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Communism

Communism

:This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. For issues regarding Communist organizations, see the Communist party article. For issues regarding Communist Party-run states, see Communist state. Communism refers to a theoretical system of social organization and a political movement based on common ownership of the means of production. As a political movement, communism seeks to establish a classless society. A major force in world politics since the early 20th century, modern communism is generally associated with The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, according to which the capitalist profit-based system of private ownership is replaced by a communist society in which the means of production are communally owned, such as through a gift economy. Often this process is said initiated by the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie (see Marxism), passes through a transitional period marked by the preparatory stage of socialism (see Leninism). Pure communism has never been implemented, it remains theoretical: communism is, in Marxist theory, the end-state, or the result of state-socialism. The word is now mainly understood to refer to the political, economic, and social theory of Marxist thinkers, or life under conditions of Communist party rule. In the late 19th century, Marxist theories motivated socialist parties across Europe, although their policies later developed along the lines of "reforming" capitalism, rather than overthrowing it. The exception was the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. One branch of this party, commonly known as the Bolsheviks and headed by Vladimir Lenin, succeeded in taking control of the country after the toppling of the Provisional Government in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1918, this party changed its name to the Communist Party; thus establishing the contemporary distinction between communism and socialism. After the success of the October Revolution in Russia, many socialist parties in other countries became communist parties, owing allegiance of varying degrees to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (see Communist International). After World War II, regimes calling themselves communist took power in Eastern Europe. In 1949 the Communists in China, led by Mao Zedong, came to power and established the People's Republic of China. Among the other countries in the Third World that adopted a Communist form of government at some point were Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, and Mozambique. By the early 1980s, almost one-third of the world's population lived under Communist states. Communism never became a popular ideology in the United States, either before or after the establishment of the Communist Party USA in 1919. Since the early 1970s, the term "Eurocommunism" was used to refer to the policies of Communist Parties in Western Europe, which sought to break with the tradition of uncritical and unconditional support of the Soviet Union. Such parties were politically active and electorally significant in France and Italy. With the collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe from the late 1980s and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Communism's influence has decreased dramatically in Europe, but around a quarter of the world's population still lives under Communist Party rule.

Marxism

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and 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 socialism. 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. Marx here follows G.W.F. Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of constraints but as action having moral content. Not only does communism allow people to do what they want but it puts humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to have need for exploitation. Whereas for Hegel, the unfolding of this ethnical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material, especially the development of the means of production. 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. 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 his abilities, and received according to his 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, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm] Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a positive scientific 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. Some of Marx's contemporaries, such as Mikhail Bakunin, espoused similar ideas, but differed in their views of how to reach to a harmonic society with no classes. To this day there has been a split in the workers movement between Marxists (communists) and anarchists. The anarchists are against, and wish to abolish, every state organisation. Among them, anarchist-communists such as Peter Kropotkin believed in an immediate transition to one society with no classes, while anarcho-syndicalists believe that labor unions, as opposed to Communist parties, are the organizations that can help usher this society.

The growth of modern Communism

Soviet Marxism

In Russia, the modern world's first effort to build socialism or communism on a large scale, following the 1917 October Revolution, led by Lenin's Bolsheviks, raised significant theoretical and practical debates on communism among Marxists themselves. Marx's theory had presumed that revolutions would occur where capitalist development was the most advanced and where a large working class was already in place. Russia, however, was the poorest country in Europe, with an enormous, illiterate peasantry and little industry. Under these circumstances, it was necessary for the communists, according to Marxian theory, to create a working class itself. Nevertheless, some socialists believed that a Russian revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the west. For this reason, the socialist Mensheviks had opposed Lenin's communist Bolsheviks in their demand for socialist revolution before capitalism had been established. In seizing power, the Bolsheviks found themselves without a program beyond their pragmatic and politically successful slogans "peace, bread, and land," which had tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War and the peasants' demand for land reform. The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies. The revolutionary Bolsheviks broke completely with the non-revolutionary social democratic movement, withdrew from the Second International, and formed the Third International, or Comintern, in 1919. Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the development of a socialist economy. Ultimately, their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state. In the early 1920s, the Soviet Communists formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire. Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline. In 1918-1920, in the middle of the Russian Civil War, the new regime nationalized all productive property. When mutiny and peasant unrest resulted, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP). However, Joseph Stalin's personal fight for leadership spelled the end of the NEP, and he used his control over personnel to abandon the program. The Soviet Union and other countries ruled by Communist Parties are often described as 'Communist states' with 'state socialist' economic bases. This usage indicates that they proclaim that they have realized part of the socialist program by abolishing private control of the means of production and establishing state control over the economy; however, they do not declare themselves truly communist, as they have not established communal ownership.

Stalinism

The Stalinist version of socialism, with some important modifications, shaped the Soviet Union and influenced Communist Parties worldwide. It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization and collectivization. The rapid development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, maintained that vision throughout the world, even around a decade following Stalin's death, when the party adopted a program in which it promised the establishment of communism within thirty years. However, under Stalin's leadership, evidence emerged that dented faith in the possibility of achieving communism within the framework of the Soviet model. Stalin had created in the Soviet Union a repressive state that dominated every aspect of life. After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev admitted the enormity of the repression that took place under Stalin. Later, growth declined, and rent-seeking and corruption by state officials increased, which dented the legitimacy of the Soviet system. Despite the activity of the Comintern, the Soviet Communist Party adopted the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country" and claimed that, due to the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism," it was possible, even necessary, to build socialism in one country alone. This departure from Marxist internationalism was challenged by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution" stressed the necessity of world revolution.

Trotskyism

Trotsky and his supporters organized into the "Left Opposition," and their platform became known as Trotskyism. But Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining full control of the Soviet regime, and their attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. After Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured in two distinct branches: Stalinism and Trotskyism. Trotsky later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern, in 1938. Though some follow Trotskyism today, Trotsky's theories were never reaccepted in Communist circles in the Soviet bloc, even after Stalin's death; and Trotsky's interpretation of communism has not been successful in leading a political revolution that would overthrow a state. However, Trotskyist ideas have occasionally found an echo among political movements in countries experiencing social upheavals (such is the case of Alan Woods' Trotskyist Committee for a Marxist International, which has had contact with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela), most parties are active in politically stable, developed countries (such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany). It is noteworthy that Trotskyists groups that contribute with pro-capitalist parties have not escaped criticism as opportunists from other Trotskyists which are loathe to do so (see Trotskyism).

Cold War years

As the Soviet Union won important allies by victory in the Second World War in Eastern Europe, communism as a movement spread to a number of new countries, and gave rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism. Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern Europe. Governments modeled on Soviet Communism were formed in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Communist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern, and Titoism, a new branch in the world communist movement, was labeled "deviationist." By 1950 the Chinese Communists held all of China except Taiwan, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases actual fighting include Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and, especially, Vietnam (see Vietnam War). With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against Western imperialism in these poor countries.

Maoism

After the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin's crimes and his cult of personality. He called for a return to the principles of Lenin, thus presaging some change in Communist methods. However, Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological differences between China and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly apparent in the 1960s and 1970s. As the Sino-Soviet Split in the international Communist movement turned toward open hostility, Maoist China portrayed itself as a leader of the underdeveloped world against the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with Maoism gaining recognition worldwide as a new branch of Marxism.

Collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism today

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in accordance with reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself dissolved. By the beginning of the 21st century, Communist parties hold power in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova is a member of the Communist Party of Moldova, but the country is not run under one-party leadership. However, China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Communist parties, or their descendent parties, remain politically important in many European countries and throughout the Third World, particularly in India. Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Eastern Europe was not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of the societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of a bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in its own interests. Marxist critics of the Soviet Union referred to the Soviet system, along with other Communist states, as "state capitalism," arguing that Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal. They argued that the state and party bureaucratic elite acted as a surrogate capitalist class in the heavily centralized and repressive political apparatus. Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled by a Communist Party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to such existing nation-states. In the social sciences, societies ruled by Communist Parties are distinct for their single party control and their socialist economic bases. While anticommunists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, many social scientists identified possibilities for independent political activity within them, and stressed their continued evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, Marxist revolutionaries are active in India, Nepal, and Colombia.

"Communism" or "communism"?

According to the 1996 third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, communism and derived words are written with the lowercase "c" except when they refer to a political party of that name, a member of that party, or a government led by such a party, in which case the word "Communist" is written with the uppercase "C".

Criticism of communism

:Main article: Criticisms of communism. A diverse array of writers and political activists have published anticommunist work, such as Soviet bloc dissidents Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel; economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman; and historians and social scientists Hannah Arendt, Robert Conquest, Daniel Pipes and R. J. Rummel, to name a few. Some writers such as Conquest go beyond attributing large-scale human rights abuses to Communist regimes, presenting events occurring in these countries, particularly under Stalin, as an argument against the ideology of Communism itself. It should be noted that these are criticisms of Communist parties and states they have ruled, rather than criticisms of communism as such. It should also be noted that many Communist parties outside of the Warsaw Pact (i.e. Communist parties in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa) differed greatly, therefore no single criticism fits all.

External links

Online resources for original Marxist literature

- [http://www.marxists.org Marxists Internet Archive]
- [http://www.libcom.org/library Libertarian Communist Library]
- [http://www.marxist.net Marxist.net]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm?title= Theses on Feuerbach]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm?title= Principles of Communism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm?title= The Communist Manifesto]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm?title= The Civil War in France]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm?title= Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1896/960126.htm Reform or Revolution?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm?title= What is to be Done?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep/index.htm?title= One Step Forward, Two Steps Back]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/two-tact/index.htm?title= Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm?title= Materialism and Empirio-Criticism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm?title= The Right of Nations to Self-Determination]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm?title= Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm?title= The State and Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/index.htm?title= The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/index.htm?title= The Tasks of the Proletariat In Our Revolution] Category:Communism Category:Political theories Category:Society Category:Economic ideologies zh-min-nan:Kiōng-sán-chú-gī ko:공산주의 ms:Komunisme ja:共産主義 simple:Communism

Communist party

In modern usage, a communist party is a political party which promotes communism, a sociopolitical philosophy based on the particular interpretation of Marxism put forth by Vladimir Lenin. Communist parties today may or may not formally use the term "communist" in their name. Even if they do, not all follow a strict interpretation of any of the main 'schools' of communism (chiefly Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism or Trotskyism). The original Communist Parties first started to be widely established across the world in the early 20th century, after the creation of the Communist International by the Russian Bolsheviks. Communist parties have held power in 21 nations throughout history, first and most notably in the Soviet Union. As of 2005, parties that profess adherence to communist ideology govern Cuba, the Peoples' Republic of China, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea. In the case of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the adoption of a so-called "socialist market economy" — formally known as "socialism with Chinese characteristics" — has led many communists and communist parties worldwide to argue that it has either partially or completely abandoned communism for capitalism and market society, a charge which the CPC vigorously denies. The Communist Party of Vietnam's adoption of doi moi has led to similar allegations from critics, as have recent Communist Party of Cuba policies dating from during and after the Special Period of the 1990s. In North Korea, Marxism has been officially "superseded" by the ideology of Juche. In July 2002, North Korea started running an experiment with capitalism in the Kaesŏng Industrial Region. A small number of other areas have been designated as Special Administrative Regions, or regions where free-market policies are allowed, including Sinŭiju along the China-North Korea border. Meanwhile, in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, the Communist Party was elected back into power. However, as of 2004, this nominally communist government has not distinguished itself in any significant way from the capitalist government which preceded it. There are currently hundreds, if not thousands, of communist parties, large and small, in existence today throughout the world. Their success rates vary widely: some are growing; others are in decline. See the List of Communist Parties and the World Communist Movement for details on today's communist parties.

History of Communist Parties

Early Communist groups

The first international Marxist organization was called the Communist League, advocates of the principles put forth in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto and inspired by the example of the Paris Commune. The group dissolved in 1852 after breaking into factional quarrels. The Bolshevik party seized power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In March, 1918, the party changed its name to "All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", and was generally known as "The Communist Party" from that point on. Many other Communist parties, especially in Europe, were created in the 1910s and 1920s as the result of factional splits within most of the socialist parties that existed at the time. Some factions advocated the creation of socialism through existing legal channels, while others advocated armed revolution and the ejection of the bourgeois from power through the use of force. The revolutionary groups usually called themselves communists, while those who wanted a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism kept the names socialists or social democrats. Shortly after the split, more differences between the two sides began to emerge. During the 1920s, communists supported the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism, while the socialists supported only Marxism and rejected Leninism. This rift grew even wider as both sides started to develop separate branches of their own. Most mainsteam social democrats had abandoned Marxism by the 1950s. Trotskyism and several other branches of self-proclaimed revolutionary Marxism contend that, under the influence of Stalinism, the Soviet-influenced Communist Parties drifted far away from the original Marxist-Leninist position during the same period. In contrast, Anti-Revisionists, who also self-identify as revolutionary Marxists, say that the Soviet Union broke with true socialism with Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech of 1956. The latter subsequently supported the 1949 Chinese Revolution, Mao Zedong, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, though most abandoned support of China as it became clear (in their view) that Deng Xiaoping's "socialism with Chinese characteristics" pursued in the late 1970s and early 1980s signalled a return to capitalism.

Stalin-era Communist Parties

Following Stalin's orders, the Communist International was dissolved in 1943. In the period between 1945 and 1949, following the end of World War II, Moscow-controlled Communist parties such as the Polish Polish United Workers' Party and the German Socialist Unity Party were put in power throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe, creating the Eastern bloc. The Communist Party of the United States was considered within the political mainstream during the 1930s and 1940s, but the advent of the Cold War got it declared illegal for a time and led to McCarthyism, a vigorous anti-Communist political repression movement in America during the 1950s which effectively destroyed the American Communist Party's influence.

Non-Soviet controlled Communist governments

In Yugoslavia, communist guerrillas liberated the country from Nazi occupation and established a government without Soviet assistance. As a result, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was not controlled from Moscow. Indeed, it opposed the Soviet Union vigorously on a number of major policy points, leading to Stalin's excommunication of the Yugoslav communist government from the Soviet bloc. In 1949, Chinese communists ended a civil war that had raged for decades, and established the People's Republic of China. Shortly thereafter, another communist party, the Workers Party of Korea, came to power in North Korea and was backed by the new communist Chinese government during the Korean War. Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong entertained major differences of vision, however, precipitating the Sino-Soviet split between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China in the early 1960s. Albania was liberated by communist partisans in a similar fashion, but it developed in a very different way from Yugoslavia. The Albanian government sided with the Soviet Union early on, then took the side of the Communist Party of China in the Sino-Soviet split.

Western European Communist Parties after the war

Members of communist parties were persecuted in many countries in the early Cold War period, when anticommunist sentiment was fueled by Western governments as part of their Cold War strategy. Nevertheless, in capitalist countries such as Italy and France, large Communist Parties gathered lots of popular support and played a prominent part in politics throughout the post-war decades. They developed a variant of Communist ideology known as Eurocommunism. This called for a socialist planned economy under the administration of a democratic government, and a multi-party system of free elections. This was a clear break with the Soviet line, but many of these parties continued to maintain good, or at least diplomatic, relations with the Soviet Union.

Third world Communist parties

In the third world, communist parties became quite popular in some areas because they promised the overthrow of governmental structures that many people considered oppressive, and a higher standard of living for the poor. Often, communists played the dominant role in struggles for independence against colonial powers. The resulting wars usually became enmeshed into the Cold War, with the Soviet Union supporting communist forces and the United States supporting anti-communist ones. The two superpowers waged wars by proxy, as in, for example, the Vietnam War, where American troops fought local communists; or in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where Soviet troops fought mujahideen forces supported by the United States which sought to overthrow the pro-Soviet Communist government of Afghanistan. Vietnam and Laos are still ruled by Communist Parties.

Cuba

After Fidel Castro's nationalistic revolt in Cuba, he was snubbed by President Eisenhower, who went out to play golf on the day he was scheduled to meet with Castro, and assigned Vice President Richard Nixon to meet with Castro instead. Castro was extremely annoyed at the slight, and entered into negotiations with the Soviet Union. Castro aligned with the Soviets and declared himself a communist shortly afterward. Cuba survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with careful market-oriented reforms and strategic alliances, known as the "Special Period," the Communist Party of Cuba remains in power as of 2005. Some question, however, how Castro's personal health will fare in the near future, and it remains to be seen if his party will remain in power after his death.

Post-Soviet Eastern bloc Communists

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, communist parties lost their power monopolies in most of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In many places, communist parties re-organized themselves as new socialist or social democratic organizations (though some have remained orthodox late-Soviet era communist). Many of the communist parties in those countries and their various successor organizations remain highly influential in local government elections and political struggles throughout the former Eastern bloc.

Structure of Communist parties

:See: democratic centralism. In theory, a party congress would elect a Central Committee to execute the will of the Congress between meetings. The Central Committee would elect a much smaller Politburo to elect a general secretary and handle day-to-day operations. In practice, the flow of power often became the reverse: the Politburo became self-perpetuating, and controlled the composition of the Central Committee, which in turn controlled the party congresses. Some modern communist parties still hold to the democratic centralist tradition. Others have abadoned democratic centralism, often accompanied by a renouncing of Marxism-Leninism overall, and instead pursue a structure more in common with social democracy, advocating welfare-statism such as is found in Scandinavia and most parts of Western Europe. The doctrine of ruling communist parties was typically that all property would belong to the state as the transition to a communist society (see socialism and state capitalism), and that the state would highly regulate all commerce in the country in the meantime. This policy stopped companies from driving each other out of business and in turn kept unemployment low.

Means of production

The means of production are physical, non-human, inputs used in production. This includes factories, machines, tools and materials, along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital - in other words, the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital or labor. When used in contemporary terms, "means of production" usually applies to land or commons being converted to natural resources, and to that infrastructural capital which is not owned strictly in common but is applied to make "goods". Marx's analysis (see below) does not distinguish between infrastructural and natural means of production, but this distinction could be introduced.

Marxist concept

The analysis of people's relationships with the means of production is one element that stands at the basis of Marxism. Karl Marx focused on labor questions. He considered it a reification to treat labor as just another "factor" in production; it implied an inversion of means and ends, so that people were effectively used as things. The working classes are the principal productive forces of society, since their labor creates and conserves material wealth. The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, comprises people who own and trade in means of production as capital assets, and who hire workers to work for them, using those means of production. The bourgeois as property owner can obtain a profit from the work of his employees because the value of output exceeds the outlay on wages and materials. Therefore, the bourgeois obtains a surplus value from the work of his employees. In the Marxist view, this constitutes exploitation of the workers. Marx's terms are often employed in economic analysis by socialists who advocate public ownership of some (or all) means of production. The affinity between labor movement causes and this advocacy is very strong - and often shared by social democrats, socialists, communists and greens. Marx's analysis in particular helped to make clear the key differences between human capital and "labor" or "human resources" - which earlier political economy favoring labor value (e.g. that of David Ricardo) had not done. Marxists define economic systems in terms of how the means of production are used, and which social class controls them. Thus, in capitalism, the means of production are controlled by the bourgeoisie (the "capitalists" - the owners of capital), while in socialism they are controlled by the people's elected representatives and in communism they are controlled collectively by the people themselves.

Green economics

Some green economists, notably Brian Milani, draw parallels between Marx's treatment of labor and natural capital, accepting Marx's view that land is a means, but not a simple factor, of production. Others go further to argue that land, more fully regarded as natural capital must be seen as a sort of "lumpenproletariat" performing ecological work. Still others, including many following neoclassical economics, argue that nothing that is alive (land, labor) and therefore negentropic can be counted as a "means" for anything else that is alive and negentropic - and reject the Marxist terms of reference entirely. There is thus a dispute on convergence between the idea of "means of production" and the modern general notion of capital; Marx's analysis has been important in refining the factors of production wherein individual and natural (alive, natural, creative) actors are kept separate from instructional, social, infrastructural and financial (unliving, entropic, imitative "means") "factors", at least to some degree - notably in the analyses of Natural Capitalism and some macro-economics which study the choice (by people) to do work, or take recreation.

Baldassari and Acquisti

In the analysis of Baldassari and Acquisti, any living actor may choose to use or not use a "means", but an unliving "factor" can only take orders from above, robotically, without any capacity to question. Or, indeed, any capacity to take or choose to do harm. There is thus a clear distinction between a "means", including autonomous intellectual capital, and a "factor" whose detailed choices are defined by passive instructional capital and limits of infrastructural capital. This analysis avoids however the problem of individual capital or "enterprise" or "ingenuity", and how choices to act or not act work in the large to define roles or rules. Some theorists emphasize the "driving down" of decision-making power "closer to the customer" as making the roles of bourgeois and proletarian more alike. Whether true or false, however, this would not affect the basic idea of means of production; rather, it would simply render it ambiguous where means begin and factors end. In particular, the role of those who employ only financial capital and do not directly use the other factors of production remains distinct. The most significant feature of capitalism, in the Marxist analysis, is the fact that the ruling class monopolizes the means of protection, thus of property law enforcement, which keeps the financial capital valuable and convertible into the means of production (all other forms of capital).

Feminist analysis

There are parallels in analysis by modern feminist economists, notably Marilyn Waring who argues that women's work has been systematically devalued and undervalued, while education and training sufficient to use the "means" deemed most valuable by society have traditionally gone to men. She sarcastically parallels two very different ideas of "value" by focusing on village women in a developing nation whose day is defined by the search for clean water and dry firewood, and a man in a U.S. missile silo, whose day is defined by waiting for orders to destroy the Soviet Union. She argues, in general, that woman is to man as lumpen is to proletariat, but does not use those terms herself, evidently to avoid offending the Marxists.

20th century

The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begins with the year 1. The 20th century is also sometimes known as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0" year and named accordingly ("1960s", etc.). However, a number of arguments have been used to justify the common usage. One was advanced, erroneously, by Stephen Jay Gould. He claimed that the first decade had only nine years, thus contradicting the definition of decade equaled 10 years. Another argument is that the astronomical year numbering system for years does have a year zero, the year normally known as 1 BC. In 2000 the International Organization for Standardization clarified ISO 8601 to use the astronomical year numbering system, which could be interpreted as retrospectively endorsing all the people who had celebrated the new century a few months earlier. The term is also used to describe various periods that overlap with the calendar definition, most notably the Short twentieth century, which claims that the 20th Century spanned from 1914 to 1989, rendering the pre-WWI 1900s into the 19th Century and putting the 1990s at the beginning of the 21st Century. Indeed, the part of the 20th Century before World War I is quite identical to the late 1800s culturally and technologically and the 1990s decade pointed in many ways (such as the rise of the Internet) to the 21st Century and is seen by some as not being truly a part of the 20th Century.

Overview

The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovations. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage and became an influence on the lives of everyday people. War reached an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication; in the Second World War (1939-1945) alone, approximately 57 million people died, mainly due to massive improvements in weaponry. The trends of mechanization of goods and services and networks of global communication, which were begun in the 19th century, continued at an ever-increasing pace in the 20th. In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace. As the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy said: :What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal. Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century and for the first time, any individual could influence the course of history no matter their background. Arguably, the 20th century re-shaped the face of the planet in more ways than any previous century.
- Death rates
- Infant mortality
- Infectious disease
- Life expectancy
- Maternal death rates
- Battles Scientific discoveries such as relativity and quantum physics radically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was much more complex than they had previously believed, and dashing the hopes at the end of the preceding century that the last few details of knowledge were about to be filled in. For a more coherent overview of the historical events of the century, see The 20th century in review. The 20th century has sometimes been called, both within and outside the United States, the American Century, though this is a controversial term.

Important developments, events and achievements

Science and technology

- The assembly line and mass production of motor vehicles and other goods allowed manufacturers to produce more and cheaper products. This allowed the automobile to become the most important means of transportation.
- The invention of heavier-than-air flying machines and the jet engine allowed for the world to become "smaller". Space flight increased knowledge of the rest of the universe and allowed for global real-time communications via geosynchronous satellites.
- Mass media technologies such as film, radio, and television allow the communication of political messages and entertainment with unprecedented impact
- Mass availability of the telephone and later, the computer, especially through the Internet, provides people with new opportunities for near-instantaneous communication
- Applied electronics, notably in its miniaturized form as integrated circuits, made possible the above mentioned rise of mass media, telecommunications, ubiquitous computing, and all kinds of "intelligent" appliances; as well as many advances in natural sciences such as physics, by the use of exponentially growing calculation power (see supercomputer).
- The development of Nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides resulted in significantly higher agricultural yield.
- Advances in fundamental physics through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics led to the development of nuclear weapons (known informally as "the Bomb" and dropped on the industrial town of Hiroshima and the historic one of Nagasaki), the nuclear reactor, and the laser. Fusion power was studied extensively but remained an experimental technology at the end of the century.
- Inventions such as the washing machine and air conditioning led to an increase in both the quantity and quality of leisure time for the middle class in Western societies.
- Most influential inventions in the 20th century: antibiotics, oral contraceptives, new plastics, transistors, Internet
- More...

Wars and politics

- Democratic nations began to extend voting privileges to all adults.
- Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were among the causes of World War I, the first of two wars to involve all the major world powers including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and the British Commonwealth. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Eastern Europe. Ironically, it was said by many to be the 'War to end all Wars'.
- The economic and political aftermath of World War I led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe, and shortly to World War II. This war also involved Asia and the Pacific, in the form of Japanese aggression against China and the United States. While the First World War mainly cost lives among soldiers, civilians suffered greatly in the Second -- from the bombing of cities on both sides, and in the unprecedented German genocide of the Jews and others, known as the Holocaust.
- During World War I, in Russia the Bolshevik putsch led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II, Communism became a major force in global politics, spreading all over the world: notably, to Eastern Europe, China, Indochina and Cuba. This led to the Cold War and proxy wars with the western world, including wars in Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam (1957 - 75).
- The "fall of Communism" in the late 1980s freed Eastern and Central Europe from Soviet supremacy. It also led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia into successor states, many rife with ethnic nationalism, and left the United States as the world's superpower.
- Through the League of Nations and, after World War II, the United Nations, international cooperation increased. Other efforts included the formation of the European Union, leading to a common currency in much of Western Europe, the euro around the turn of the millennium.
- The end of colonialism led to the independence of many African and Asian countries. During the Cold War, many of these aligned with the USA, the USSR, or China for defense.
- The creation of Israel, a Jewish state in a mostly Arab region of the world, fueled many conflicts in the region, which were also influenced by the vast oil fields in many of the Arab countries.
- The term Southeast Asia coined.

Culture and entertainment

- Movies, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many movies and music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world.
- After gaining political rights in the United States and much of Europe in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques women became more independent throughout the century.
- Rock and Roll and Jazz styles of music are developed in the United States, and quickly become the dominant forms of popular music in America, and later, the world. The Beatles, a 1960s British Rock and Roll band, becomes one of the most successful acts of all time, and is credited, in their experimental later albums, with permanently changing what was thought possible in popular music.
- Modern art developed new styles such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
- The automobile provided vastly increased transportation capabilities for the average member of Western societies in the early to mid-century, spreading even further later on. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car. The car became a leading symbol of modern society, with styles of car suited to and symbolic of particular lifestyles.
- Sports became an important part of society, becoming an activity not only for the privileged. Watching sports, later also on television, became a popular activity.

Disease and medicine

- Although the availability and quality of medicine continued to improve, epidemic diseases continued to spread, aided by modern transportation. An influenza pandemic, the Spanish Flu, killed 25 million between 1918 and 1919, while AIDS is yet uncured and treatments remain too expensive for wide use in developing countries.
- Advances in medicine, such as the invention of antibiotics, decreased the number of people dying from diseases. Contraceptive drugs and organ transplantation were developed. The discovery of DNA molecules and the advent of molecular biology allowed for cloning and genetic engineering.

Natural resources and the environment

- The widespread use of petroleum in industry -- both as a chemical precursor to plastics and as a fuel for the automobile and airplane -- led to the vital geopolitical importance of petroleum resources. The Middle East, home to many of the world's oil deposits, became a center of geopolitical and military tension throughout the latter half of the century. (For example, oil was a factor in Japan's decision to go to war against the United States in 1941, and the oil cartel, OPEC, used an oil embargo of sorts in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in the 1970s).
- A vast increase in fossil fuel consumption leads to depletion of natural resources, while air pollution has led to the develoment of an ozone hole and, many believe, global warming and both local and global climate change. The problem is increased by world-wide deforestation, also causing a loss of biodiversity. The problem of a depletion of natural resources is decreased by advances in drilling technology which led to a net increase in the amount of fossil fuel that is readily obtainable at the end of the century, as compared with the amount considered obtainable at the beginning of the century.

Significant people

Communism

Marxism

The growth of modern Communism

Soviet Marxism

Stalinism

Trotskyism

Cold War years

Maoism

Collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism today

"Communism" or "communism"?

Criticism of communism

See also

Schools of communism

Organizations and people

Further reading

External links

Online resources for original Marxist literature

Communist party

History of Communist Parties

Early Communist groups

Stalin-era Communist Parties

Non-Soviet controlled Communist governments

Western European Communist Parties after the war

Third world Communist parties

Cuba

Post-Soviet Eastern bloc Communists

Structure of Communist parties

See also

Means of production

Marxist concept

Green economics

Baldassari and Acquisti

Feminist analysis

See also

20th century

Overview

Important developments, events and achievements

Science and technology

Wars and politics

Culture and entertainment

Disease and medicine

Natural resources and the environment

Significant people

World leaders

Scientists

Humanities

Business

Aerospace pioneers

Military leaders

Spiritual figures

Artists

Music