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Communism is an ideological and a social political movement. Its aim is to set up a communist society. This would be based on the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state. No large society has ever achieved this. In the Soviet Union, for example, all ownership was taken by the State. In effect, this meant a small ruling elite took all the major decisions in a one-party state.

Socialism is worker's control of the means of production. Communism considers itself a more advanced form of socialism. It says this will set the people free to find a higher meaning of life. Work would not be something a person had to do to stay alive, but instead something people could choose whether or not to do.

According to communist writers and thinkers, the goal of communism is to create a classless society. Communist thinkers believe this can happen if the people take away the power of the bourgeoisie (the ruling class, who own the means of production) and create a dictatorship of the proletariat (the working class).

Communism is not anti-individualist. However, it does say that decisions should be good for the population as a whole, instead of just being good for one or two people.

Some socialists believed that socialists could take state power in democratic elections. They tried to make socialist parties in their own countries win elections. Others thought that the state was created to keep capitalism alive, and that capitalists would never allow communists to take power. They thought there needed to be a war or revolution in order to create a new workers' state.

In some countries, especially those that used to be ruled by communist parties, the communist party is illegal or discouraged from holding power (like in Eastern Europe). They also have elections.

In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto. It was a short book with the basic ideas of communism. Most socialists and communists today still use this book to help them understand politics and economics. Many non-communists read it too, even if they do not agree with everything in it.

Karl Marx said that for society to change into a communist way of living, there would have to be a period of change. During this period, the workers would govern society. Marx was very interested in the experience of the Paris Commune of 1870, when the workers of Paris ran the city following the defeat of the French Army by the Prussian Army. He thought that this practical experience was more important than the theoretical views of the various radical groups.

Many groups and individuals liked Marx's ideas. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a worldwide socialist movement called Social Democracy. It was influenced by his ideas. They said that the workers in different countries had more in common with each other than the workers had in common with the bosses within their own countries. In 1917, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky led a Russian group called the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. They got rid of the temporary government of Russia, which was formed after the February Revolution against the Tsar (Emperor). They established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also called the Soviet Union or USSR.

The Soviet Union was the first country claiming to have established a workers' state. In reality, the country never became communist in the way that Marx and Engels described.

During the 20th century, many people tried to establish workers' states. In the late 1940's, China also had a revolution and created a new government with Mao Zedong as its leader. In the 1950s, the island of Cuba had a revolution and created a new government with Fidel Castro as its leader. At one time, there were many such countries, and it seemed as though communism would win. But communist party governments forgot to use democracy in their governments, a very important part of socialism and communism. Because of this, the governments became separated from the people, making communism difficult. This also led to disagreements and splits between countries.

By the 1960's, one-third of the world had overthrown capitalism and were trying to build communism. Most of these countries followed the model of the Soviet Union. Some followed the model of China. The other two-thirds of the world still lived in capitalism, and this led to a worldwide divide between capitalist countries and communist countries. This was called the "Cold War" because it was not fought with weapons or armies, but competing ideas. However, this could have turned into a large war. During the 1980's, the United States and the Soviet Union were competing to have the biggest army and having the most dangerous weapons. This was called the "Arms Race". President Ronald Reagan called communism the "Ash heap of history".

Since 1989, when the Berlin Wall was torn down, most countries that used be communist have returned to capitalism. Communism now has much less influence around the world. In 1991, the Soviet Union broke up. However, around a quarter of the world's people still live in states controlled by a communist party. Most of these people are in China. The other countries include Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea. There are also communist movements in Latin America and South Africa.

Many people have written their own ideas about communism. Vladimir Lenin of Russia thought that there had to be a group of hard-working revolutionaries (called a vanguard) to lead a socialist revolution worldwide and create a communist society everywhere. Leon Trotsky, also from Russia, argued that socialism had to be international, and it was not important to make it happen first in Russia. He also did not like Joseph Stalin, who became the leader of the USSR after Lenin's death in 1924. Trotsky was made to leave the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1928, and then killed in 1940. This scared many people, and lots of communists argued about whether this was right and whose ideas should be followed.

Mao Zedong of China thought that other classes would be important to the revolution in China and other developing countries because the working classes in these countries were small. Mao's ideas on communism are usually called Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought. After Stalin's death in 1953, Mao saw himself as the leader of worldwide communism until he died in 1976. Today the Chinese government is still ruled by the Communist Party, but they actually have what is called a mixed economy. They have borrowed many things from capitalism. The government in China today does not follow Maoism. However, revolutionaries in other countries like India and Nepal still like his ideas and are trying to use them in their own countries.

The word "communism" is not a very specific description of left-wing political organizations. Many political parties calling themselves "communist" may actually be more reformist (supportive of reforms and slow change instead of revolution) than some parties calling themselves "socialists". Many communist parties in Latin America have lost many members because these parties do different things than what they promised once they get into power. In Chile, between 1970-1973, under the left-wing Coalition (groups of parties) of Popular Unity, led by Salvador Allende, the Communist Party of Chile was to the right of the Socialist Party of Chile. This means it was more reformist than the socialist party.

Many communist parties will use a reformist strategy. They say working-class people are not organized enough to make big changes to their societies. They put forward candidates that will be elected democratically. Once communists become elected to parliament or the Senate, then they will fight for the working class. This will allow working-class people to change their capitalist society into a socialist one.

The color red is a symbol of communism around the world. A red five-pointed star sometimes also stands for communism. The hammer and sickle is a well-known symbol of communism. It was on the flags of many communist countries (see top of article). Some communists also like to use pictures of famous communists from history, such as Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong, as symbols of the whole philosophy of communism.

A song called The Internationale was the international song of communism. It has the same music everywhere, but the words to the song are translated into many languages.

There is also a special kind of art and architecture found in many communist and former communist countries. Paintings done in the style of socialist realism are often done for propaganda to show a perfect version of a country's people and political leader. Art done in the socialist realism style, such as plays, movies, novels, and paintings show hard-working, happy, and well-fed factory workers and farmers. Movies, plays and novels in this style often tell stories about workers or soldiers who sacrifice themselves for the good of their country. Paintings often showed heroic portraits of the leader, or landscapes showing huge fields of wheat. Stalinist architecture was supposed to represent the power and glory of the state and its political leader. Some non-communists also enjoy this kind of art.

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Communism Facts for Kids

Communist nations are quickly disappearing from the world as we move further away from the Cold War and into the 21st century. Today the world has only five remaining Communist nations, most of which are struggling to hold on to any remaining political and economic power in the largely capitalist world that surrounds them. Heres an in-depth look at the situations of the five remaining communist nations of the world, and the last five to move away from Marxist Ideologies.

The smaller of the two countries named Congo (Brazzaville refers to the capital in order to distinguish themKinshasa is the larger), The Peoples Republic of the Congo was the second-latest Marxist state on the African continent. The Peoples Republic was founded after a leftist militant coup in 1970. The initial leader, Marien Ngouabi, led the local Marxist/Leninist party for seven years before himself being assassinated. The nation maintained strong ties to semi-socialist France as well as the Soviet Unionthe Soviet Union was the largest sponsor of African Marxist countries. Like many of the 1992 transitions from Communism, the initial transition was relatively peaceful. Sadly, the peace did not last, with a civil war following in the late 1990s, and peace has only returned alongside single-party rule, with much international concern for the human rights of indigenous communities.

Following the conclusion of World War II, Albania ended up more closely linked to its northern neighbor, Yugoslavia, than its southern neighbor, Greece. As such, it became a communist nation, even after its relations with Yugoslavia deteriorated. At that point, the ruling clique aligned with the Soviet Unionbut even this link was short-lived, with relations with China eventually becoming critical to securing independent leadership from Yugoslavia. In the 1970s, even this relationship deteriorated, and Albania began establishing relations with France, Italy, and other non-communist powers. Following the execution of the Romanian communist leadership in 1989, Albania began to formalize elections and other human rights, before transitioning from communism in 1992 and eventually establishing a new constitution in 1998. Albania applied for European Union membership in 2009, reflecting a strong transition to western-style democracy.

A federation of many disparate nations, the original Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 following World War I, and took its Communist form in 1943. Today, its former constituents include Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Kosovoa disparate group once united under the banner of the Land of the Southern Slavs, the translation of Yugoslavia. Only the first six were recognized as Federal States under Yugoslavia, with Kosovar independence coming only later. Ruled initially by the communist Tito, Yugoslavia had a split with the Soviet Union almost immediately after the war, and Tito retained relatively good relations with the United Statesalthough not too close, as he never joined NATO. After his death in 1980, uprisings began later in the 1980s, and degenerated into a protracted war through the 1990s. Conflict largely subsided in 1999, and today all former members are either in the E.U. (Slovenia and Croatia), candidates (Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia), or potential future candidates (Kosovo as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina). Investigations into war crimes in the former Yugoslavia have continued to the present day, as the dissolution of the state was a violent and bloody episode.

With Soviet support, the first Communist regime was established in Afghanistan in 1978, and it survived in various forms until 1992. The leaders initially after the revolution, Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, instituted a number of reforms, including equal rights for women and land reform. Both were assassinated before 1980, however, and the reforms were eventually rolled back. The Soviet Union remained a military force through most of the 1980s, and millions of refugees left for neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Without Soviet backup, the ruling Communist clique was unable to maintain power, and the government collapsed in 1992. The country has been embroiled in civil war essentially ever since, with the US replacing the Soviets as the main force powering the governmentbut nevertheless, armed conflict has been ever-present, with or without Communism. This country of 25 million remains one of the poorest countries on earth.

After winning its independence from Portugal in 1975, two groups aimed to dominate the new-found Republic: one (the MPLA) backed by the USSR, and the other (UNITA) backed by the US. The MPLA won out, and Angola was a communist republic until the broad collapse of most communist countries in 1992. With strong ties to the USSR, Caribbean Communist country Cuba, and fellow south African, Portuguese-speaking country Mozambiquewhich turned communist at the same time. Civil war between the two sides began in 1975 and lasted, with some quieter periods, until 2002though the fall of Communist rule came in 1992, and some resistance continued beyond 2002. Today, Angola is a hotbed for Chinese investment, and with its oil riches it has a rapidly increased GDP per person (although inequality remains high and many residents are quite poor). Peace has been relatively lasting, with over a decade since cessation of conflict, and many economic improvements have been made since then.

A commonality between the aforementioned Communist nations are their connection to the USSR, and Vietnams current status is no different. After the First Indochina war Vietnam was split into two halvesNorth Vietnam becoming Communist with the support of the Soviet Union, and South Vietnam remaining democratic with support from the United States. After the Vietnam War, and decades of national and international conflict, the United States and South Vietnam los the war and Vietnam was reunited as a Communist nation in 1976.

While Vietnam remained truly communist from 1976-1986, the country eventually needed to reach out for international support and aid; which resulted in many political and economic reforms. As a result of these reforms, Vietnam is today one of the worlds fastest growing economies. Yet, there are still problematic aspects of the countrys system: income inequality, access to medicine, and gender equality being some of the biggest.

Supported by both neighboring Vietnam and the Soviet Union, Laos underwent a Communist revolution in 1975. The nations governing system is run by high-ranked officials in Laos military. Laos has historically been largely influenced by Vietnams Communist governmentleaving it largely isolated from trade with the rest of the world, among other consequences to its economic development.

Laos has been accused of committing genocide against the nations Hmong minority. In fact, during the late 1900s the United States received hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees who were fleeing their homelands communist repression and persecution.

Today Laos is ranked #23 of the worlds poorest countries.

The Cuban Revolution in all of its glory is one of the most well-known events in the history of the Americas. Today, Cuba remains the only Communist country outside of Asia, since its revolution in 1959. Fidel Castro has continued to be the single-party ruler of the small Caribbean island since the date of the revolutions success in the 1960s.

The Cuban Revolution was a bloody event, and the Communist dictatorship succeeded in executing thousands of citizens for political crimes. The United States has attempted to eliminate Fidel Castro on several occasions, but failing repetitively.

Unlike some other Communist nations, Cuba has a respectable healthcare system available to all citizens; its ranked one of the best in the world.

Much like the case of Vietnam, Korea was split into two countries in 1910the Soviet-backed North Korea and the United States-backed South Korea. In 1948 North Korea turned Communist. In the 1950s the Korean War was fought over the two nations sovereignty, and while fighting between the two nations has ceased, there was never a signed treatymeaning that they are still technically at war.

The infamous Kim family has acted as dictators since 1948, and the family is in fact constitutionally defined as rulers according to a 2013 constitutional amendment. Today, North Korea is avidly protected by its Communist neighbor China and it is also, worrisomely, one of the only nations in the world with nuclear technologies, which it has threatened to use against foreign nations including the United States many times.

China has one of the biggest and most prosperous economies of the world and, somewhat surprisingly, remains a Communist superpower. The Communist party gained control of the country in 1949, initially led by Mao Zedong and his Little Red Book which wielded Communist control around the nation. The goal of Maos Cultural Revolution was to eliminate cultural and capitalist influences from the nation. Market economics were introduced to China in the 1970s, when it was increasingly clear that Maos ideas were effectively destroying China. Ever since, Chinas economy has been among the fastest growing in the world: turning it into the superpower that it is today, a lucky benefit of the capitalist reforms introduced into the nations Communist ideology.

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10 Most Recent & Current Communist Nations In The World ...

Mr. Mandel suggests I am confusing socialism and communism. In his piece in the second paragraph, he says, Communism, on the other hand, is a failed branch of socialism.

Could it be that socialism is in a category with communism, bringing similar disastrous effects on a large scale should authoritarianism arrive on our shores.

The Nazis operated under National Socialism. People could be in a murderous jail, the political allegiance of the jailers not mattering.

My point is our freedoms easily could be lost if we allowed socialism or communism to creep in.

My friend and her family had to flee from Cuba in the middle of the night. Castro expelled the intellectual professionals so he could retain the compliant, whom he could control. And who can forget Maduro and the harsh, unforgiving life in Venezuela.

My Cuban friend tells me, Fidels brother, Raul, is even crueler, although his portrayal of the beauty and serenity of his communist island belies the incarceration of political prisoners who languish in rat-infested prisons.

How we could expect to live under socialism or communism is thoroughly undesirable.

I didnt see anything I like.

Sandy Goble

Brevard

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Not The Answer - The Transylvania Times

PRAGUE/WARSAW (Reuters) - Eastern Europeans with strong memories of authoritarian Communist rule have taken a been there, done that attitude to the restrictions on free movement and shortages of some basic goods caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

FILE PHOTO: A woman wearing a face mask stands at the Prague Castle as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Prague, Czech Republic, March 24, 2020. REUTERS/David W Cerny/File Photo

The shuttered stores, sealed borders and other measures have revived memories of life behind the old Iron Curtain before the fall of Communism and advent of democracy in 1989.

As Czech scientist Jan Konvalinka, 57, joked on Twitter, Shut borders, nothing on shelves, store closures? Welcome to my childhood.

Weve been there, done that, he added.

Scenes of shoppers in Britain, the United States and elsewhere plundering supermarkets for toilet paper, pasta and canned goods have bemused many in a region where people once had to wait years to be able to buy a car or where they would queue hours for a rare delivery of bananas at a state-run store.

In the UK, where youve had democracy for years, people panic when theres an unusual situation. We are behaving in a more rational way, we are detached, said Piotr Adamowicz, 59, an opposition member of the Polish parliament and former anti-communist activist.

Echoing that comment, Andrea in Budapest said: People here are not panicking.

My grandmother lived through two wars, my mom was born during World War II and then we had Communism. We are prepared for this, said Andrea, an ethnic Hungarian who grew up in Romania and spent time in a detention center before 1989 after trying to cross into Hungary.

People do not expect the current restrictions to last very long, unlike the privations they endured in the past.

For me these border closures dont hurt me as much as during Communism because I know they will open one day, said Filip Antos, 51, owner of Czech online travel service A-Hotel.com.

This is not like Communism because we know this will end. During Communism we didnt think it would ever end.

Access to trustworthy news sources today has also eased the strain for those who remember Moscow-dominated rule that ended in a series of mostly peaceful revolutions in 1989. Under Communism, governments that nobody trusted were the main source of peoples information in a pre-Internet world.

i For younger east Europeans, however, the experience of shortages and closed borders is novel.

I never thought such things could happen again, said Tomas Klima, 31, who was born a year before the 1989 Velvet Revolution in then-Czechoslovakia.

But, noting the hugely expanded role of the state in many countries to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and cushion the economic impact of the disruption caused, he added:

We tend to forget too quickly what it used to be like back then. The state controlled everything, you had to ask for permission to travel abroad etc.

I hope people will realize soon that by allowing the state to take control of various aspects of peoples lives, even if with good intentions, they lose a lot of their liberty.

Additional Reporting by Joanna Plucinska in Warsaw, Jan Lopatka in Prague and Krisztina Than in Budapest, Editing by Gareth Jones

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Closed borders, no shops? Been there, done that, say east Europeans - Reuters

Commentary

Now that college classes have been forced online because of the CCP virus pandemic, professors are worried that their lessons will be exposed to the public via right-wing sites.

Its no wonder. As Grinnell College music professor Tony Perman revealed in his essay on the NBC News site Think, their sympathies lie with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) more than their own country.

Perman reported that he felt safer in China than he did in the United States, because, when he and his family returned to the United States, the CDC employee trusted them to self-isolate for 14 days and never even asked where we were going.

By contrast, the Chinese states heavy-handed approach seemed to work. There, the obligation to isolate felt shared, and the public changed their habits almost immediately, practicing sterilization, cleanliness and social distancing.

Perman gave credit to the communist regime for the citizenrys collectivist attitude that even encouraged some to rat out others suspected of hiding symptoms. He praised Chinese propaganda that celebrated health care workers and thus led to pride in collective civic responsibility.

A person like Perman would have once been called a useful idiot. The Chinese regime, as Epoch Times reporter Bowen Xiao pointed out, causes crises, blames others, and then uses the crises to clamp down with full force, ultimately praising its own heroism.

Perman made no mention of Dr. Li Wenliang, the health care worker who tried to sound the alarm in December 2019, but was punished by the government and has since died. The Chinese officials suppressed data for two months and then claimed the United States introduced the virus to China via the military. A Southampton University study found that cases would have been reduced by 95 percent had Beijing intervened three weeks sooner.

Perman was displaying the same attitude that one of my international students from China did when I was teaching at Emory University between 2007 and 2013. As we were discussing the documents and speeches of the American Founding that emphasized liberty, freedom of speech, and equal rights, she became visibly disturbed. In her mind, a strong dictatorial government was necessary and good. Freedom scared her.

At a state college where I also taught around the same time, I discovered during a lecture that a third of my college sophomore literature class hadnt heard of the word communism. When I assigned a speech by Mao Zedong as a lesson in propagandistic rhetoric, college freshmen believed the first things that came up on Google searches, i.e., that Mao was a great leader.

At Emory University, most of my American students had been taught that communism was a phantom red scare promulgated by right-wing reactionaries.

According to a survey conducted for Victims of Communism, Only 57% of Gen Z and 62% of Millennials, compared to 88% of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation think China is a communist country and not a democratic country.

A quarter of Generation Z and millennials say they have gotten a positive presentation of communism in K12, as opposed to 7 percent for Boomers and older. The percentages go up for college. Seventy percent of millennials said they were at least somewhat likely to vote for a socialist. They support Bernie Sanders who, at the last debate, repeated his praise for communist China for allegedly lifting its people out of extreme poverty, and he distinguished his approach to dealing with the pandemic by promising to institute Medicare for All and to work with China.

I think its no coincidence that the precipitous rise in favorable attitudes about communism, and attendant ignorance about it, parallels the increasing use of Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United States, especially in Advanced Placement U.S. History courses, which were revised to a far-left, Marxist interpretation under the Obama administration.

Zinn, a one-time member of the Communist Party USA, taught at Spelman College and Boston University. In his book, first published in 1980, he claimed American leaders allowed a myth of Soviet expansion to cover for domestic suppression during the Cold War. He said the takeover of countries by the Soviet regime after World War II was a falsehood spread by American imperialists. Really, these were locally led peoples movements, he claimed.

This is Zinns presentation of China: In China, a revolution was already under way when World War II ended, led by a Communist movement with enormous mass support. A Red Army, which had fought against the Japanese, now fought to oust the corrupt dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek, which was supported by the United States. In January 1949, Chinese Communist forces moved into Peking, the civil war was over, and China was in the hands of a revolutionary movement, the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a peoples government, independent of outside control.

Today, the nonprofit Zinn Education Project pushes Zinns history to primary and secondary schools by distributing curriculum materials in print and online. A recent Zinn Education Project lesson, The Corona Connection, which makes the connection to climate change and indigenous people, is typical fare.

The co-sponsor of the Zinn Education Project, the nonprofit Rethinking Schools, which distributes these materials, on March 18 sent out an email announcing its commitment during the pandemic to providing social justice teaching, storytelling, and resources.

They encouraged organizing against Trumps naked xenophobia and defending especially the rights of children in immigrant detention facilities. The crisis, they urged, was not a time of retreat, but a time to insist on, to organize for, an agenda of human rights and wealth redistribution.

Democrats delayed the stimulus bill by insisting it include pet projects of their freedom-denying, wealth-redistributing agenda, such as green energy, abortion funding, and mandated diversity quotas and regulations for corporations. And China, in its propaganda, is using charges about xenophobia being promulgated by Democrats (including Joe Biden), CNN, and NBC.

After three decades of off-shoring and global citizenship, Americans are being forced to acknowledge the folly of dependence on a communist regimenot only for cheap plastics, but for essential medicines and equipment. Americans should return to their roots of self-reliance. But first we must teach the young the truth about communism and American history.

That begins by exposing the lies of Howard Zinn.

Mary Grabar holds a doctorate in English from the University of Georgia and is a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Grabar is the author of Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation against America, published by Regnery History.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Its Time to Teach the Truth About Communist China (and the Lies of Howard Zinn) - The Epoch Times