Communist state Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
In common speech in the Western World, a communist state is one ruled by a single political party which declares its allegiance to the principles of Marxism-Leninism. In Marxist political theory, however, "communism" is the final stateless stage of society, therefore these countries called themselves socialist states instead, representing a stage prior to communism in their political view.
While the West generally divides governments into (1) the "Free World", (2) the Communist bloc (particularly the Warsaw Pact countries) and (3) the "Third World"; advocates of communism generally classify societies by their economic system, especially "capitalist" vs. "socialist". Both sides identify themselves as the true representatives of democracy, however they differ as to the very notion of democracy besides the literal meaning of the word.
There has never been a state which has called itself communist (lower case 'c'). Countries that are given this label by many non-communists usually called themselves socialist instead. In these countries the comunist-type party is only legal party, and distinctions between government and party become blurred. There is usually a command economy. These states often modelled their political and economic systems after the Soviet Union, which in the mid-20th century appeared to them to offer a mechanism for rapid economic development.
This definition contrasts with communist governments in multi-party systems, in which the governing elites, though they emerge from highly disciplined political parties, govern through state rather than party structures, and exercise less control over the state and economy: For example, the governments of the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal, while ruled by communist parties, operate in a multiparty framework.
In terms of English usage "communist state" needs to be distinguished from "Communist state". Whereas the former is a generic term applicable to political systems, style guides tend to restrict the use of latter to circumstances where a state is governed by a formally organized "Communist Party".
Communist party run governments typically arose during times of general international unrest as a result of revolutions led by national communist parties. Such parties often operated illegally for a period before the revolution and developed disciplined and effective structures and a cadre of committed leaders marked by both idealism and skill at organizing successfully among the disaffected classes of the preceding state, generally workerss, intellectuals and, especially in the case of China, peasants. Following a successful revolution, a switch in orientation is made from seizing power to building a new society.
The short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, a brief revolutionary government after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, was an early attempt at instituting a socialist regime, and Marx wrote approvingly of it.
In the 20th century, a number of Communist parties attempted to put Marx's ideas into practice, organizing such successful coups or revolutions and establishing governments in various countries. Them and parties allied with them became the only legal, governing parties.
The most notable examples of these "communist states" were the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.
Following the Russian Revolution in 1917 which established what became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union, there was a revolutionary wave throughout Europe that resulted in a number of attempted communist uprisings. Only two were able to take power, and only for short periods, the Munich Soviet Republic which lasted from November 1918 until May 3 1919 and the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Mongolia had been a protectorate of the Russia from 1912 until 1919 when the Chinese took control during the Russian Civil War. The Russian White Army took control in 1921 and then was driven out by the Red Army that year. While Mongolia was not absorbed into the Soviet Union, a Mongolian People's Republic which was a Commuist state in Moscow's orbit, was established in 1924.
Most of the Communist states in the world were established in the aftermath of World War II in Eastern Europe either in countries which were liberated from the Nazis by the Soviet Red Army and subsequently occupied by Soviet troops or in countries where Communist led partisans succeeded in driving out the Nazis and taking power themselves. The Red Army supported the establishment of Communist governments in what became the Soviet Union's satellite states of Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Communist partisans established Communist governments which were initially pro-Soviet in Albania and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In east Asia the Red Army joined the war against Japan and established a Communist state in North Korea.
The Chinese Revolution led to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and the First Indochina War led to the established of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in North Vietnam in 1954 while the Vietnam War resulted in the North Vietnamese ultimately conquring the rest of the country to establish the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975. The conflict also led to a Communist state being established in Laos and the related Cambodian Civil War resulted in the establishment of the quasi-Communist state of Democratic Kampuchea in 1975. Civil war also led to the establishment of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1969.
For several years communist regimes also existed in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique and in other developing countries. Towards the end of the 20th century nearly one third of the world's population was ruled by Communist governments.
After the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s, all European communist party–run governments abandoned communism. However, China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam continue to be run by communist parties. In practice the economies of China and Vietnam are organized to a greater or lesser extent around the market. Some outside these countries refer to this arrangement as market socialism; others view China in particular as having become capitalist in all but name. Trotskyists refer to all these countries as "deformed workers states".
The People's Republic of China today has moved to a system of market allocations of resources, what they call "market socialism" or "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and claims to have preserved socialism under this framework, sustaining the world's highest rate of per capita economic growth for over two decades.
In China, it has been firmly established that the party is subordinate to the state and the state has the power to regulate the party. This and the receding of the Chinese state from the economy has caused some political scientists to question the applicability of the term "communist" to the Chinese governing elite, and thus whether the term communist remains an accurate description of the Chinese system.
However, Marxism-Leninism constitutionally remains the basis of the Chinese state and the Communist Party of China retains extensive influence over the state. Furthermore, although Marxism-Leninism has been reinterpreted to allow extensive debate on some economic and political issues, the validity of Marxism-Leninism is still not subject to open debate. As a result, the term communist state is used by many, though not all, political scientists to describe China's current system of government.
For a complete discussion, see Politics of the People's Republic of China.
The dominant form of communism today is based on Marxism: a political and economic philosophy derived from the works of Karl Marx that considers history in terms of class relations. Various revolutionaries in the twentieth century have contributed to Marxist theory, especially Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Mao Zedong.
In Marxist theory, communism is the final evolutionary phase of society (coming after socialism) at which time the state would have withered away: the ideal stateless and classless society without private ownership of means of production in which there should be no oppression or exploitation. Marx specified that the workers would rise up to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism, a transitional stage during which the state holds the property of means of production on behalf of its citizens. Communist theory argues that this in turn is destined to be replaced by a classless communist stage of society, after the socialist state "withers away". Marx did not explain how socialism would transform into communism, which anti-communists consider a serious theoretical flaw.
Supporters of current Marxist-Leninist regimes consider these states to be practicing socialism, and not communism -- no Marxist government ever actually claimed to have instituted a "communist" society. In addition, current states are believed to be in either the capitalist or the socialist phase of history, and the role of the Communist Party is to pull a nation toward the communist phase of history by first implementing socialism.
Leninism or Marxism-Leninism is the name given to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin's system of thought, which emphasises a type of governing structure known as democratic centralism, and the need to spread the revolution to other countries, and to exclude any compromise with the bourgeoisie.
Lenin's rule gave way to Joseph Stalin's style of dictatorship (see Stalinism). Stalin's government was violently repressive of individual liberties and of political dissidents and featured five-year plans, collectivization and industrialization, as a means of constructing socialism in one country. Leon Trotsky opposed the doctrine of "socialism in one country", and criticized Stalin's regime as being a "bureaucratically degenerated" worker's state. (for more information see Trotskyism)
Although they promote collective ownership of the means of production, they are also characterized by strong state apparatuses. Many have characterized the old Soviet command model as state socialism or state capitalism. At various times they have had to allow or even encourage certain forms of private property.
However, critics have often claimed that as practiced in nations such as the former Soviet Union it created a new division of power (see nomenklatura).
The practices of Mao Zedong are known as Maoism. Maoism differs from traditional Marxism in the fact that the peasants are perceived as a larger source of revolution as opposed to the proletariat.
The history of communist party run governments since 1917 is varied and complex, but it is possible to make some valid generalizations which apply to most examples: communist party run governments have historically been characterized by public ownership of productive resources in a centrally planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform, collective farming, or state farms.
Political scientists, however, have developed the concept of communist state to reflect claims made by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and others that the revolutionary state must be a "dictatorship of the proletariat," and that the working class is represented by the Communist Party. In practice, according to this theory, state and the party are effectively identical, and govern all aspects of the society -- economic and cultural, as well as political.
In the Soviet Union for example, the General Secretary of the Communist Party did not necessarily hold a state office like president or prime minister to effectively control the system of government. Instead party members answerable to or controlled by the party held these posts, often as honorific posts as a reward for their long years of service to the party. On other occasions, having governed as General Secretary, the party leader might assume a state office in addition. For example, Mikhail Gorbachev initially did not hold the presidency of the Soviet Union, that office being given as an honor to a former Soviet Foreign Minister.
Within most communist states there are no restrictions in theory and few restrictions in practice on the power of the state, resulting in state structures which are either totalitarian or authoritarian. The mainstream branch of Marxism-Leninism sees restrictions on state power to be an unnecessary interference in the goal of pulling the society toward communism. Other Marxist-Leninists have argued that a state with absolute power is incapable of moving society towards a democratic system such as communism.
In some communist party-run states, such as the Soviet Union, a large secret police apparatus closely monitors the population. Autocratic methods are often employed to crush opposition. Some political scientists have argued that there are deep similarities between communist states and fascist ones and that both are examples of totalitarian states.
The nature of each example of the communist party run state differs widely both between countries and within each individual state. Policies which incorporate the policies and techniques of the orthodox Stalinist state of the 1930s are characteristically more totalitarian, impoverished, militaristic, and static as can be seen in the examples of North Korea and Albania. Attempts to incorporate democratic principles as in the case of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, socialist principles as in Yugoslavia, or capitalistic techniques as in China result in some mitigation of the negative features of the communist party run state but sometimes result in dynamic situations which may undermine the control of the party over the state or even lead to its collapse.
The People's Republic of China and to a lesser extent Vietnam have both moved toward market economics.
Advocates of communism praise Communist parties for running countries that have sometimes leaped ahead of contempary "capitalistic" countries, offering guaranteed employment. Critics of communism typically condemn Communist parties by the same criteria, claiming that communist-run countries all lag far behind the "Free World" in terms of industrialization and general prosperity. They regard the Communist practice of making it illegal to quit one's job, or to hire a dissident or his relatives, tantamount to slavery.
Other claims include generous social and cultural programs, often administered by labor organizations. Universal education programs have been a strong point, as has the generous provision of universal health care. Western critics charge that Communist compulsory education is replete with pro-Communist and atheistic propaganda and that it severely punishes critical thinking.
Central economic planning has in certain instances produced dramatic advances, for example, rapid development of heavy industry during the 1930s in the Soviet Union and later in their space program. Yet other examples touted by advocates of Communism, such as the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cuba, have according to Western critics produced few discoveries of note (it is rather the West, particularly the US, which has produced the bulk of new drugs and vaccines). Early advances in the status of women were also notable, especially in Islamic areas of the Soviet Union. See Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia: 1919-1929, Princeton University Press, 1974, hardcover, 451 pages, ISBN 069107562X
Many Marxists and Marxist-Leninists argue that most communist states do not actually adhere to Marxism-Leninism but rather to a perversion heavily influenced by Stalinism, a "Caliban state" which sharply diverges in practice from the humanistic philosophy of Marxist revolutionaries. This critique is particularly strong among social democrats and some critical theorists who hold that Marxism is correct as a social and historical theory, but that it can only be implemented within a multiparty democracy. Trotskyistss argue that the bureaucratic and repressive nature of communist states differs from Lenin's vision of the socialist state. Some Marxists (for example Milovan Djilas, James Burnham) described communist states as systems where a new powerful class of party bureaucrats emerged, exercised complete control over the means of production and exploited the working class.
Regimes described as communist have, according to many observers, in practice been abusive of human rights. Democratic movements that arose within a framework of communist theory, such as that instituted by Alexander Dubček; in Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring, have been forcibly put down (see also Hungarian Uprising).
One controversial doctrine that was popular in the 1980s was the Kirkpatrick doctrine which argued that communist states were inherently "totalitarian" while right-wing dictatorships which the United States supported were "authoritarian".
Current one party Soviet style "Communist states" and their ruling parties are:
Terminology and political classification
Historical examples of communist governments
Early examples
20th century
People's Republic of China
Communist theories and ideologies of government
Relationship between party and state
Criticism and Advocacy
List of current Communist states
The following countries are generally considered to be "Communist states" according to the way the term has been generally used since World War II as they are states in which a ruling Communist Party has a monopoly on political power. The degree to which these states are "socialist" is a matter of contention due to differing definitions of socialism but it is generally acknowledged that they are Soviet style systems emulating the ex Soviet Union. Even so, there is a wide degree of variation from the People's Republic of China, on one end, which many would consider to be market socialist or even capitalist to North Korea whose system is closest to Stalinism and practices a rigid command economy.
See also: List of Communist partiesDefunct Communist States
Defunct Communist states and their ruling parties (where applicable):
Sometimes the Paris Commune (1870-1871) is also classified as such, since Karl Marx described it as a living example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.