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The term communism is generally applied to the Marxist-Leninist political and socioeconomic doctrines that guided the USSR until its disintegration in 1991 and that were shared by governments and political parties in Eastern Europe, China, and elsewhere. This system is primarily associated with the collective ownership of the means of production, central economic planning, and rule by a single political party.

Originally, the term communism signified an ideal society in which property would be owned in common and the necessities of life shared by members of the community according to their needs. In the Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels applied the term communism to a final stage of socialism in which all class differences would disappear and humankind would live in harmony. Marx and Engels claimed to have discovered a scientific approach to socialism based on the laws of history. They declared that the course of history was determined by the clash of opposing forces rooted in the economic system and the ownership of property. Just as the feudal system had given way to capitalism, so in time capitalism would give way to socialism. The class struggle of the future would be between the bourgeoisie, or capitalist employers, and the proletariat, or workers. The struggle would end, according to Marx, in the socialist revolution and the attainment of full communism.

Marxism became the dominant body of thought in European socialism in the 19th century. Socialist parties grew rapidly and, despite their revolutionary theories, began to elect representatives to national legislatures. Much controversy raged within the parties between those who felt the need for a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and those who held that socialism might be achieved through gradual reforms.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was not only a revolutioniary but a prolific writer who made important additions to the theory of Marxism and created a doctrine for professional revolutionists that gained considerable influence in economically backward areas of the world. In his pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902) he called for an elitist, disciplined party of professional revolutionists to lead the working class toward communism. The principles of "the leading role of the party" and "democratic centralism"--meaning an almost military organizational discipline within the party--were supposed to be practiced by all Communist parties.

Following Lenin's death in 1924, Josef Stalin skillfully used his position as general secretary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union to obtain a monopoly of power. Stalin espoused the doctrine of "socialism in one country," maintaining that any nation could build socialism by itself. He also believed that unless socialist nations quickly became industrial powers they would be destroyed by the stronger capitalist nations of the West. Stalin's political system has been characterized as totalitarianism. Under Stalin the party strove to control every aspect of Soviet life, including the activities of workers, peasants, artists, writers, and athletes. A cult of praise that amounted almost to deification developed around Stalin as supreme leader. His policy decisions were enforced as much by the secret police as by the party. Stalin believed that the struggle with the capitalist West called for the strictest ideological and political discipline. The Soviet population was forced to endure economic privation and political repression so that the Soviet leadership could accomplish the task of reconstructing and expanding the domestic base of heavy industry, which was needed to establish the USSR as a world power.

In 1949 a Communist movement also took power in China under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The Chinese Communist party's doctrines were shaped as much by Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism as by its own unique experience blended with the ideas of Mao. Mao saw humans as engaged in a permanent struggle against nature. Society was riven by contradictions between classes (antagonistic contradictions) and between groups in specific classes (nonantagonistic contradictions). The antagonistic contradictions could be solved by revolution, but after the revolution it was necessary to work out the nonantagonistic contradictions that existed among the people and even within the party through self-criticism and mass movements. Mao believed that the revolution did not end when the Communists came to power; it had to be waged continually against vestiges of the old culture and against bureaucratic habits. Under Mao, China was subjected to startling shifts in policy that began with the elite and were carried downward through all parts of society.

Bibliography: Barnard, F. M., Pluralism, Socialism, and Political Legitimacy (1991); Brzezinski, Z., The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the 20th Century (1989); Daniels, R., ed., Marxism and Communism: Essential Readings (1965); Femia, J., Marxism and Democracy (1993); Graubard, S., Exit from Communism (1993); Harding, H., China's Second Revolution (1987); Laqueur, W., The Long Road to Freedom: Russia and Glasnost (1989); Lewin, M., The Gorbachev Phenomenon (1988); Lowenthal, R., Communism: The Disintegration of a Secular Faith (1964); McLellan, D., Marxism after Marx (1980); Seton-Watson, H., The Imperialist Revolutionaries (1978; repr. 1985); Solomon, R. H., Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (1971); Solzhenitsyn, A., The Gulag Archipelago, 3 vols. (1974-78); Timmermann, H., The Decline of the World Communist Movement (1987); Volkogonov, Dmitri, Stalin (1991); Wolfe, B., Three Who Made a Revolution (1964).

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General Characteristics of Authoritarian Socialism:

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