Communism

1. Communism • Communism is a socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production and property in general. • Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems believed to be inherent with capitalist economies and the legacy of imperialism and nationalism. • Communism states that the only way to solve these problems would be for the working class, or proletariat, to replace the wealthy bourgeoisie, which is currently the ruling class, in order to establish a peaceful, free society, without classes, or government. • Communism is the idea of a free society with no division or alienation, where humankind is free from oppression and scarcity. • A communist society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions.

2. Marxism • Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and the systems which they perceived to be responsible for the exploitation of workers. • But whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution was all but inevitable, and the only path to the socialist state. • According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom.

3. Marxism • According to Marx, Communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal: • The agent is the common/working people; • the obstacles are class divisions, economic inequalities, unequal life-chances, and false consciousness; • the goal is the fulfillment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of the product. • They believed that communism allowed people to do what they want, but also put humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to exploit, or have any need to. • Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the establishment of a communist society in which private ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community.

4. Marxism • Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a communist society. • It is clear that it entails abundance in which there is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake. • In the popular slogan that was adopted by the communist movement, communism was a world in which each gave according to their abilities, and received according to their needs. • The German Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the communist future: • "In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."

5. Marxism • Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way toward communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about. • In the late 19th century the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often used interchangeably. • However, Marx and Engels argued that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully developed state, but would pass through a "first phase" in which most productive property was owned in common, but with some class differences remaining. • The "first phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which class differences were eliminated, and a state was no longer needed. • Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to refer to Marx and Engels' supposed "first phase" of communism and used the term "communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels' "higher phase" of communism.

6. Leninism • In his pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin argued that the proletariat can only achieve a successful revolutionary consciousness through the efforts of a vanguard party composed of full-time professional revolutionaries. • Leninism holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolutionary means; that is, any attempts to reform capitalism from within, such as non-revolutionary forms of democratic socialism, are doomed to fail. • The goal of a Leninist party is to orchestrate the overthrow of the existing government by force and seize power on behalf of the proletariat and then implement a dictatorship of the proletariat. • The party must then use the powers of government to educate the proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of false consciousness the bourgeois have instilled in them in order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically, such as religion and nationalism.