History of communism
The history of communism encompasses a wide variety of ideologies and political movements sharing the core principles of common ownership of wealth, economic enterprise, and property. Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least nominally in Marxism, a theory and method conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the 19th century. Marxism subsequently gained a widespread following across much of Europe, and throughout the late 1800s its militant supporters were instrumental in a number of unsuccessful revolutions on that continent. During the same era, there was also a proliferation of communist parties which rejected armed revolution, but embraced the Marxist ideal of collective property and a classless society.
Although Marxist theory suggested that industrial societies were the most suitable places for social revolution, communism was mostly successful in underdeveloped countries with endemic poverty such as the Republic of China. In 1917, the Bolshevik Party seized power during the Russian Revolution and in 1922 created the Soviet Union, the world's first self-declared socialist state. The Bolsheviks thoroughly embraced the concept of proletarian internationalism and world revolution, seeing their struggle as an international rather than a purely regional cause. This was to have a phenomenal impact on the spread of communism during the 20th century as the Soviet Union installed new Marxist–Leninist governments in Central and Eastern Europe following World War II and indirectly backed the ascension of others in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Pivotal to this policy was the Communist International, also known as the Comintern, formed with the perspective of aiding and assisting communist parties around the world and fostering revolution. This was one major cause of tensions during the Cold War as the United States and its military allies equated the global spread of communism with Soviet expansionism by proxy.
By 1985, one-third of the world's population lived under a Marxist–Leninist system of government in one form or another. However, there was significant debate among communist and Marxist ideologues as to whether most of these countries could be meaningfully considered Marxist at all since many of the basic components of the Marxist system were altered and revised by such countries. There was a rapid decline of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and several other Marxist–Leninist states repudiating or abolishing the ideology altogether. Later historians have proposed different explanations for this decline, including arguments that Marxist-Leninist governments failed to live up to the ideal of a communist society, that there was a general trend towards increasing authoritarianism, that they suffered from excessive bureaucracy, and that they had inefficiencies in their economies. As of the 21st century, only a small number of Marxist–Leninist states remain, namely China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. With the exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule.
Origins of communism
Communism in antiquity
Many historical groups have been considered as following forms of communism. Karl Marx and other early communist theorists believed that hunter-gatherer societies as were found in the Paleolithic through to horticultural societies as found in the Chalcolithic were essentially egalitarian and he, therefore, termed their ideology to be primitive communism. One of the first writers to espouse a belief in the primitive communism of the past was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who stated," How happy was the primitive age when the bounties of nature lay in common...They held all nature in common which gave them secure possession of the public wealth." Because of this he believed that such primitive societies were the richest as there was no poverty. Other Greco-Roman writers that believed in a prehistoric humanity that practiced communism include Diodorus Siculus, Virgil, and Ovid. Similarly the early Church Fathers, like their pagan predecessors, maintained that humans society had declined to its current state from a now lost egalitarian social order.Around the late 5th century BC in Ancient Greece, ideas similar to communism were becoming widespread to the extent that they were parodied by the dramatist Aristophanes in his comedy The Assemblywomen in which the women of Athens seize control of the Ecclesia or city government and abolish all private property while making the sharing of women and the collective rearing of children mandatory. Over a decade later in Plato's Republic Socrates declares that an ideal state would eliminate all forms of private property among the elite of society to the extent that even children and wives are shared. He asserts that such practices would prevent internal conflict within a society and promote a sense of unity and common identity. Around AD 500 in Iran, the Zoroastrian priest and reformist Mazdak purportedly founded a movement preaching religious communism while under the patronage of the Sassanian King Kavad I who initially supported the priest and his reforms, but later had the Mazdakians repressed and Mazdak executed.
Developments in Christian communism
supported a form of common ownership based on the teachings in the New Testament which emphasised sharing. For example, in the Book of Acts the passages and state all believers held their possessions communally and would distribute goods based on need. Additionally, the related Jewish sect known as the Essenes was committed to, "social and material egalitarianism." Despite these practices falling into decline even before the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the principles of sharing property and holding goods in common continued within the Christian traditions of monasticism.From the High Middle Ages to the early modern period in Europe, various groups supporting Christian communist and communalist ideas were occasionally adopted by reformist Christian sects. An early 12th century proto-Protestant group originating in Lyon, Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles known as the Waldensians held their property in common in accordance with the Book of Acts, but were persecuted by the Catholic Church and retreated to the Piedmont. Some Waldensians led a schism after they felt the group's leader was becoming authoritarian. With the rise of the Mendicant Orders in the 13th century groups such as the Franciscans began challenging the concept of private property to the extent it had to be defended by Pope John XXII in his 1328 papal bull Quia vir reprobus, in which he ruled that because God had gifted Adam with the Earth as his domain, the ownership of property was divinely sanctioned. Also beginning in the 13th century a lay order known as the Beghards, originating in the Low Countries, started to spread among the underprivileged groups of society, taking in members who renounced private property and dedicated themselves to communal living and pious, frugal lifestyles as artisans. Although the practices were successful enough to spread to other areas on the continent such as France and Germany, the Beghards were later repeatedly condemned by the Catholic Church. Around 1300 the Apostolic Brethren in northern Italy were taken over by Fra Dolcino who formed a sect known as the Dulcinians which advocated ending feudalism, dissolving hierarchies in the church, and holding all property in common. The 14th century English scholastic and founder of Lollardy, John Wycliffe, preached of an idealized Christian state with collective ownership and disapproved of those rejecting the, "common charity and common property of Christian men." Around the same time the revolutionary priest John Ball, who was later executed for his prominent role in the doomed Wat Tyler Rebellion allegedly declared, "things cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all goods are held in common."
File:Campanella Civitas Solis.jpg|thumb|Tommaso Campanella's Civitas Solis envisioned a utopian city where private property is abolished
In Tábor, Bohemia during the 15th century Hussite Wars, the radical Taborites attempted to institute a system they called a "community of goods" where, "there is no mine or thine but all is held in common", but once initiated the scheme was quickly abandoned. They have been considered precursors of totalitarian governance while under leadership of the dictatorial Jan Želivský. After Taborite power was broken at Lipany their successors fled to Moravia forming the Moravian Church under the pacifist spiritual leader Petr Chelčický who harbored both Christian communist and Christian anarchist beliefs. The extent to which Chelčický's followers, also known as the Bohemian Brethren, adhered to his ideals, namely the abstinence from property, trade, and government, is disputed, and by the 16th century the Brethren definitely no longer embraced them. During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century the radical Anabaptists, who originated in Switzerland, endorsed the communalization of goods as practiced in the Book of Acts. The most notable Anabaptist groups were the Hutterites, founded by Jacob Hutter, who settled in Moravia in the 1520s and the Münster Anabaptists who were eradicated in battle during their attempt in 1535 to forcibly convert the city of Münster into a theocratic New Jerusalem. Various groups on the side of the Roundheads during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century propagated the redistribution of wealth on an egalitarian basis, namely the Levellers and the Diggers although only the latter group under Gerrard Winstanley promoted a propertyless, communist society.
European writers began depicting idealized communist societies in utopian fiction from the 16th century onward. Inspired by largely fictional accounts of native communities in the New World, the English humanist and future Lord Chancellor Thomas More, wrote the utopian novel Utopia in which the main character decries private property after traveling to an idyllic island without money or private property and where, "everything is under state control." More coined the term utopia as a name for his idealized community, which means "nowhere" in Latin, evincing the fact that More did not consider such a society attainable in reality. Tommaso Campanella's 1601 work The City of the Sun propagated the concept of a society where the products of society should be shared equally. In Campanella's utopia all people are well educated, there is only a four-hour work day, there is no private property, the population practices eugenics to improve mental and physical fitness, most time is devoted to either leisure or self improvement, and society is managed by a ruling scientist who bases his administration on scientific principles all in the interest of benefiting society as a whole. Utopian communist societies were also described by the French writers François Fénelon and Denis Vairasse while English writer Francis Bacon wrote of a utopia that merely had a "communism in knowledge."