [[moving toward socialism]] in orange, and [[List of socialist states#Countries with constitutional references to socialism|states with constitutional references to socialism]] in yellow]]
Its leading role in World War II saw the emergence of the [[industrialized Soviet Union]] as a [[superpower]].<ref name="Program_CPSS">{{cite web |url=http://aleksandr-kommari.narod.ru/kpss_programma_1961.htm |script-title=ru:Программа коммунистической партии советского Союза |title=Programma kommunisticheskoy partii sovetskogo Soyuza |language=ru |trans-title=Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union |date=1961 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221011120447/http://aleksandr-kommari.narod.ru/kpss_programma_1961.htm |archive-date=11 October 2022}}</ref><ref name="Nossal">{{cite conference |first=Kim Richard |last=Nossal |title=Lonely Superpower or Unapologetic Hyperpower? Analyzing American Power in the post–Cold War Era |url=http://post.queensu.ca/~nossalk/papers/hyperpower.htm |conference=Biennial meeting, South African Political Studies Association, 29 June-2 July 1999 |access-date=28 February 2007 |archive-date=7 August 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120807084022/http://post.queensu.ca/~nossalk/papers/hyperpower.htm |url-status=dead}}</ref> Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]], [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]], [[East Germany]], [[Polish People's Republic|Poland]], Hungary, and [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]]. A Marxist–Leninist government was also created under [[Josip Broz Tito]] in [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]]; Tito's independent policies led to the [[Tito–Stalin split]] and expulsion of Yugoslavia from the [[Cominform]] in 1948, and [[Titoism]] was branded ''[[deviationist]]''. [[People's Socialist Republic of Albania|Albania]] also became an independent Marxist–Leninist state following the [[Albanian–Soviet split]] in 1960,{{r|Bland 1995}}{{r|Bland 1997}} resulting from an ideological fallout between [[Enver Hoxha]], a Stalinist, and the Soviet government of [[Nikita Khrushchev]], who enacted a period of [[de-Stalinization]] and re-approached diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia in 1976.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1880822 |title=Kushtetuta e Republikës Popullore Socialiste të Shqipërisë: [miratuar nga Kuvendi Popullor më 28. 12. 1976]. SearchWorks (SULAIR) |trans-title=Constitution of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania: [approved by the People's Assembly on 28. 12. 1976]. SearchWorks (SULAIR) |language=sq |access-date=3 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120322181503/http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1880822 |archive-date=22 March 2012 |publisher=8 Nëntori |date=4 January 1977}}</ref> The Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, established the [[People's Republic of China]], which would follow its own ideological path of development following the [[Sino-Soviet split]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Chambers Dictionary of World History |editor-first1=Bruce |editor-last1=Lenman |editor-first2=Trevor |editor-last2=Anderson |editor-first3=Hilary |editor-last3=Marsden |publisher=[[Chambers (publisher)|Chambers]] |location=Edinburgh |year=2000 |page=769 |isbn=9780550100948}}</ref> Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to Western capitalism for most of the 20th century.<ref name="Georgakas1992">{{cite encyclopedia |author-link=Dan Georgakas |last=Georgakas |first=Dan |date=1992 |chapter=The Hollywood Blacklist |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of the American Left |edition=paperback |location=Champaign, Illinois |publisher=[[University of Illinois Press]] |isbn=9780252062506}}</ref>

In Western Europe, communist parties were part of several post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the [[liberal-democratic]] process.<ref name="Kindersley"/><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Lazar |first=Marc |author-link=Marc Lazar |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of Political Science]] |title=Communism |pages=310–314 (312) |editor1-last=Badie |editor1-first=Bertrand |editor1-link=Bertrand Badie |editor2-first=Dirk |editor2-last=Berg-Schlosser |editor2-link=Dirk Berg-Schlosser |editor3-first=Leonardo |editor3-last=Morlino |editor3-link=Leonardo Morlino |volume=2 |date=2011 |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |doi=10.4135/9781412994163 |isbn=9781412959636}}</ref> There were also many developments in libertarian Marxism, especially during the 1960s with the [[New Left]].<ref>{{harvp|Wright|1960}}; {{harvp|Geary|2009|p=1}}; {{harvp|Kaufman|2003}}; {{harvp|Gitlin|2001|pp=3–26}}; {{harvp|Farred|2000|pp=627–648}}</ref> By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western communist parties had criticized many of the actions of communist states, distanced from them, and developed a [[democratic road to socialism]], which became known as [[Eurocommunism]].<ref name="Kindersley">{{cite book |editor-first=Richard |editor-last=Kindersley |title=In Search of Eurocommunism |publisher=[[Macmillan Press]] |date=1981 |isbn=978-1-349-16581-0 |url=https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781349165810}}</ref> This development was criticized by more orthodox supporters of the Soviet Union as amounting to [[social democracy]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Deutscher |first=Tamara |date=January–February 1983 |url=http://newleftreview.org/I/137/tamara-deutscher-e-h-carr-a-personal-memoir |title=E. H. Carr—A Personal Memoir |journal=[[New Left Review]] |volume=I |issue=137 |pages=78–86 |access-date=13 August 2021}}</ref>

Since 1957, [[Communism in Kerala|communists have been frequently voted into power]] in the [[India|Indian]] state of [[Kerala]].<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Jaffe |first1=Greg |last2=Doshi |first2=Vidhi |date=1 June 2018 |title=One of the few places where a communist can still dream |language=en-US |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-place-where-communists-can-still-dream/2017/10/26/55747cbe-9c98-11e7-b2a7-bc70b6f98089_story.html |access-date=10 August 2023 |issn=0190-8286}}</ref>

In 1959, [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban communist revolutionaries]] overthrew Cuba's previous government under the dictator [[Fulgencio Batista]]. The leader of the Cuban Revolution, [[Fidel Castro]], ruled Cuba from 1959 until 2008.<ref>{{Cite web |date=15 May 2023 |title=Cuban Revolution |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-Revolution |access-date=15 June 2023 |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |language=en}}</ref>

=== Dissolution of the Soviet Union ===
{{further|Dissolution of the Soviet Union}}
With the fall of the [[Warsaw Pact]] after the [[Revolutions of 1989]], which led to the fall of most of the former [[Eastern Bloc]], the Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the [[Soviet of the Republics]] of the [[Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Alimzhanov |first=Anuarbek |date=1991 |url=http://vedomosti.sssr.su/1991/52/#1561#1082 |title=Deklaratsiya Soveta Respublik Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR v svyazi s sozdaniyem Sodruzhestva Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv |script-title=ru:Декларация Совета Республик Верховного Совета СССР в связи с созданием Содружества Независимых Государств |language=ru |trans-title=Declaration of the Council of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in connection with the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151220173637/http://vedomosti.sssr.su/1991/52/#1561 |archive-date=20 December 2015 |work=[[Vedomosti]] |volume=52}}. [[wikisource:ru:Декларация Совета Республик ВС СССР от December 26, 1991 № 142-Н|Declaration № 142-Н]] {{in lang|ru}} of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, formally establishing the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a state and subject of international law.</ref> The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former [[Soviet republics]] and created the [[Commonwealth of Independent States]], although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet president [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] (the eighth and final [[leader of the Soviet Union]]) resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers, including control of the [[Cheget]], to Russian president [[Boris Yeltsin]]. That evening at 7:32, the [[Soviet flag]] was lowered from the [[Kremlin]] for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary [[Russian flag]]. Previously, from August to December 1991, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the [[Alma-Ata Protocol]], formally establishing the [[Commonwealth of Independent States]], and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/22/world/end-soviet-union-text-declaration-mutual-recognition-equal-basis.html |title=The End of the Soviet Union; Text of Declaration: 'Mutual Recognition' and 'an Equal Basis' |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=22 December 1991 |access-date=30 March 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1225.html |title=Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns; U.S. Recognizes Republics' Independence |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=26 December 1991 |access-date=27 April 2015}}</ref>

=== Post-Soviet communism ===
{{see also|List of socialist parties with national parliamentary representation}}[[File:Communist flag at night at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, year 2024.jpg|thumb|Communist flag at night at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, year 2024]]

[[File:Communist Party of Vietnam Poster in Hanoi.jpg|thumb|A poster of the [[Communist Party of Vietnam]] in Hanoi]]

As of 2023, states controlled by Marxist–Leninist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the [[Republic of Cuba]], the [[Lao People's Democratic Republic]], and the [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam]].{{refn|group=note|name=NKorea}} Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. With the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] and the [[Fall of Communism]], there was a split between those hardline Communists, sometimes referred to in the media as ''[[neo-Stalinist]]s'', who remained committed to orthodox [[Marxism–Leninism]], and those, such as [[The Left (Germany)|The Left]] in Germany, who work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism;<ref>{{cite book |last=Sargent |first=Lyman Tower |year=2008 |title=Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis |url=https://archive.org/details/contemporarypoli00sarg_989 |url-access=limited |edition=14th |publisher=[[Wadsworth Publishing]] |page=[https://archive.org/details/contemporarypoli00sarg_989/page/n135 117] |isbn=9780495569398 |quote=Because many communists now call themselves democratic socialists, it is sometimes difficult to know what a political label really means. As a result, social democratic has become a common new label for democratic socialist political parties.}}</ref> other ruling Communist parties became closer to [[democratic socialist]] and [[social-democratic]] parties.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lamb |first=Peter |year=2015 |title=Historical Dictionary of Socialism |edition=3rd |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |page=415 |isbn=9781442258266 |quote=In the 1990s, following the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union, social democracy was adopted by some of the old communist parties. Hence, parties such as the Czech Social Democratic Party, the Bulgarian Social Democrats, the Estonian Social Democratic Party, and the Romanian Social Democratic Party, among others, achieved varying degrees of electoral success. Similar processes took place in Africa as the old communist parties were transformed into social democratic ones, even though they retained their traditional titles ... .}}</ref> Outside Communist states, reformed Communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning government or regional coalitions, including in the former Eastern Bloc. In Nepal, Communists ([[CPN UML]] and [[Nepal Communist Party]]) were part of the [[1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly]], which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with other communists, Marxist–Leninists, and [[Maoists]] ([[CPN Maoist]]), social democrats ([[Nepali Congress]]), and others as part of their [[People's Multiparty Democracy]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11057207&fsrc=nwl |title=Nepal's election The Maoists triumph |newspaper=[[The Economist]] |date=17 April 2008 |access-date=18 October 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090214103506/http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11057207&fsrc=nwl |archive-date=14 February 2009 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Bhattarai |first=Kamal Dev |date=21 February 2018 |url=https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/the-rebirth-of-the-nepal-communist-party/ |title=The (Re)Birth of the Nepal Communist Party |work=[[The Diplomat]] |access-date=29 November 2020}}</ref> The [[Communist Party of the Russian Federation]] has some supporters, but is reformist rather than revolutionary, aiming to lessen the inequalities of Russia's market economy.<ref name="Ball & Dagger 2019" />

[[Chinese economic reforms]] were started in 1978 under the leadership of [[Deng Xiaoping]], and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 8% in 2001.<ref>{{cite web |last=Ravallion |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Ravallion |date=2005 |url=http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0%2C%2CcontentMDK%3A20634060~pagePK%3A64165401~piPK%3A64165026~theSitePK%3A469382%2C00.html |title=Fighting Poverty: Findings and Lessons from China's Success |publisher=[[World Bank]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180301071146/http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0%2C%2CcontentMDK%3A20634060~pagePK%3A64165401~piPK%3A64165026~theSitePK%3A469382%2C00.html |archive-date=1 March 2018 |access-date=10 August 2006}}</ref> After losing Soviet subsidies and support, Vietnam and Cuba have attracted more foreign investment to their countries, with their economies becoming more market-oriented.<ref name="Ball & Dagger 2019" /> North Korea, the last Communist country that still practices Soviet-style Communism, is both repressive and isolationist.<ref name="Ball & Dagger 2019" />

== Theory ==
Communist political thought and theory are diverse but share several core elements.{{efn|March (2009), p. 127: "The 'communists' are a broad group. Without Moscow's pressure, 'orthodox' communism does not exist beyond a commitment to Marxism and the communist name and symbols. 'Conservative' communists define themselves as Marxist–Leninist, maintain a
relatively uncritical stance towards the Soviet heritage, organize their parties through Leninist democratic centralism and still see the world through the Cold-War prism of 'imperialism,' although even these parties often appeal to nationalism and populism. 'Reform' communists, on the other hand, are more divergent and eclectic. They have
discarded aspects of the Soviet model (for example, Leninism and democratic centralism), and have at least paid lip service to elements of the post-1968 'new left' agenda (a (feminism, environmentalism, grass-roots democracy, and so on)."<ref>{{cite journal |last=March |first=Luke |title=Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream? |url=https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/ipg/ipg-2009-1/10_a_march_us.pdf |journal=IPG |volume=1 |date=2009 |page=127 |via=[[Friedrich Ebert Foundation]]}}</ref>|group=quote}} The dominant forms of communism are based on [[Marxism]] or [[Leninism]] but non-Marxist versions of communism also exist, such as [[anarcho-communism]] and [[Christian communism]], which remain partly influenced by Marxist theories, such as [[libertarian Marxism]] and [[humanist Marxism]] in particular. Common elements include being theoretical rather than ideological, identifying political parties not by ideology but by class and economic interest, and identifying with the proletariat. According to communists, the proletariat can avoid mass unemployment only if capitalism is overthrown; in the short run, state-oriented communists favor [[state ownership]] of the [[commanding heights of the economy]] as a means to defend the proletariat from capitalist pressure. Some communists are distinguished by other Marxists in seeing peasants and smallholders of property as possible allies in their goal of shortening the abolition of capitalism.{{sfn|Morgan|2001|p=2332}}

For Leninist communism, such goals, including short-term proletarian interests to improve their political and material conditions, can only be achieved through [[vanguardism]], an elitist form of [[socialism from above]] that relies on theoretical analysis to identify proletarian interests rather than consulting the proletarians themselves,{{sfn|Morgan|2001|p=2332}} as is advocated by [[libertarian]] communists.{{r|Kinna 2012}} When they engage in elections, Leninist communists' main task is that of educating voters in what are deemed their true interests rather than in response to the expression of interest by voters themselves. When they have gained control of the state, Leninist communists' main task was preventing other political parties from deceiving the proletariat, such as by running their own independent candidates. This vanguardist approach comes from their commitments to [[democratic centralism]] in which communists can only be cadres, i.e. members of the party who are full-time professional revolutionaries, as was conceived by [[Vladimir Lenin]].{{sfn|Morgan|2001|p=2332}}

=== Marxist communism ===
{{main|Marxism}}
{{see also|List of communist ideologies|Marxist schools of thought}}
[[File:Marx et Engels à Shanghai.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|A monument dedicated to [[Karl Marx]] (left) and [[Friedrich Engels]] (right) in Shanghai]]
Marxism is a method of [[socioeconomic]] analysis that uses a [[materialist]] interpretation of historical development, better known as [[historical materialism]], to understand [[social class]] relations and [[social conflict]] and a [[dialectic]]al perspective to view [[social transformation]]. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]]. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and [[schools of thought]], no single, definitive [[Marxist theory]] exists.<ref name="Wolff and Resnick, 1987">{{cite book |last1=Wolff |first1=Richard |author1-link=Richard D. Wolff |last2=Resnick |first2=Stephen |author2-link=Stephen Resnick |url=https://archive.org/details/economicsmarxian00wolf_0 |title=Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical |year=1987 |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] |isbn=978-0801834806 |page=[https://archive.org/details/economicsmarxian00wolf_0/page/130 130] |quote=The German Marxists extended the theory to groups and issues Marx had barely touched. Marxian analyses of the legal system, of the social role of women, of foreign trade, of international rivalries among capitalist nations, and the role of parliamentary democracy in the transition to socialism drew animated debates&nbsp;... Marxian theory (singular) gave way to Marxian theories (plural). |url-access=registration}}</ref> Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of [[scientific socialism]] but does not model an ideal society based on the design of [[intellectual]]s, whereby communism is seen as a [[State of affairs (sociology)|state of affairs]] to be established based on any intelligent design; rather, it is a non-[[idealist]] attempt at the understanding of material history and society, whereby communism is the expression of a real movement, with parameters that are derived from actual life.<ref>{{cite book |author1-link=Karl Marx |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author2-link=Friedrich Engels |last2=Engels |first2=Friedrich |date=1845 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm |chapter=Idealism and Materialism |title=[[The German Ideology]] |postscript=. Transcribed by T. Delaney, B. Schwartz, and B. Baggins. |page=[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#p48 48] |quote=Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

According to Marxist theory, class conflict arises in capitalist societies due to contradictions between the material interests of the oppressed and exploited [[proletariat]]—a class of wage laborers employed to produce goods and services—and the [[bourgeoisie]]—the [[ruling class]] that owns the [[means of production]] and extracts its wealth through appropriation of the [[surplus product]] produced by the proletariat in the form of [[Profit (economics)|profit]]. This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's [[productive forces]] against its [[relations of production]], results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage the intensifying [[alienation of labor]] experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of [[class consciousness]]. In periods of deep crisis, the resistance of the oppressed can culminate in a [[proletarian revolution]] which, if victorious, leads to the establishment of the [[socialist mode of production]] based on [[social ownership]] of the means of production, "[[To each according to his contribution]]", and [[production for use]]. As the productive forces continued to advance, the [[communist society]], i.e. a classless, stateless, humane society based on [[common ownership]], follows the maxim "[[From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs]]."{{r|Hudis et al. 2018}}

While it originates from the works of Marx and Engels, Marxism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory.{{r|Wolff and Resnick, 1987}} Different Marxian schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of [[classical Marxism]] while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Many schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts, which has then led to contradictory conclusions.<ref>{{cite book |last=O'Hara |first=Phillip |title=Encyclopedia of Political Economy |volume=2 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-415-24187-8 |page=107 |quote=Marxist political economists differ over their definitions of capitalism, socialism and communism. These differences are so fundamental, the arguments among differently persuaded Marxist political economists have sometimes been as intense as their oppositions to political economies that celebrate capitalism.}}</ref> There is a movement toward the recognition that historical materialism and [[dialectical materialism]] remain the fundamental aspects of all [[Marxist schools of thought]].{{r|Ermak 2019}} [[Marxism–Leninism]] and its offshoots are the most well-known of these and have been a driving force in [[international relations]] during most of the 20th century.<ref name="Columbia">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Communism |url=http://www.bartleby.com/65/co/communism.html |encyclopedia=[[The Columbia Encyclopedia]] |edition=6th |year=2007}}</ref>

Classical Marxism is the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Marx and Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially [[Leninism]] and Marxism–Leninism.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://isj.org.uk/classical-marxism-and-the-question-of-reformism/ |title=Classical Marxism and the question of reformism |last=Gluckstein |first=Donny |date=26 June 2014 |journal=[[International Socialism (magazine)|International Socialism]] |access-date=19 December 2019}}</ref> [[Orthodox Marxism]] is the body of Marxist thought that emerged after the death of Marx and which became the official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the [[Second International]] until World War I in 1914. Orthodox Marxism aims to simplify, codify, and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying the perceived ambiguities and contradictions of classical Marxism. The philosophy of orthodox Marxism includes the understanding that material development (advances in technology in the [[productive forces]]) is the primary agent of change in the structure of society and of human social relations and that social systems and their relations (e.g. [[feudalism]], [[capitalism]], and so on) become contradictory and inefficient as the productive forces develop, which results in some form of social revolution arising in response to the mounting contradictions. This revolutionary change is the vehicle for fundamental society-wide changes and ultimately leads to the emergence of new [[economic system]]s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rees |first=John |author-link=John Rees (activist) |title=The Algebra of Revolution: The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-19877-6}}</ref> As a term, ''orthodox Marxism'' represents the methods of historical materialism and of dialectical materialism, and not the normative aspects inherent to classical Marxism, without implying dogmatic adherence to the results of Marx's investigations.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lukács |first=György |author-link=György Lukács |date=1967 |orig-date=1919 |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/orthodox.htm |chapter=What is Orthodox Marxism? |title=[[History and Class Consciousness|History and Class Consciousness']] |translator-last=Livingstone |translator-first=Rodney |publisher=[[Merlin Press]] |access-date=22 September 2021 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |quote=Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the 'belief' in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a 'sacred' book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method.}}</ref>

==== Marxist concepts ====
===== Class conflict and historical materialism =====
{{main|Class conflict|Historical materialism}}
At the root of Marxism is historical materialism, the [[materialist]] conception of history which holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the [[mode of production]] and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the [[Industrial Revolution]] ushered the world into the new [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|capitalist mode of production]]. Before capitalism, certain [[working class]]es had ownership of instruments used in production; however, because machinery was much more efficient, this property became worthless and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor to make use of someone else's machinery, and making someone else profit. Accordingly, capitalism divided the world between two major classes, namely that of the [[proletariat]] and the [[bourgeoisie]]. These classes are directly antagonistic as the latter possesses [[private ownership]] of the [[means of production]], earning profit via the [[surplus value]] generated by the proletariat, who have no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie.<ref>{{cite book |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |author-link=Friedrich Engels |date=1969 |chapter="Principles of Communism". No. 4 – "How did the proletariat originate?" |title=Marx & Engels Selected Works |volume=I |location=Moscow |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |pages=81–97}}</ref>

According to the materialist conception of history, it is through the furtherance of its own material interests that the rising bourgeoisie within [[feudalism]] captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only the feudal privilege, thereby taking the feudal [[ruling class]] out of existence. This was another key element behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, the final expression of class and property relations that has led to a massive expansion of production. It is only in capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished.<ref>[[Friedrich Engels|Engels, Friedrich]]. [1847] (1969). "[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm#015 "Was not the abolition of private property possible at an earlier time?]" ''[[Principles of Communism]]''. ''[[Marx/Engels Collected Works]]''. '''I'''. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 81–97.</ref> Similarly, the proletariat would capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through the [[common ownership]] of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into [[Communist society|communism as a new mode of production]]. In between capitalism and communism, there is the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]]; it is the defeat of the [[bourgeois state]] but not yet of the capitalist mode of production, and at the same time the only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production. This ''dictatorship'', based on the [[Paris Commune]]'s model,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Priestland |first=David |date=January 2002 |url=https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/13937520.pdf |title=Soviet Democracy, 1917–91 |journal=[[European History Quarterly]] |location=Thousand Oaks, California |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=111–130 |doi=10.1177/0269142002032001564 |s2cid=144067197 |access-date=19 August 2021 |via=Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung |quote=Lenin defended all four elements of Soviet democracy in his seminal theoretical work of 1917, ''State and Revolution''. The time had come, Lenin argued, for the destruction of the foundations of the bourgeois state, and its replacement with an ultra-democratic 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' based on the model of democracy followed by the communards of Paris in 1871. Much of the work was theoretical, designed, by means of quotations from Marx and Engels, to win battles within the international Social Democratic movement against Lenin's arch-enemy Kautsky. However, Lenin was not operating only in the realm of theory. He took encouragement from the rise of a whole range of institutions that seemed to embody class-based, direct democracy, and in particular the soviets and the factory committees, which demanded the right to 'supervise' ('kontrolirovat') (although not to take the place of) factory management.}}</ref> is to be the most democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of [[universal suffrage]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Twiss |first=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill]] |pages=28–29 |date=2014 |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8}}</ref>

===== Critique of political economy =====
{{main|Critique of political economy}}
Critique of [[political economy]] is a form of [[social critique]] that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resource allocation and income distribution in the economy. Communists, such as Marx and Engels, are described as prominent critics of political economy.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Murray |first=Patrick |date=March 2020 |title=The Illusion of the Economic: Social Theory without Social Forms |journal=[[Critical Historical Studies]] |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–27 |doi=10.1086/708005 |issn=2326-4462 |quote='There are no counterparts to Marx's economic concepts in either classical or utility theory.' I take this to mean that Marx breaks with economics, where economics is understood to be a generally applicable social science. |s2cid=219746578}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Liedman |first=Sven-Eric |date=December 2020 |title=Engelsismen
|url=https://fronesis.nu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/FR02808.pdf |journal=[[Fronesis (magazine)|Fronesis]] |language=sv |page=134 |quote=Engels var också först med att kritiskt bearbeta den nya nationalekonomin; hans 'Utkast till en kritik av nationalekonomin' kom ut 1844 och blev en utgångspunkt för Marx egen kritik av den politiska ekonomin |number=28 |trans-quote=Engels was the first to critically engage the new political economy his 'Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy' came out in 1844 and became a starting point for Marx's own critique of political economy.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=István |last=Mészáros |date=2010 |others=transcribed by Conttren, V. (2022) |chapter=The Critique of Political Economy |title=Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness |volume=1 |location=New York |publisher=[[Monthly Review Press]] |pages=317–331 |chapter-url=https://osf.io/65mxd/ |doi=10.17605/OSF.IO/65MXD}}</ref> The critique rejects economists' use of what its advocates believe are unrealistic [[axiom]]s, faulty historical assumptions, and the normative use of various descriptive narratives.<ref>{{cite book |last=Henderson |first=Willie |title=John Ruskin's political economy |date=2000 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=0-203-15946-2 |location=London |oclc=48139638 |quote=... Ruskin attempted a methodological/scientific critique of political economy. He fixed on ideas of 'natural laws', 'economic man' and the prevailing notion of 'value' to point out gaps and inconsistencies in the system of classical economics.}}</ref> They reject what they describe as mainstream economists' tendency to posit the economy as an ''[[a priori]]'' societal category.<ref name="Reading Capital">{{cite book |last1=Louis |first1=Althusser |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1968/reading-capital/ch02.htm |title=Reading Capital |last2=Balibar |first2=Etienne |publisher=[[Verso Editions]] |year=1979 |pages=158 |oclc=216233458 |quote='To criticize Political Economy' means to confront it with a new problematic and a new object: i.e., to question the very object of Political Economy}}</ref> Those who engage in critique of economy tend to reject the view that the economy and its categories is to be understood as something [[transhistorical]].<ref>{{Citation |last1=Fareld |first1=Victoria |title=From Marx to Hegel and Back |date=2020 |page=142,182 |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Academic]] |doi=10.5040/9781350082700.ch-001 |isbn=978-1-3500-8267-0 |last2=Kuch |first2=Hannes |s2cid=213805975}}</ref>{{sfn|Postone|1995|pages=44,192–216}} It is seen as merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources. They argue that it is a relatively new mode of resource distribution, which emerged along with modernity.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Mortensen |title=Ekonomi |journal=Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap |language=sv |volume=3 |number=4 |pages=9}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Moishe |last=Postone |title=Time, labor, and social domination: a reinterpretation of Marx's critical theory |year=1995 |isbn=0-521-56540-5 |pages=130, 5 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |oclc=910250140}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Jönsson |first=Dan |title=John Ruskin: En brittisk 1800-talsaristokrat för vår tid? - OBS |date=7 February 2019 |url=https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1244376 |url-status=live |access-date=24 September 2021 |publisher=[[Sveriges Radio]] |language=sv |quote=Den klassiska nationalekonomin, som den utarbetats av John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith och David Ricardo, betraktade han som en sorts kollektivt hjärnsläpp ... |trans-quote=The classical political economy as it was developed by John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo, as a kind of 'collective mental lapse' ... |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200305082621/https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1244376 |archive-date=5 March 2020}}</ref>

Critics of economy critique the given status of the economy itself, and do not aim to create theories regarding how to administer economies.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ramsay |first=Anders |date=21 December 2009 |title=Marx? Which Marx? Marx's work and its history of reception |url=https://www.eurozine.com/marx-which-marx/ |url-status=live |access-date=16 September 2021 |website=[[Eurozine]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180212144158/http://www.eurozine.com/marx-which-marx/ |archive-date=12 February 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Ruccio |first=David |date=10 December 2020 |title=Toward a critique of political economy |website=MR Online |url=https://mronline.org/2020/12/10/toward-a-critique-of-political-economy/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201215173028/https://mronline.org/2020/12/10/toward-a-critique-of-political-economy/ |archive-date=15 December 2020 |access-date=20 September 2021 |quote=Marx arrives at conclusions and formulates new terms that run directly counter to those of Smith, Ricardo, and the other classical political economists.}}</ref> Critics of economy commonly view what is most commonly referred to as the economy as being bundles of [[metaphysical]] concepts, as well as societal and normative practices, rather than being the result of any self-evident or proclaimed economic laws.<ref name="Reading Capital"/> They also tend to consider the views which are commonplace within the field of economics as faulty, or simply as [[pseudoscience]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Murray |first=Patrick |date=March 2020 |title=The Illusion of the Economic: Social Theory without Social Forms |journal=[[Critical Historical Studies]] |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–27 |doi=10.1086/708005 |issn=2326-4462 |s2cid=219746578}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Patterson |first1=Orlando |last2=Fosse |first2=Ethan |title=Overreliance on the Pseudo-Science of Economics |url=https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated/overreliance-on-the-pseudo-science-of-economics |url-status=live |work=[[The New York Times]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150209225723/http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated/overreliance-on-the-pseudo-science-of-economics |archive-date=9 February 2015 |access-date=13 January 2023}}</ref> Into the 21st century, there are multiple critiques of political economy; what they have in common is the critique of what critics of political economy tend to view as [[dogma]], i.e. claims of the economy as a necessary and transhistorical societal category.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Ruda |first1=Frank |last2=Hamza |first2=Agon |date=2016 |title=Introduction: Critique of Political Economy |url=http://crisiscritique.org/political11/Introduction-2.pdf |journal=[[Crisis and Critique]] |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=5–7 |access-date=13 January 2023 |archive-date=16 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211116135722/http://crisiscritique.org/political11/Introduction-2.pdf |url-status=dead}}</ref>

===== Marxian economics =====
{{main|Marxian economics}}
Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for [[falling rates of profit]] by cutting employee's wages, social benefits, and pursuing military aggression. The [[communist mode of production]] would succeed capitalism as humanity's new mode of production through workers' [[revolution]]. According to Marxian [[crisis theory]], communism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity.<ref>Free will, non-predestination and non-determinism are emphasized in Marx's famous quote "Men make their own history". ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'' (1852).</ref>

===== Socialization versus nationalization =====
{{main|Socialization (economics)|Socialization (Marxism)}}
An important concept in Marxism is socialization, i.e. [[social ownership]], versus [[nationalization]]. Nationalization is [[state ownership]] of property whereas socialization is control and management of property by society. Marxism considers the latter as its goal and considers nationalization a tactical issue, as state ownership is still in the realm of the [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|capitalist mode of production]]. In the words of [[Friedrich Engels]], "the transformation ... into State-ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. ... State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."<ref name=":0" group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Engels|1970|pp=95–151}}: "But, the transformation—either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership—does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine—the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."</ref> This has led Marxist groups and tendencies critical of the [[Soviet model]] to label states based on nationalization, such as the Soviet Union, as [[state capitalist]], a view that is also shared by several scholars.{{r|Chomsky, Howard, Fitzgibbons}}{{r|The Soviet Union Has an Administered, Not a Planned, Economy, 1985}}{{r|Ellman 2007}}

=====Democracy in Marxism=====
{{Excerpt|Democracy in Marxism}}

=== Leninist communism ===
{{Main|Leninism}}
{{Quote box
| quote = We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called "socialism".
| source = Vladimir Lenin, ''To the Rural Poor'' (1903)<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=1903 |chapter=To the Rural Poor |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/rp/1.htm |title=Collected Works |volume=6 |page=366 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>
| align = right
| width = 35em
}}

Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian [[Marxist]] revolutionary [[Vladimir Lenin]] that proposes the establishment of the [[Dictatorship of the proletariat#Vladimir Lenin|dictatorship of the proletariat]], led by a revolutionary [[vanguard party]], as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the [[political consciousness]] (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose [[capitalism]] in the [[Russian Empire]] (1721–1917).<ref name="Modern Thought Third Edition 1999 pp. 476">{{cite book |title=The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought |edition=Third |date=1999 |pages=476–477}}</ref>

Leninist revolutionary leadership is based upon ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'' (1848), identifying the [[Communist party]] as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country; that section which pushes forward all others." As the vanguard party, the [[Bolsheviks]] viewed history through the theoretical framework of [[dialectical materialism]], which sanctioned political commitment to the successful overthrow of capitalism, and then to instituting [[socialism]]; and as the revolutionary national government, to realize the socio-economic transition by all means.<ref name="Leninism, p. 265">{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Leninism |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |edition=15th |volume=7 |pages=265}}</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=July 2023}}<!-- What year? There various versions of the 15th Ed., with different volume counts: [[Encyclopædia_Britannica#Edition_summary]]. -->

==== Marxism–Leninism ====
{{main|Marxism–Leninism}}
[[File:Lenin-statue-in-Kolkata.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[Vladimir Lenin]] statue in Kolkata, West Bengal]]

Marxism–Leninism is a political ideology developed by [[Joseph Stalin]].<ref name="made_by_stalin">{{cite magazine|last=Lisichkin |first=G. |date=1989 |title=Мифы и реальность |language=ru |trans-title=Myths and reality |magazine=[[Novy Mir]] |volume=3 |pages=59}}</ref> According to its proponents, it is based on [[Marxism]] and [[Leninism]]. It describes the specific political ideology which Stalin implemented in the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] and in a global scale in the [[Comintern]]. There is no definite agreement between historians about whether Stalin actually followed the principles of Marx and Lenin.<ref name="stalin_follow_marx_lenin">{{cite magazine |first=Aleksandr |last=Butenko |author-link=Aleksandr Butenko |script-title=ru:Социализм сегодня: опыт и новая теория |title=Sotsializm segodnya: opyt i novaya teoriya |trans-title=Socialism Today: Experience and New Theory |language=ru |magazine=Журнал Альтернативы |number=1 |date=1996 |pages=2–22}}</ref> It also contains aspects which according to some are deviations from Marxism such as [[socialism in one country]].<ref name="sioc1">{{cite journal |title=Comment on Wallerstein |first=Richard |last=Platkin |journal=[[Social Justice (journal)|Contemporary Marxism]] |volume=4–5 |publisher=[[Synthesis Publications]] |date=1981 |issue=4 |jstor=23008565 |page=151 |quote=[S]ocialism in one country, a pragmatic deviation from classical Marxism.}}</ref><ref name="sioc2">{{cite book |last=Erik |first=Cornell |title=North Korea Under Communism: Report of an Envoy to Paradise |date=2002 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0700716975 |page=169 |quote=Socialism in one country, a slogan that aroused protests as not only it implied a major deviation from Marxist internationalism, but was also strictly speaking incompatible with the basic tenets of Marxism.}}</ref> Marxism–Leninism was the official ideology of 20th-century [[Communist parties]] (including [[Trotskyist]]), and was developed after the death of Lenin; its three principles were [[dialectical materialism]], the [[leading role of the Communist party]] through [[democratic centralism]], and a [[planned economy]] with [[industrialization]] and [[agricultural collectivization]]. ''Marxism–Leninism'' is misleading because Marx and Lenin never sanctioned or supported the creation of an ''-ism'' after them, and is revealing because, being popularized after Lenin's death by Stalin, it contained those three doctrinal and institutionalized principles that became a model for later Soviet-type regimes; its global influence, having at its height covered at least one-third of the world's population, has made ''Marxist–Leninist'' a convenient label for the [[Communist bloc]] as a dynamic ideological order.{{sfnm|1a1=Morgan|1y=2001|1pp=2332, 3355|2a1=Morgan|2a2=2015}}<ref group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Morgan|2015|ps=: {{"'}}Marxism–Leninism' was the formal name of the official state ideology adopted by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), its satellite states in Eastern Europe, the Asian communist regimes, and various 'scientific socialist' regimes in the Third World during the Cold War. As such, the term is simultaneously misleading and revealing. It is misleading, since neither Marx nor Lenin ever sanctioned the creation of an eponymous 'ism'; indeed, the term Marxism–Leninism was formulated only in the period of Stalin's rise to power after Lenin's death. It is revealing, because the Stalinist institutionalization of Marxism–Leninism in the 1930s did contain three identifiable, dogmatic principles that became the explicit model for all later Soviet-type regimes: dialectical materialism as the only true proletarian basis for philosophy, the leading role of the communist party as the central principle of Marxist politics, and state-led planned industrialization and agricultural collectivization as the foundation of socialist economics. The global influence of these three doctrinal and institutional innovations makes the term Marxist–Leninist a convenient label for a distinct sort of ideological order—one which, at the height of its power and influence, dominated one-third of the world's population."}}</ref>

During the Cold War, Marxism–Leninism was the ideology of the most clearly visible communist movement and is the most prominent ideology associated with communism.{{r|Columbia}}{{refn|According to their proponents, Marxist–Leninist ideologies have been adapted to the material conditions of their respective countries and include [[Castroism]] (Cuba), [[National communism in Romania|Ceaușism]] (Romania), [[Gonzalo Thought]] (Peru), [[Guevarism]] (Cuba), [[Ho Chi Minh Thought]] (Vietnam), [[Hoxhaism]] (anti-revisionist Albania), [[Husakism]] (Czechoslovakia), [[Juche]] (North Korea), [[Kadarism]] (Hungary), [[Khmer Rouge]] (Cambodia), [[Khrushchevism]] (Soviet Union), [[Prachanda Path]] (Nepal), [[Shining Path]] (Peru), and [[Titoism]] (anti-Stalinist Yugoslavia).{{sfn|Morgan|2015}}<ref group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Morgan|2001|ps=: "As communist Parties emerged around the world, encouraged both by the success of the Soviet Party in establishing Russia's independence from foreign domination and by clandestine monetary subsidies from the Soviet comrades, they became identifiable by their adherence to a common political ideology known as Marxism–Leninism. Of course from the very beginning Marxism–Leninism existed in many variants. The conditions were themselves an effort to enforce a minimal degree of uniformity on diverse conceptions of communist identity. Adherence to the ideas of 'Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky' characterized the Trotskyists who soon broke off in a 'Fourth International'."}}</ref>|group=note}} [[Social fascism]] was a theory supported by the Comintern and affiliated [[Communist parties]] during the early 1930s, which held that [[social democracy]] was a variant of [[fascism]] because it stood in the way of a [[dictatorship of the proletariat]], in addition to a shared [[corporatist]] economic model.<ref name="Haro 2011">{{cite journal |last=Haro |first=Lea |year=2011 |title=Entering a Theoretical Void: The Theory of Social Fascism and Stalinism in the German Communist Party |journal=[[Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory]] |volume=39 |issue=4 |pages=563–582 |doi=10.1080/03017605.2011.621248 |s2cid=146848013}}</ref> At the time, leaders of the Comintern, such as Stalin and [[Rajani Palme Dutt]], stated that [[capitalist]] society had entered the [[Third Period]] in which a [[proletariat revolution]] was imminent but could be prevented by social democrats and other ''fascist'' forces.{{r|Haro 2011}}<ref name="Hoppe 2011">{{cite book |last=Hoppe |first=Bert |year=2011 |title=In Stalins Gefolgschaft: Moskau und die KPD 1928–1933 |trans-title=In Stalin's Followers: Moscow and the KPD 1928–1933 |publisher=[[Oldenbourg Verlag]] |language=de |isbn=978-3-486-71173-8}}</ref> The term ''social fascist'' was used pejoratively to describe social-democratic parties, anti-Comintern and progressive socialist parties and dissenters within Comintern affiliates throughout the [[interwar period]]. The social fascism theory was advocated vociferously by the [[Communist Party of Germany]], which was largely controlled and funded by the Soviet leadership from 1928.{{r|Hoppe 2011}}

Within Marxism–Leninism, [[anti-revisionism]] is a position which emerged in the 1950s in opposition to the reforms and [[Khrushchev Thaw]] of Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]]. Where Khrushchev pursued an interpretation that differed from Stalin, the anti-revisionists within the international communist movement remained dedicated to Stalin's ideological legacy and criticized the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and his successors as [[state capitalist]] and [[social imperialist]] due to its hopes of achieving peace with the United States. The term ''Stalinism'' is also used to describe these positions but is often not used by its supporters who opine that Stalin practiced [[orthodox Marxism]] and Leninism. Because different political trends trace the historical roots of revisionism to different eras and leaders, there is significant disagreement today as to what constitutes anti-revisionism. Modern groups which describe themselves as anti-revisionist fall into several categories. Some uphold the works of Stalin and Mao Zedong and some the works of Stalin while rejecting Mao and universally tend to oppose [[Trotskyism]]. Others reject both Stalin and Mao, tracing their ideological roots back to Marx and Lenin. In addition, other groups uphold various less-well-known historical leaders such as [[Enver Hoxha]], who also broke with Mao during the [[Sino-Albanian split]].{{r|Bland 1995}}{{r|Bland 1997}} ''Social imperialism'' was a term used by Mao to criticize the Soviet Union post-Stalin. Mao stated that the Soviet Union had itself become an [[imperialist]] power while maintaining a socialist ''façade''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mao |first=Zedong |author-link=Mao Zedong |year=1964 |url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm |title=On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World |location=Beijing |publisher=[[Foreign Languages Press]] |access-date=1 August 2021 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> Hoxha agreed with Mao in this analysis, before later using the expression to also condemn Mao's [[Three Worlds Theory]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Hoxha |first=Enver |author-link=Enver Hoxha |year=1978 |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch4.htm |chapter=The Theory of 'Three Worlds': A Counterrevolutionary Chauvinist Theory |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/toc.htm |title=Imperialism and the Revolution |location=Tirana |publisher=Foreign Language Press |access-date=1 August 2021 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

===== Stalinism =====
{{main|Stalinism}}
[[File:JStalin Secretary general CCCP 1942 flipped.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|1942 portrait of [[Joseph Stalin]], the longest-serving [[leader of the Soviet Union]]]]
Stalinism represents Stalin's style of governance as opposed to Marxism–Leninism, the [[socioeconomic system]] and [[political ideology]] implemented by Stalin in the Soviet Union, and later adapted by other states based on the [[ideological Soviet model]], such as [[central planning]], [[nationalization]], and one-party state, along with [[public ownership]] of the [[means of production]], accelerated [[industrialization]], pro-active development of society's [[productive forces]] (research and development), and nationalized [[natural resources]]. Marxism–Leninism remained after [[de-Stalinization]] whereas Stalinism did not. In the last letters before his death, Lenin warned against the danger of Stalin's personality and urged the Soviet government to replace him.{{r|Ermak 2019}} Until the [[death of Joseph Stalin]] in 1953, the Soviet Communist party referred to its own ideology as ''Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism''.{{sfn|Morgan|2001|p=2332}}

Marxism–Leninism has been criticized by other communist and Marxist tendencies, which state that Marxist–Leninist states did not establish socialism but rather [[state capitalism]].{{r|Chomsky, Howard, Fitzgibbons}}{{r|The Soviet Union Has an Administered, Not a Planned, Economy, 1985}}{{r|Ellman 2007}} According to Marxism, the dictatorship of the proletariat represents the rule of the majority (democracy) rather than of one party, to the extent that the co-founder of Marxism, [[Friedrich Engels]], described its "specific form" as the [[Republicanism|democratic republic]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Friedrich |last=Engels |author-link=Friedrich Engels |chapter=A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891 |title=[[Marx/Engels Collected Works]] |volume=27 |page=217 |quote=If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat.}}</ref> According to Engels, state property by itself is private property of capitalist nature,<ref name=":0" group="lower-alpha"/> unless the proletariat has control of political power, in which case it forms public property.<ref group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Engels|1970}}: "The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out."</ref> Whether the proletariat was actually in control of the Marxist–Leninist states is a matter of debate between Marxism–Leninism and other communist tendencies. To these tendencies, Marxism–Leninism is neither Marxism nor Leninism nor the union of both but rather an artificial term created to justify Stalin's ideological distortion,<ref name="stalin_distortion">{{cite book |title=History for the IB Diploma: Communism in Crisis 1976–89 |first=Allan |last=Todd |page=16 |quote=The term Marxism–Leninism, invented by Stalin, was not used until after Lenin's death in 1924. It soon came to be used in Stalin's Soviet Union to refer to what he described as 'orthodox Marxism'. This increasingly came to mean what Stalin himself had to say about political and economic issues. ... However, many Marxists (even members of the Communist Party itself) believed that Stalin's ideas and practices (such as socialism in one country and the purges) were almost total distortions of what Marx and Lenin had said.}}</ref> forced into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Comintern. In the Soviet Union, this struggle against Marxism–Leninism was represented by [[Trotskyism]], which describes itself as a Marxist and Leninist tendency.{{sfn|Morgan|2001}}

===== Trotskyism =====
{{main|Trotskyism}}
[[File:Mexico - Bellas Artes - Fresque Riviera « Man at the Crossroads ».JPG|thumb|Detail of ''Man, Controller of the Universe'', fresco at [[Palacio de Bellas Artes]] in Mexico City showing [[Leon Trotsky]], [[Friedrich Engels]], and [[Karl Marx]]]]
Trotskyism, developed by [[Leon Trotsky]] in opposition to [[Stalinism]],{{sfn|Patenaude|2017|p=199}} is a Marxist and Leninist tendency that supports the theory of [[permanent revolution]] and [[world revolution]] rather than the [[two-stage theory]] and Stalin's [[socialism in one country]]. It supported another communist revolution in the [[Soviet Union]] and [[proletarian internationalism]].{{sfn|Patenaude|2017|p=193}}

Rather than representing the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]], Trotsky claimed that the Soviet Union had become a [[degenerated workers' state]] under the leadership of Stalin in which class relations had re-emerged in a new form. Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution—rather than socialism in one country—and support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles. Struggling against Stalin for power in the Soviet Union, Trotsky and his supporters organized into the [[Left Opposition]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |author1-link=Robert Vincent Daniels |title=A Documentary History of Communism in Russia |date=1993 |publisher=[[University of Vermont Press]] |location=Burlington, Vermont |isbn=978-0-87451-616-6 |pages=125–129, 158–159 |edition=3rd}}</ref> the platform of which became known as Trotskyism.{{sfn|Patenaude|2017|p=199}}

In particular, Trotsky advocated for a [[decentralization|decentralised]] form of [[economic planning]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Twiss |first1=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |date=8 May 2014 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 |pages=105–106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+decentralized+planning&pg=PA106 |language=en}}</ref> mass soviet [[democratization]],<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Van Ree |first1=Erik |title=Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment |journal=Studies in East European Thought |date=1998 |volume=50 |issue=2 |pages=77–117 |doi=10.1023/A:1008651325136 |jstor=20099669 |s2cid=146375012 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20099669 |issn=0925-9392}}</ref> elected representation of Soviet [[List of political parties in the Soviet Union|socialist parties]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=293 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going? |date=1991 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-0-929087-48-1 |page=218 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hiCYS9Z3lDoC |language=en}}</ref> the tactic of a [[united front]] against far-right parties,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ticktin |first1=Hillel |title=Trotsky's political economy of capitalism. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=227}}</ref>
[[cultural]] autonomy for artistic movements, <ref>{{cite book |last1=Eagleton |first1=Terry |title=Marxism and Literary Criticism |date=7 March 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-94783-6 |page=20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h7k8t09BbIQC&q=trotsky+literature+and+revolution+socialist+realism |language=en}}</ref> voluntary [[collectivisation]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Beilharz |first1=Peter |title=Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism |date=19 November 2019 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-000-70651-2 |pages=1–206 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lfe-DwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+widely+acknowledged+collectivisation&pg=PT196 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rubenstein |first1=Joshua |title=Leon Trotsky : a revolutionary's life |date=2011 |publisher=New Haven : Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-13724-8 |page=161 |url=https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization}}</ref> a [[The Death Agony of Capitalism  and the Tasks of the Fourth International|transitional program]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Löwy |first1=Michael |title=The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx |date=2005 |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=978-1-931859-19-6 |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gSrvmQeZyhoC&dq=trotsky+transitional+program&pg=PA191 |language=en}}</ref> and socialist [[proletarian internationalism|internationalism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cox |first1=Michael |title=Trotsky and His Interpreters; or, Will the Real Leon Trotsky Please Stand up? |journal=The Russian Review |date=1992 |volume=51 |issue=1 |pages=84–102 |doi=10.2307/131248 |jstor=131248 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/131248}}</ref>

Trotsky had the support of many party [[intellectuals]] but this was overshadowed by the huge apparatus which included the GPU and the party cadres who were at the disposal of Stalin.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitri |title=Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary |date=June 2008 |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers Limited |isbn=978-0-00-729166-3 |page=284 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2BNwaOW1VgEC |language=en}}</ref> Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. While in exile, Trotsky continued his campaign against Stalin, founding in 1938 the [[Fourth International]], a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern.<ref name="transitional">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm |title=The Transitional Program |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=May–June 1938 |magazine=Bulletin of the Opposition |access-date=5 November 2008}}</ref>{{sfn|Patenaude|2017|pp=189, 194}}{{sfn|Johnson|Walker|Gray|2014|loc=Fourth International (FI)|p=155}} In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in [[Mexico City]] on Stalin's orders. Trotskyist currents include [[orthodox Trotskyism]], [[third camp]], [[Posadism]], and [[Pabloism]].<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.bolshevik.org/history/pabloism/Trpab-4.htm |title=A Letter to Trotskyists Throughout the World |date=16 November 1953 |magazine=[[The Militant]] |author-link=Socialist Workers Party (UK) |author=National Committee of the SWP}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.peacelandbread.com/post/on-the-problem-of-trotskyism |title=On the Problem of Trotskyism |first=Jeff |last=Korolev |date=27 September 2021 |journal=Peace, Land, and Bread |access-date=11 February 2022 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211163239/https://www.peacelandbread.com/post/on-the-problem-of-trotskyism |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The economic platform of a [[planned economy]] combined with an authentic [[socialist democracy|worker's democracy]] as originally advocated by Trotsky has constituted the programme of the Fourth International and the modern Trotskyist movement.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Weber |first1=Wolfgang |title=Solidarity in Poland, 1980-1981 and the Perspective of Political Revolution |date=1989 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-0-929087-30-6 |page=ix |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-FCyCDv9QswC&dq=trotskyists+planned+economy+workers+democracy+programme&pg=PR9 |language=en}}</ref>

===== Maoism =====
{{main|Maoism|Marxism–Leninism–Maoism}}
[[File:Mao Statue at Zhong Shan Guang Chang.jpg|thumb|180px|[[Long Live the Victory of Mao Zedong Thought]] monument in Shenyang]]Maoism is the theory derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader [[Mao Zedong]]. Developed from the 1950s until the [[Deng Xiaoping]] [[Chinese economic reform]] in the 1970s, it was widely applied as the guiding political and military ideology of the Communist Party of China and as the theory guiding [[revolutionary movement]]s around the world. A key difference between Maoism and other forms of Marxism–Leninism is that [[peasant]]s should be the bulwark of the revolutionary energy which is led by the working class.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Meisner |first=Maurice |author-link=Maurice Meisner |date=January–March 1971 |title=Leninism and Maoism: Some Populist Perspectives on Marxism-Leninism in China |journal=[[The China Quarterly]] |volume=45 |issue=45 |pages=2–36 |doi=10.1017/S0305741000010407 |jstor=651881 |s2cid=154407265}}</ref> Three common Maoist values are revolutionary [[populism]], being practical, and [[dialectic]]s.{{sfn|Wormack|2001}}

The synthesis of Marxism–Leninism–Maoism,<ref group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Morgan|2001|p=2332|ps=: {{"'}}Marxism–Leninism–Maoism' became the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and of the splinter parties that broke off from national communist parties after the Chinese definitively split with the Soviets in 1963. Italian communists continued to be influenced by the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, whose independent conception of the reasons why the working class in industrial countries remained politically quiescent bore far more democratic implications than Lenin's own explanation of worker passivity. Until Stalin's death, the Soviet Party referred to its own ideology as 'Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism'."}}</ref> which builds upon the two individual theories as the Chinese adaption of Marxism–Leninism, did not occur during the life of Mao. After [[de-Stalinization]], Marxism–Leninism was kept in the [[Soviet Union]], while certain [[anti-revisionist]] tendencies like [[Hoxhaism]] and Maoism stated that such had deviated from its original concept. Different policies were applied in Albania and China, which became more distanced from the Soviet Union. From the 1960s, groups who called themselves ''Maoists'', or those who upheld Maoism, were not unified around a common understanding of Maoism, instead having their own particular interpretations of the political, philosophical, economical, and military works of Mao. Its adherents claim that as a unified, coherent higher stage of Marxism, it was not consolidated until the 1980s, first being formalized by the [[Shining Path]] in 1982.<ref name="On Marxism-Leninism-Maoism">{{cite web |date=1982 |title=On Marxism-Leninism-Maoism |url=http://library.redspark.nu/1982_-_Maoism._On_Marxism-Leninism-Maoism |access-date=20 January 2020 |website=MLM Library |publisher=[[Communist Party of Peru]] |archive-date=28 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200728184142/http://library.redspark.nu/1982_-_Maoism._On_Marxism-Leninism-Maoism}}</ref> Through the experience of the [[people's war]] waged by the party, the Shining Path were able to posit Maoism as the newest development of Marxism.{{r|On Marxism-Leninism-Maoism}}

==== Eurocommunism ====
{{main|Eurocommunism}}
[[File:Enrico Berlinguer.jpg|thumb|180px|[[Enrico Berlinguer]], the secretary of the [[Italian Communist Party]] and main proponent of Eurocommunism]]Eurocommunism was a [[Revisionism (Marxism)|revisionist]] trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties, claiming to develop a theory and practice of [[social transformation]] more relevant to their region. Especially prominent within the [[French Communist Party]], [[Italian Communist Party]], and [[Communist Party of Spain]], Communists of this nature sought to undermine the influence of the [[Soviet Union]] and its [[All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]] during the [[Cold War]].{{r|Kindersley}} Eurocommunists tended to have a larger attachment to liberty and democracy than their Marxist–Leninist counterparts.<ref>{{cite news |last=Escalona |first=Fabien |date=29 December 2020 |title=Le PCF et l'eurocommunisme: l'ultime rendez-vous manqué? |trans-title=The French Communist Party and Eurocommunism: The greatest missed opportunity? |url=https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-idees/291220/le-pcf-et-l-eurocommunisme-l-ultime-rendez-vous-manque |language=fr |work=Mediapart |access-date=9 February 2023}}</ref> [[Enrico Berlinguer]], general secretary of Italy's major Communist party, was widely considered the father of Eurocommunism.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/eurocomunismo_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/ |title=Eurocomunismo |date=2010 |encyclopedia=Enciclopedia Treccani |language=it |access-date=22 September 2021}}</ref>

=== Libertarian Marxist communism ===
{{main|Libertarian Marxism}}
Libertarian Marxism is a broad range of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the [[anti-authoritarian]] aspects of [[Marxism]]. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as [[left communism]],<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Pierce |first=Wayne |url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wayne-price-libertarian-marxism-s-relation-to-anarchism |title=Libertarian Marxism's Relation to Anarchism |pages=73–80 |magazine=The Utopian |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210525073948/http://www.utopianmag.com/files/in/1000000034/12___WayneLibMarx.pdf |archive-date=25 May 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> emerged in opposition to [[Marxism–Leninism]]<ref name="Gorter et al. 2007">{{cite book |title=Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils |date=2007 |publisher=Red and Black Publishers |isbn=978-0-9791813-6-8 |location=St. Petersburg, Florida |first1=Hermann |last1=Gorter |author1-link=Herman Gorter |first2=Antonie |last2=Pannekoek |author2-link=Antonie Pannekoek |first3=Sylvia |last3=Pankhurst |author3-link=Sylvia Pankhurst |first4=Otto |last4=Rühle |author4-link=Otto Rühle}}</ref> and its derivatives such as [[Stalinism]] and [[Maoism]], as well as [[Trotskyism]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Marot |first=Eric |date=2006 |url=http://libcom.org/library/trotsky-left-opposition-rise-stalinism-theory-practice-john-eric-marot |title=Trotsky, the Left Opposition and the Rise of Stalinism: Theory and Practice |access-date=31 August 2021}}</ref> Libertarian Marxism is also critical of [[reformist]] positions such as those held by [[social democrats]].<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://libcom.org/library/social-democracy-1-aufheben-8 |title=The Retreat of Social Democracy ... Re-imposition of Work in Britain and the 'Social Europe' |magazine=[[Aufheben]] |volume=8 |date=Autumn 1999 |access-date=31 August 2021}}</ref> Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the ''[[Grundrisse]]'' and ''[[The Civil War in France]]'',<ref>{{cite book |first=Ernesto |last=Screpanti |author-link=Ernesto Screpanti |title=Libertarian communism: Marx Engels and the Political Economy of Freedom |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |location=London |date=2007 |isbn=978-0230018969}}</ref> emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the [[working class]] to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or [[State (polity)|state]] to mediate or aid its liberation.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Hal |last=Draper |author-link=Hal Draper |title=The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels |journal=[[Socialist Register]] |volume=8 |issue=8 |url=http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5333 |date=1971 |access-date=25 April 2015}}</ref> Along with [[anarchism]], libertarian Marxism is one of the main derivatives of [[libertarian socialism]].<ref>{{citation |last=Chomsky |first=Noam |author-link=Noam Chomsky |url=http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo/19700216.mp3 |title=Government In The Future |publisher=Poetry Center of the New York YM-YWHA |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130116194522/http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo/19700216.mp3 |archive-date=16 January 2013 |type=Lecture}}</ref>

Aside from left communism, libertarian Marxism includes such currents as [[autonomism]], [[communization]], [[council communism]], [[De Leonism]], the [[Johnson–Forest Tendency]], [[Lettrism]], [[Luxemburgism]] [[Situationism]], [[Socialisme ou Barbarie]], [[Solidarity (UK)|Solidarity]], the [[World Socialist Movement]], and [[workerism]], as well as parts of [[Freudo-Marxism]], and the [[New Left]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://libcom.org/library/libertarian-marxist-tendency-map |title=A libertarian Marxist tendency map |publisher=libcom.org |access-date=1 October 2011}}</ref> Moreover, libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both [[Post-left anarchy|post-left]] and [[Social anarchism|social anarchists]]. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included [[Antonie Pannekoek]], [[Raya Dunayevskaya]], [[Cornelius Castoriadis]], [[Maurice Brinton]], [[Daniel Guérin]], and [[Yanis Varoufakis]],<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ted.com/speakers/yanis_varoufakis |title=Yanis Varoufakis thinks we need a radically new way of thinking about the economy, finance and capitalism |last=Varoufakis |first=Yanis |author-link=Yanis Varoufakis |publisher=[[TED (conference)|TED]] |access-date=14 April 2019 |quote=Yanis Varoufakis describes himself as a "libertarian Marxist}}</ref> the latter of whom claims that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/yanis-varoufakis-we-leftists-are-not-necessarily-pro-public-sector-marx-was-anti-state-1-7861928 |title=Yanis Varoufakis: We leftists are not necessarily pro public sector – Marx was anti state |last=Lowry |first=Ben |work=The News Letter |date=11 March 2017 |access-date=14 April 2019}}</ref>

==== Council communism ====
{{main|Council communism}}
[[File:Rosa Luxemburg.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Rosa Luxemburg]]]]
Council communism is a movement that originated from Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s,{{sfn|Johnson|Walker|Gray|2014|loc=Pannekoek, Antonie (1873–1960)|pp=313–314}} whose primary organization was the [[Communist Workers Party of Germany]]. It continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both [[libertarian Marxism]] and [[libertarian socialism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=van der Linden |first=Marcel |author-link=Marcel van der Linden |year=2004 |title=On Council Communism |journal=Historical Materialism |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=27–50 |doi=10.1163/1569206043505275 |s2cid=143169141}}</ref> The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by [[workers' council]]s, which are composed of [[Delegate model of representation|delegates]] elected at workplaces and [[Recall election|recallable]] at any moment. Council communists oppose the perceived authoritarian and undemocratic nature of [[central planning]] and of [[state socialism]], labelled [[state capitalism]], and the idea of a revolutionary party,<ref name="The New Blanquism">{{cite magazine |title=The New Blanquism |first=Antonie |last=Pannekoek |author-link=Antonie Pannekoek |magazine=Der Kommunist |location=Bremen |number=27 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1920/blanquism.htm |date=1920 |access-date=31 July 2020 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Anarchism and Council Communism on the Russian Revolution |first=Christos |last=Memos |journal=[[Anarchist Studies]] |volume=20 |issue=2 |url=https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/anarchist-studies/20-2/anarchism-and-council-communism-russian-revolution |pages=22–47 |date=Autumn–Winter 2012 |publisher=Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. |access-date=27 May 2022 |archive-date=29 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129181048/https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/anarchist-studies/20-2/anarchism-and-council-communism-russian-revolution}}</ref> since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party would necessarily produce a [[party dictatorship]]. Council communists support a workers' democracy, produced through a federation of workers' councils.

In contrast to those of [[social democracy]] and [[Leninist]] communism, the central argument of council communism is that democratic workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural forms of working-class organizations and governmental power.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gerber |first=John |author-link=John Paul Gerber |title=Anton Pannekoek and the Socialism of Workers' Self-Emancipation, 1873-1960 |year=1989 |publisher=Kluwer |location=Dordrecht |isbn=978-0792302742}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Shipway |first=Mark |chapter=Council Communism |pages=104–126 |editor-first1=Maximilien |editor-last1=Rubel |editor-link1=Maximilien Rubel |editor-first2=John |editor-last2=Crump |title=Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |year=1987 |publisher=St. Martin's Press |location=New York}}</ref> This view is opposed to both the [[reformist]]<ref name="Socialism and Labor Unionism">{{cite magazine|title=Socialism and Labor Unionism |first=Anton |last=Pannekoek |author-link=Anton Pannekoek |magazine=The New Review |volume=1 |number=18 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1913/07/socialism-labor-unionism.htm |date=July 1913 |access-date=31 July 2020 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> and the Leninist communist ideologies,{{r|The New Blanquism}} which respectively stress parliamentary and [[New institutionalism|institutional]] government by applying [[Reform movement|social reforms]] on the one hand, and [[vanguard parties]] and [[Participatory democracy|participative]] [[democratic centralism]] on the other.{{r|Socialism and Labor Unionism}}{{r|The New Blanquism}}

==== Left communism ====
{{main|Left communism}}
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas and practices espoused, particularly following the series of revolutions that brought [[World War I]] to an end by [[Bolsheviks]] and [[social democrats]].<ref>{{cite web |title=The Communist Left in the Third International |first=Amadeo |last=Bordiga |author-link=Amadeo Bordiga |date=1926 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/comintern.htm |access-date=23 September 2021 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically [[Marxist]] and [[proletarian]] than the views of [[Marxism–Leninism]] espoused by the [[Communist International]] after its [[1st Congress of the Comintern|first congress]] (March 1919) and during its [[2nd World Congress of the Comintern|second congress]] (July–August 1920).{{r|Gorter et al. 2007}}<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bordiga |first1=Amadeo |author-link=Amadeo Bordiga |title=Dialogue with Stalin |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm |publisher=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=15 May 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Ronald I. |last=Kowalski |title=The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918 |publisher=[[Palgrave MacMillan]] |location=Basingstoke, England |date=1991 |isbn=978-1-349-10369-0 |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-10367-6 |page=2}}</ref>

Left communists represent a range of political movements distinct from [[Marxist–Leninists]], whom they largely view as merely the left-wing of [[Capital (economics)|capital]], from [[anarcho-communists]], some of whom they consider to be [[internationalist socialists]], and from various other revolutionary socialist tendencies, such as [[De Leonists]], whom they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/761 |title=The Legacy of De Leonism, part III: De Leon's misconceptions on class struggle |date=2000–2001 |website=Internationalism}}</ref> [[Bordigism]] is a Leninist left-communist current named after [[Amadeo Bordiga]], who has been described as being "more Leninist than Lenin", and considered himself to be a Leninist.<ref>{{cite book |last=Piccone |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Piccone |date=1983 |title=Italian Marxism |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |pages=134 |isbn=978-0-520-04798-3}}</ref>

=== Other types of communism ===
==== Anarcho-communism ====
{{main|Anarcho-communism}}
[[File:Kropotkin2.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Peter Kropotkin]], main theorist of [[anarcho-communism]]]]
Anarcho-communism is a [[libertarian]] theory of [[anarchism]] and communism which advocates the abolition of the [[State (polity)|state]], [[private property]], and [[capitalism]] in favor of [[common ownership]] of the [[means of production]];<ref name="Mayne">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6MkTz6Rq7wUC&pg=PA131 |title=From Politics Past to Politics Future: An Integrated Analysis of Current and Emergent Paradigms |first=Alan James |last=Mayne |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group]] |page=316 |isbn=978-0-275-96151-0 |year=1999 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Anarchism for Know-It-Alls |publisher=Filiquarian Publishing |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-59986-218-7}}</ref> [[direct democracy]]; and a [[Horizontal integration|horizontal network]] of [[voluntary association]]s and [[workers' council]]s with production and consumption based on the guiding principle, "[[From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs|From each according to his ability, to each according to his need]]".<ref>{{cite web |last=Fabbri |first=Luigi |author-link=Luigi Fabbri |title=Anarchism and Communism. Northeastern Anarchist No. 4. 1922 |date=13 October 2002 |url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/worldwidemovements/fabbrianarandcom.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629024338/http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/worldwidemovements/fabbrianarandcom.html |archive-date=29 June 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |website=The Nestor Makhno Archive |title=Constructive Section |url=http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/platform/constructive.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721225357/http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/platform/constructive.htm |archive-date=21 July 2011}}</ref> Anarcho-communism differs from Marxism in that it rejects its view about the need for a [[state socialism]] phase prior to establishing communism. [[Peter Kropotkin]], the main theorist of anarcho-communism, stated that a revolutionary society should "transform itself immediately into a communist society", that it should go immediately into what Marx had regarded as the "more advanced, completed, phase of communism".<ref name="theanarchistlibrary.org">{{cite book |url=http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Wayne_Price__What_is_Anarchist_Communism_.html |title=What is Anarchist Communism? |first=Wayne |last=Price |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101221140615/http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Wayne_Price__What_is_Anarchist_Communism_.html |archive-date=21 December 2010 |access-date=19 January 2011}}</ref> In this way, it tries to avoid the reappearance of class divisions and the need for a state to be in control.{{r|theanarchistlibrary.org}}

Some forms of anarcho-communism, such as [[insurrectionary anarchism]], are [[Egoist anarchism|egoist]] and strongly influenced by radical [[individualism]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gray |first1=Christopher |title=Leaving the 20th century: the incomplete work of the Situationist International |date=1998 |location=London |isbn=9780946061150 |pages=88 |publisher=Rebel Press }}</ref><ref name="creativenothing">{{cite book |url=http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Renzo_Novatore__Toward_the_Creative_Nothing.html |title=Towards the creative Nothing |first=Renzo |last=Novatore |author-link=Renzo Novatore |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728093004/http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Renzo_Novatore__Toward_the_Creative_Nothing.html |archive-date=28 July 2011}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite book |url=http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Bob_Black__Nightmares_of_Reason.html#toc22 |title=Bob Black. ''Nightmares of Reason'' |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101027102331/http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Bob_Black__Nightmares_of_Reason.html#toc22 |archive-date=27 October 2010 |access-date=1 November 2010}}</ref> believing that anarchist communism does not require a [[communitarian]] nature at all. Most anarcho-communists view anarchist communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society.<ref group="lower-alpha">{{cite web |last=Kropotkin |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Kropotkin |date=1901 |title=Communism and Anarchy |url=http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Petr_Kropotkin__Communism_and_Anarchy.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728092851/http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Petr_Kropotkin__Communism_and_Anarchy.html |archive-date=28 July 2011 |quote=Communism is the one which guarantees the greatest amount of individual liberty—provided that the idea that begets the community be Liberty, Anarchy&nbsp;... Communism guarantees economic freedom better than any other form of association, because it can guarantee wellbeing, even luxury, in return for a few hours of work instead of a day's work.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Dielo Truda (Workers' Cause) |author-link=Delo Truda |url=http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Dielo_Truda__Workers__Cause___Organisational_Platform_of_the_Libertarian_Communists.html |title=Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists |date=1926 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728092719/http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Dielo_Truda__Workers__Cause___Organisational_Platform_of_the_Libertarian_Communists.html |archive-date=28 July 2011 |quote=This other society will be libertarian communism, in which social solidarity and free individuality find their full expression, and in which these two ideas develop in perfect harmony.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=MY PERSPECTIVES – Willful Disobedience Vol. 2, No. 12 |url=http://www.reocities.com/kk_abacus/vb/wd12persp.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716084332/http://www.reocities.com/kk_abacus/vb/wd12persp.html |archive-date=16 July 2011 |quote=I see the dichotomies made between individualism and communism, individual revolt and class struggle, the struggle against human exploitation and the exploitation of nature as false dichotomies and feel that those who accept them are impoverishing their own critique and struggle.}}</ref>

==== Christian communism ====
{{main|Christian communism}}
Christian communism is a theological and political theory based upon the view that the teachings of [[Jesus in Christianity|Jesus Christ]] compel [[Christians]] to support [[religious communism]] as the ideal [[social system]].{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=24–25}} Although there is no universal agreement on the exact dates when communistic ideas and practices in Christianity began, many Christian communists state that evidence from the [[Bible]] suggests that the first Christians, including the [[Apostles in the New Testament]], established their own small communist society in the years following Jesus' death and resurrection.<ref>{{cite web |last=Montero |first=Roman |date=30 July 2019 |title=The Sources of Early Christian Communism |url=https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-sources-of-early-christian-communism/ |access-date=26 March 2021 |website=Church Life Journal}}</ref>

Many advocates of Christian communism state that it was taught by Jesus and practiced by the apostles themselves,<ref>{{cite book |last=Kautsky |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Kautsky |title=Foundations of Christianity |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/index.htm |date=1953 |orig-date=1908 |publisher=[[Atheneum Books|Russell & Russell]] |chapter=IV.II. The Christian Idea of the Messiah. Jesus as a Rebel. |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/ch10.htm#s3 |quotation=Christianity was the expression of [[class conflict]] in Antiquity. |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> an argument that historians and others, including anthropologist Roman A. Montero,<ref>{{cite book |last=Montero |first=Roman A. |title=All Things in Common The Economic Practices of the Early Christians |date=2017 |publisher=[[Wipf and Stock Publishers]] |isbn=9781532607912 |location=Eugene |page=5|oclc=994706026}}</ref> scholars like [[Ernest Renan]],<ref>{{cite book |first=Ernest |last=Renan |page=122 |title=Origins of Christianity |publisher=Carleton |location=New York |year=1869 |chapter=VIII. First Persecution. Death of Stephen. Destruction of the First Church of Jerusalem |volume=II. The Apostles |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=knYRAAAAYAAJ&q=christian+communism&pg=PA152 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Roland |last=Boer |page=120 |title=Political Grace. The Revolutionary Theology of John Calvin |chapter=Conclusion: What If? Calvin and the Spirit of Revolution. Bible |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-664-23393-8 |location=Louisville, Kentucky |publisher=[[Westminster John Knox Press]] |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HIeLYNEq6zsC&q=christian+communism&pg=PA120 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> and theologians like [[Charles Ellicott]] and [[Donald Guthrie (theologian)|Donald Guthrie]],<ref>{{cite book |first1=Charles John |last1=Ellicott |author1-link=Charles Ellicott |first2=Edward Hayes |last2=Plumptre |author2-link=Edward Plumptre |chapter=III. The Church in Jerusalem. I. Christian Communism |title=The Acts of the Apostles |year=1910 |location=London |publisher=[[Cassell (publisher)|Cassell]] |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Htk8AAAAIAAJ&q=christian+communism&pg=PA11 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Donald |last=Guthrie |author-link=Donald Guthrie (theologian) |orig-date=1975 |year=1992 |publisher=[[Zondervan]] |isbn=978-0-310-25421-8 |title=The Apostles |page=[https://archive.org/details/apostles0010guth/page/46 46] |location=Grand Rapids, Michigan |chapter=3. Early Problems. 15. Early Christian Communism |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uts4VTUm1iEC&q=christian+communism&pg=PA46 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> generally agree with.{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=24–25}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Frank K. |last=Flinn |title=Encyclopedia of Catholicism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gxEONS0FFlsC&pg=PA173 |year=2007 |publisher=[[Infobase Publishing]] |isbn=978-0-8160-7565-2 |pages=173–174}}</ref> Christian communism enjoys some support in Russia. Russian musician [[Yegor Letov]] was an outspoken Christian communist, and in a 1995 interview he was quoted as saying: "Communism is the [[Kingdom of God]] on Earth."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Agranovsky |first=Dmitry |date=12 July 1995 |url=http://grob-hroniki.org/article/1995/art_1995-12-07a.html |title=Yegor Letov: Russkiy Proryv |script-title=ru:Егор Летов: Русский Прорыв |trans-title=Egor Letov: Russian Breakthrough |magazine=Sovetskaya Rossiya |language=ru |issue=145 |access-date=15 August 2021}}</ref>

== Analysis ==
=== Reception ===
Emily Morris from [[University College London]] wrote that because [[Karl Marx]]'s writings have inspired many movements, including the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]], communism is "commonly confused with the political and economic system that developed in the Soviet Union" after the revolution.{{r|Morris}}<ref group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Morgan|2015|ps=: "Communist ideas have acquired a new meaning since 1918. They became equivalent to the ideas of Marxism–Leninism, that is, the interpretation of Marxism by Lenin and his successors. Endorsing the final objective, namely, the creation of a community owning means of production and providing each of its participants with consumption 'according to their needs', they put forward the recognition of the class struggle as a dominating principle of a social development. In addition, workers (i.e., the proletariat) were to carry out the mission of reconstruction of the society. Conducting a socialist revolution headed by the avant-garde of the proletariat, that is, the party, was hailed to be a historical necessity. Moreover, the introduction of the proletariat dictatorship was advocated and hostile classes were to be liquidated."}}</ref> Morris also wrote that Soviet-style communism "did not 'work'." due to "an over-centralised, oppressive, bureaucratic and rigid economic and political system."{{r|Morris}} Historian Andrzej Paczkowski summarized communism as "an ideology that seemed clearly the opposite, that was based on the secular desire of humanity to achieve equality and social justice, and that promised a great leap forward into freedom."{{sfn|Paczkowski|2001|pp=32–33}} In contrast, Austrian-American economist [[Ludwig von Mises]] argued that by abolishing free markets, [[Economic calculation problem|communist officials would not have the price system]] necessary to guide their planned production.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Greaves |first=Bettina Bien |date=1 March 1991 |title=Why Communism Failed |url=https://fee.org/articles/why-communism-failed/ |access-date=13 August 2023 |website=[[Foundation for Economic Education]] |language=en}}</ref>

[[Anti-communism]] developed as soon as communism became a conscious political movement in the 19th century, and [[anti-communist mass killings]] have been reported against alleged communists, or their alleged supporters, which were committed by anti-communists and political organizations or governments opposed to communism. The communist movement has faced opposition since it was founded and the opposition to it has often been organized and violent. Many of these anti-communist mass killing campaigns, primarily during the Cold War,<ref name="Aarons 2007">{{cite book |last=Aarons |first=Mark |url=http://www.brill.com/legacy-nuremberg-civilising-influence-or-institutionalised-vengeance |title=The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? (International Humanitarian Law) |date=2007 |publisher=[[Martinus Nijhoff Publishers]] |isbn=978-9004156913 |editor1-last=Blumenthal |editor1-first=David A. |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=dg0hWswKgTIC&pg=PA71 71], [https://books.google.com/books?id=dg0hWswKgTIC&pg=PA81 80–81] |chapter=Justice Betrayed: Post-1945 Responses to Genocide |access-date=28 June 2021 |editor2-last=McCormack |editor2-first=Timothy L. H. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dg0hWswKgTIC&pg=PA69 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160105053952/http://www.brill.com/legacy-nuremberg-civilising-influence-or-institutionalised-vengeance |archive-date=5 January 2016}}</ref>{{sfn|Bevins|2020b}} were supported by the United States and its [[Western Bloc]] allies,<ref>{{cite book |last=Blakeley |first=Ruth |date=2009 |title=State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South |url=http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415462402/ |publisher=[[Routledge]] |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=rft8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 4], [https://books.google.com/books?id=rft8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA20 20–23], [https://books.google.com/books?id=rft8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA88 88] |isbn=978-0-415-68617-4}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=McSherry |first1=J. Patrice |author1-link=J. Patrice McSherry |editor1-last=Esparza |editor1-first=Marcia |editor2-first=Henry R. |editor2-last=Huttenbach |editor3-first=Daniel |editor3-last=Feierstein |title=State Violence and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold War Years (Critical Terrorism Studies) |chapter=Chapter 5: 'Industrial repression' and Operation Condor in Latin America |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=acGNAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA107 107] |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-415-66457-8 |url=https://www.routledge.com/State-Violence-and-Genocide-in-Latin-America-The-Cold-War-Years/Esparza-Huttenbach-Feierstein/p/book/9780415496377}}</ref> including those who were formally part of the [[Non-Aligned Movement]], such as the [[Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66]] and [[Operation Condor]] in South America.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Bevins |first=Vincent |author-link=Vincent Bevins |date=18 May 2020a |url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/18/how-jakarta-became-the-codeword-for-us-backed-mass-killing/ |title=How 'Jakarta' Became the Codeword for US-Backed Mass Killing |magazine=The New York Review of Books |access-date=15 August 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Prashad |first=Vijay |author-link=Vijay Prashad |date=2020 |title=Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations |publisher=[[Monthly Review|Monthly Review Press]] |page=87 |isbn=978-1583679067}}</ref>

=== Excess mortality in Communist states ===
{{further|Mass killings under communist regimes|Crimes against humanity under communist regimes}}
Many authors have written about excess deaths under Communist states and [[mortality rate]]s,{{refn|group=note|name=third}} such as [[excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin]].{{refn|group=note|name=fourth}} Some authors posit that there is a Communist death toll, whose death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them, ranging from lows of 10–20 million to highs over 100 million. The higher estimates have been criticized by several scholars as ideologically motivated and inflated; they are also criticized for being inaccurate due to incomplete data, inflated by counting any excess death, making an unwarranted link to communism, and the grouping and body-counting itself. Higher estimates account for actions that Communist governments committed against civilians, including executions, human-made famines, and deaths that occurred during, or resulted from, imprisonment, and forced deportations and labor. Higher estimates are criticized for being based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable, and for being skewed to higher possible values.<ref name="ReferenceB">{{harvp|Harff|1996}}; {{harvp|Hiroaki|2001}}; {{harvp|Paczkowski|2001}}; {{harvp|Weiner|2002}}; {{harvp|Dulić|2004}}; {{harvp|Harff|2017}}</ref> Others have argued that, while certain estimates may not be accurate, "quibbling about numbers is unseemly. What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes."{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} Historian Mark Bradley wrote that while the exact numbers have been in dispute, the [[order of magnitude]] is not.{{sfn|Bradley|2017|pp=151–153}} 

There is no consensus among [[genocide scholars]] and [[scholars of Communism]] about whether some or all the events constituted a [[genocide]] or [[mass killing]].{{refn|Most genocide scholars do not lump Communist states together, and do not treat genocidical events as a separate subjects, or by regime-type, and compare them to genocidical events which happened under vastly different [[regime]]s. Examples include ''Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts'',<ref>{{cite book |last1=Charny |first1=Israel W. |author1-link=Israel Charny |last2=Parsons |first2=William S. |last3=Totten |first3=Samuel |author3-link=Samuel Totten |year=2004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Ef8Hrx8Cd0C |title=Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts |publisher=[[Psychology Press]] |isbn=978-0-415-94430-4 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> ''The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing'',<ref>{{cite book |last=Mann |first=Michael |year=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cGHGPgj1_tIC |title=The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-53854-1 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> ''Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide'',<ref>{{cite book |last=Sémelin |first=Jacques |author-link=Jacques Sémelin |year=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HIS-AwAAQBAJ |title=Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0-231-14282-3 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> ''Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue'',<ref>{{cite book |last1=Andrieu |first1=Claire |last2=Gensburger |first2=Sarah |last3=Sémelin |first3=Jacques |author3-link=Jacques Sémelin |year=2011 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=61HEQ2Y9iQ8C |title=Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0-231-80046-4 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> and ''Final Solutions''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Valentino |first=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Valentino |year=2013 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qqedDgAAQBAJ |title=Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |isbn=978-0-8014-6717-2 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> Several of them are limited to the geographical locations of "the Big Three", or mainly the [[Cambodian genocide]], whose culprit, the [[Khmer Rouge]] regime, was described by genocide scholar [[Helen Fein]] as following a [[xenophobic]] ideology bearing a stronger resemblance to "an almost forgotten phenomenon of national socialism", or [[fascism]], rather than communism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Fein |first=Helen |author-link=Helen Fein |year=1993 |chapter=Soviet and Communist Genocides and 'Democide' |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n4TaAAAAMAAJ |title=Genocide: A Sociological Perspective; Contextual and Comparative Studies I: Ideological Genocides |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |isbn=978-0-8039-8829-3 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> while historian [[Ben Kiernan]] described it as "more racist and generically totalitarian than Marxist or specifically Communist",<ref>{{cite journal |last=Heder |first=Steve |date=July 1997 |title=Racism, Marxism, Labelling, and Genocide in Ben Kiernan's 'The Pol Pot Regime' |journal=South East Asia |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=101–153 |doi=10.1177/0967828X9700500202 |jstor=23746851}}</ref> or do not discuss Communist states, other than passing mentions. Such work is mainly done in an attempt to prevent [[genocide]]s but has been described by scholars as a failure.{{r|Weiss-Wendt 2008}}|group=note}} Among genocide scholars, there is no consensus on a common terminology,<ref name="Weiss-Wendt 2008">{{cite book |last=Weiss-Wendt |first=Anton |date=2008 |chapter=Problems in Comparative Genocide Scholarship |editor-last=Stone |editor-first=Dan |title=The Historiography of Genocide |location=London |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |pages=42–70 |doi=10.1057/9780230297784_3 |isbn=978-0-230-29778-4 |quote=There is barely any other field of study that enjoys so little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe. Considering that scholars have always put stress on prevention of genocide, comparative genocide studies have been a failure. Paradoxically, nobody has attempted so far to assess the field of comparative genocide studies as a whole. This is one of the reasons why those who define themselves as genocide scholars have not been able to detect the situation of crisis.}}</ref> and the events have been variously referred to as ''excess mortality'' or ''mass deaths''; other terms used to define some of such killings include ''[[classicide]]'', ''[[crimes against humanity]]'', ''[[democide]]'', ''genocide'', ''[[politicide]]'', ''[[Holocaust (disambiguation)|holocaust]]'', ''mass killing'', and ''[[Political repression|repression]]''.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008">{{harvnb|Karlsson|Schoenhals|2008}}</ref>{{refn|Genocide scholar [[Barbara Harff]] maintains a global database on mass killings, which is intended mostly for statistical analysis of mass killings in attempt to identify the best predictors for their onset and data is not necessarily the most accurate for a given country, since some sources are general genocide scholars and not experts on local history;{{sfn|Harff|2017}} it includes [[anticommunist mass killings]], such as the [[Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966]] (genocide and politicide), and some events which happened under Communist states, such as the [[1959 Tibetan uprising]] (genocide and politicide), the [[Cambodian genocide]] (genocide and politicide), and the [[Cultural Revolution]] (politicide), but no comparative analysis or communist link is drawn, other than the events just happened to take place in some Communist states in Eastern Asia. The Harff database is the most frequently used by genocide scholars.{{r|Tago & Wayman 2010}} [[Rudolph Rummel]] operated a similar database, but it was not limited to Communist states, it is mainly for statistical analysis, and in a comparative analysis has been criticized by other scholars,<ref>{{harvnb|Harff|1996}}; {{harvnb|Kuromiya|2001}}; {{harvnb|Paczkowski|2001}}; {{harvnb|Weiner|2002}}; {{harvnb|Dulić|2004}}; {{harvnb|Karlsson|Schoenhals|2008|pp=35, 79|ps=: "While Jerry Hough suggested Stalin's terror claimed tens of thousands of victims, R.J. Rummel puts the death toll of Soviet communist terror between 1917 and 1987 at 61,911,000. In both cases, these figures are based on an ideological preunderstanding and speculative and sweeping calculations. On the other hand, the considerably lower figures in terms of numbers of Gulag prisoners presented by Russian researchers during the glasnost period have been relatively widely accepted. ... It could, quite rightly, be claimed that the opinions that Rummel presents here (they are hardly an example of a serious and empirically-based writing of history) do not deserve to be mentioned in a research review, but they are still perhaps worth bringing up on the basis of the interest in him in the blogosphere."}}</ref> over that of Harff,{{sfn|Harff|2017}} for his estimates and statistical methodology, which showed some flaws.{{sfn|Dulić|2004}}|group=note}} These scholars state that most Communist states did not engage in mass killings;<ref>{{cite book |last1=Valentino |first1=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Valentino |date=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC |title=Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century |location=Ithaca |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |pages=91 |isbn=978-0-801-47273-2 |quote=Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing.}}</ref>{{refn|In their criticism of ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'', which popularized the topic, several scholars have questioned, in the words of [[Alexander Dallin]], "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss."<ref name="Dallin 2000">{{cite journal |last=Dallin |first=Alexander |date=Winter 2000 |title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. By Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, and Jean-Louis Margolin. Trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. xx, 858 pp. Notes. Index. Photographs. Maps. $37.50, hard bound. |journal=[[Slavic Review]] |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=59 |issue=4 |pages=882–883 |doi=10.2307/2697429 |jstor=2697429}}</ref> In particular, historians Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann stated that a connection between the events in [[Joseph Stalin]]'s Soviet Union and [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the [[Khmer Rouge]]'s murderous anti-urbanism under the same category.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Mecklenburg |editor-first1=Jens |editor-last2=Wippermann |editor-first2=Wolfgang |date=1998 |title='Roter Holocaust'? Kritik des Schwarzbuchs des Kommunismus |trans-title=A 'Red Holocaust'? A Critique of the Black Book of Communism |location=Hamburg |publisher=Konkret Verlag Literatur |language=de |isbn=3-89458-169-7}}</ref> Historian Michael David-Fox criticized the figures as well as the idea to combine loosely connected events under a single category of Communist death toll, blaming [[Stéphane Courtois]] for their manipulation and deliberate inflation which are presented to advocate the idea that communism was a greater evil than Nazism. David-Fox criticized the idea to connect the deaths with some "generic Communism" concept, defined down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals.<ref name="David-Fox 2004">{{cite journal |last=David-Fox |first=Michael |date=Winter 2004 |title=On the Primacy of Ideology: Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia) |journal=[[Kritika (journal)|Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History]] |volume=5 |number=1 |pages=81–105 |doi=10.1353/kri.2004.0007 |s2cid=159716738}}</ref> A similar criticism was made by ''[[Le Monde]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Malia |first=Martin |date=October 1999 |chapter=Preface |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC |title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |page=xiv |isbn=978-0-674-07608-2 |access-date=12 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]] |quote=... commentators in the liberal ''Le Monde'' argue that it is illegitimate to speak of a single Communist movement from Phnom Penh to Paris. Rather, the rampage of the Khmer Rouge is like the ethnic massacres of third-world Rwanda, or the 'rural' Communism of Asia is radically different from the 'urban' Communism of Europe; or Asian Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism. ... conflating sociologically diverse movements is merely a stratagem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left.}}</ref> Allegation of a communist or red Holocaust is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hackmann |first=Jörg |date=March 2009 |title=From National Victims to Transnational Bystanders? The Changing Commemoration of World War II in Central and Eastern Europe |journal=[[Constellations (journal)|Constellations]] |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=167–181 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8675.2009.00526.x}}</ref> and is considered a form of softcore antisemitism and Holocaust trivialization.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Heni |first=Clemens |date=Fall 2008 |title=Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah |journal=[[Jewish Political Studies Review]] |location=Jerusalem |volume=20 |issue=3/4 |pages=73–92 |jstor=25834800}}</ref>|group=note}} [[Benjamin Valentino]] proposes the category of [[Communist mass killing]], alongside colonial, counter-guerrilla, and ethnic mass killing, as a subtype of dispossessive mass killing to distinguish it from coercive mass killing.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Valentino |first1=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Valentino |date=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC |title=Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century |location=Ithaca |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |pages=66 |isbn=978-0-801-47273-2 |quote=I contend mass killing occurs when powerful groups come to believe it is the best available means to accomplish certain radical goals, counter specific types of threats, or solve difficult military problem.}}</ref> Genocide scholars do not consider ideology,<ref name="Tago & Wayman 2010">{{cite journal |last1=Atsushi |first1=Tago |last2=Wayman |first2=Frank W. |title=Explaining the onset of mass killing, 1949–87 |journal=[[Journal of Peace Research]] |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=3–13 |date=2010 |doi=10.1177/0022343309342944 |issn=0022-3433 |jstor=25654524 |s2cid=145155872}}</ref> or regime-type, as an important factor that explains mass killings.<ref name="Straus 2007">{{cite journal |last=Straus |first=Scott |date=April 2007 |title=Review: Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide |journal=[[World Politics]] |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=59 |issue=3 |pages=476–501 |doi=10.1017/S004388710002089X |jstor=40060166 |s2cid=144879341}}</ref> Some authors, such as [[John Gray (philosopher)|John Gray]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gray |first=John |title=Totalitarianism at the crossroads |publisher=Social Philosophy & Policy Center |others=Ellen Frankel Paul |year=1990 |isbn=0-88738-351-3 |location=[Bowling Green, OH] |pages=116 |oclc=20996281}}</ref> [[Daniel Goldhagen]],{{sfn|Goldhagen|2009|p=206}} and [[Richard Pipes]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pipes |first=Richard |title=Communism: a history |date=2001 |publisher=Modern Library |isbn=0-679-64050-9 |edition= |location=New York |pages=147 |oclc=47924025}}</ref> consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings. Some connect killings in [[Joseph Stalin]]'s Soviet Union, [[Mao Zedong]]'s China, and [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia on the basis that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot; in all cases, scholars say killings were carried out as part of a policy of an unbalanced modernization process of rapid industrialization.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}}{{refn|The Cambodia case is particular because it is different from the emphasis Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China gave to [[heavy industry]]. The goal of Khmer Rouge's leaders goal was to introduce communism in an extremely short period of time through [[collectivization of agriculture]] in the effort to remove social differences and inequalities between rural and urban areas.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}} As there was not much industry in Cambodia at that time, Pol Pot's strategy to accomplish this was to increase agricultural production in order to obtain money for rapid industrialization.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mann |first=Michael |year=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cGHGPgj1_tIC |title=The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing |edition=illustrated, reprint |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=343 |isbn=9780521538541 |access-date=28 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]] |quote=As in other Communist development plans, this agricultural surplus, essentially rice, could be exported to pay for the import of machinery, first for agriculture and light industry, later for heavy industry (Chandler, 1992: 120–8).}}</ref> {{paragraph break}} In analyzing the Khmer Rouge regime, scholars place it within the historical context. The Khmer Rouge came to power through the [[Cambodian Civil War]] (where unparalleled atrocities were executed on both sides) and [[Operation Menu]], resulting in the dropping of more than half a million tonnes of bombs in the country during the civil-war period; this was mainly directed to [[North Vietnam|Communist Vietnam]] but it gave the Khmer Rouge a justification to eliminate the pro-Vietnamese faction and other communists.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}} The [[Cambodian genocide]], which is described by many scholars as a [[genocide]] and by others, such as Manus Midlarsky, as a [[politicide]],{{r|Straus 2007}} was stopped by Communist Vietnam, and there have been [[allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge]]. South East Asian communism was deeply divided, as China supported the Khmer Rouge, while the Soviet Union and Vietnam opposed it. The United States supported [[Lon Nol]], who seized power in the [[1970 Cambodian coup d'état]], and research has shown that everything in Cambodia was seen as a legitimate target by the United States, whose verdict of its main leaders at that time ([[Richard Nixon]] and [[Henry Kissinger]]) has been harsh, and bombs were gradually dropped on increasingly densely populated areas.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}}|group=note}} Daniel Goldhagen argues that 20th century communist regimes "have killed more people than any other regime type."{{sfn|Goldhagen|2009|p=54}}

Some authors and politicians, such as [[George G. Watson]], allege that [[genocide]] was dictated in otherwise forgotten works of [[Karl Marx]].<ref name="Grant 1999">{{cite journal |last=Grant |first=Robert |date=November 1999 |title=Review: The Lost Literature of Socialism |journal=The Review of English Studies |volume=50 |number=200 |pages=557–559 |doi=10.1093/res/50.200.557}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Ijabs |first=Ivars |date=23 May 2008 |title=Cienīga atbilde: Soviet Story |trans-title=Worthy answer: Soviet Story |work=Latvijas Vēstnesis |language=lv |url=http://www.lv.lv/?menu=exblogi&sub=&type=full&id=44 |access-date=15 June 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720194148/http://www.lv.lv/?menu=exblogi&sub=&type=full&id=44 |archive-date=20 July 2011 |quote=To present Karl Marx as the 'progenitor of modern genocide' is simply to lie.}}</ref> Many commentators on the political right point to the mass deaths under Communist states, claiming them as an indictment of communism.<ref name="Piereson">{{cite web |last=Piereson |first=James |title=Socialism as a hate crime |url=https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/socialism-as-a-hate-crime-9746 |access-date=22 October 2021 |website=New Criterion}}</ref>{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}}<ref name="Satter 2017">{{cite news |last=Satter |first=David |date=6 November 2017 |title=100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810 |access-date=22 October 2021 |issn=0099-9660}}</ref> Opponents of this view argue that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by communism itself, and point to mass deaths in wars and famines that they argue were caused by [[colonialism]], capitalism, and anti-communism as a counterpoint to those killings.<ref>{{harvp|Bevins|2020b}}; {{harvp|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}}; {{harvp|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Sullivan |first1=Dylan |last2=Hickel |first2=Jason |author2-link=Jason Hickel |date=2 December 2022 |title=How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians |work=[[Al Jazeera English|Al Jazeera]] |access-date=14 December 2022 |quote=While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and Mengistu's Ethiopia.}}</ref> According to [[Dovid Katz]] and other historians, a [[historical revisionist]] view of the [[double genocide theory]],<ref>{{cite web |last1=Liedy |first1=Amy Shannon |last2=Ruble |first2=Blair |date=7 March 2011 |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/holocaust-revisionism-ultranationalism-and-the-nazisoviet-double-genocide-debate-eastern |title=Holocaust Revisionism, Ultranationalism, and the Nazi/Soviet 'Double Genocide' Debate in Eastern Europe |publisher=[[Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars|Wilson Center]] |access-date=14 November 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Shafir |first=Michael |date=Summer 2016 |url=http://jsri.ro/ojs/index.php/jsri/article/viewFile/798/696 |title=Ideology, Memory and Religion in Post-Communist East Central Europe: A Comparative Study Focused on Post-Holocaust |journal=Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies |volume=15 |issue=44 |pages=52–110}}</ref> equating mass deaths under Communist states with the Holocaust, is popular in [[Eastern European]] countries and the [[Baltic states]], and their approaches of history have been incorporated in the [[European Union]] agenda,<ref name="Satori">{{cite news |url=https://satori.lv/article/latvias-soviet-story-transitional-justice-and-the-politics-of-commemoration |title=Latvia's 'Soviet Story'. Transitional Justice and the Politics of Commemoration |website=Satory |date=26 October 2009 |access-date=6 August 2021}}</ref> among them the [[Prague Declaration]] in June 2008 and the [[European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism]], which was proclaimed by the [[European Parliament]] in August 2008 and endorsed by the [[OSCE in Europe]] in July 2009. Among many scholars in [[Western Europe]], the comparison of the two regimes and equivalence of their crimes has been, and still is, widely rejected.{{r|Satori}}

=== Memory and legacy ===
Criticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories, namely that [[criticism of Communist party rule]] that concerns with the practical aspects of 20th-century [[Communist state]]s,<ref name="Bruno Bosteels 2014">{{cite book |last=Bosteels |first=Bruno |title=The Actuality of Communism |date=2014 |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=9781781687673 |edition=paper back |location=New York City, New York |author-link=Bruno Bosteels}}</ref> and [[criticism of Marxism]] and communism generally that concerns its principles and theory.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taras |first=Raymond C. |title=The Road to Disillusion: From Critical Marxism to Post-Communism in Eastern Europe |date=2015 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |isbn=9781317454786 |edition=E-book |location=London |author-link=Raymond Taras |orig-date=1992}}</ref> Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between the communist-sympathetic or [[anti-anti-communist]] political left and the [[anti-communism]] of the [[political right]].{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} Critics of communism on the political right point to the [[excess deaths]] under Communist states as an indictment of communism as an ideology.{{r|Piereson}}{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}}{{r|Satter 2017}} Defenders of communism on the political left say that the deaths were caused by specific authoritarian regimes and not communism as an ideology, while also pointing to [[anti-communist mass killings]] and deaths in wars that they argue were caused by capitalism and anti-communism as a counterpoint to the deaths under Communist states.{{sfn|Bevins|2020b}}{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}}{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}} 

According to Hungarian sociologist and politician [[András Bozóki]], positive aspects of communist countries included support for social mobility and equality, the elimination of illiteracy, urbanization, more accessible healthcare and housing, regional mobility with public transportation, the elimination of semi-feudal hierarchies, more women entering the labor market, and free access to higher education. Negative aspects of communist countries, on the other hand according to Bozóki included the suppression of freedom, the loss of trust in civil society; a culture of fear and corruption; reduced international travel; dependency on the party and state; Central Europe becoming a satellite of the Soviet Union; the creation of closed societies, leading to xenophobia, racism, prejudice, cynicism and pessimism; women only being emancipated in the workforce; the oppression of national identity; and relativist ethical societal standards.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bozóki |first=András |date=December 2008 |title=The Communist Legacy: Pros and Cons in Retrospect |url=https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Communist-Legacy-Pros-and-Cons-in-Retrospect_tbl2_228979606 |website=[[ResearchGate]]}}</ref>

[[Memory studies]] have been done on how the events are memorized.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kaprāns |first=Mārtiņš |date=2 May 2015 |title=Hegemonic representations of the past and digital agency: Giving meaning to 'The Soviet Story' on social networking sites |journal=Memory Studies |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=156–172 |doi=10.1177/1750698015587151 |s2cid=142458412}}</ref> According to [[Kristen Ghodsee|Kristen R. Ghodsee]] and [[Scott Sehon]], on the political left, there are "those with some sympathy for socialist ideals and the popular opinion of hundreds of millions of Russian and east European citizens nostalgic for their state socialist pasts.", while on the political right, there are "the committed anti-totalitarians, both east and west, insisting that all experiments with Marxism will always and inevitably end with the gulag."{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} The "[[victims of Communism]]" concept,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Neumayer |first=Laure |date=November 2017 |title=Advocating for the Cause of the 'Victims of Communism' in the European Political Space: Memory Entrepreneurs in Interstitial Fields |journal=Nationalities Papers |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=45 |issue=6 |pages=992–1012 |doi=10.1080/00905992.2017.1364230 |doi-access=free}}</ref> has become accepted scholarship, as part of the double genocide theory, in Eastern Europe and among anti-communists in general;<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dujisin |first=Zoltan |date=July 2020 |title=A History of Post-Communist Remembrance: From Memory Politics to the Emergence of a Field of Anticommunism |journal=[[Theory and Society]] |volume=50 |issue=January 2021 |pages=65–96 |doi=10.1007/s11186-020-09401-5 |s2cid=225580086 |quote=This article invites the view that the Europeanization of an antitotalitarian 'collective memory' of communism reveals the emergence of a field of anticommunism. This transnational field is inextricably tied to the proliferation of state-sponsored and anticommunist memory institutes across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), ... [and is proposed by] anticommunist memory entrepreneurs. |doi-access=free}}</ref> it is rejected by some Western European{{r|Satori}} and other scholars, especially when it is used to equate Communism and [[Nazism]], which is seen by scholars as a long-discredited perspective.<ref name="Doumanis 2016">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yd8mDAAAQBAJ |title=The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2016 |isbn=9780191017759 |editor-last=Doumanis |editor-first=Nicholas |edition=E-book |location=Oxford, England |pages=377–378}}</ref> The narrative posits that famines and mass deaths by Communist states can be attributed to a single cause and that communism, as "the deadliest ideology in history", or in the words of [[Jonathan Rauch]] as "the deadliest fantasy in human history",<ref>{{cite news |last=Rauch |first=Jonathan |date=December 2003 |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/12/the-forgotten-millions/302849/ |title=The Forgotten Millions |work=[[The Atlantic]] |access-date=20 December 2020}}</ref> represents the greatest threat to humanity.{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}} Proponents posit an alleged link between communism, left-wing politics, and socialism with genocide, mass killing, and [[totalitarianism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Mrozick |first=Agnieszka |date=2019 |editor1-last=Kuligowski |editor1-first=Piotr |editor2-last=Moll |editor2-first=Łukasz |editor3-last=Szadkowski |editor3-first=Krystian |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=788051 |title=Anti-Communism: It's High Time to Diagnose and Counteract |journal={{ill|Praktyka Teoretyczna|pl}} |publisher=Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań |volume=1 |number=31, ''Anti-Communisms: Discourses of Exclusion'' |pages=178–184 |access-date=26 December 2020 |via=Central and Eastern European Online Library |quote=First is the prevalence of a totalitarian paradigm, in which Nazism and Communism are equated as the most atrocious ideas and systems in human history (because communism, defined by Marx as a classless society with common means of production, has never been realised anywhere in the world, in further parts I will be putting this concept into inverted commas as an example of discursive practice). Significantly, while in the Western debate the more precise term 'Stalinism' is used – in 2008, on the 70th anniversary of the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, the European Parliament established 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism – hardly anyone in Poland is paying attention to niceties: 'communism' or the left, is perceived as totalitarian here. A homogenizing sequence of associations (the left is communism, communism is totalitarianism, ergo the left is totalitarian) and the ahistorical character of the concepts used (no matter if we talk about the USSR in the 1930s under Stalin, Maoist China from the period of the Cultural Revolution, or Poland under Gierek, 'communism' is murderous all the same) not only serves the denigration of the Polish People's Republic, expelling this period from Polish history, but also – or perhaps primarily – the deprecation of Marxism, leftist programs, and any hopes and beliefs in Marxism and leftist activity as a remedy for capitalist exploitation, social inequality, fascist violence on a racist and anti-Semitic basis, as well as homophobic and misogynist violence. The totalitarian paradigm not only equates fascism and socialism (in Poland and the countries of the former Eastern bloc stubbornly called 'communism' and pressed into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, which should additionally emphasize its foreignness), but in fact recognizes the latter as worse, more sinister (the ''Black Book of Communism'' (1997) is of help here as it estimates the number of victims of 'communism' at around 100 million; however, it is critically commented on by researchers on the subject, including historian Enzo Traverso in the book ''L'histoire comme champ de bataille'' (2011)). Thus, anti-communism not only delegitimises the left, including communists, and depreciates the contribution of the left to the breakdown of fascism in 1945, but also contributes to the rehabilitation of the latter, as we can see in recent cases in Europe and other places. (Quote at pp. 178–179)}}</ref>

Some authors, as [[Stéphane Courtois]], propose a theory of equivalence between class and racial genocide.<ref name="Jaffrelot & Sémelin 2009">{{cite book |editor-last1=Jaffrelot |editor-first1=Christophe |editor-link1=Christophe Jaffrelot |editor-last2=Sémelin |editor-first2=Jacques |editor-link2=Jacques Sémelin |date=2009 |title=Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide |translator-last=Schoch |translator-first=Cynthia |series=CERI Series in Comparative Politics and International Studies |location=New York |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |pages=37 |isbn=978-0-231-14283-0}}</ref> It is supported by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, with 100 million being the most common estimate used from ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'' despite some of the authors of the book distancing themselves from the estimates made by Stephen Courtois.{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} Various museums and monuments have been constructed in remembrance of the victims of Communism, with support of the European Union and various governments in Canada, Eastern Europe, and the United States.<ref name="Ghodsee 2014">{{cite journal |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=115–142 |title=A Tale of 'Two Totalitarianisms': The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism |journal=[[History of the Present]] |year=2014 |url=http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/history_of_the_present_galleys.pdf |jstor=10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115 |doi=10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115}}</ref><ref name="Neumayer 2018">{{cite book |last=Neumayer |first=Laure |author-link=Laure Neumayer |year=2018 |title=The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=9781351141741}}</ref> Works such as ''The Black Book of Communism'' and ''[[Bloodlands]]'' legitimized debates on the [[comparison of Nazism and Stalinism]],{{r|Jaffrelot & Sémelin 2009}}<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kühne |first=Thomas |date=May 2012 |title=Great Men and Large Numbers: Undertheorising a History of Mass Killing |journal=[[Contemporary European History]] |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=133–143 |doi=10.1017/S0960777312000070 |issn=0960-7773 |jstor=41485456 |s2cid=143701601}}</ref> and by extension communism, and the former work in particular was important in the criminalization of communism.{{r|Ghodsee 2014}}{{r|Neumayer 2018}} According to [[Freedom House]], Communism is "considered one of the two great totalitarian movements of the 20th century", the other being Nazism, but added that "there is an important difference in how the world has treated these two execrable phenomena.":<ref>{{Cite web |last=Puddington |first=Arch |date=23 March 2017 |title=In Modern Dictatorships, Communism's Legacy Lingers On |url=https://freedomhouse.org/article/modern-dictatorships-communisms-legacy-lingers |access-date=5 August 2023 |website=[[Freedom House]] |language=en}}</ref>

The failure of Communist governments to live up to the ideal of a [[communist society]], their general trend towards increasing [[authoritarianism]], their bureaucracy, and the inherent inefficiencies in their economies have been linked to the decline of communism in the late 20th century.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=9–24, 36–44}}<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Djilas |first=Milovan |author-link=Milovan Djilas |date=1991 |title=The Legacy of Communism in Eastern Europe |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45290119 |journal=The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=83–92 |jstor=45290119 |issn=1046-1868}}</ref> [[Walter Scheidel]] stated that despite wide-reaching government actions, Communist states failed to achieve long-term economic, social, and political success.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidel |first=Walter |title=The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-0691165028 |chapter=Chapter 7: Communism |author-link=Walter Scheidel}}</ref> The experience of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the [[North Korean famine]], and alleged economic underperformance when compared to developed free market systems are cited as examples of Communist states failing to build a successful state while relying entirely on what they view as ''orthodox Marxism''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidel |first=Walter |title=The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century |date=2017 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-0691165028 |pages=222 |author-link=Walter Scheidel}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Natsios |first=Andrew S. |title=The Great North Korean Famine |date=2002 |publisher=[[Institute of Peace Press]] |isbn=1929223331 |author-link=Andrew Natsios}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2021}} Despite those shortcomings, [[Philipp Ther]] stated that there was a general increase in the standard of living throughout Eastern Bloc countries as the result of modernization programs under Communist governments.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ther |first=Philipp |url=https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10812.html |title=Europe Since 1989: A History |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-691-16737-4 |page=132 |quote=Stalinist regimes aimed to catapult the predominantly agrarian societies into the modern age by swift industrialization. At the same time, they hoped to produce politically loyal working classes by mass employment in large state industries. Steelworks were built in Eisenhüttenstadt (GDR), Nowa Huta (Poland), Košice (Slovakia), and Miskolc (Hungary), as were various mechanical engineering and chemical combines and other industrial sites. As a result of communist modernization, living standards in Eastern Europe rose. Planned economies, moreover, meant that wages, salaries, and the prices of consumer goods were fixed. Although the communists were not able to cancel out all regional differences, they succeeded in creating largely egalitarian societies. |author-link=:de:Philipp Ther}}</ref> 

Most experts agree there was a significant increase in mortality rates following the years 1989 and 1991, including a 2014 [[World Health Organization]] report which concluded that the "health of people in the former Soviet countries deteriorated dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet Union."<ref name="Ghodsee 2021">{{cite book |last1=Ghodsee |first1=Kristen |last2=Orenstein |first2=Mitchell A. |author1-link=Kristen Ghodsee |date=2021 |title=Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions |url= |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=78 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780197549230.001.0001 |isbn=978-0197549247}}</ref> Post-Communist Russia during the [[IMF]]-backed economic reforms of [[Boris Yeltsin]] experienced surging [[economic inequality]] and [[poverty]] as unemployment reached double digits by the early to mid 1990s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidel |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Scheidel |title=The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-0691165028 |pages=51, 222–223 |quote=Following the dissolution of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and then of the Soviet Union itself in late 1991, exploding poverty drove the surge in income inequality.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Mattei |first=Clara E. |date=2022 |title=The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism |pages=301–302 |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html |location= |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |isbn=978-0226818399 |quote="If, in 1987–1988, 2 percent of the Russian people lived in poverty (i.e., survived on less than $4 a day), by 1993–1995 the number reached 50 percent: in just seven years half the Russian population became destitute.}}</ref> By contrast, the [[Central Europe|Central European]] states of the former Eastern Bloc–Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia–showed healthy increases in life expectancy from the 1990s onward, compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation under Communism.<ref>{{harvp|Hauck|2016}}; {{harvp|Gerr|Raskina|Tsyplakova|2017}}; {{harvp|Safaei|2011}}; {{harvp|Mackenbach|2012}}; {{harvp|Leon|2013}}</ref> Bulgaria and Romania followed this trend after the introduction of more serious economic reforms in the late 1990s.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=C. |last1=Dolea |first2=E. |last2=Nolte |first3=M. |last3=McKee |url=https://jech.bmj.com/content/56/6/444 |title=Changing life expectancy in Romania after the transition] |journal=[[Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health]] |year=2002 |volume=56 |issue=6 |pages=444–449 |doi=10.1136/jech.56.6.444 |pmid=12011202 |pmc=1732171 |access-date=4 January 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Chavez |first=Lesly Allyn |date=June 2014 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335675821 |title=The Effects of Communism on Romania's Population |access-date=4 January 2021}}</ref> The economies of Eastern Bloc countries had previously experienced stagnation in the 1980s under Communism.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hirt |first1=Sonia |last2=Sellar |first2=Christian |last3=Young |first3=Craig |date=4 September 2013 |title=Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation and Purification in Post-Socialist Spaces |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668136.2013.822711 |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]] |volume=65 |issue=7 |pages=1243–1254 |doi=10.1080/09668136.2013.822711 |s2cid=153995367 |issn=0966-8136}}</ref> A common expression throughout Eastern Europe after 1989 was "everything they told us about communism was a lie, but everything they told us about capitalism was true."{{r|Ghodsee 2021}}{{rp|192}} The right-libertarian think tank [[Cato Institute]] has stated that the analyses done of post-communist countries in the 1990s were "premature" and "that early and rapid reformers by far outperformed gradual reformers" on [[Lists of countries by GDP per capita|GDP per capita]], the [[United Nations Human Development Index]] and [[political freedom]], in addition to developing better institutions. The institute also stated that the process of privatization in Russia was "deeply flawed" due to Russia's reforms being "far ''less'' rapid" than those of Central Europe and the [[Baltic states]].<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Havrylyshyn |first1=Oleh |last2=Meng |first2=Xiaofan |last3=Tupy |first3=Marian L. |date=12 July 2016 |title=25 Years of Reforms in Ex-Communist Countries |url=https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/25-years-reforms-ex-communist-countries-fast-extensive-reforms-led-higher-growth#introduction |access-date=7 July 2023 |website=[[Cato Institute]]}}</ref>

The average post-Communist country had returned to 1989 levels of per-capita GDP by 2005.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Appel |first1=Hilary |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PHhTDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA36 |title=From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Postcommunist Countries |last2=Orenstein |first2=Mitchell A. |date=2018 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1108435055 |page=36}}</ref> However, [[Branko Milanović]] wrote in 2015 that following the end of the Cold War, many of those countries' economies declined to such an extent during the transition to capitalism that they have yet to return to the point they were prior to the collapse of communism.<ref>{{cite journal |year=2015 |title=After the Wall Fell: The Poor Balance Sheet of the Transition to Capitalism |journal=[[Challenge (economics magazine)|Challenge]] |volume=58 |issue=2 |pages=135–138 |doi=10.1080/05775132.2015.1012402 |quote=So, what is the balance sheet of transition? Only three or at most five or six countries could be said to be on the road to becoming a part of the rich and (relatively) stable capitalist world. Many of the other countries are falling behind, and some are so far behind that they cannot aspire to go back to the point where they were when the Wall fell for several decades. |last=Milanović |first=Branko |author-link=Branko Milanović |s2cid=153398717}}</ref> Several scholars state that the negative economic developments in post-Communist countries after the fall of Communism led to increased nationalist sentiment and [[Nostalgia for Communism|nostalgia for the Communist era]].{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen Rogheh |title=Red hangover: legacies of twentieth-century communism |date=October 2017 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-6934-9}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=5 December 2011 |title=Confidence in Democracy and Capitalism Wanes in Former Soviet Union |work=Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project |url=http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/ |access-date=24 November 2018}}</ref> In 2011, ''[[The Guardian]]'' published an analysis of the former Soviet countries twenty years after the fall of the USSR. They found that "GDP fell as much as 50 percent in the 1990s in some republics... as capital flight, industrial collapse, hyperinflation and tax avoidance took their toll", but that there was a rebound in the 2000s, and by 2010 "some economies were five times as big as they were in 1991." Life expectancy has grown since 1991 in some of the countries, but fallen in others; likewise, some held free and fair elections, while others remained authoritarian.<ref name=":22">{{Cite web |title=End of the USSR: visualising how the former Soviet countries are doing, 20 years on {{!}} Russia |date=17 Aug 2011 |first1=Mark |last1=Rice-Oxley |first2=Ami |last2=Sedghi |first3=Jenny |last3=Ridley |first4=Sasha |last4=Magill |url=https://theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17/ussr-soviet-countries-data |access-date=21 January 2021 |website=The Guardian}}</ref> By 2019, the majority of people in most Eastern European countries approved of the shift to multiparty democracy and a market economy, with approval being highest among residents of Poland and residents in the territory of what was once [[East Germany]], and disapproval being the highest among residents of Russia and [[Ukraine]]. In addition, 61 percent said that standards of living were now higher than they had been under Communism, while only 31 percent said that they were worse, with the remaining 8 percent saying that they did not know or that standards of living had not changed.<ref>{{Cite web |first1=Richard |last1=Wike |first2=Jacob |last2=Poushter |first3=Laura |last3=Silver |first4=Kat |last4=Devlin |first5=Janell |last5=Fetterolf |first6=Alexandra |last6=Castillo |first7=Christine |last7=Huang |date=15 October 2019 |title=European Public Opinion Three Decades After the Fall of Communism |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/15/european-public-opinion-three-decades-after-the-fall-of-communism/ |access-date=15 June 2023 |website=[[Pew Research Center]]'s Global Attitudes Project |language=en-US}}</ref>

According to Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker in their book ''Communism's Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes'', citizens of post-Communist countries are less supportive of democracy and more supportive of government-provided social welfare. They also found that those who lived under Communist rule were more likely to be left-authoritarian (referencing the [[right-wing authoritarian personality]]) than citizens of other countries. Those who are left-authoritarian in this sense more often tend to be older generations that lived under Communism. In contrast, younger post-Communist generations continue to be anti-democratic but are not as left-wing ideologically, which in the words of Pop-Eleches and Tucker "might help explain the growing popularity of [[right-wing populists]] in the region."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Pop-Eleches |first1=Grigore |last2=Tucker |first2=Joshua |date=12 November 2019 |title=Europe's communist regimes began to collapse 30 years ago, but still shape political views |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/12/europes-communist-regimes-began-collapse-years-ago-still-shape-political-views/ |access-date=20 August 2022}}</ref>

[[Conservatives]], [[Liberalism|liberals]], and [[social democrats]] generally view 20th-century Communist states as unqualified failures. Political theorist and professor [[Jodi Dean]] argues that this limits the scope of discussion around political alternatives to [[capitalism]] and [[neoliberalism]]. Dean argues that, when people think of capitalism, they do not consider what are its worst results ([[climate change]], [[economic inequality]], [[hyperinflation]], the [[Great Depression]], the [[Great Recession]], the [[Robber baron (industrialist)|robber barons]], and [[unemployment]]) because the [[history of capitalism]] is viewed as dynamic and nuanced; the history of communism is not considered dynamic or nuanced, and there is a fixed historical narrative of communism that emphasizes [[authoritarianism]], the [[gulag]], starvation, and violence.<ref>{{cite web |last=Ehms |first=Jule |date=9 March 2014 |url=https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/7871_the-communist-horizon-review-by-jule-ehms/ |title=The Communist Horizon |website=Marx & Philosophy Society |access-date=29 October 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |year=2015 |title=The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QkJ5CAAAQBAJ&pg=PT18 |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |page=xvi–xvii |isbn=978-0822358350}}</ref> Ghodsee,<ref group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Ghodsee|2018|ps=: "Throughout much of the twentieth century, state socialism presented an existential challenge to the worst excesses of the free market. The threat posed by Marxist ideologies forced Western governments to expand social safety nets to protect workers from the unpredictable but inevitable booms and busts of the capitalist economy. After the Berlin Wall fell, many celebrated the triumph of the West, cosigning socialist ideas to the dustbin of history. But for all its faults, state socialism provided an important foil for capitalism. It was in response to a global discourse of social and economic rights—a discourse that appealed not only to the progressive populations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America but also to many men and women in Western Europe and North America—that politicians agreed to improve working conditions for wage laborers as well as create social programs for children, the poor, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled, mitigating exploitation and the growth of income inequality. Although there were important antecedents in the 1980s, once state socialism collapsed, capitalism shook off the constraints of market regulation and income redistribution. Without the looming threat of a rival superpower, the last thirty years of global neoliberalism have witnessed a rapid shriveling of social programs that protect citizens from cyclical instability and financial crises and reduce the vast inequality of economic outcomes between those at the top and bottom of the income distribution."}}</ref> along with the historians [[Gary Gerstle]] and [[Walter Scheidel]], suggest that the rise and fall of communism had a significant impact on the development and decline of [[labor movement]]s and social [[welfare state]]s in the United States and other Western societies. Gerstle argues that organized labor in the United States was strongest when the threat of communism reached its peak, and the decline of both organized labor and the welfare state coincided with the collapse of communism. Both Gerstle and Scheidel posit that as economic elites in the West became more fearful of possible communist revolutions in their own societies, especially as the tyranny and violence associated with communist governments became more apparent, the more willing they were to compromise with the working class, and much less so once the threat waned.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gerstle |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Gerstle |date=2022 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era |url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en& |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=12 |isbn=978-0197519646}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Taylor |first=Matt |date=22 February 2017 |title=One Recipe for a More Equal World: Mass Death|url=https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ypxw55/one-recipe-for-a-more-equal-world-mass-death |work=[[Vice (magazine)|Vice]] |access-date=27 June 2022}}</ref>

== See also ==
{{Portal|Communism}}
{{cols|colwidth=17em}}
* [[Commons-based peer production]]
* [[:Category:Communism by country|Communism by country]]
* [[Criticism of Marxism]]
* [[Crypto-communism]]
* [[List of communist parties]]
* [[Outline of Marxism]]
* [[Post-scarcity economy]]
* [[Sociocultural evolution]]
{{colend}}

; Works<!--That have a Wikipedia article-->
{{cols|colwidth=21em}}
* ''[[American Communist History]]''
* ''[[Twentieth Century Communism]]''
{{colend}}

== References ==
=== Citations ===
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

=== Explanatory footnotes ===
{{reflist|group=note}}

=== Quotes ===
{{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}

== Bibliography ==
{{main|Bibliography of works about communism}}
{{see also|Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War|Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union|Bibliography of the Post Stalinist Soviet Union}}
{{refbegin}}
{{columns-list|colwidth=30em|<!-- Column start. -->
* {{cite book |last=Bernstein |first=Eduard |author-link=Eduard Bernstein |year=1895 |url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1895/cromwell |title=Kommunistische und demokratisch-sozialistische Strömungen während der englischen Revolution |trans-title=Cromwell and Communism: Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution |language=de |publisher=J. H. W. Dietz |oclc=36367345 |access-date=1 August 2021 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}
* {{cite book |last1=Bevins |first1=Vincent |title=[[The Jakarta Method|The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World]] |date=2020b |publisher=[[PublicAffairs]] |isbn=978-1541742406 |page=240 |quote=... we do not live in a world directly constructed by Stalin's purges or mass starvation under Pol Pot. Those states are gone. Even Mao's Great Leap Forward was quickly abandoned and rejected by the Chinese Communist Party, though the party is still very much around. We do, however, live in a world built partly by US-backed Cold War violence. ... Washington's anticommunist crusade, with Indonesia as the apex of its murderous violence against civilians, deeply shaped the world we live in now ... . |author-link=Vincent Bevins}}
* {{cite book |last=Bradley |first=Mark Philip |chapter=Human Rights and Communism |title=The Cambridge History of Communism |volume=3: Endgames? Late Communism in Global Perspective, 1968 to the Present |editor1-last=Fürst |editor1-first=Juliane |editor2-last=Pons |editor2-first=Silvio |editor3-last=Selden|editor3-first=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eBs0DwAAQBAJ |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-1-108-50935-0}}
* {{cite book |last=Brown |first=Archie |author-link=Archie Brown (historian) |date=2009 |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism |publisher=Bodley Head |isbn=978-022407-879-5}}
* {{cite book |last=Calhoun |first=Craig J. |author-link=Craig Calhoun |year=2002 |title=Classical Sociological Theory |publisher=[[Wiley-Blackwell]] |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-631-21348-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6mq-H3EcUx8C}}
* {{cite journal |last=Chomsky |first=Noam |author-link=Noam Chomsky |date=Spring–Summer 1986 |title=The Soviet Union Versus Socialism |url=https://chomsky.info/1986____/ |journal=[[Our Generation (journal)|Our Generation]] |access-date=10 June 2020 |via=Chomsky.info}}
* {{cite journal |last=Dulić |first=Tomislav |date=January 2004 |title=Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel's Work on Democide |journal=[[Journal of Peace Research]] |location=Thousand Oaks, California |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |volume=41 |number=1 |pages=85–102 |doi=10.1177/0022343304040051 |jstor=4149657 |s2cid=145120734}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Engel-Di Mauro |first1=Salvatore |last2=Engel-Di Mauro |first2=Deborah |last3=Faber |first3=Danny |last4=Labban |first4=Mazen |last5=De Kadt |first5=Maarten |last6=Watson |first6=Judith |last7=Armiero |first7=Marco |last8=Brownhill |first8=Leigh |last9=Forkasiewicz |first9=Adi |last10=Vettese |first10=Troy |display-authors=1 |date=4 May 2021 |title=Anti-Communism and the Hundreds of Millions of Victims of Capitalism |journal=[[Capitalism Nature Socialism]] |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=1–17 |doi=10.1080/10455752.2021.1875603 |doi-access=free}}
* {{cite book |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |author-link=Friedrich Engels |date=1970 |orig-date=1880 |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm |chapter=Historical Materialism |title=[[Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]] |translator-link=Edward Aveling |translator-last=Aveling |translator-first=Edward |series=[[Marx/Engels Selected Works]] |volume=3 |location=Moscow |publisher=Progress Publishers |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}
* {{cite journal |last=Farred |first=Grant |author-link=Grant Farred |year=2000 |title=Endgame Identity? Mapping the New Left Roots of Identity Politics |journal=[[New Literary History]] |volume=31 |issue=4 |pages=627–648 |jstor=20057628 |doi=10.1353/nlh.2000.0045 |s2cid=144650061}}</ref>
* {{cite web |last=Fitzgibbons |first=Daniel J. |date=11 October 2002 |title=USSR strayed from communism, say Economics professors |url=https://www.umass.edu/pubaffs/chronicle/archives/02/10-11/economics.html |access-date=22 September 2021 |website=The Campus Chronicle |publisher=[[University of Massachusetts Amherst]]}}
* {{cite book |last=Geary |first=Daniel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z4yNnGJLHU8C&q=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22 |title=Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=2009 |isbn=9780520943445 |via=[[Google Books]]}}
* {{Cite book |last1=George |first1=John |title=American Extremists: Militias, Supremacists, Klansmen, Communists, and Others |last2=Wilcox |first2=Laird |publisher=[[Prometheus Books]] |year=1996 |isbn=978-1573920582 |location=Amherst, NY}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Gerr |first1=Christopher J. |first2=Yulia |last2=Raskina |first3=Daria |last3=Tsyplakova |date=28 October 2017 |title=Convergence or Divergence? Life Expectancy Patterns in Post-communist Countries, 1959–2010 |journal=[[Social Indicators Research]] |volume=140 |issue=1 |pages=309–332 |doi=10.1007/s11205-017-1764-4 |pmid=30464360 |pmc=6223831}}
* {{cite book |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |date=2018 |title=[[Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism]] |url= |location= |publisher=[[Vintage Books]] |pages=3–4 |isbn=978-1568588902}}
* {{cite magazine |editor1-last=Ghodsee |editor1-first=Kristen |editor1-link=Kristen Ghodsee |editor2-last=Sehon |editor2-first=Scott |editor2-link=Scott Sehon |editor3-last=Dresser |editor3-first=Sam |date=22 March 2018 |title=The merits of taking an anti-anti-communism stance |url=https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-communism-stance |url-status=live |magazine=[[Aeon (digital magazine)|Aeon]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220401001435/https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-communism-stance |archive-date=1 April 2022 |access-date=12 August 2021}}
* {{cite book |last1=Gitlin |first1=Todd |author1-link=Todd Gitlin |chapter=The Left's Lost Universalism |editor1-last=Melzer |editor1-first=Arthur M. |editor2-last=Weinberger |editor2-first=Jerry |editor3-last=Zinman |editor3-first=M. Richard |title=Politics at the Turn of the Century |pages=3–26 |location=Lanham, MD |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |date=2001}}
* {{cite book |last=Goldhagen |first=Daniel Jonah |date=2009 |title=Worse than war: genocide, eliminationism, and the ongoing assault on humanity |publisher=PublicAffairs |isbn=978-1-58648-769-0 |edition=1st |location=New York |oclc=316035698}}
* {{cite journal |last=Harff |first=Barbara |author-link=Barbara Harff |date=Summer 1996 |title=Review of ''Death by Government'' by R. J. Rummel |journal=[[Journal of Interdisciplinary History]] |location=Boston, Massachusetts |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |volume=27 |number=1 |pages=117–119 |doi=10.2307/206491 |jstor=206491}}
* {{cite book |last=Harff |first=Barbara |author-link=Barbara Harff |date=2017 |url=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-54463-2_12.pdf |chapter=The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide |editor-last=Gleditsch |editor-first=N. P. |title=R.J. Rummel: An Assessment of His Many Contributions |volume=37 |series=SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice |pages=111–129 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-54463-2_12 |isbn=9783319544632}}
* {{cite web |last=Hauck |first=Owen |date=2 February 2016 |url=https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/average-life-expectancy-post-communist-countries-progress-varies-25-years-after |title=Average Life Expectancy in Post-Communist Countries—Progress Varies 25 Years after Communism |website=Peterson Institute for International Economics |access-date=4 January 2021}}
* {{cite journal |last=Hiroaki |first=Kuromiya |date=2001 |title=Review Article: Communism and Terror. Reviewed Work(s): ''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression'' by Stephane Courtois; Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest |journal=[[Journal of Contemporary History]] |volume=36 |number=1 |pages=191–201 |doi=10.1177/002200940103600110 |jstor=261138 |s2cid=49573923}}
* {{cite book |last=Holmes |first=Leslie |year=2009 |title=Communism: A Very Short Introduction |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-955154-5 |ref=Hol09}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Howard |first1=M. C. |last2=King |first2=J. E. |date=2001 |title=State Capitalism' in the Soviet Union |url=http://www.hetsa.org.au/pdf/34-A-08.pdf |journal=[[History of Economics Review]] |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=110–126 |doi=10.1080/10370196.2001.11733360 |s2cid=42809979}}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Johnson |editor-first1=Elliott |title=Historical Dictionary of Marxism |edition=2nd |editor-first2=David |editor-last2=Walker |editor-first3=Daniel |editor-last3=Gray |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |location=Lanham; Boulder; New York; London |date=2014 |isbn=978-1-4422-3798-8}}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Karlsson |editor-first1=Klas-Göran |editor-last2=Schoenhals |editor-first2=Michael |year=2008 |url=https://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/research-review-crimes-against-humanity.pdf |title=Crimes Against Humanity under Communist Regimes – Research Review |location=Stockholm, Sweden |publisher=Forum for Living History |isbn=9789197748728 |access-date=17 November 2021 |via=Forum för levande historia}}
* {{cite book |last=Kaufman |first=Cynthia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3nJUwFqRLTwC&q=new+left&pg=PA275 |title=Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change |isbn=978-0-89608-693-7 |year=2003 |publisher=[[South End Press]] |via=[[Google Books]]}}
* {{cite journal |last=Kuromiya |first=Hiroaki |date=January 2001 |title=Review Article: Communism and Terror |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |location=Thousand Oaks, California |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=191–201 |doi=10.1177/002200940103600110 |jstor=261138 |s2cid=49573923}}
* {{cite book |last=Lansford |first=Tom |year=2007 |title=Communism |publisher=[[Marshall Cavendish]] |isbn=978-0-7614-2628-8}}
* {{cite web |last=Leon |first=David A. |url=https://blog.oup.com/2011/04/life-expectancy/ |title=Trends in European Life Expectancy: a Salutary View |website=OUPblog |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=23 April 2013 |access-date=12 March 2021}}
* {{cite book |last=Link |first=Theodore |year=2004 |title=Communism: A Primary Source Analysis |publisher=[[Rosen Publishing]] |isbn=978-0-8239-4517-7}}
* {{cite journal |last=Mackenbach |first=Johan |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234823288 |title=Political conditions and life expectancy in Europe, 1900-2008 |journal=[[Social Science and Medicine]] |date=December 2012 |volume=82 |pages=134–146 |doi=10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.12.022 |pmid=23337831}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Morgan |first=W. John |year=2001 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080430768/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences |title=Marxism–Leninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism |editor-last1=Baltes |editor-first1=Paul B. |editor-last2=Smelser |editor-first2=Neil J. |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |volume=20 |edition=1st |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |isbn=9780080430768 |access-date=25 August 2021 |via=[[Science Direct]]}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Morgan |first=W. John |year=2015 |orig-date=2001 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080970875/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences |title=Marxism–Leninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=James D. |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |volume=26 |edition=2nd |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |isbn=9780080970875 |access-date=25 August 2021 |via=[[Science Direct]]}}
* {{cite book |last=Newman |first=Michael |year=2005 |title=Socialism: A Very Short Introduction |edition=paperback |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=9780192804310}}
* {{cite magazine |last=Paczkowski |first=Andrzej |author-link=Andrzej Paczkowski |date=2001 |title=The Storm over The Black Book |url=http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/essays/storm-over-black-book |magazine=[[The Wilson Quarterly]] |volume=25 |number=2 |pages=28–34 |jstor=40260182 |access-date=31 August 2021 |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=[[Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars]] |via=Wilson Quarterly Archives}}
* {{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Bertrand M. |chapter=7 - Trotsky and Trotskyism |editor1-first=Silvio |editor1-last=Pons |editor1-link=:it:Silvio Pons |editor2-first=Stephen A. |editor2-last=Quinn-Smith |title=The Cambridge History of Communism |volume=1 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=2017 |isbn=9781316137024 |doi=10.1017/9781316137024}}
* {{cite book |last=Rabinowitch |first=Alexander |author-link=Alexander Rabinowitch |year=2004 |url=https://8768512fb23263ac9a23-f839e98e865f2de9ab20702733bd4398.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/look-inside/LI-9780745399997.pdf |title=The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd |edition=hardback, 2nd |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |isbn=978-0-7453-9999-7 |access-date=15 August 2021}}
* {{cite book |last1=Rosser |first1=Mariana V. |last2=Barkley |first2=J. Jr. |title=Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |date=23 July 2003 |isbn=978-0262182348 |pages=14 |quote=Ironically, the ideological father of communism, Karl Marx, claimed that communism entailed the withering away of the state. The dictatorship of the proletariat was to be a strictly temporary phenomenon. Well aware of this, the Soviet Communists never claimed to have achieved communism, always labeling their own system socialist rather than communist and viewing their system as in transition to communism.}}
* {{citation |last=Rummel |first=Rudolph Joseph |author-link=Rudolph Rummel |url=https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM#*|title=How Many did Communist Regimes Murder? |access-date=15 September 2018 |publisher=[[University of Hawaii]] Political Science Department |date=November 1993 |archive-date=27 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180827103150/https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM}}
* {{cite journal |last=Safaei |first=Jalil |date=31 August 2011 |title=Post-Communist Health Transitions in Central and Eastern Europe |journal=[[Economics Research International]] |volume=2012 |pages=1–10 |doi=10.1155/2012/137412 |doi-access=free}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |title=Ci–Cz |encyclopedia=The World Book Encyclopedia |volume=4 |publisher=Scott Fetzer Company |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-7166-0108-1}}
* {{cite book |last=Steele |first=David |author-link=David Ramsay Steele |title=From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation |publisher=[[Open Court Publishing Company]] |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-87548-449-5}}
* {{cite journal |last=Weiner |first=Amir |author-link=Amir Weiner |date=2002 |title=Review. Reviewed Work: ''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'' by Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Margolin, Jonathan Murphy, Mark Kramer |journal=[[Journal of Interdisciplinary History]] |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |volume=32 |number=3 |pages=450–452 |doi=10.1162/002219502753364263 |jstor=3656222 |s2cid=142217169}}
* {{cite book |last=Wilczynski |first=J. |title=The Economics of Socialism after World War Two: 1945–1990 |publisher=Aldine Transaction |date=2008 |isbn=978-0202362281 |pages=21 |quote=Contrary to Western usage, these countries describe themselves as 'Socialist' (not 'Communist'). The second stage (Marx's 'higher phase'), or 'Communism' is to be marked by an age of plenty, distribution according to needs (not work), the absence of money and the market mechanism, the disappearance of the last vestiges of capitalism and the ultimate 'withering away' of the State.}}
* {{cite book |last=Williams |first=Raymond |author-link=Raymond Williams |title=Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society |edition=revised |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1983 |isbn=978-0-19-520469-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289 289] |chapter=Socialism |quote=The decisive distinction between socialist and communist, as in one sense these terms are now ordinarily used, came with the renaming, in 1918, of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) as the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). From that time on, a distinction of socialist from communist, often with supporting definitions such as social democrat or democratic socialist, became widely current, although it is significant that all communist parties, in line with earlier usage, continued to describe themselves as socialist and dedicated to socialism. |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289}}
* {{cite book |last=Wright |first=C. Wright |author-link=C. Wright Mills |title=Letter to the New Left |url=http://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/letter-new-left.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |date=1960}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Wormack |first=Brantly |author-link=Brantly Womack |year=2001 |title=Maoism |editor-last1=Baltes |editor-first1=Paul B. |editor-last2=Smelser |editor-first2=Neil J. |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |volume=20 |pages=9191–9193 |edition=1st |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |doi=10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/01173-6 |isbn=9780080430768}}<!-- Split column end. -->
}}
{{refend}}

== Further reading ==
{{Library resources box|onlinebooks=yes}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |editor1-last=Adami |editor1-first=Stefano |editor2-last=Marrone |editor2-first=G. |date=2006 |title=Communism |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies |edition=1st |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-57958-390-3}}
* {{cite book |last=Daniels |first=Robert Vincent |author-link=Robert Vincent Daniels |date=1994 |title=A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse |publisher=[[University Press of New England]] |isbn=978-0-87451-678-4}}
* {{cite book |last=Daniels |first=Robert Vincent |author-link=Robert Vincent Daniels |date=2007 |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=978-0-30010-649-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Dean |first=Jodi |author-link=Jodi Dean |date=2012 |title=The Communist Horizon |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=978-1-84467-954-6}}
* {{cite book |last=Dirlik |first=Arif |date=1989 |title=Origins of Chinese Communism |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-505454-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=Engels |first1=Friedrich |author1-link=Friedrich Engels |last2=Marx |first2=Karl |author2-link=Karl Marx |title=[[The Communist Manifesto]] |date=1998 |orig-date=1848 |edition=reprint |publisher=Signet Classics |isbn=978-0-451-52710-3}}
* {{cite journal |last=Fitzpatrick |first=Sheila |author-link=Sheila Fitzpatrick |date=2007 |title=Revisionism in Soviet History |journal=[[History and Theory]] |volume=46 |number=4 |pages=77–91 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-2303.2007.00429.x |jstor=4502285}}. Historiographical essay that covers the scholarship of the three major schools: totalitarianism, revisionism, and post-revisionism.
* {{cite book |last=Forman |first=James D. |date=1972 |title=Communism: From Marx's Manifesto to 20th-century Reality |publisher=Watts |isbn=978-0-531-02571-0}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Fuchs-Schündeln |first1=Nicola |last2=Schündeln |first2=Matthias |date=2020 |title=The Long-Term Effects of Communism in Eastern Europe |journal=[[Journal of Economic Perspectives]] |volume=34 |number=2 |pages=172–191 |doi=10.1257/jep.34.2.172 |s2cid=219053421 |doi-access=free}}. ([https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/ PDF version])
* {{cite book |last=Furet |first=François |author-link=François Furet |translator-last=Kan |translator-first=D. |date=2000 |title=The Passing of An Illusion: The Idea of Communism In the Twentieth Century |edition=English |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |isbn=978-0-226-27341-9}}
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Fürst |editor1-first=Juliane |editor2-last=Pons |editor2-first=Silvio |editor2-link=:it:Silvio Pons |editor3-last=Selden |editor3-first=Mark |editor3-link=Mark Selden |date=2017 |chapter=Endgames? Late Communism in Global Perspective, 1968 to the Present |title=The Cambridge History of Communism |volume=3 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-31650-159-7}}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Gerlach |editor-first1=Christian |editor-link1=Christian Gerlach |editor-last2=Six |editor-first2=Clemens |date=2020 |title=The Palgrave Handbook of Anti-Communist Persecutions |location= |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-3030549657}}
* {{cite book |last=Gregor |first=A. J. |author-link=A. James Gregor |date=2014 |title=Marxism and the Making of China: A Doctrinal History |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-1-137-37949-8}}
* {{cite book |last=Henry |first=Michel |author-link=Michel Henry |translator-last=Davidson |translator-first=Scott |date=2014 |orig-date=1991 |url=https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/from-communism-to-capitalism-9781472524317 |title=From Communism to Capitalism |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury]] |isbn=978-1-472-52431-7}}
* {{cite book |last1=Laybourn |first1=Keith |author1-link=Keith Laybourn |last2=Murphy |first2=Dylan |date=1999 |title=Under the Red Flag: A History of Communism in Britain |edition=illustrated, hardcover |publisher=[[Sutton Publishing]] |isbn=978-0-75091-485-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Lovell |first=Julia |author-link=Julia Lovell |date=2019 |title=Maoism: A Global History |publisher=Bodley Head |isbn=978-184792-250-2}}
* {{cite book |last=Morgan |first=W. John |date=2003 |title=Communists on Education and Culture 1848–1948 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=0-333-48586-6}}
* {{cite journal |last=Morgan |first=W. John |date=December 2005 |title=Communism, Post-Communism, and Moral Education |journal=[[The Journal of Moral Education]] |volume=34 |number=4 |issn=1465-3877}}. {{ISSN|0305-7240}} (print).
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Naimark |editor-first1=Norman |editor-link1=Norman Naimark |editor-last2=Pons |editor-first2=Silvio |editor-link2=:it:Silvio Pons |date=2017 |chapter=The Socialist Camp and World Power 1941–1960s |title=The Cambridge History of Communism |volume=2 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-31645-985-0}}
* {{cite book |last1=Pipes |first1=Richard |author1-link=Richard Pipes |date=2003 |title=Communism: A History |edition=reprint |publisher=Modern Library |isbn=978-0-81296-864-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Pons |first1=Silvio |author1-link=:it:Silvio Pons |date=2014 |title=The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism 1917–1991 |edition=English, hardcover |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19965-762-9}}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Pons |editor-first1=Silvio |editor-link1=:it:Silvio Pons |editor-last2=Service |editor-first2=Robert |editor-link2=Robert Service (historian) |date=2010 |title=A Dictionary of 20th Century Communism |edition=hardcover |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-0-69113-585-4}}
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Pons |editor1-first=Silvio |editor1-link=:it:Silvio Pons |editor2-last=Smith |editor2-first=Stephen A. |date=2017 |chapter=World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941 |title=The Cambridge History of Communism |volume=1 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-31613-702-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Pop-Eleches |first1=Grigore |last2=Tucker |first2=Joshua A. |date=2017 |title=Communism's Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes |edition=hardcover |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-0-69117-558-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Priestland |first1=David |author1-link=David Priestland |date=2009 |title=The Red Flag: A History of Communism |publisher=[[Grove Press]] |isbn=978-0-80214-512-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Sabirov |first1=Kharis Fatykhovich |date=1987 |url=https://archive.org/details/whatiscommunism1987 |title=What Is Communism? |edition=English |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |isbn=978-0-82853-346-1}}
* {{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |author1-link=Robert Service (historian) |date=2010 |title=Comrades!: A History of World Communism |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-67404-699-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Shaw |first1=Yu-ming |date=2019 |title=Changes And Continuities In Chinese Communism: Volume I: Ideology, Politics, and Foreign Policy |edition=hardcover |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-36716-385-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Zinoviev |first1=Alexandre |author1-link=Alexander Zinoviev |date=1984 |orig-date=1980 |title=The Reality of Communism |publisher=[[Schocken Books]] |isbn=978-0-80523-901-0}}

== External links ==
{{Sister project links|auto=1|q=Communism|wikt=Communism|s=Communism|v=y|d=Q6186}}
* {{cite EB1911|wstitle=Communism|short=x}} Retrieved 18 August 2021.
* [https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism "Communism"]. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Online''. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
* [http://libcom.org/library/ Libertarian Communist Library] at [[Libcom.org]] contains almost 20,000 articles, books, pamphlets, and journals on libertarian communism. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051211121016/http://libcom.org/library/|date=11 December 2005}}. Retrieved 18 August 2021. One example being [https://libcom.org/library/marx-russian-mir-misconceptions-marxists "Marx on the Russian Mir, and misconceptions by Marxists"].
* {{cite NIE |last=Lindsay |first=Samuel McCune |wstitle=Communism |year=1905 |short=x}} Retrieved 18 August 2021.
* [https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/rad.html The Radical Pamphlet Collection] at the [[Library of Congress]] contains materials on the topic of communism. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
* {{cite web |last=Winstanley |first=Gerrard |year=1649 |url=https://www.rogerlovejoy.co.uk/philosophy/diggers/diggers3.htm |title=The True Levellers Standard Advanced, the Diggers' Manifesto |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709064100/http://www.rogerlovejoy.co.uk/philosophy/diggers/diggers3.htm |archive-date=9 July 2011 |access-date=18 August 2021 |via=Roger Lovejoy}} See also [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/winstanley/1649/levellers-standard.htm "The True Levellers Standard Advanced: Or, The State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men"] from [[Kingston University London]]'s Faculty of Business and Social Sciences at [[Marxists Internet Archive]]. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
* [https://communistcrimes.org/en Communist Crimes: Facts, research and articles on communist ideology and regimes. Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.]
* [https://www.memoriaal.ee/en/ Estonia's Victims of Communism 1940–1991.]
{{communism}}
{{political ideologies}}
{{political philosophy}}
{{authority control}}

[[Category:Communism| ]]<!-- Please leave the empty space as standard. -->
[[Category:1770s neologisms]]
[[Category:Anarcho-communism]]
[[Category:Anti-capitalism]]
[[Category:Anti-fascism]]
[[Category:Economic ideologies]]
[[Category:Left-wing ideologies]]
[[Category:Marxism–Leninism]]
[[Category:Political ideologies]]
[[Category:Political culture]]
[[Category:Social anarchism]]
[[Category:Socialism]]