World communism
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World communism, also known as global communism or international communism, is a form of communism placing emphasis on an international scope rather than being individual communist states. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless, moneyless, stateless, and nonviolent, which may be achieved through an intermediate-term goal of either a voluntary association of sovereign states as a global alliance, or a world government as a single worldwide state.
A series of internationals have proposed world communism as a primary goal, including the First International, the Second International, the Third International (the Communist International or Comintern), the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, Maoist Internationalist Movement, the World Socialist Movement, and variant offshoots. The methods and political theories of each International remain distinct in their pursuit of the global communist society.
During the
The end of the
Early era (1917–1944)
Theorists have differed on whether world communism may be achieved peacefully despite evidently ongoing class conflict. Those who believe the capitalist class would not put down their property rights to become workers again believe the transition to world communism must be more contentious. World communism as the utopian final goal of the class conflict can only be achieved by world revolution as "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" in the words of noted socialist, Martin Luther King Jr. As such, World communism is ultimately incompatible with the permanent existence of the nation state formation as a means of organizing people and property. To be a socialist is to believe that people are people everywhere, even within nations and they must unite to end their own exploitation by the would be elitists of capitalism. Whether the people unite in a supranational unions of sovereign states or a world government to progress through the socialist phase of human development is guided by the desire to end this capitalist exploitation of humankind.
This transitional period of
Abolition of the state is not in itself a distinctively
This is from the pioneer work of
Reference to the whole passage shows that this happens only after the proletariat has seized the means of production. The schematic is therefore revolution, transitional period, ultimate period. Although the ultimate period sounds like a utopia, Marx and Engels did not consider themselves utopian socialists, but rather scientific socialists. They considered violence necessary for resistance of wage slavery.
Whereas for Engels the transitional period was reduced to a single act, for Lenin thirty to forty years later it had become extended and "obviously lengthy".[4] In the same place, he argues strongly that Marx's conception of communist society is not utopian, but takes into account the heritage of what came before.
This gives at least roughly the position on world communism as the Comintern was set up in 1919: world revolution is necessary for the setting up of world communism, but not as an immediate or clearly sufficient event.
Stalinist and Cold War era (1947–1991)
During the Stalinist era, the idea of socialism in one country, which many internationalists considered unworkable, became part of the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as Stalin and his supporters concluded that the transitional period would indeed be very long and complicated. Advocates of socialism in one country had not abandoned the goal of ultimate world communism, but they considered it naive to think world revolution was imminent. Thus the Soviet Union dissolved the Third International during World War II. However, Stalin did not intend to implement isolationism despite this one-country approach.
In a 1936 interview with journalist Roy W. Howard, Stalin articulated his rejection of world revolution and stated that “We never had such plans and intentions” and that “The export of revolution is nonsense”.[5][6][7]
Despite retaining the earlier
Collapse and survival
Socialism survived in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba, after severe internal crises. In 1989-1991 the party control collapsed in other Communist states, which then entered into Post-communism. Yugoslavia plunged into a long complex series of wars between ethnic groups. Soviet-oriented Communist movements collapsed in countries where it was not in control.[8]
See also
- Communist nostalgia
- Dissolution of the Soviet Union
- Fall of communism in Albania
- History of communism § Contemporary communism (1993–present)
- List of communist parties with national parliamentary representation
- National communism
- Post-communism
- Predictions of the collapse of the Soviet Union
- Proletarian internationalism
- Revolutions of 1989
References
- ISBN 978-0198744337.
- ^ Engels, Friedrich (1894). "Part III: Socialism - II. Theoretical". Anti-Dühring. Translated by Burns, Emile. Archived from the original on April 15, 2007 – via Marxists Internet Archive.. The passage was not in the first edition of 1878.
- ^ Engels, Friedrich (1894). "Part III: Socialism - II. Theoretical". Anti-Dühring. Translated by Burns, Emile. Archived from the original on April 15, 2007 – via Marxists Internet Archive.. The passage was not in the first edition of 1878.
- ^ Lenin, V.I. "5". The State and Revolution. Archived from the original on April 23, 2007.
- ^ Vyshinsky, Andrey Yanuaryevich (1950). Speeches Delivered at the Fifth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, September-October, 1950. Information Bulletin of the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. p. 76.
- ISBN 978-0-684-83420-7.
- ISBN 978-0-7139-9945-7.
- ^ Priestland 2010, pp. 346–353.
Further reading
- Bown, Archie. The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009).
- Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (2nd ed. 2008) excerpt
- Pons, Silvio; Quinn-Smith, Stephen A., eds. (2017). "World Revolution and Socialism in One Country, 1917-1941". The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 1. ISBN 9781316137024.
- Naimark, Norman; Pons, Silvio; Quinn-Judge, Sophie, eds. (2017). "The Socialist Camp and World Power, 1941-1960s". The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 2. ISBN 9781316459850.
- Fürst, Juliane, Silvio Pons and Mark Selden, eds. The Cambridge History of Communism (Volume 3): Endgames? Late Communism in Global Perspective, 1968 to the Present (2017) excerpt
- Naimark, Norman; Pons, Silvio; Quinn-Judge, Sophie, eds. (2017). "The Socialist Camp and World Power, 1941-1960s". The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 2.
- Pons, Silvio, and Robert Service, eds. A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism (2010).
- ISBN 978-0140295207.
- ISBN 978-0-674-02530-1.