Communism

The doctrine on the struggle of emancipation of the proletariat, the idea and theory of the proletariat aimed at abolishing capitalism and establishing communism; meanwhile, a political movement, and a new and higher social system that replaces capitalism. The word communism is derived from the Latin word communis, which originally means public, common, universal.

Communism is the doctrine founded by Marx and Engels on the nature, conditions and general purpose of the emancipation of the proletariat, and has scientificity and class nature. The communist doctrine has gone through a development process of scientization. Before Marx put forth communism, there were the germs of the communist thought. For example, the Hussite revolutionary movement in Czechoslovakia in the 15th century, the peasant war in Germany in the 16th century, and the victory of the English bourgeois revolution in the 17th century, etc. spread ideas such as community of property, labor for all, and the satisfaction of the needs of the members of society; and the aspirations and pursuits of the working masses for these beautiful ideals used to be embodied in some fantastic depictions and theoretical works of an ideal society. Marx and Engels critically inherited all the excellent achievements of the ideas on communism in history, summarized the experience of the revolutionary practice of the European workers’ movement, and turned communism from a utopia into a science. They critically assimilated classical German philosophy, classical English political economy, and the French doctrines of utopian socialism, and established Marxism, a scientific system of communist thought. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx pointed out: “Communism is the positive sublation of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man; it is the complete restoration of man to himself as a social, i.e., human-being, a restoration which has become conscious and which takes place within the entire wealth of previous periods of development.” There is still an influence of Feuerbachian humanism here, but Marx had already connected communism with the abolition of private property. The Communist Manifesto made a comprehensive and systematic elaboration of the theory of communism on the basis of the materialist conception of history. In this period, Marx had not yet made a strict distinction between the two concepts of communism and socialism.

Marx held that communism was a most real movement, the social revolutionary movement led by the proletariat to overthrow capitalism and the oppression of exploiting classes in order to realize communism. In The German Ideology, he pointed out, “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” Communism is the fundamental negation of actual private property, the gradual abolition of exploitation, the elimination of polarization, the establishment of public property, and the ultimate realization of communism.

Communism is ultimately the form of public property by which the people appropriate the social resources in common, work together, and share the fruits of their labor together. It is the higher phase of socialist development. Lenin called the first phase (the lower phase) socialism and the second phase (the higher phase) communism. Marx pointed out in his Critique of the Gotha Programme that the first phase of the communist society is not yet a communist society as it has developed on its own foundations, but just as it emerges from capitalist society, and is economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. At the higher phase of communism, the means of production are appropriated by the society, the phenomenon of exploitation of one individual by another is abolished, all members of society participate in labor, anarchy in social production is transformed into production organized upon a definite plan, the productive forces are highly developed, and the development of the productive forces is aimed at satisfying the growing material and cultural needs of society as a whole. The basic feature of the communist society is the implementation of the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Labor is not only a means of life but life’s prime want. Social wealth is enormously abundant, and people have a high-level ideological consciousness. It is only under such conditions that the free and full development of man be truly realized, and with it the complete emancipation of the proletariat and all mankind can be realized.

The realization of communism is a long historical process that progresses step by step. It is full of contradictions and struggles, with victories and advances, as well as twists and turns and failures, but the prospect of communist development is bright. The cause of communism is the greatest cause in human history. It cannot be accomplished without self-improvement and hard work over many generations, in accordance with the objective reality of one’s own development and following the objective laws of social development.