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Communism

From dKosopedia

Modern secular Communism is an political ideology that emphasises class struggle and the need for the working class, i.e. the Proletrariat, to join together to push its interests vis-a-vis the middle and ruling classes, i.e. the Petit Bourgeoisie and Beouyrgeoisie. In the ideal, a communist society is a classless, moneyless, and stateless society were the means of production are controlled by the proletariat. In reality communist states or Leninist Party-State have created comprehensive systems of often poor quality social services, subordinated pre-communist elites, and established combinations of state owned and worker owned enterprises producing goods (more or less) according to quotas set by central planning agencies. Many economies that call themselves communist have been criticized for being inefficient, to focused on productive capacity as opposed to consumer goods, and inflexibility to changing conditions.

Politically, communist states have been described as insufficiently democratic and as giving too little respect to the rights of the individual. Many supporters of communism argue that these failings are due to the regime's failures to abide by communist doctrine, rather than due to its adoption of communist doctrine. Communist states traditionally have distrusted religion. This feeling lead in the Eisenhower administration to the insertion of the words "under God" into the pledge of allegiance and to other references to God in public life, along with many expressly anti-communist policies.

Communist parties have won democratic national election, although most communists have won subnational offices and seats in national parliaments. Most Communist Parties win National elections through an alliance with another party such as in Chile the communist party in an alliance with the socialist party won power, olny to be overthrown in a US backed coup. Many European countries have communist parties, not always under that name. The Communist Party, U.S.A., has never had any electoral strength in the United States.

Karl Marx is the individual most credited with the idea of modern secular communism. He and others helped to establish a global socialist political movement that later fragmented into a variety of political ideological movements, some of which achieved political power. The most powerful was Marxism-Leninism develoepd by the Russian Bolsheviks (later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or CPSU) under Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia in November, 1917 (overthrowing the autocratic Romanov Czarist regime. The power struggle inside the CPSU following the death of Lenin led to the emergence off the Stalinist and later post-Stalinist orthodox Soviet Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyist Marxism-Leninism. Orthodox Marxism-Leninism was faithfully copied by al but two of the communist parties that took power in Eastern and Central Europe when the Soviet Red Army defeated the German Wehrmacht. Yugoslav and Albanian communism developed independently, although the later was later influenced by ideological developments in the People's Republic of China. The Soviet Union and Orthodox Marxism-Leninism also provided the models for the communist movements that took power in Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. In Romania, Nicolae Ceacescu brook with the Soviet Union and developed Romanian national communism.

The Sino-Soviet split caused the emergence of a third political movement: Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism. This was dominant in the People's Republic of China and influenced the ideological development of the Albanian Communist Party under Enver Hoxha, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in Cambodia, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, and the North Korean Worker's Party under Kim il Sung.

See Also

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This page was last modified 18:06, 1 December 2008 by dKosopedia user Estusemucho. Based on work by Chad Lupkes, CD and Andrew Oh-Willeke and dKosopedia user(s) Jbet777, Freedom2k8, BartFraden, Corncam, Reddays, One of the people and DAT in NY. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.


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