Communism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===== 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}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page