02/12/2020
Burnie Sanders is a Cominst please read before you vote or we are in trouble and if your young and stupid don't bother reading this you probably can't read in the first place.
Democratic socialism
Not to be confused with Social democracy.
Democratic socialism is a political philosophy that advocates for political democracy alongside a socially owned economy,[1] with a particular emphasis on workers' self-management and democratic control of economic institutions within a market socialist economy or some form of a decentralised planned socialist economy.[2] Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality and solidarity and that these ideals can only be achieved through the realisation of a socialist society.[3] Although most democratic socialists seek a gradual transition to socialism,[4] democratic socialism can support either revolutionary or reformist politics as means to establish socialism.[3] As a term, democratic socialism was popularised by social democrats who were opposed to the authoritarian socialist development in Russia and elsewhere during the 20th century.[5][6][7]
The origins of democratic socialism can be traced to 19th-century utopian socialist thinkers and the British Chartist movement that somewhat differed in their goals yet all shared the essence of democratic decision making and public ownership of the means of production as positive characteristics of the society they advocated for.[8] In the late 19th century and early 20th century, democratic socialism was also influenced by social democracy. The gradualist form of socialism promoted by the British Fabian Society and Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism in Germany influenced the development of democratic socialism.[9][10][11] Democratic socialism is what most socialists understand by the concept of socialism.[6] It may be a very broad or more limited concept,[12][13][14] referring to all forms of socialism that are democratic and reject an authoritarian Marxist–Leninist state,[6][15] including libertarian socialism,[16] market socialism,[2] reformist socialism[3] and revolutionary socialism[3][17][18] as well as ethical socialism,[19][20][21] liberal socialism,[20][22] social democracy[5][7][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] and some forms of democratic state socialism and utopian socialism.[8]
Democratic socialism is contrasted to Marxism–Leninism which is viewed as being authoritarian or undemocratic in practice.[6][15][30] Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political system and the Soviet-type economic system, rejecting the perceived authoritarian form of governance and the centralised administrative command economy that took form in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states during the 20th century.[15] Democratic socialism is also distinguished from Third Way social democracy[31] on the basis that democratic socialists are committed to systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism whereas social democratic supporters of the Third Way were more concerned about challenging the New Right and win social democracy back to power.[32] This has resulted in analysts and critics alike arguing that in effect it endorsed capitalism, even if it was due to recognising that outspoken opposition to capitalism in these circumstances was politically nonviable; and that it was not only anti-socialist and neoliberal, but anti-social democratic in practice.[24][26][27][28][29] Others have maintained this was the result of their type of reformism that caused them to administer the system according to capitalist, not socialist, logic[33] while some saw it as theoretically fitting with democratic, liberal socialism, distinguishing it from classical socialism, especially within the United Kingdom.[34]
While having socialism as a long-term goal,[35][36][37][38] modern social democrats are more concerned to curb capitalism's excesses and are supportive of progressive reforms to humanise it in the present day.[3][30] In contrast, democratic socialists believe that economic interventionism and other policy reforms aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing the economic contradictions of capitalism would only exacerbate the contradictions, causing them to emerge elsewhere under a different guise.[27][39][40][41][42][43][44] Democratic socialists believe the fundamental issues with capitalism are systemic in nature and can only be resolved by replacing the capitalist economic system with socialism, i.e. by replacing private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere.[3][30][45]
Overview
History
Parliamentary democratic socialist parties
Notable democratic socialists
Views on compatibility of socialism and democracy
See also
References
Bibliography
External links
Last edited 4 hours ago by Davide King
Wikipedia
Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted.
Terms of UsePrivacyDesktopFor other uses, see Communism (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Communalism or Communitarianism.
Communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a philosophical, social, political and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money[3][4] and the state.[5][6]
Communism includes a variety of schools of thought which broadly include Marxism and anarchism (anarcho-communism and social anarchism) as well as the political ideologies grouped around both. All of these share the analysis that the current order of society stems from its economic system and mode of production, capitalism; that in this system there are two major social classes; that conflict between these two classes is the root of all problems in society;[7] and that this situation will ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat (the working class)—who must work to survive and who make up the majority within society—and the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class)—a minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. The revolution will put the working class in power and in turn establish social ownership of the means of production, which according to this analysis is the primary element in the transformation of society towards communism.
Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the 1920s.[8] While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally communist state led to communism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model and Marxism–Leninism,[9][10][11] some economists and intellectuals argued that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism,[12][13][14] or a non-planned administrative or command economy.[15][16]
History
Main article: History of communism
Early communism
See also: Religious communism, Scientific socialism, and Utopian socialism
According to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece.[17] The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia (Iran) has been described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy, for criticizing the institution of private property and for striving to create an egalitarian society.[18][19] At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture.[20] In the medieval Christian Church, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property.
Thomas More, whose Utopia portrayed a society based on common ownership of property
Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his 1516 treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the Diggers advocated the abolition of private ownership of land.[21] In his 1895 Cromwell and Communism,[22] Eduard Bernstein argued that several groups during the English Civil War (especially the Diggers) espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[22] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. Following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism later emerged as a political doctrine.[23]
In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. Unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis.[24] Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, as well as Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm in 1841.[24]
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist
The Russian SFSR as a part of the Soviet Union in 1922
The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority.[25][26][27] The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. However, Russia was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule.[28]
The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolshevik (majority) plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, bread and land" which tapped into the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the soviets.[29] The Soviet Union was established in 1922.
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.[30] In the Moscow Trials, many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917 or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov and Bukharin, were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed.[31]
Cold War
Main article: Cold War
Its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered, and communist parties played a leading role in many independence movements. Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Marxist–Leninist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform which had replaced the Comintern, and Titoism was branded "deviationist". Albania also became an independent Marxist–Leninist state after World War II.[32] Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to western capitalism for most of the 20th century.[33]
The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.[34]
The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States, although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union) resigned, declared his office extinct and handed over its powers, including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes, to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag.[35]
Previously, from August to December all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, formally establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.[36][37]
Present situation
See also: List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with national parliamentary representation
Countries of the world now (red) or previously (orange) having nominally Marxist–Leninist communist governments
At present, states controlled by Marxist–Leninist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea currently refers to its leading ideology as Juche, which is portrayed as a development of Marxism–Leninism.
Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. The South African Communist Party is a partner in the African National Congress-led government. In India, as of March 2018, communists lead the government of Kerala. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in the parliament.[38] The Communist Party of Brazil was a part of the parliamentary coalition led by the ruling democratic socialist Workers' Party until August 2016.
The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy, and along with Laos, Vietnam and to a lesser degree Cuba, has decentralized state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Chinese economic reforms were started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 6% in 2001.[39] These reforms are sometimes described by outside commentators as a regression to capitalism, but the communist parties describe it as a necessary adjustment to existing realities in the post-Soviet world in order to maximize industrial productive capacity. In these countries, the land is a universal public monopoly administered by the state, as are natural resources and vital industries and services. The public sector is the dominant sector in these economies, and the state plays a central role in coordinating economic development.
For other uses, see Communism (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Communalism or Communitarianism.
Communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a philosophical, social, political and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money[3][4] and the state.[5][6]
Communism includes a variety of schools of thought which broadly include Marxism and anarchism (anarcho-communism and social anarchism) as well as the political ideologies grouped around both. All of these share the analysis that the current order of society stems from its economic system and mode of production, capitalism; that in this system there are two major social classes; that conflict between these two classes is the root of all problems in society;[7] and that this situation will ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat (the working class)—who must work to survive and who make up the majority within society—and the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class)—a minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. The revolution will put the working class in power and in turn establish social ownership of the means of production, which according to this analysis is the primary element in the transformation of society towards communism.
Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the 1920s.[8] While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally communist state led to communism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model and Marxism–Leninism,[9][10][11] some economists and intellectuals argued that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism,[12][13][14] or a non-planned administrative or command economy.[15][16]
History
Main article: History of communism
Early communism
See also: Religious communism, Scientific socialism, and Utopian socialism
According to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece.[17] The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia (Iran) has been described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy, for criticizing the institution of private property and for striving to create an egalitarian society.[18][19] At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture.[20] In the medieval Christian Church, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property.
Thomas More, whose Utopia portrayed a society based on common ownership of property
Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his 1516 treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the Diggers advocated the abolition of private ownership of land.[21] In his 1895 Cromwell and Communism,[22] Eduard Bernstein argued that several groups during the English Civil War (especially the Diggers) espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[22] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. Following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism later emerged as a political doctrine.[23]
In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. Unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis.[24] Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, as well as Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm in 1841.[24]
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.[24]
The Russian SFSR as a part of the Soviet Union in 1922
The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority.[25][26][27] The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. However, Russia was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule.[28]
The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolshevik (majority) plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, bread and land" which tapped into the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the soviets.[29] The Soviet Union was established in 1922.
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.[30] In the Moscow Trials, many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917 or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov and Bukharin, were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed.[31]
Cold War
Main article: Cold War
Its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered, and communist parties played a leading role in many independence movements. Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Marxist–Leninist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform which had replaced the Comintern, and Titoism was branded "deviationist". Albania also became an independent Marxist–Leninist state after World War II.[32] Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to western capitalism for most of the 20th century.[33]
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Main article: Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.[34]
The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States, although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union) resigned, declared his office extinct and handed over its powers, including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes, to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag.[35]
Previously, from August to December all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, formally establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.[36][37]
Present situation
See also: List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with national parliamentary representation
Countries of the world now (red) or previously (orange) having nominally Marxist–Leninist communist governments
At present, states controlled by Marxist–Leninist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea currently refers to its leading ideology as Juche, which is portrayed as a development of Marxism–Leninism.
Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. The South African Communist Party is a partner in the African National Congress-led government. In India, as of March 2018, communists lead the government of Kerala. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in the parliament.[38] The Communist Party of Brazil was a part of the parliamentary coalition led by the ruling democratic socialist Workers' Party until August 2016.
The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy, and along with Laos, Vietnam and to a lesser degree Cuba, has decentralized state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Chinese economic reforms were started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 6% in 2001.[39] These reforms are sometimes described by outside commentators as a regression to capitalism, but the communist parties describe it as a necessary adjustment to existing realities in the post-Soviet world in order to maximize industrial productive capacity. In these countries, the land is a universal public monopoly administered by the state, as are natural resources and vital industries and services. The public sector is the dominant sector in these economies, and the state plays a central role in coordinating economic development.
