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Portal:Communism

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THE COMMUNISM PORTAL

Introduction

Communism (from Latin communis 'common, universal') is a political and economic ideology whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic classless order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need. A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and an authoritarian socialist, vanguardist, or party-driven approach to establish a socialist state, which is expected to wither away.

There are many variants of communism, such as anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought (including Leninism and its offshoots), and religious communism. These ideologies share the analysis that the current order of society stems from the capitalist economic system and mode of production; they believe that there are two major social classes under capitalism, that the relationship between them is exploitative, and that it can only be resolved through social revolution. The two classes under capitalism are the proletariat (working class), who make up most of the population and sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie (owning class), a minority that derives profit from employing the proletariat through private ownership of the means of production. Some variants additionally emphasize feudal classes, such as the peasantry and feudal lords, or other classes. According to this, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a socialist 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 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels offered a new definition of communism in The Communist Manifesto. In the 20th century, Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism came to power, first in the Soviet Union with the 1917 Russian Revolution, then in Eastern Europe, Asia, and other regions after World War II. By the 1920s, communism had become one of the two dominant types of socialism in the world, the other being social democracy. Communist parties have been described as radical left or far-left. (Full article...)

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Mao flag
Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (Chinese: , pinyin: Máo Zēdōng Sīxĭang) is an ideology derived from the teachings of Mao Zedong. In the People's Republic of China (PRC) Mao Zedong Thought has been the official doctrine of the Communist Party of China since the Cultural Revolution of the mid 1960s, although since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping the term has had little meaning in practice.

Outside the PRC, Maoism was a term, used from the 1960s onwards, usually in a hostile sense, to describe parties or individuals who supported Mao Zedong and his form of Communism, as opposed to the form practised in the Soviet Union, which these groups denounced as "revisionist." These groups usually rejected the term Maoism, preferring to call themselves Marxist–Leninists. Since the death of Mao and the reforms of Deng, most of these parties have disappeared, but various small Communist groups in a number of countries continue to advance Maoist ideas.

Selected biography

Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 5 March 1953) was the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the leader of the Soviet Union, which he ruled as a leader of dictatorship of proletariat.

Stalin launched a command economy, replacing the New Economic Policy of the 1920s with five-year plans and launching a period of rapid industrialization and economic collectivization. The upheaval in the agricultural sector disrupted food production, resulting in widespread famine, such as the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor.

During the late 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purge (also known as the "Great Terror"), a campaign to purge the Communist Party of people accused of sabotage, terrorism, or treachery; he extended it to the military and other sectors of Soviet society. Targets were often executed, imprisoned in Gulag labor camps or exiled. In the years which followed, millions of members of ethnic minorities were also deported.

In 1939, after failed attempts to establish a collective security system in Europe, Stalin decided to enter into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, followed by a Soviet invasion of Poland, Finland, the Baltics, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. After Germany violated the pact in 1941, the Soviet Union joined the Allies to play a primary role in the Axis defeat, at the cost of the largest death toll for any country in the war (mostly due to the mass deaths of civilians on the territories occupied by Nazis). After the war Stalin installed communist governments in most of Eastern Europe, forming the Eastern Bloc, behind what was referred to as an "Iron Curtain" of Soviet rule during the long period of antagonism between the Western world and the USSR, known as the Cold War.

Stalin fostered a cult of personality around him, but after his death, his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced his legacy and drove the process of de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union.

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4th Tamil Nadu state conference of the Revolutionary Socialist Party.

Photo credit: Rspdrravindran

26 August 2026 – 2026 Nepal floods
Flash floods and mudslides along the Trishuli River impact Nepal and Tibet. At least 160 people are killed, hundreds are injured and 463 others, including over 200 tourists, are reported missing in Nepal, while Chinese Communist Party officials report three deaths and 265 missing in Tibet, severely affecting Gyirong County and its port. (AFP via Jamaica Observer) (AP) (BBC News)
13 July 2026 – Naxalite–Maoist insurgency
Ravindra Ganjhu, a CPI (Maoist) top wanted leader, is confirmed to have been arrested by Jharkhand police in Latehar, India during an anti-Maoist operation. (The New Indian Express)

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Together with this inquestionable increase in the number of workers occupied in industry, we are also confronted in Soviet Russia with an increase in the number of unemployed registered on the Labour Exchange. The number of unemployed has attained about a million. There have been months when the number of unemployed has even exceeded that amount.

Unemployment is one of the most distressing phenomena in Russia at the present time, and we must take every measure to abolish it. Of the entire number of unemployed about one fourth, or 25%, are industrial workers, and the remainder is made up of the intelligentzia, the professions, office workers and unskilled labourers. I must admit that I personally do not place complete confidence in the official statistics of the Labour Exchange, because of that fact that all kinds of people are registered on the exchange for the sake of receiving those privileges for the unemployed and those conditions of hire which are guaranteed by the laws of the Soviet Republic, and which are inflexibly carried out. Here are registered not only those who are looking for work, but also those who would not accept work, and are merely looking for the privileges and exemptions which are connected with the category of unemployment. We have constantly discovered cases where people who have been arrested and sentenced to Pechora (a place of exile-to Archangel) on the charge of speculation, have been registered on the Labour Exchange as unemployed. Therefore in my opinion the official figures probably exceed the actual number of unemployed. But in general we must take cognizance of the growth of number of unemployed, which goes parallel with the growth of the number of workers occupied in industry.

Alexei Rykov (1881-1938)
REPORT on the Economic Position of Soviet Russia and a summary of the Discussion in the Russian Communist Party , 1924

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