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 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. The two classes are the proletariat, who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their 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. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.
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. In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, 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. 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. (Full article...)
The Workers' Party (Arabic: حزب العمال), formerly the Tunisian Workers' Communist Party (Arabic: حزب العمال الشيوعي التونسي, Ḥizb al-‘Ummāl ash-Shuyū‘ī at-Tūnisī ; French: Parti communiste des ouvriers de Tunisie, PCOT), is a Marxist-Leninistpolitical party in Tunisia. Its general secretary is Hamma Hammami. After their involvement in the uprising against Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, PCOT held their first conference as a legal party on July 22–24, with up to 2000 persons attending.
In the 2011 Constituent Assembly election, the candidates of PCOT's electoral formation ran by the name "Revolutionary Alternative" (Arabic: البديل الثوريal-badīl ath-thawrī; French: Alternative révolutionaire) and won 3 of the 217 seats, in Sfax, Kairouan and Siliana. In July 2012, the PCOT decided to remove the word "communist" from its name to avoid the stereotype associated with this term.
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung, (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was the chairman of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China from 1943 and the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from 1945 until his death. Under his leadership, the CCP became the ruling party of mainland China as the result of its victory in the Chinese Civil War. On 1 October 1949, Mao declared the formation of the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen Square.
Mao developed a brand of Sinified Marxism-Leninismcommunism known as Maoism, paralleling the political ideology known as Stalinism. While in power, he started a series of experiments aimed at speeding up China's economic development known as the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward sought to rely on labour instead of capital to help agriculture and industries succeed. Unfortunately, as a result of the Great Leap Forward, at least 20 million people starved to death. He forged, and later split, an alliance with the Soviet Union and launched the Cultural Revolution, with its stated goal of purging Chinese society of bourgeoisie elements and enforcing socialism.
Mao is widely credited for creating a mostly unified China free of foreign domination for the first time since the First and Second Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century. Mao has also been criticized for his inefficient response to the famine of 1958–1961 and the violence of the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong is commonly referred to as Chairman Mao (毛主席). At the height of his personality cult, Mao was commonly known in China as the "Four Greats": "Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander, Great Helmsman".
...that Moscow City Hall, built in the 1890s to the tastes of the Russian bourgeoisie, was converted by Communists into the Central Lenin Museum after its rich interior decoration had been plastered over.
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The suppression of the resistance of the exploiters — which is the fundamental task of the dictatorship — is not only a military, or only a political, or only an economic task; it is all of them — military, political, economic. The resistance of the exploiters acquires only its most acute form during an armed conflict; but the rich peasantry, which will not give the bread for the famishing population; the engineers who sabotage industry; and the bankers who bring confusion into the mutual account of the industrial enterprises by concealing their books — are not less important factors in the resistance of the bourgeoisie. The suppression of all these various forms of resistance can be as little the work of an organization created in the narrow sphere of the trade union movement, as, say, of a workers’ co-operative organization. It can be successfully achieved only by a general organization of all the workers; in the shape of their Soviets, in which are represented all the forms of the labor movement, and which are under the guidance of a political party, concentrating in itself the whole experience of the previous struggle of the working class.
In the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communist Party is still more necessary for the working class than in any other. It constitutes an essential condition for victory. A refusal to work for its creation and strengthening means a renunciation of the efficient carrying on of the class war; i. e., a renunciation of dictatorship, of a condition of the victory of Socialism, and may engender, although unconsciously, the most cruel betrayal of the working class cause, by depriving the proletariat, at the most critical moment, of its most important weapon. Anyone who doubts the inevitability of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a necessary stage of its victory over the bourgeoisie, facilitates the conditions for the victory of the latter; anyone who doubts or renounces the political party of the proletariat, is helping to weaken and disorganize the working class.