Communism
Communism is a socio-economic ideology advocating for a classless society where the means of production are owned and controlled by the community as a whole. It seeks to eliminate private property and establish a system where resources are distributed based on need. Communism has been influential in shaping political movements and governments around the world.
5 Key excerpts on "Communism"
eBook - ePub- Stephen White(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Equally, however, the state still existed (as it was not supposed to do under Communism) and the distribution of rewards was determined by the work that people did, rather than by their needs. Only when the higher stage of Communism had been reached would the state disappear and distribution be determined by people’s needs rather than by the work they performed. In the Soviet case the single most authoritative statement of the official ideology was the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a new and revised version of which was adopted by the 27th Party Congress in 1986. This defined Communism in the following terms: Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and with full social equality of all members of society. Under Communism, the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of productive forces on the basis of continuous progress in science and technology, all the springs of social wealth will flow abundantly, and the great principle, ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’, will be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people, a society in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a clearly recognised necessity, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people. The achievement of a communist society of this kind was described in the Programme as the CPSU’s ‘ultimate goal’; the much more general transition from capitalism to socialism and Communism on a worldwide scale was described, despite its ‘unevenness, complexity and contradictoriness’, as ‘inevitable’. The 1986 Programme replaced a more ambitious set of objectives that had been approved in 1961 under party leader Nikita Khrushchev...
eBook - ePubMarxism
Karl Marx's Fifteen Key Concepts for Cultural and Communication Studies
- Christian Fuchs(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In a fully developed communist society, there is no wage-labour and no compulsion to work. Everyone works as far as he can and work is largely self-fulfilment. Goods are not sold or exchanged, but given to humans freely as gifts. There is distribution not according to the possession of money, but according to human needs. 10.2.4.2 Communist Politics Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; Communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i. e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. 30 Freedom is an important principle of democratic societies. For Marx, Communism means the abolition of alienation and the realisation of true freedom that allows humans to fully develop their potentials. Communism is a democracy and a humanism, in which the freedom of all interacts with individual freedom. “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”. 31 It has often been argued that Communism is totalitarian but for Marx and Engels, democracy is a precondition of Communism. This circumstance becomes, for example, very clear in the following two passages: “Question 18 : What will be the course of this revolution? Answer: In the first place it will inaugurate a democratic constitution and thereby, directly or indirectly, the political rule of the proletariat”. 32 Democracy nowadays is Communism. […] Democracy has become the proletarian principle, the principle of the masses. The masses may be more or less clear about this, the only correct meaning of democracy, but all have at least an obscure feeling that social equality of rights is implicit in democracy...
eBook - ePubCentrally Planned Economies
Theory and Practice in Socialist Czechoslovakia
- Libor Žídek(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Communism will be characterized by the absence of markets and money, abundance and the withering away of the state. (Gregory and Stuart 2014) In the eyes of the theorists, it is the conflict between the classes which causes progress among the stages. Societies have always taken on the form of an oppressed majority living under the thumb of an oppressive minority. In capitalism, the conflict takes place between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The proletariat will irreversibly grab power (under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party) in a revolutionary action because the bourgeoisie is not willing to surrender voluntarily. In Marx and Engels’ view the decline of capitalism is inevitable because the system is developing its own contradictions up to an unsolvable state (Hába et al. 1988). It creates conditions for the appearance of a new, classless socio-economic system – Communism – which will be created on the ruins of capitalism. As Lenin expressed: “The proletariat seizes state power and turns the means. […] But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions” (Lenin 1964, p. 400). Marx emphasized that the rule by the working class must be a dictatorship (Gregory and Stuart 2014). In specific, he believed in the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat (Marx and Engels 1969), which was deepened by Lenin (1964). He believed that the state will “wither away” and because democracy represents the state it will evaporate as well. Toppling of the bourgeoisie and abolition of private property was supposed to liberate the man from the domination of others (Havelková 2009 b). It was meant to result in a situation when everybody is supposed to be an owner. This is based on the principle that, as a member of the society, in which everybody works for everybody, each member of the society is de facto an owner...
eBook - ePub- Vic George, Nicholas Manning(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 T HE POLITICAL ECONOMY AND SOCIAL POLICY OF THE USSR The primary concern of this chapter is the inter-relationship between social policy and the political economy of the Soviet Union. It is an examination both of the constraints and opportunities through which the political and economic system affects social policy and of the influences of social policy on that system in its professed attempt to industrialise and create a fully socialist, i.e. communist, society. We need to discuss first, however, the nature of the political economy and of social policy. Some repetition of points made in passing in previous chapters is inevitable but it is necessary in order to prepare the ground for the main discussion of this chapter. The political economy of the Soviet Union * Unlike the relatively clear distinction which can be drawn between economic and political systems in capitalist societies, we shall have to consider the political economy of the Soviet Union as an interlocking whole. The economy is shaped by two key principles: the public ownership of the means of production, and the centralised planning of major production and distribution decisions. 1 We characterise it as centralised state socialism. It aims to generate surplus (as must all economic systems) but the accumulation and distribution of this surplus is determined primarily according to the political aims of the Communist party acting through the central government administrators rather than by the profit-maximisation typically pursued by private owners of capital in capitalist societies. The political determination of priorities occurs at the top of the hierarchy of power in the central committee of the party. Decisions reached here are transmitted down according to the principle of democratic centralism. This has resulted in a very centralised hierarchical system whereby all levels, from enterprises or small city soviets upwards, are accountable to those above...
eBook - ePubDiplomacy and Global Governance
The Diplomatic Service in an Age of Worldwide Interdependence
- Thomas Nowotny(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...10 Welded Together by the Economy: “All Politics Is Global” “The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.” —Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto The Great Transformation When Karl Marx wrote this manifesto, the world he described was just emerging. Now it is a reality. Karl Marx was correct in his analysis. Today we can agree with his central thesis: namely that the economy and economic development underlie much of what occurs in other spheres such as politics or culture. This seems to hold true at least if we take a very long-term view of things and look at them in a historic perspective that spans centuries...
