Contents

Concepts of Marxism

1.1

Historical materialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.1

Key ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.2

Key implications in the study and understanding of history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.3

Marx's materialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.4

The future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.5

Marxist beliefs about history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.6

Alienation and freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.7

History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.8

Warnings against misuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.9

In Marxist thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.10 Recent versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.11 Criticisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.12 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.13 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.14 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.1.15 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dialectical materialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.2.1

The term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.2.2

Historical background of materialism

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10

1.2.3

Marx's dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10

1.2.4

Engels' dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

1.2.5

Lenin's contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

1.2.6

Lukcs' contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12

1.2.7

Mao's contributions

13

1.2.8

Dialectical materialism as a heuristic in biology and elsewhere

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

1.2.9

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

1.2.10 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

1.2.11 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Marxist philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16

1.3.1

Marxism and philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16

1.3.2

The Philosophy of Marx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17

1.2

1.3

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ii

CONTENTS

1.4

1.5

1.6

1.7

1.3.3

Dierences within Marxist philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

22

1.3.4

Key works and authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

22

1.3.5

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

1.3.6

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

1.3.7

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

Marx's method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

1.4.1

Readings on Marxs method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

1.4.2

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

24

1.4.3

External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

24

Marxian economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

24

1.5.1

Marx's response to classical economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

24

1.5.2

Marx's theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25

1.5.3

Current theorizing in Marxian economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

1.5.4

Criticisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

1.5.5

Neo-Marxian economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28

1.5.6

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28

1.5.7

Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28

1.5.8

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29

1.5.9

Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29

1.5.10 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30

Surplus value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30

1.6.1

Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30

1.6.2

Denition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31

1.6.3

Interpretations

31

1.6.4

Equalization of rates of surplus value

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

1.6.5

Appropriation from production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

1.6.6

Absolute vs. relative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

1.6.7

Production versus realisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

1.6.8

Relation to taxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

1.6.9

Relation to the circuits of capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

1.6.10 Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

34

1.6.11 Dierent conceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

34

1.6.12 Morality and power of surplus value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

1.6.13 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36

1.6.14 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36

1.6.15 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36

1.6.16 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

Bourgeoisie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

1.7.1

Etymology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38

1.7.2

History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38

1.7.3

Denotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CONTENTS

iii

1.7.4

Modern history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

40

1.7.5

Bourgeois culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

1.7.6

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43

1.7.7

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43

1.7.8

External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44

Proletariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44

1.8.1

Usage in Roman law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44

1.8.2

Usage in Marxist theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45

1.8.3

Prole drift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

1.8.4

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

1.8.5

Reference notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

1.8.6

Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

1.8.7

External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

Class conict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

1.9.1

Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

48

1.9.2

Capitalist societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

48

1.9.3

The Soviet Union and similar societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50

1.9.4

Marxist perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50

1.9.5

Non-Marxist perspectives

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51

1.9.6

Class vs. race struggle

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

52

1.9.7

Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

52

1.9.8

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

1.9.9

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

1.9.10 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

54

1.9.11 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

54

1.10 Classless society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

1.10.1 Classlessness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

1.10.2 Marxist denition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

1.10.3 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

1.10.4 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

1.11 Class consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

1.11.1 Marxist theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

1.11.2 Georg Lukcs' History and Class Consciousness (1923)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56

1.11.3 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

1.11.4 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

1.11.5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

1.12 Commune (socialism) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

1.12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

1.12.2 Within Marxism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

1.12.3 Bakunin's Revolutionary Catechism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

1.12.4 The function of mini-communes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

1.8

1.9

iv

CONTENTS
1.12.5 Contemporary political movements organized around the idea of the commune . . . . . . .

58

1.12.6 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

1.12.7 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

1.12.8 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

1.13 Common ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

1.13.1 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

1.13.2 Common ownership and socialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

1.13.3 In practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

1.13.4 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

1.13.5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

1.14 Dictatorship of the proletariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

1.14.1 Theoretical approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

1.14.2 Lenin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

1.14.3 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

64

1.14.4 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

64

1.14.5 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

1.15 Collective leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

1.15.1 Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

1.15.2 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

1.15.3 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

1.15.4 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

1.16 Scientic socialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

1.16.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

1.16.2 Similar perspectives

67

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.16.3 Critique of the notion of socialism as a science

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

1.16.4 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

1.16.5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

1.17 Gift economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

1.17.1 Principles of gift exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

1.17.2 Case studies: Prestations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

1.17.3 Charity and alms giving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

72

1.17.4 Gifting as non-commodied exchange in market societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

1.17.5 Related concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

1.17.6 Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

77

1.17.7 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

78

1.17.8 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

78

1.17.9 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

80

1.18 Communist society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

1.18.1 Economic aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

1.18.2 Social aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

1.18.3 Open-source and peer production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

CONTENTS

1.18.4 In Soviet ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

1.18.5 Fictional portrayals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

1.18.6 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

1.18.7 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

1.18.8 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

84

1.19 Socialist mode of production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

84

1.19.1 Mode of production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85

1.19.2 Social relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85

1.19.3 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

86

1.19.4 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

86

1.20 World revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87

1.20.1 Communist movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87

1.20.2 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

88

1.20.3 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

88

Communism & Variants

89

2.1

Anti-imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89

2.1.1

Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89

2.1.2

Political movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

90

2.1.3

Anti-Imperialist League

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

90

2.1.4

Marxism, Leninism, and anti-imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

90

2.1.5

Right-wing anti-imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92

2.1.6

Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92

2.1.7

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92

2.1.8

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92

2.1.9

Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93

2.1.10 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93

Theory of the productive forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

94

2.2.1

Empirical support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

94

2.2.2

External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

94

2.2.3

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

94

2.2.4

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

95

Economic planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

95

2.3.1

Socialist economic planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

95

2.3.2

Planning in capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

96

2.3.3

Economic planning in practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

97

2.3.4

Criticisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

98

2.3.5

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

98

2.3.6

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99

2.2

2.3

2.4

Commanding heights of the economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

2.4.1

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

2.4.2

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

vi

CONTENTS
2.5

2.6

2.7

2.8

Communist state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

2.5.1

Communist party as the leader of the state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

2.5.2

Development of communist states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

2.5.3

State institutions in Communist states

2.5.4

Critiques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

2.5.5

Modern period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

2.5.6

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

2.5.7

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Democratic centralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

2.6.1

Before Stalin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

2.6.2

In the Soviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

2.6.3

In China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

2.6.4

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

2.6.5

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

2.6.6

External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

MarxistLeninist atheism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

2.7.1

Inuence of Feuerbach and Left Hegelians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

2.7.2

Marx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

2.7.3

Engels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

2.7.4

Lenin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

2.7.5

Soviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

2.7.6

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

2.7.7

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

2.7.8

Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

2.7.9

External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Proletarian internationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

2.8.1

Marx and Engels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

2.8.2

First International

2.8.3

Second International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

2.8.4

First World War

2.8.5

Third International: Leninism versus Left Communism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

2.8.6

Socialist internationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

2.8.7

Proletarian internationalism today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

2.8.8

Leftist opposition to proletarian internationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

2.8.9

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

2.8.10 Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

2.8.11 References and external links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
2.9

Socialist patriotism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

2.9.1

Countries' variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

2.9.2

See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

2.9.3

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

CONTENTS

vii

2.10 Single-party state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

2.10.1 Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
2.10.2 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
2.10.3 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2.10.4 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2.10.5 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2.11 Socialist state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2.11.1 Marxist concept of a socialist state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
2.11.2 Non-Leninist countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
2.11.3 Establishing a socialist state by reformism or revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
2.11.4 Controversy with the term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
2.11.5 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
2.11.6 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
2.12 Vanguardism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
2.12.1 Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
2.12.2 Current use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
2.12.3 Political party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
2.12.4 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
2.12.5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
2.12.6 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
2.13 Leninism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
2.13.1 Historical background

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

2.13.2 Leninist theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

2.13.3 Leninism after 1924 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
2.13.4 Philosophic successors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
2.13.5 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
2.13.6 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
2.13.7 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
2.13.8 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
2.13.9 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
2.14 Stalinism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
2.14.1 Etymology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
2.14.2 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
2.14.3 Stalinist policies

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

2.14.4 Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

2.14.5 Relationship to Leninism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
2.14.6 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
2.14.7 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
2.14.8 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2.14.9 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2.15 Maoism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

viii

CONTENTS
2.15.1 Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
2.15.2 Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
2.15.3 Maoism in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
2.15.4 Maoism after Mao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
2.15.5 Maoism's International Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
2.15.6 Criticisms and interpretations

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

2.15.7 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

2.15.8 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
2.15.9 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
2.15.10 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
2.16 Anti-revisionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
2.16.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
2.16.2 Anti-revisionist groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
2.16.3 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
2.17 MarxismLeninismMaoism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
2.17.1 Origin

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

2.17.2 Components

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

2.17.3 Dierences from Mao Zedong Thought

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

2.17.4 Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Internationally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

2.17.5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
2.17.6 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
2.18 Hoxhaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
2.18.1 List of Hoxhaist parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
2.18.2 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
2.18.3 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
2.18.4 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
2.19 Trotskyism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
2.19.1 Denition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
2.19.2 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
2.19.3 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
2.19.4 Trotskyist movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
2.19.5 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
2.19.6 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
2.19.7 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
2.19.8 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
2.20 Politics of Fidel Castro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
2.20.1 Inuences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
2.20.2 On the Soviet Union and its leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
2.20.3 On Israel and anti-Semitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
2.20.4 Public image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
2.20.5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

CONTENTS

ix

2.20.6 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

2.21 Guevarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
2.21.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
2.21.2 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
2.21.3 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
2.21.4 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
3

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

180

3.1

Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

3.2

Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

3.3

Content license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Chapter 1

Concepts of Marxism
1.1 Historical materialism

beings to survive and continue existence from generation

to generation, it is necessary for them to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life.* [4] Marx then
extended this premise by asserting the importance of the
fact that, in order to carry out production and exchange,
people have to enter into very denite social relations,
most fundamentally production relations.

Historical materialism is a methodological approach to

the study of human societies and their development over
time rst articulated by Karl Marx (18181883) as the
materialist conception of history. It is principally a
theory of history according to which the material conditions of a society's mode of production (its way of producing and reproducing the means of human existence in Marxist terms, the union of its productive capacity and
social relations of production) fundamentally determine
its organisation and development.

However, production does not get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrary or random relations
chosen at will. Human beings collectively work on nature
but do not do the same work; there is a division of labor
in which people not only do dierent jobs, but according
to Marxist theory, some people live o the fruits of others' labour by owning the means of production. How this
is accomplished depends on the type of society. Production is carried out through very denite relations between
people. And, in turn, these production relations are determined by the level and character of the productive forces
that are present at any given time in history. For Marx,
productive forces refer to the means of production such
as the tools, instruments, technology, land, raw materials, and human knowledge and abilities in terms of using
these means of production.

Historical materialism* [1] looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by
which humans collectively produce the necessities of life.
Social classes and the relationship between them, along
with the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reect contemporary economic
activity.* [2]
Since Marx's time, the theory has been modied and expanded by Marxist writers. It now has many Marxist and
non-Marxist variants.

1.1.1

Writers who identify with historical materialism usually

postulate that society has moved through a number of
types or modes of production. That is, the character of
the production relations is determined by the character of
the productive forces; these could be the simple tools and
instruments of early human existence, or the more developed machinery and technology of present age. The
main modes of production Marx identied generally include primitive communism or tribal society (a prehistoric stage), ancient society, feudalism, and capitalism.
In each of these social stages, people interact with nature
and produce their living in dierent ways. Any surplus
from that production is allotted in dierent ways. Ancient society was based on a ruling class of slave owners
and a class of slaves; feudalism was based on landowners
and serfs; and capitalism based on the capitalist class and
the working class. The capitalist class privately owns the
means of production, distribution and exchange (e.g., factories, mines, shops and banks) while the working class
live by exchanging their socialized labour with the capitalist class for wages.

Key ideas

In the Marxian view, human history is like a river. From

any given vantage point, a river looks much the same
day after day. But actually it is constantly owing and
changing, crumbling its banks, widening and deepening
its channel. The water seen one day is never the same as
that seen the next. Some of it is constantly being evaporated and drawn up, to return as rain. From year to year
these changes may be scarcely perceptible. But one day,
when the banks are thoroughly weakened and the rains
long and heavy, the river oods, bursts its banks, and may
take a new course. This represents the dialectical part of
Marx's famous theory of dialectical (or historical) materialism.
Hubert Kay, LIFE Magazine, 1948* [3]
Historical materialism springs from a fundamental underlying reality of human existence: that in order for human
1

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Marx identied the production relations of society (arising on the basis of given productive forces) as the economic base of society. He also explained that on the
foundation of the economic base there arise certain political institutions, laws, customs, culture, etc., and ideas,
ways of thinking, morality, etc. These constituted the
political/ideological superstructure of society. This superstructure not only has its origin in the economic base,
but its features also ultimately correspond to the character
and development of that economic base, i.e. the way people organize society is determined by the economic base
and the relations that arise from its mode of production.
Historical materialism can be seen to rest on the following
principles:
1. The basis of human society is how humans work on
nature to produce the means of subsistence.
2. There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership
where some people live from the labour of others.
3. The system of class division is dependent on the
mode of production.
4. The mode of production is based on the level of the
productive forces.
5. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by
overthrowing thepolitical shellthat enforces the
old relations of production no longer corresponding
to the new productive forces. This takes place in the
superstructure of society, the political arena in the
form of revolution, whereby the underclass liberatesthe productive forces with new relations of
production, and social relations, corresponding to it.

of development, the material productive forces

of society come into conict with the existing
relations of production or this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms with
the property relations within the framework of
which they have operated hitherto. From forms
of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters. Then begins
an era of social revolution. The changes in
the economic foundation lead sooner or later
to the transformation of the whole immense
superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be
determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic
or philosophic in short, ideological forms in
which men become conscious of this conict
and ght it out. Just as one does not judge an
individual by what he thinks about himself, so
one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary,
this consciousness must be explained from the
contradictions of material life, from the conict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.* [5]

Perhaps the most inuential recent defense of this passage, and of relevant Marxian and Marxist assertions,
is G.A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence.* [6]

Marx's clearest formulation of his materialist concep- 1.1.2 Key implications in the study and untion of historywas in the 1859 Preface to his book A
derstanding of history
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, whose
relevant passage is reproduced here:
Many writers note that historical materialism represented
a revolution in human thought, and a break from previIn the social production of their exisous ways of understanding the underlying basis of change
tence, men inevitably enter into denite rewithin various human societies. As Marx puts it, a colations, which are independent of their will,
herence arises in human history* [7] because each genernamely relations of production appropriate to a
ation inherits the productive forces developed previously
given stage in the development of their material
and in turn further develops them before passing them on
forces of production. The totality of these reto the next generation. Further, this coherence increaslations of production constitutes the economic
ingly involves more of humanity the more the productive
structure of society, the real foundation, on
forces develop and expand to bind people together in prowhich arises a legal and political superstrucduction and exchange.
ture and to which correspond denite forms
of consciousness. The mode of production of
material life conditions the general process of
social, political and intellectual life. It is not
the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage

This understanding counters the notion that human history is simply a series of accidents, either without any underlying cause or caused by supernatural beings or forces
exerting their will on society. This posits that history
is made as a result of struggle between dierent social
classes rooted in the underlying economic base.

1.1. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

1.1.3

Marx's materialism

While the historicalpart of historical materialism

does not cause a comprehension problem (i.e., it means
the present is explained by analysing the past), the term
materialism is more dicult. Historical materialism uses
materialismto make two separate points, where the
truth or falsehood of one point does not aect the others.
Firstly, there is metaphysical or philosophical materialism, in which matter-in-motion is considered primary
and thought about matter-in-motion, or thought about abstractions, secondary.
Secondly, there is the notion that economic processes
form the material base of society upon which institutions
and ideas rest and from which they derive. While the
economy is the base structure of society, it does not follow that everything in history is determined by the economy, just as every feature of a house is not determined by
its foundations. Thus, there is the idea that in the capitalist
mode of production the behaviour of actors in the market economy (means of production, distribution and exchange, the relations of production) plays the major role
in conguring society.

1.1.4

The future

In his analysis of the movement of history, Marx predicted the breakdown of capitalism, and the establishment in time of a communist society in which class-based
human conict would be overcome. The means of production would be held in the common ownership and used
for the common good. In the mention of human liberationone should not neglect that, in the level of production, solely the working class is the most oppressed. But
either way in the prediction of the future, one shall rst
know of the past (i.e. the establishment of capitalism and
the transitional part of feudalism).

1.1.5

Marxist beliefs about history

Society does not consist of individuals,

but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1858* [8]

According to Marxist theorists, history develops in accordance with the following observations:
1. Social progress is driven by progress in the material, productive forces a society has at its disposal
(technology, labour, capital goods, etc.)
2. Humans are inevitably involved in production relations (roughly speaking, economic relationships

3
or institutions), which constitute our most decisive
social relations.
3. Production relations progress, with a degree of inevitability, following and corresponding to the development of the productive forces.
4. Relations of production help determine the degree
and types of the development of the forces of production. For example, capitalism tends to increase
the rate at which the forces develop and stresses the
accumulation of capital.
5. Both productive forces and production relations
progress independently of mankind's strategic intentions or will.
6. The superstructure the cultural and institutional
features of a society, its ideological materials is
ultimately an expression of the mode of production
(which combines both the forces and relations of
production) on which the society is founded.
7. Every type of state is a powerful institution of the
ruling class; the state is an instrument which one
class uses to secure its rule and enforce its preferred
production relations (and its exploitation) onto society.
8. State power is usually only transferred from one class
to another by social and political upheaval.
9. When a given style of production relations no longer
supports further progress in the productive forces,
either further progress is strangled, or 'revolution'
must occur.
10. The actual historical process is not predetermined
but depends on the class struggle, especially the organization and consciousness of the working class.

1.1.6 Alienation and freedom

Hunter-gatherer societies were structured so that the economic forces and the political forces were one and the
same. The elements of force and relation operated together, harmoniously. In the feudal society, the political
forces of the kings and nobility had their relations with
the economic forces of the villages through serfdom. The
serfs, although not free, were tied to both forces and, thus,
not completely alienated. Capitalism, Marx argued, completely separates the economic and political forces, leaving them to have relations through a limiting government.
He takes the state to be a sign of this separation - it exists
to manage the massive conicts of interest which arise
between classes in all those societies based on property
relations.

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

1.1.7

History

Marx's attachment to materialism arose from his doctoral

research on the philosophy of Epicurus,* [9] as well as
his reading of Adam Smith and other writers in classical political economy. Historical materialism builds upon
the idea that became current in philosophy from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that the development of human society has moved through a series of stages, from
hunting and gathering, through pastoralism and cultivation, to commercial society.* [10]
Friedrich Engels wrote: I use 'historical materialism' to
designate the view of the course of history, which seeks
the ultimate causes and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of
society, in the changes in the modes of production and
exchange, with the consequent division of society into
distinct classes and the struggles of these classes.* [11]

1.1.8

Warnings against misuse

See also: Economic determinism

One has to leave philosophy aside

(Wigand, p. 187, cf. Hess, Die letzten
Philosophen, p. 8), one has to leap out of it
and devote oneself like an ordinary man to
the study of actuality, for which there exists
also an enormous amount of literary material,
unknown, of course, to the philosophers....
Philosophy and the study of the actual world
have the same relation to one another as
masturbation and sexual love.(Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology,
International Publishers, ed. Chris Arthur, p.
103)

Marx himself took care to indicate that he was only

proposing a guideline to historical research (Leitfaden or
Auassung), and was not providing any substantivetheory of historyor grand philosophy of history, let
alone a master-key to history. Numerous times, he
and Engels expressed irritation with dilettante academics
who sought to knock up their skimpy historical knowledge as quickly as possible into some grand theoretical
system that would explaineverythingabout history. To
their great annoyance, the materialist outlook was used as
an excuse for not studying history.
In the 1872 Preface to the French edition of Das Kapital
Vol. 1, Marx also emphasised thatThere is no royal road
to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing
climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. Reaching a scientic understanding
was hard work. Conscientious, painstaking research was

required, instead of philosophical speculation and unwarranted, sweeping generalisations.

But having abandoned abstract philosophical speculation
in his youth, Marx himself showed great reluctance during the rest of his life about oering any generalities or
universal truths about human existence or human history.
The rst explicit and systematic summary of the materialist interpretation of history published, Anti-Dhring, was
written by Friedrich Engels.
One of the aims of Engels's polemic Herr Eugen
Dhring's Revolution in Science (written with Marx's approval) was to ridicule the easy world schematismof
philosophers, who invented the latest wisdom from behind their writing desks. Towards the end of his life, in
1877, Marx wrote a letter to the editor of the Russian
paper Otetchestvennye Zapisky, which signicantly contained the following disclaimer:
"(...) If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western
European countries, and during the last years
she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction - she will not succeed without having
rst transformed a good part of her peasants
into proletarians; and after that, once taken to
the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not enough for
my critic. He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of
capitalism in Western Europe into an historicophilosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the
historic circumstances in which it nds itself, in
order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of
economy which will ensure, together with the
greatest expansion of the productive powers of
social labour, the most complete development
of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.)"
Marx goes on to illustrate how the same factors can in different historical contexts produce very dierent results,
so that quick and easy generalisations are not really possible. To indicate how seriously Marx took research, it is
interesting to note that when he died, his estate contained
several cubic metres of Russian statistical publications (it
was, as the old Marx observed, in Russia that his ideas
gained most inuence).
But what is true is that insofar as Marx and Engels regarded historical processes as law-governed processes,
the possible future directions of historical development
were to a great extent limited and conditioned by what
happened before. Retrospectively, historical processes
could be understood to have happened by necessity in certain ways and not others, and to some extent at least, the
most likely variants of the future could be specied on the

1.1. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

basis of careful study of the known facts.
Towards the end of his life, Engels commented several
times about the abuse of historical materialism.
In a letter to Conrad Schmidt dated August 5, 1890, he
stated:
And if this man (i.e., Paul Barth) has
not yet discovered that while the material
mode of existence is the primum agens this
does not preclude the ideological spheres from
reacting upon it in their turn, though with
a secondary eect, he cannot possibly have
understood the subject he is writing about.
(...) The materialist conception of history
has a lot of [dangerous friends] nowadays, to
whom it serves as an excuse for not studying
history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting
on the French Marxistsof the late 70s:
All I know is that I am not a Marxist.(...)
In general, the word materialisticserves
many of the younger writers in Germany
as a mere phrase with which anything and
everything is labeled without further study,
that is, they stick on this label and then
consider the question disposed of. But our
conception of history is above all a guide to
study, not a lever for construction after the
manner of the Hegelian. All history must be
studied afresh, the conditions of existence
of the dierent formations of society must
be examined individually before the attempt
is made to deduce them from the political,
civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious,
etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now
but little has been done here because only
a few people have got down to it seriously.
In this eld we can utilize heaps of help,
it is immensely big, anyone who will work
seriously can achieve much and distinguish
himself. But instead of this too many of the
younger Germans simply make use of the
phrase historical materialism (and everything
can be turned into a phrase) only in order
to get their own relatively scanty historical
knowledge for economic history is still in its
swaddling clothes! constructed into a neat
system as quickly as possible, and they then
deem themselves something very tremendous.
And after that a Barth can come along and
attack the thing itself, which in his circle has
indeed been degraded to a mere phrase.* [12]

5
stress enough in our writings and in regard to
which we are all equally guilty. That is to say,
we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main
emphasis, in the rst place, on the derivation
of political, juridical and other ideological
notions, and of actions arising through the
medium of these notions, from basic economic
facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal
side the ways and means by which these
notions, etc., come about for the sake of
the content. This has given our adversaries a
welcome opportunity for misunderstandings,
of which Paul Barth is a striking example.
*
[13]

1.1.9 In Marxist thought

In 1880, about three years before Marx died, Friedrich
Engels indicated that he accepted the usage of the term
historical materialism. Recalling the early days of the
new interpretation of history, he stated:
We, at that time, were all materialists, or,
at least, very advanced free-thinkers, and to us
it appeared inconceivable that almost all educated people in England should believe in all
sorts of impossible miracles, and that even geologists like Buckland and Mantell should contort the facts of their science so as not to clash
too much with the myths of the book of Genesis; while, in order to nd people who dared to
use their own intellectual faculties with regard
to religious matters, you had to go amongst the
uneducated, the great unwashed, as they
were then called, the working people, especially the Owenite Socialists.
(Preface to the English edition of his pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientic)* [14]
In a foreword to his essay Ludwig Feuerbach and the End
of Classical German Philosophy (1886), three years after Marx's death, Engels claimed condently thatIn the
meantime, the Marxist world outlook has found representatives far beyond the boundaries of Germany and Europe
and in all the literary languages of the world.* [15]

In his old age, Engels speculated about a new cosmology

or ontology which would show the principles of dialectics
to be universal features of reality. He also drafted an
article on The Part Played by Labour in the Transition
from Ape to Man, apparently a theory of anthropogenesis
which would integrate the insights of Marx and Charles
Darwin.* [16] (This is discussed by Charles Woolfson in
Finally, in a letter to Franz Mehring dated 14 July 1893,
The Labour Theory of Culture: a Re-examination of EnEngels stated:
gels Theory of Human Origins).
"...there is only one other point lacking,
which, however, Marx and I always failed to

At the very least, Marxism had now been born, andhistorical materialismhad become a distinct philosophical

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

doctrine, subsequently elaborated and systematised by in- ism.

tellectuals like Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georgi
Plekhanov and Nikolai Bukharin. Even so, up to the
1930s many of Marx's earlier works were still unknown,
and in reality most self-styled Marxists had not read beyond Capital Vol. 1. Isaac Deutscher provides an anec- 1.1.11
dote about the knowledge of Marx in that era:
"Capital is a tough nut to crack, opined Ignacy Daszyski,
one of the best known socialistpeople's tribunesaround
the turn of the 20th century, but anyhow he had not read
it. But, he said, Karl Kautsky had read it, and written
a popular summary of the rst volume. He hadn't read
this either, but Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, the party theoretician, had read Kautsky's pamphlet and summarised
it. He also had not read Kelles-Krauz's text, but the nancial expert of the party, Hermann Diamand, had read
it and had told him, i.e. Daszynski, everything about it
.* [17]
After Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, Marxism was
transformed into Marxism-Leninism and from there to
Maoism or Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought in
China which some regard as thetrue doctrineand others as a state religion.
In the early years of the 20th century, historical materialism was often treated by socialist writers as interchangeable with dialectical materialism, a formulation
never used by Friedrich Engels however. According to
many Marxists inuenced by Soviet Marxism, historical
materialism is a specically sociological method, while
dialectical materialism refers to a more general, abstract,
philosophy. The Soviet orthodox Marxist tradition, inuential for half a century, based itself on Joseph Stalin's
pamphlet Dialectical and Historical Materialism and on
textbooks issued by theInstitute of Marxism-Leninism
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union.

1.1.10

Recent versions

Criticisms

Philosopher of science Karl Popper, in his Conjectures

and Refutations, critiqued such claims of the explanatory power or valid application of historical materialism
by arguing that it could explain or explain away any fact
brought before it, making it unfalsiable.
In his 1940 essay "On the Concept of History,scholar
Walter Benjamin compares historical materialism to The
Turk, an 18th-century device which was promoted as a
mechanized automaton which could defeat skilled chess
players but actually concealed a human who controlled
the machine. Benjamin suggested that, despite Marx's
claims to scientic objectivity, historical materialism was
actually quasi-religious. Like the Turk, wrote Benjamin,
"[t]he puppet called 'historical materialism' is always supposed to win. It can do this with no further ado against any
opponent, so long as it employs the services of theology,
which as everyone knows is small and ugly and must
be kept out of sight.Benjamin's friend and colleague
Gershom Scholem would argue that Benjamin's critique
of historical materialism was so denitive that, as Mark
Lilla would write,nothing remains of historical materialism [...] but the term itself.* [18] It is important to note,
however, that Benjamin was arguing against a mechanistic form of historical materialist explanation then prevalent in Stalin's Russia, and was himself a committed, if
unorthodox, Marxist. Later in On the Concept of History,he writes: Class struggle, which for a historian
schooled in Marx is always in evidence, is a ght for the
crude and material things without which no rened and
spiritual things could exist. ... There is no document of
culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is never free of
barbarism, so barbarism taints the manner in which it was
transmitted from one hand to another. The historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from this process of
transmission as far as possible. He regards it as his task
to brush history against the grain.* [19]

Several scholars have argued that historical materialism

ought to be revised in the light of modern scientic
knowledge. Jrgen Habermas believes historical materialism needs revision in many respects, especially Underlying the dispute among historians are the dierbecause it has ignored the signicance of communicative ent assumptions made about the denition or concept of
action.
"history" and "historiography". Dierent historians take
Gran Therborn has argued that the method of historical a dierent view of what it is all about, and what the posmaterialism should be applied to historical materialism as sibilities of historical and social scientic knowledge are.
intellectual tradition, and to the history of Marxism itself. Broadly, the importance of the study of history lies in the

In the early 1980s, Paul Hirst and Barry Hindess elab- ability of history to explain the present. John Bellamy
orated a structural Marxism interpretation of historical Foster asserts that historical materialism is important in
explaining history from a scientic perspective, by folmaterialism.
lowing the scientic method, as opposed to belief-system
Regulation theory, especially in the work of Michel Agli- theories like Creationism and Intelligent Design, which
etta draws extensively on historical materialism.
do not base their beliefs on veriable facts and hypotheSpiral dynamics shows similarities to historical material- ses.* [20]

1.1. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

1.1.12

See also

Economic determinism
Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism
Marx's theory of history
Marxist historiography
Orthodox Marxism
Parametric determinism
Historical Materialism - Journal

1.1.13

References

Notes
[1] Seligman 1901, p. 613: This doctrine is often called
'historical materialism,' or the 'materialistic interpretation
of history.' Such terms are, however, lacking in precision.
If by materialism is meant the tracing of all changes to
material causes, the biological view of history is also materialistic. Again, the theory which ascribes all changes
in society to the inuence of climate or to the character
of the fauna and ora is materialistic, and yet has little in
common with the doctrine here discussed. The doctrine
we have to deal with is not only materialistic, but also economic in character; and the better phrase is not the 'materialistic interpretation,' but the 'economic interpretation'
of history.
[2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/
man/ch02.htm

[13] Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1893. Marxists.org. Retrieved 2011-12-07.

[14] Frederick Engels. Socialism: Utopian and Scientic
(Introduction - Materialism)". Marxists.org. Retrieved
2011-12-07.
[15] Frederick Engels. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End
of Classical German Philosophy Foreword. Marxists.org. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
[16] The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape
to Man. Marxists.org. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
[17] de beste bron van informatie over rote ruhr uni. Deze
website is te koop!". rote-ruhr-uni.org. 2011-01-02. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
[18] Mark Lilla,The Riddle of Walter Benjaminin The New
York Review of Books, May 25, 1995.
[19] Theses on the Philosophy of History
[20] Foster, John Bellamy; Clark, Brett (2008). Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 9781583671733.

Bibliography
Seligman, Edwin R. A. (1901).The Economic Interpretation of History. Political Science Quarterly
16 (4): 612640. (Free to view)

1.1.14 Further reading

[3] Karl Marx, by Hubert Kay, LIFE Magazine, October 18,

1948, p. 66

Marx, Karl, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845

[4] Seligman 1901, p. 163.

Marx, Karl, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

of 1844, 1844; 1932

[5] K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, with some
notes by R. Rojas.
[6] G.A. Cohen (1978, 2000), Karl Marx's Theory of History:
A Defence, Princeton and Oxford.
[7] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in One
Volume (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968), p. 660.
[8] Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, by Karl Marx & Martin Nicolaus, Penguin Classics,
1993, ISBN 0-14-044575-7, pg 265
[9] John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology
[10] Ronald Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage
[11] Historical Materialism is a theory that privileges the economic in explanation of non. Marxmail.org. Retrieved
2011-12-07.
[12] Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890. Marxists.org. Retrieved 2011-12-07.

Marx, Karl, The German Ideology, 1846; 1932

Marx, Karl, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859
Marx, Karl, Manifesto of the Communist Party,
1848
Marx, Karl, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 1850
Marx, Karl, The 18th Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1852
Marx, Karl, The Grundrisse, (foundations for the
study of Capital), 1857
Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. 1, 1867
Marx, Karl, Capital, Vols. 2 & 3, 1867 - 1883, (unnished)

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Aronowitz, Stanley, The Crisis in Historical Materialism, (American criticism of orthodox Marxism
and argument for a more radical version of historical materialism that sticks closer to Marx by changing itself to keep up with changes in the historical
situation), 1981

Franz Jakubowski, Ideology and Superstructure attempts to provide an alternative to schematic interpretations of historical materialism

Karl Marx, Pre-capitalist Economic Formations,

with an introduction by Eric Hobsbawm

Ernest Mandel, Introduction to Marxism. (emphasizes understanding the roots of class society and the
state)

H. B. Acton, The Illusion of the Epoch. (critical account which focusses on incoherencies in the
thought of Marx, Engels and Lenin)
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State,
1974
Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble
Savage, Cambridge U.P. Cambridge studies in the
history and theory of politics, 1976
Paul Blackledge, Reections on the Marxist Theory
of History (2006)
Louis B. Boudin, The Theoretical System of Karl
Marx. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co.,
1907, contains an early defense of the materialist
conception of history against its critics of the day
Gordon V. Childe, Man Makes Himself (free interpretation of Marx's idea)
Gerald Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A
Defence. (inuential analytical Marxist interpretation)
Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution (4
volumes). (captures the full subtlety of Marx's
thought, but at length)
Helmut Fleischer, Marxism and History. (good reply to false interpretations of Marx's view of history)

Z.A. Jordan, The Origins of Dialectical Materialism

(good survey)* [1]

Ernest Mandel, The Place of Marxism in History

(modelled on Lenin'sThree components of Marxismbut with a section on the reception and diusion of Marxism in the world)* [2]
Mao Zedong, Four Essays on Philosophy. (standard
Maoist reading of Marx's materialism)
Franz Mehring, On Historical Materialism (classic
statement by a contemporary and friend of Marx &
Engels)* [3]
George Novack, Understanding History: Marxist
Essays (Trotskyist interpretations of problems of
history)* [4]
Leszek Nowak, Property and Power: Towards
a non-Marxian Historical Materialism attempts to
develop a post-Stalinist interpretation of Marx's
project
Anton Pannekoek, Materialism And Historical Materialism.
Alexander Spirkin; Sergei Syrovatkin (translator)
(1990), Fundamentals of Philosophy., Moscow:
Progress Publishers, ISBN 5-01-002582-5, retrieved 15 January 2011 First published in 1988, as

John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology: Materialism

and Nature, London, New York: Monthly Review,
1999

Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, attacks the

notion that the study of history can be used to predict
the future.

Stefan Gandler, Critical Marxism in Mexico: Adolfo

Snchez Vzquez and Bolvar Echeverra, Leiden/Boston, Brill Academic Press, 2015.

S.H. Rigby, Marxism and History, 1977

Loren R. Graham, Science Philosophy and Human

Behavior in the Soviet Union. (sympatheticallycritical of dialectical materialism)
Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, 1981
Jrgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society. (argues historical materialism must
be revised to include communicative action)
Chris Harman, A People's History of the World
(Marxist view of history according to a leader of the
International Socialist Tendency)

John Rees, The Algebra of Revolution. (Classical

Marxist account of the philosophy of Marx, Engels,
Lenin, Lukacs and Trotsky)
William H. Shaw, Marx's Theory of History provides
a short survey
Joseph Stalin, Historical and Dialectical Materialism. (classic statement of Stalinist doctrine)
Wal Suchting, Marx: An Introduction includes a
good short introduction
Gran Therborn, Science, Class and Society (critical survey of the relationship between sociology and
historical materialism)

1.2. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory. (polemic The formulation of dialectical and historical materialism
which ridicules theorists of history who do not actu- in the Soviet Union in the 1930s by Stalin and his assoally study history)
ciates (such as in Stalin's book Dialectical and Historical Materialism) became the ocialinterpretation of
Gustav A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism: a His- Marxism. It was codied and popularized in text books
torical and Systematic Survey of Philosophy in the that were required reading in the Soviet Union as well as
Soviet Union. (alternative survey)
the Eastern European countries it occupied. It was ex Johan Witt-Hansen, Historical Materialism: The ported to China as theocialinterpretation of MarxMethod, The Theories. (sees historical materialism ism but has since then been widely rejected in China in
as a methodology, and Das Kapital as an application the Soviet formulation.
of the method)
Allen W. Wood, Karl Marx (Arguments of the Philiosophers series), Routledge 2004 delves into misinterpretations of Marx including the substitution of
Historical materialismby Lenin

1.1.15

External links

Extract from the Communist Manifesto

Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy
Materialist Conception of History
The materialist conception of history
Bibliography of modern commentaries on Marx's
thought
[1] Z A Jordan. The Origins of Dialectical Materialism by
Z. A. Jordan. Marx Myths. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
[2] Ernest Mandel. The Place of Marxism in History
[3] Franz Mehring: On Historical Materialism (1893)".
Marxists.org. 2004-02-27. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
[4] George Novack Internet Archive. Marxists.org. 200906-23. Retrieved 2011-12-07.

1.2 Dialectical materialism

Dialectical materialism (sometimes abbreviated diamat) is a philosophy of science and nature, based on
the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and developed largely in Russia and the Soviet Union.* [1]* [2]
It was inspired by dialectic and materialist philosophical
traditions. The main idea of dialectical materialism lies
in the concept of the evolution of the natural world and
the emergence of new qualities of being at new stages of
evolution. As Z. A. Jordan notes,Engels made constant
use of the metaphysical insight that the higher level of existence emerges from and has its roots in the lower; that
the higher level constitutes a new order of being with its
irreducible laws; and that this process of evolutionary advance is governed by laws of development which reect
basic properties of 'matter in motion as a whole'.* [3]

A Soviet philosophical encyclopedia of the 1960s speaks

of the evolution of complexity in nature as follows:This
whole series of forms (mechanical, physical, chemical,
biological and social) is distributed according to complexity from lower to higher. This seriation expresses
their mutual bonds in terms of structure and in terms of
history. The general laws of the lower forms of the motion of matter keep their validity for all the higher forms
but they are subject to the higher laws and do not have
a prominent role. They change their activity because of
changed circumstances. Laws can be general or specic,
depending on their range of applicability. The specic
laws fall under the special sciences and the general laws
are the province of diamat.* [4] Each level of matter exists as a type of organization, in which the elements that
make up a whole, or system, are marked by a specic type
of interconnection.

1.2.1 The term

The term dialectical materialism was coined in 1887, by
Joseph Dietzgen, a socialist tanner who corresponded
with Marx, during and after the failed 1848 German Revolution. As a philosopher, Dietzgen had constructed the
theory of dialectical materialism independently of Marx
and Engels.* [5] Casual mention of the term is also found
in the biography Frederick Engels, by Karl Kautsky,* [6]
written in the same year. Marx himself had talked about
thematerialist conception of history, which was later
referred to as "historical materialism" by Engels. Engels
further exposed thematerialist dialecticnotdialectical materialismin his Dialectics of Nature in 1883.
Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, later
introduced the term dialectical materialism to Marxist literature.* [7] Joseph Stalin further delineated and dened
dialectical and historical materialism as the world outlook
of Marxism-Leninism, and as a method to study society
and its history.* [8]
The exact term was not used by Marx in any of his
works, and controversy exists regarding the relationship
between dialectics, ontology, and nature. Joseph Needham, the inuential historian of science and a Christian
who nonetheless was an adherent of dialectical materialism, suggested that a more appropriate term might be
dialectical organicism.* [9] For scholars working on
these issues from a variety of perspectives see the works
of Bertell Ollman, Roger Albritton, and Roy Bhaskar.

10

1.2.2

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Historical background of material- rising workers' movement observed by Engels in England

(Chartist movement) and by Marx in France and Gerism

Marx and Engels each began their adulthood as Young

Hegelians, one of several groups of intellectuals inspired
by the philosopher Hegel.* [10]* [11] But both soon concluded that Hegelian philosophy, at least as interpreted
by their former colleagues, was too abstract and was being misapplied in attempts to explain the social injustice in recently industrializing countries such as Germany,
France, and the United Kingdom, which was a growing
concern in the early 1840s.* [11] In contrast to the conventional Hegelian dialectic of the day, which emphasized the idealist observation that human experience is
dependent on the mind's perceptions, Marx developed
Marxist dialectics, which emphasized the materialist view
that the world of the concrete shapes socioeconomic interactions and that those in turn determine sociopolitical
reality.* [10] Whereas some Hegelians blamed religious
alienation (estrangement from the traditional comforts
of religion) for societal ills, Marx and Engels concluded
that alienation from economic and political autonomy,
coupled with exploitation and poverty, was the real culprit.* [11] In keeping with dialectical ideas of such sequences as thesis-antithesis-synthesis, thesis-rejectionrejection, and action-reaction-reaction, Marx and Engels
thus created an alternative theory, not only of why the
world is the way it is, but also of which actions people
should take to make it the way it ought to be. Marx summarized, The philosophers have only interpreted the
world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change
it.* [10] Dialectical materialism is thus closely related to
Marx's and Engels's historical materialism (and has sometimes been viewed as synonymous with it).

many. Marx's view of human history was thus historical

materialism. Marxist materialists tended to accord primacy to the class struggle. The ultimate sense of Marx's
materialist philosophy is that philosophy itself must take
a position in the class struggle based on objective analysis of physical and social relations. Otherwise, it will be
reduced to spiritualist idealism, such as the philosophies
of Immanuel Kant or Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

1.2.3 Marx's dialectics

The concept of dialectical materialism emerges from
statements by Marx in the preface to his magnum opus,
Capital. There Marx says he intends to use Hegelian dialectics but in revised form. He defends Hegel against
those who view him as a dead dogand then says, I
openly avowed myself as the pupil of that mighty thinker
[Hegel].* [13] Marx credits Hegel withbeing the rst
to present its [dialectic's] form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. But he then criticizes
Hegel for turning dialectics upside down: With him
it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up
again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the
mystical shell.* [14]

Marx's criticism of Hegel asserts that Hegel's dialectics

go astray by dealing with ideas, with the human mind.
Hegel's dialectic, Marx says, inappropriately concerns
the process of the human brain"; it focuses on ideas.
Hegel's thought is in fact sometimes called dialectical
idealism. Marx believed that dialectics should deal not
with the mental world of ideas but with the material
Dialectical materialism is but an aspect of the broader world,the world of production and other economic acsubject of materialism. Marx's doctoral thesis concerned tivity.* [14]
the atomism of Epicurus and Democritus, which is conFor Marx, human history cannot be tted into any neat
sidered the foundation of materialist philosophy. Marx a priori schema. He explicitly rejects the idea of Hegel
was also familiar with Lucretius's theory of clinamen.
s followers that history can be understood as a person
Materialism asserts the primacy of the material world: in apart, a metaphysical subject of which real human indishort, matter precedes thought. Materialism is a realist viduals are but the bearers.* [15] To interpret history
philosophy of science,* [12] which holds that the world as though previous social formations have somehow been
is material; that all phenomena in the universe consist of aiming themselves toward the present state of aairs is
matter in motion,wherein all things are interdependent to misunderstand the historical movement by which the
and interconnected and develop according to natural law; successive generations transformed the results acquired
that the world exists outside us and independently of our by the generations that preceded them.* [16] Marx's reperception of it; that thought is a reection of the mate- jection of this sort of teleology was one reason for his
rial world in the brain, and that the world is in principle enthusiastic (though not entirely uncritical) reception of
knowable.
Darwins theory of natural selection.* [17]
Marx presented his own materialist philosophy as an alternative to Hegel's idealism. However, Marx also criticized classical materialism as another idealist philosophyidealist because of its transhistorical understanding of material contexts. According to the famous Theses
on Feuerbach (1845), philosophy had to stopinterpretingthe world in endless metaphysical debates, in order
to start changingthe world, as was being done by the

For Marx, dialectics is not a formula for generating predetermined outcomes, but is a method for the empirical study of social processes in terms of interrelations,
development, and transformation. In his introduction to
the Penguin edition of Marxs Capital, Ernest Mandel
writes, When the dialectical method is applied to the
study of economic problems, economic phenomena are
not viewed separately from each other, by bits and pieces,

1.2. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

11

but in their inner connection as an integrated totality, tative changes can also be applied to the process of social
structured around, and by, a basic predominant mode of change and class conict.* [31]
production.* [18]
The third law, negation of the negation,originated
Marxs own writings are almost exclusively concerned with Hegel. Although Hegel coined the term negation
with understanding human history in terms of systemic of the negation,it gained its fame from Marx's using it
processes, based on modes of production (broadly speak- in Capital. There Marx wrote this: The [death] knell
ing, the ways in which societies are organized to employ of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators
their technological powers to interact with their mate- [capitalists] are expropriated. The capitalist mode of aprial surroundings). This is called historical materialism. propriation, the result of the capitalist mode of producMore narrowly, within the framework of this general the- tion, produces capitalist private property. This is the rst
ory of history, most of Marxs writing is devoted to an negation [antithesis] of individual private property. [The
analysis of the specic structure and development of the rst negation,or antithesis, negates the thesis, which in
capitalist economy.
this instance is feudalism, the economic system that preFor his part, Engels applies a dialecticalapproach ceded capitalism.] . . . But capitalist production begets,
to the natural world in general, arguing that contem- with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negathe synthesis] is the negation
porary science is increasingly recognizing the necessity tion. It [nal communism,
*
of
[the]
negation.
[32]
of viewing natural processes in terms of interconnectedness, development, and transformation. Some scholars
have doubted that Engelsdialectics of natureis a
legitimate extension of Marxs approach to social processes.* [19]* [20]* [21]* [22] Other scholars have argued
that despite Marxs insistence that humans are natural
beings in an evolving, mutual relationship with the rest of
nature, Marxs own writings pay inadequate attention to
the ways in which human agency is constrained by such
factors as biology, geography, and ecology.* [23]* [24]

1.2.4

Engels' dialectics

Engels postulated three laws of dialectics from his reading

of Hegel's Science of Logic.* [25] Engels elucidated these
laws as the materialist dialectic in his work Dialectics of
Nature:
1. The law of the unity and conict of opposites
2. The law of the passage of quantitative changes into
qualitative changes

In drawing up these laws, Engels presupposes a holistic

approach outlined above and in Lenin's three elements of
dialectic below, and emphasizes elsewhere that all things
are in motion.* [33] The discovery that heat was actually
the movement of atoms or molecules was the very latest
science of the period in which Engels was writing.

1.2.5 Lenin's contributions

After reading Hegel's Science of Logic in 1914, Lenin
made some brief notes outlining three elementsof
logic.* [34] They are:
1. The determination of the concept out of itself [the
thing itself must be considered in its relations and in
its development];
2. The contradictory nature of the thing itself (the
other of itself), the contradictory forces and tendencies in each phenomenon;
3. The union of analysis and synthesis.

3. The law of the negation of the negation

The rst law was seen by both Hegel and Vladimir Lenin
as the central feature of a dialectical understanding of
things* [26]* [27] and originates with the ancient Ionian
philosopher Heraclitus.* [28]
The second law Hegel took from Ancient Greek philosophers, notably the paradox of the heap, and explanation
by Aristotle,* [29] and it is equated with what scientists
call phase transitions. It may be traced to the ancient
Ionian philosophers, particularly Anaximenes* [30] from
whom Aristotle, Hegel, and Engels inherited the concept.
For all these authors, one of the main illustrations is the
phase transitions of water. There has also been an eort
to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby
population increases result in changes in social structure.
The law of the passage of quantitative changes into quali-

Lenin develops these in a further series of notes, and appears to argue thatthe transition of quantity into quality
and vice versais an example of the unity and opposition
of opposites expressed tentatively as not only the unity
of opposites, but the transitions of every determination,
quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its
opposite?].
Also, in his essayOn the Question of Dialectics, Lenin
stated that " Development is thestruggle of opposites.
He stated that " The unity ( coincidence, identity, equal
action ) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory,
relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is
absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.
"* [35]
In Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908), Lenin explained dialectical materialism as three axes: (i) the

12

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

materialist inversion of Hegelian dialectics, (ii) the

historicity of ethical principles ordered to class struggle,
and (iii) the convergence of "laws of evolution" in physics
(Helmholtz), biology (Darwin), and in political economy
(Marx). Hence, Lenin was philosophically positioned
between historicist Marxism (Labriola) and determinist
Marxisma political position close to "social Darwinism" (Kautsky). Moreover, late century discoveries in
physics (x-rays, electrons), and the beginning of quantum
mechanics, philosophically challenged previous conceptions of matter and materialism, thus Matter seemed to
be disappearing. Lenin disagreed:
'Matter disappears' means that the limit
within which we have hitherto known matter
disappears, and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are disappearing that formerly seemed absolute, immutable,
and primary, and which are now revealed to be
relative and characteristic only of certain states
of matter. For the sole 'property' of matter,
with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up, is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside of the mind.

in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of asacredbook. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers
exclusively to method. It is the scientic conviction that dialectical materialism is the road
to truth, and that its methods can be developed,
expanded, and deepened, only along the lines
laid down by its founders. (1)
In his later works and actions, Lukcs became a leader
of Democratic Marxism. In the 1960s his associates,
which became known as the Budapest School. He and
his associates became sharply critical of the formulation
of dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union that was
exported to those countries under its control. He modied many of his formulations in his 1923 works and went
on to develop a Marxist ontology and played an active
role in democratic movements in Hungary in 1956 and
the 1960s.
Lukcs philosophical criticism of Marxist revisionism
proposed an intellectual return to Marxist method. As
did Louis Althusser, who later dened Marxism and
psychoanalysis as conictual sciences";* [37] that political factions and revisionism are inherent to Marxist theory and political praxis, because dialectical materialism
is the philosophic product of class struggle:

Lenin was developing the work of Engels, who said that

with each epoch-making discovery, even in the sphere
For this reason, the task of orthodox
of natural science, materialism has to change its form.
Marxism,
its victory over Revisionism and
*
[36] One of Lenin's challenges was distancing materialutopianism can never mean the defeat, once
ism, as a viable philosophical outlook, from the vulgar
and for all, of false tendencies. It is an evermaterialismexpressed in the statement the brain serenewed struggle against the insidious eects
cretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile
of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the
(attributed to 18th-century physician Pierre Jean Georges
proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian
Cabanis, 17571808);metaphysical materialism(matof traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet
ter composed of immutable particles); and 19th-century
proclaiming the relation between the tasks of
mechanical materialism(matter as random molecules
the immediate present and the totality of the
interacting per the laws of mechanics). The philosophic
historical process. (5)
solution that Lenin (and Engels) proposed wasdialectical materialism, wherein matter is dened as objective
reality, theoretically consistent with (new) developments Moreover,the premise of dialectical materialism is, we
recall: 'It is not men's consciousness that determines their
occurred in the sciences.
existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that
determines their consciousness'. . . . Only when the core
of existence stands revealed as a social process can exis1.2.6 Lukcs' contributions
tence be seen as the product, albeit the hitherto unconGyrgy Lukcs, minister of Culture in the brief Bla Kun scious product, of human activity. (5) Philosophically
government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919), aligned with Marx is the criticism of the individualist,
published History and Class Consciousness (1923), which bourgeois philosophy of the subject, which is founded
dened dialectical materialism as the knowledge of so- upon the voluntary and conscious subject. Against said
ciety as a whole, knowledge which, in itself, was imme- ideology is the primacy of social relations. Existence
diately the class consciousness of the proletariat. In the and thus the world is the product of human activity; but
rst chapter What is Orthodox Marxism?", Lukcs de- this can be seen only by accepting the primacy of social
ned orthodoxy as delity to the Marxist method, process on individual consciousness. This type of consciousness is an eect of ideological mystication.
not delity to dogmas":
Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not
imply the uncritical acceptance of the results
of Marx's investigations. It is not the belief

Yet, at the 5th Congress of the Communist International (July 1924), Grigory Zinoviev formally denounced
Lukcs's heterodox denition of orthodox Marxism as
exclusively derived from delity to theMarxist method

1.2. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

13

, and not to Communist party dogmas; and denounced the not discarded because some nations of the second world
Marxism developments of the German theorist Karl Ko- have constructed a cardboard version as an ocial politrsch.
ical doctrine.* [40] Furthermore,

1.2.7

Mao's contributions

In On Contradiction (1937) Mao outlined a version of dialectical materialism that subsumed two of Engels' three
principal laws of dialectics,the transformation of quantity into qualityand the negation of the negationas
sub-laws (and not principal laws of their own) of the rst
law, the unity and interpenetration of opposites.

1.2.8

Dialectical materialism as a heuristic

in biology and elsewhere

The noted historian of science Loren Graham has detailed at length the role played by dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union in disciplines as diverse as biology, psychology, chemistry, cybernetics, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. He has concluded that, despite
the Lysenko period in genetics and constraints on free inquiry imposed by political authorities, dialectical materialism had a positive inuence on the work of many Soviet
scientists.* [38]
Some evolutionary biologists, such as Richard Lewontin
and the late Stephen Jay Gould, have tried to employ dialectical materialism in their approach. They view dialectics as playing a precautionary heuristic role in their work.
From Lewontin's perspective, we get this idea:
Dialectical materialism is not, and never
has been, a programmatic method for solving
particular physical problems. Rather, a dialectical analysis provides an overview and a set of
warning signs against particular forms of dogmatism and narrowness of thought. It tells us,
Remember that history may leave an important trace. Remember that being and becoming are dual aspects of nature. Remember that
conditions change and that the conditions necessary to the initiation of some process may
be destroyed by the process itself. Remember to pay attention to real objects in time and
space and not lose them in utterly idealized abstractions. Remember that qualitative eects
of context and interaction may be lost when
phenomena are isolated. And above all else,
Remember that all the other caveats are only
reminders and warning signs whose application
to dierent circumstances of the real world is
contingent.* [39]
Gould shared similar views regarding a heuristic role for
dialectical materialism. He wrote thatdialectical thinking should be taken more seriously by Western scholars,

when presented as guidelines for a philosophy of change, not as dogmatic precepts true
by at, the three classical laws of dialectics embody a holistic vision that views change as interaction among components of complete systems, and sees the components themselves not
as a priori entities, but as both products and
inputs to the system. Thus, the law of interpenetrating oppositesrecords the inextricable
interdependence of components: the transformation of quantity to qualitydefends a
systems-based view of change that translates
incremental inputs into alterations of state; and
thenegation of negationdescribes the direction given to history because complex systems
cannot revert exactly to previous states.* [41]
This heuristic was also applied to the theory of punctuated
equilibrium proposed by Niles Eldredge and Gould. They
wrote that history, as Hegel said, moves upward in
a spiral of negations,and that punctuated equilibria is a model for discontinuous tempos of change (in)
the process of speciation and the deployment of species
in geological time.* [42] They noted that the law of
transformation of quantity into quality, holds that a
new quality emerges in a leap as the slow accumulation
of quantitative changes, long resisted by a stable system,
nally forces it rapidly from one state into another,a
phenomenon described in some disciplines as a paradigm
shift. Apart from the commonly cited example of water
turning to steam with increased temperature, Gould and
Eldredge noted another analogy in information theory,
with its jargon of equilibrium, steady state, and homeostasis maintained by negative feedback,andextremely
rapid transitions that occur with positive feedback.* [43]
Lewontin, Gould and Eldredge were thus more interested
in dialectical materialism as a heuristic, than a dogmatic
form of 'truth' or a statement of their politics. Nevertheless, they found a readiness for critics toseize uponkey
statements* [44] and portray punctuated equilibrium, and
exercises associated with it, such as public exhibitions, as
a Marxist plot.* [45]

1.2.9 See also

1.2.10 References
[1] Z. A. Jordan, The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism
(London: Macmillan, 1967).
[2] Paul Thomas, Marxism and Scientic Socialism: From Engels to Althusser (London: Routledge, 2008).
[3] Jordan, p. 167.

14

[4] T. J. Blakeley (ed.), Themes in Soviet Marxist Philosophy

(Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975), p. 29.
[5] Pascal Charbonnat, Histoire des philosophies matrialistes,
Syllepse, 2007, p. 477.
[6] Karl Kautsky: Frederick Engels (1887)". Marxists.org.
2003-11-23. Retrieved 2012-08-09.
[7] For instance, Plekhanov, The development of the monist
view of history (1895)
[8] as discussed in his 1938 article, Dialectical and Historical
Materialism
[9] Joseph Needham, Moulds of Understanding (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1976), p. 278.
[10] Sperber, Jonathan (2013), Karl Marx: A NineteenthCentury Life, W.W. Norton & Co.
[11] Hunt, Tristram (2009), Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, Metropolitan/Henry Holt &
Co.
[12] Bhaskar 1979
[13] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, ed.
Frederick Engels (New York: Modern Library, no date,
rst published 1906), p. 25.
[14] Marx, p. 25.
[15] K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), p. 107.
[16] Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (London: Martin
Lawrence, [1936]), p. 102.
[17] Angus Taylor, The Signicance of Darwinian Theory
for Marx and Engels, Philosophy of the Social Sciences
19 (1989), 409423.

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

[26]It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in

the grasping of oppositions in their unity, or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists. It is
the most important aspect of dialectic.Hegel, Science of
Logic, 69, (p 56 in the Miller edition)
[27]The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its
contradictory parts is the essence (one of theessentials
, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics
or features) of dialectics. That is precisely how Hegel, too,
puts the matter.Lenin's Collected Works VOLUME 38,
p359: On the question of dialectics.
[28] cf, for instance. 'The Doctrine of Flux and the Unity of
Opposites' in the 'Heraclitus' entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[29]The sudden conversion into a change of quality of a
change which was apparently merely quantitative had already attracted the attention of the ancients who illustrated in popular examples the contradiction arising from
ignorance of this fact; they are familiar under the names
of the baldand the heap. These elenchi are, according to Aristotle's explanation, ways in which one is
compelled to say the opposite of what one had previously
asserted...https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/
hegel/works/hl/hl333.htm#0719. Hegel, Science of Logic,
718, (p 335 in the Miller edition. See also pp. 36870.)
[30] c.f. a fascination with transitions between rarefaction
and condensation. Guthrie, W.K.C. The Milesians:
Anaximenes.A History of Greek Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1962. 116.
[31] Carneiro, R.L. (2000). The transition from quantity to
quality: A neglected causal mechanism in accounting for
social evolution. Proceedings of The National Academy of
Sciences. Vol 97, No.23, pp.12926 - 12931. http://www.
pnas.org/content/97/23/12926.full
[32] Marx, Capital, ch. 32, 837.

[18] Ernest Mandel, Introduction to Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.

1 (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1976), p. 18.
[19] Jordan (1967).
[20] Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx (London:
NLB, 1971).
[21] Paul Thomas, Marx and Science, Political Studies 24
(1976), 1-23.
[22] Terrell Carver, Engels: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003).
[23] Sebastiano Timpanaro, On Materialism (London: NLB,
1975).
[24] Ted Benton, ed., The Greening of Marxism (New York:
Guilford Press, 1996).
[25] Engels, F. (7th ed., 1973). Dialectics of nature (Translator, Clements Dutt). New York: International Publishers.
(Original work published 1940). See also Dialectics of
Nature

[33] Biel,R. and Mu-Jeong Kho (2009)The Issue of Energy

within a Dialectical Approach to the Regulationist Problematique,Recherches & Rgulation Working Papers,
RR Srie ID 2009-1, Association Recherche & Rgulation: 1-21. (PDF). http://theorie-regulation.org. 200911-23. Retrieved 2013-11-09.
[34] Lenin's Summary of Hegel's Dialectics (Lenin's Collected Works Vol. 38, pp. 221222)". Marxists.org. Retrieved 2012-08-09.
[35] Lenin : On the Question of Dialectics
[36] Frederick Engels. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of
Classical German Philosophy. Marxists.org. Retrieved
2012-08-09.
[37] Louis Althusser,Marx and Freud, in Writings on Psychoanalysis, Stock/IMEC, 1993 (French edition)
[38] Loren R. Graham, Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).

1.2. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

[39] Beatty, J. (2009).Lewontin, Richard. In Michael Ruse

& Joseph Travis. Evolution: The First Four Billion Years.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 685. ISBN 978-0-674-03175-3.
[40] Gould, Stephen Jay (1990). Nurturing Nature. In
. An Urchin in the Storm: Essays About Books and Ideas.
London: Penguin. p. 153.
[41] Gould, S.J. (1990), p.154
[42] Gould, Stephen Jay, & Eldredge, Niles (1977). Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered. Paleobiology 3 (2): 115-151. (p.145)
[43] Gould, S. J., & Eldredge, N. (1977) p.146
[44] Gould, S. J. (1995).Stephen Jay Gould:The Pattern of
Life's History"". In Brockman, J. The Third Culture. New
York: Simon and Schuster. p. 60. ISBN 0-684-80359-3.
[45] Gould, Stephen Jay (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary
Theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press
of Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-674-00613-5. In
his account of one ad hominem absurdity, Gould states on
p. 984 I swear that I do not exaggerateregarding the
accusations of a Marxist plot.

1.2.11

Further reading

Dialectical Materialism, Alexander Spirkin

Spirkin, Alexander (1990). Fundamentals of Philosophy (DjVu, PDF, etc.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. ISBN 5-01-002582-5. Retrieved 2011-0122 This systematic exposition of dialectical and historical materialism was awarded a prize at a competition of textbooks for students of higher educational establishments; rst published in Russian as
" ".

15
" - The author traces the struggle between materialism and idealism on the basis of the
dialectical-materialist conception of the history of
philosophy. The book was in 1979 awarded the
Plekhanov prize under the decision of the USSR
Academy of Sciences.
Materialism And Historical Materialism, Anton Pannekoek
Grant, Ted; Woods, Alan (1995), Reason in Revolt,
Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science, London:
Wellred, ISBN 978-1-900007-00-9 text replication
at Marxist.com
Grant, Ted; Woods, Alan (2003), Dialectical Philosophy and Modern Science, Reason in Revolt, Vol.2
(American ed.), Algora Publishing, ISBN 0-87586158-X, retrieved 26 September 2010
Hollitscher, Walter (March 1953),Dialectical Materialism and the Physicist, Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists 9 (2): 5457, retrieved 26 September 2010
Lefebvre, Henri; John Sturrock (translator) (2009),
Dialectical Materialism, Minneapolis, Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-0-81665618-9, retrieved 26 September 2010 First published 1940 by Presses Universitaires de France, as
Le Matrialisme Dialectique. First English translation published 1968 by Jonathan Cape Ltd.
History and Class Consciousness, Gyrgy Lukcs
Ioan, Petru Logic and DialecticsA.I. Cuza University Press, Iai 1998.
Jameson, Fredric. Valences of the Dialectic. London
and New York: Verso, 2009.
The Origins of Dialectical Materialism, Z.A. Jordan

Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German

Philosophy, Friedrich Engels

Dialectics For Kids

Anti-Dhring, Friedrich Engels

Dialectical Materialism: Its Laws, Categories, and

Practice, Ira Gollobin, Petras Press, NY, 1986.

Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels

Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, V.I. Lenin
On the Question of Dialectics, V.I. Lenin
Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Joseph Stalin
On the Materialist Dialectic, Louis Althusser
Dialectical Materialism, V.G. Afanasyev
Oizerman T.I.; H. Campbell Creighton, M.A.
(translator, Oxon) (1988), The main Trends in Philosophy. A Theoretical Analysis of the History of
Philosophy., Moscow: Progress Publishers, ISBN
5-01-000506-9, retrieved 30 October 2010 First
published in 1971, as "

Dialectics for the New Century, ed. Bertell Ollman and Tony Smith, Palgrave Macmillan, England,
2008.
(French) Eftichios Bitsakis, Physique contemporaine
et matrialisme dialectique, ditions Sociales, 1973.
Rosa Lichtenstein's criticism of dialectical materialism,
Oizerman : Dialectical Materialism and the History
of Philosophy
Afanasyev : Marxist Philosophy (Chapter 4 to
Chapter 9)
Philosophy in the USSR: Problems of Dialectical
Materialism

16

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

(French) Pascal Charbonnat, Histoire des philoso- philosophy: The philosophers have only interpreted
phies matrialistes, Syllepse, 2007 (ISBN 978- the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
2849501245) (second edition, Kim, 2013)
If this claim (which Marx originally intended as a criti Bertell Ollman, Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in cism of German Idealism and the more moderate Young
Hegelians) is still more or less the case in the 21st century,
Marx's Method
as many Marxists would claim, then Marxist theory is in
Biel, R. and Mu-Jeong Kho (2009), The Issue of fact the practical continuation of the philosophical tradiEnergy within a Dialectical Approach to the Regu- tion, while much of philosophy is still politically irrelelationist Problematique,Recherches & Rgulation vant. Many critics, both philosophers outside Marxism
Working Papers, RR Srie ID 2009-1, Association and some Marxist philosophers, feel that this is too quick
a dismissal of the post-Marxian philosophical tradition.
Recherche & Rgulation: 1-21.
Much sophisticated and important thought has taken
(French) variste Sanchez-Palencia, Promenade diplace after the writing of Marx and Engels; much or
alectique dans les sciences, Hermann, 476p., 2012
perhaps even all of it has been inuenced, subtly or
(ISBN 978-2705682729)
overtly, by Marxism. Simply dismissing all philoso Tucker, Robert, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx phy as sophistry might condemn Marxism to a simplis(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University tic empiricism or economism, crippling it in practice and
making it comically simplistic at the level of theory.
Press, 1961).

1.3 Marxist philosophy

Nonetheless, the force of Marx's opposition to Hegelian

idealism and to anyphilosophydivorced from political
practice remains powerful even to a contemporary reader.
Marxist and Marx-inuenced 20th century theory, such
as (to name a few random examples) the critical theory
of the Frankfurt School, the political writing of Antonio
Gramsci, and the neo-Marxism of Fredric Jameson, must
take Marx's condemnation of philosophy into account,
but many such thinkers also feel a strong need to remedy
the perceived theoretical problems with orthodox Marxism.

Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in

philosophy that are strongly inuenced by Karl Marx's
materialist approach to theory, or works written by
Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided
into Western Marxism, which drew out of various
sources, and the ocial philosophy in the Soviet Union,
which enforced a rigid reading of Marx called dialectical
Such problems might include a too-simple economic dematerialism, in particular during the 1930s.
terminism, an untenable theory of ideology as "false conMarxist philosophy is not a strictly dened sub-eld of
sciousness,or a simplistic model of state power rather
philosophy, because the diverse inuence of Marxist
than hegemony. So Marxist philosophy must continue to
theory has extended into elds as varied as aesthetics,
take account of advances in the theory of politics develethics, ontology, epistemology, theoretical psychology
oped after Marx, but it must also be wary of a descent
and philosophy of science, as well as its obvious inuinto theoreticism or the temptations of idealism.
ence on political philosophy and the philosophy of history. The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy tienne Balibar claimed that if one philosopher could
are its materialism and its commitment to political prac- be called a Marxist philosopher, that one would
doubtlessly be Louis Althusser:
tice as the end goal of all thought.
Marxist theorist Louis Althusser, for example, dened
philosophy as "class struggle in theory, thus radically
separating himself from those who claimed philosophers
could adopt a "God's eye view" as a purely neutral judge.

1.3.1

Marxism and philosophy

Althusser proposed a 'new denition' of

philosophy as class struggle in theory...
marxism had proper signication (and original
problematic) only insofar as it was the theory of the tendency towards communism, and
in view of its realization. The criteria of acceptation or rejectal of a 'marxist' proposition
was always the same, whether it was presented
as 'epistemological' or as 'philosophical': it was
in the act of rendering intelligible a communist
policy, or not.(Ecrits pour Althusser, 1991,
p.98).

The philosopher tienne Balibar wrote in 1993 that

there is no Marxist philosophy and there never will be;
on the other hand, Marx is more important for philosophy
than ever before.* [1] So even the existence of Marxist philosophy is debatable (the answer may depend on
what is meant by philosophy,a complicated question
in itself). Balibar's remark is intended to explain the sig- However,Althusser never ceased to put in question the
nicance of the nal line of Karl Marx's 11 Theses on images of communism that Marxist theory and ideology
Feuerbach (1845), which can be read as an epitaph for carried on: but he did it in the name of communism

1.3. MARXIST PHILOSOPHY

itself.Althusser thus criticized the evolutionist image
which made of communism an ultimate stage of history,
as well as the apocalyptic images which made it asociety
of transparence,without contradictionnor ideology.
Balibar observes that, in the end, Althusser enjoined the
most sober denition of communism, exposed by Marx
in The German Ideology: Communism is not a state of
the future, but the real movement which destroys the existing state of being..

1.3.2

The Philosophy of Marx

17
ing Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's 1851 coup and then after
the crushing of the 1871 Paris Commune, Marx's thought
transformed itself.
Marxism's philosophical roots were thus commonly explained as derived from three sources: English political
economy, French republicanism and radicalism, and German idealist philosophy. Although this three sources
model is an oversimplication, it still has some measure
of truth.
On the other hand, Costanzo Preve (1990) has assigned
four mastersto Marx: Epicurus (to whom he dedicated his thesis, Dierence of natural philosophy between
Democritus and Epicurus, 1841) for his materialism and
theory of clinamen which opened up a realm of liberty;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from which come his idea of
egalitarian democracy; Adam Smith, from whom came
the idea that the grounds of property is labour; and nally
Hegel.
Vulgar Marxism(or codied dialectical materialism)
was seen as little other than a variety of economic determinism, with the alleged determination of the ideological
superstructure by the economical infrastructure. This
positivist reading, which mostly based itself on Engels'
latter writings in an attempt to theorize "scientic socialism" (an expression coined by Engels) has been challenged by Marxist theorists, such as Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser or, more recently, tienne Balibar.
Hegel
See also: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Marx develops a comprehensive, theoretical understanding of political reality early in his intellectual and activist
career by means of a critical adoption and radicalization
There are endless interpretations of the philosophy of of the categories of 18th and 19th century German IdealMarx, from the interior of the Marxist movement as ist thought. Of particular importance is Hegel's appropriwell as in its exterior. Although some have separated ation of Aristotle's organicist and essentialist categories in
Marx's works between a "young Marx" (in particular the the light of Kant's transcendental turn.* [2]
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844) and a
mature Marxor also by separating it into purely philo- Marx builds on four contributions Hegel makes to our
philosophical understanding. They are: (1) the replacesophical works, economics works and political and historical interventions, tienne Balibar (1993) has pointed out ment of mechanism and atomism with Aristotelean catthat Marx's works can be divided intoeconomic works egories of organicism and essentialism, (2) the idea that
(Das Kapital, 1867),philosophical worksandhistori- world history progresses through stages, (3) the diercal works(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, ence between natural and historical (dialectical) change,
the 1871 Civil War in France which concerned the Paris and (4) the idea that dialectical change proceeds through
Commune and acclaimed it as the rst "dictatorship of contradictions in the thing itself.
the proletariat", etc.)
(1) Aristotelian Organicism and Essentialism
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was an important gure in the
development of Marxism.

Marx's philosophy is thus inextricably linked to his

critique of political economy and to his historical interventions in the workers' movement, such as the 1875
Critique of the Gotha Program or The Communist Manifesto, written with Engels (who was observing the Chartist
movement) a year before the Revolutions of 1848. Both
after the defeat of the French socialist movement dur-

(a) Hegel adopts the position that chance is not the basis
of phenomena and that events are governed by laws.* [3]
Some have falsely attributed to Hegel the position that
phenomena are governed by transcendent, supersensible
ideas that ground them. On the contrary, Hegel argues
for the organic unity between universal and particular.* [4]
Particulars are not mere token types of universals; rather,

18

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

they relate to each other as a part relates to a whole. This The process of natural development occurs in a relatively
latter has import for Marx's own conception of law and straight line from the germ to the fully realized being and
necessity.
back to the germ again. Some accident from the outside
(b) In rejecting the idea that laws merely describe or in- might come along to interrupt this process of developdependently ground phenomena, Hegel revives the Aris- ment, but if left to its own devices, it proceeds in a relatotlean position that law or principle is something implicit tively straightforward manner.
in a thing, a potentiality which is not actual but which is
in the process of becoming actual.* [4] This means that if
we want to know the principle governing something, we
have to observe its typical life-process and gure out its
characteristic behavior. Observing an acorn on its own,
we can never deduce that it is an oak tree. To gure out
what the acorn is - and also what the oak tree is - we have
to observe the line of development from one to the other.

Society's historical development is internally more complex.* [4] The transaction from potentiality to actuality is
mediated by consciousness and will.* [4] The essence realized in the development of human society is freedom,
but freedom is precisely that ability to negate the smooth
line of development and go o in novel, hitherto unforeseen directions. As humankind's essence reveals itself,
that revelation is at the same time the subversion of itself.
*
(c) The phenomena of history arise from a whole with Spirit is constantly at war with itself. [4] This appears as
an essence which undergoes transformation of form and the contradictions constituting the essence of Spirit.
which has an end or telos.* [5] For Hegel, the essence of (4) Contradiction
humanity is freedom, and the telos of that essence is the In the development of a natural thing, there is by and large
actualization of that freedom.* [4] Like Aristotle, Hegel no contradiction between the process of development and
believes the essence of a thing is revealed in the entire, the way that development must appear.* [9] So the transitypical process of development of that thing. Looked at tion from an acorn, to an oak, to an acorn again occurs in
purely formally, human society has a natural line of devela relatively uninterrupted ow of the acorn back to itself
opment in accordance with its essence just like any other again. When change in the essence takes place, as it does
living thing. This process of development appears as a
in the process of evolution, we can understand the change
succession of stages of world history.
mostly in mechanical terms using principles of genetics
(2) The Stages of World History

and natural selection.

Human history passes through several stages, in each of

which is materialized a higher level of human consciousness of freedom.* [4] Each stage also has its own principle or law according to which it develops and lives in
accordance with this freedom.* [4] Yet the law is not freestanding. It is delivered by means of the actions of men
which spring from their needs, passions, and interests.* [4]
Teleology, according to Hegel, is not opposed to the ecient causation provided by passion; on the contrary, the
latter is the vehicle realizing the former.* [4] Hegel consistently lays more stress on passion than on the more historically speciable interests of men.* [4] Marx will reverse
this priority.* [4]

The historical process, however, never attempts to preserve an essence in the rst place.* [4] Rather, it develops
an essence through successive forms.* [4] This means that
at any moment on the path of historical change, there is
a contradiction between what exists and what is in the
process of coming-to-be.* [4] The realization of a natural thing like a tree is a process that by and large points
back toward itself: every step of the process takes place
in order to reproduce the genus. In the historical process,
however, what exists, what is actual, is imperfect.* [10] It
is inimical to the potential. What is trying to come into
existence - freedom - inherently negates everything preceding it and everything existing, since no actual exist(3) The Dierence Between Natural and Historical ing human institution can possibly embody pure human
freedom. So the actual is both itself and its opposite (as
Change
potential).* [4] And this potential (freedom) is never inert
Hegel distinguishes as Aristotle did not between the ap- but constantly exerts an impulse toward change.* [4]
plication of organic, essentialist categories to the realm
of human history and the realm of organic nature.* [6]
According to Hegel, human history strives toward perThe rupture with German Idealism and the Young
fectibility, but nature does not.* [7] Marx deepens and exHegelians
pands this idea into the claim that humankind itself can
adapt society to its own purposes rather than adapting
Main articles: German Idealism and Young Hegelians
themselves to it.* [4]
Natural and historical change, according to Hegel, have
two dierent kinds of essences.* [4] Organic natural entities develop through a straightforward process, relatively
simple to comprehend at least in outline.* [4] Historical
development, however, is a more complex process.* [8]
Its specic dierence is its dialecticalcharacter.* [4]

Marx did not study directly with Hegel, but after Hegel
died Marx studied under one of Hegel's pupils, Bruno
Bauer, a leader of the circle of Young Hegelians to whom
Marx attached himself. However, Marx and Engels came
to disagree with Bruno Bauer and the rest of the Young
Hegelians about socialism and also about the usage of

1.3. MARXIST PHILOSOPHY

Hegel's dialectic. Having achieved his thesis on the Difference of natural philosophy between Democritus and
Epicurus in 1841, the young Marx progressively broke
away with the Prussian university and its teachings impregnated by German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling
and Hegel).
Along with Engels, who observed the Chartist movement
in the United Kingdom, he cut away with the environment in which he grew up and encountered the proletariat
in France and Germany. He then wrote a scathing criticism of the Young Hegelians in two books, "The Holy
Family" (1845), and The German Ideology (1845), in
which he criticized not only Bauer but also Max Stirner's
The Ego and Its Own (1844), considered as one of the
founding book of individualist anarchism. Max Stirner
claimed that all ideals were inherently alienating, and that
replacing God with Humanity, as did Ludwig Feuerbach
in The Essence of Christianity (1841), was not sucient.
According to Stirner, any ideals, God, Humanity, the
Nation, or even the Revolution alienated the Ego.
Marx also criticized Proudhon, who had become famous
with his cry "Property is theft!", in The Poverty of Philosophy (1845).

19
alienation. Some critics have claimed that meant that
Marx enforced a strict social determinism which destroyed the possibility of free will.
Criticisms of the human rights In the same way,
following Babeuf, considered as one of the founder of
communism during the French Revolution, he criticized
the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as a bourgeois declarationof the rights of the
egoistic individual, ultimately based on the right to
private property, which economism deduced from its
own implicitphilosophy of the subject, which asserts
the preeminence of an individual and universal subject
over social relations. On the other hand, Marx also criticized Bentham's utilitarianism.
Alongside Freud, Nietzsche, and Durkheim, Marx thus
takes a place amongst the 19th century philosophers
who criticized this pre-eminence of the subject and its
consciousness.* [11] Instead, Marx saw consciousness as
political. According to Marx, the recognition of these individual rights was the result of the universal extension of
market relations to all of society and to all of the world,
rst through the primitive accumulation of capital (including the rst period of European colonialism) and then
through the globalization of the capitalist sphere. Such individual rights were the symmetric of the right for the
labourertofreelysell his labor force on the marketplace through juridical contracts, and worked in the same
time as an ideological means to discompose the collective
grouping of producers required by the Industrial Revolution: thus, in the same time that the Industrial Era requires masses to concentrate themselves in factories and
in cities, the individualist, bourgeoisideology separated themselves as competing homo economicus.

Marx's early writings are thus a response towards Hegel,

German Idealism and a break with the rest of the Young
Hegelians. Marx, stood Hegel on his head,in his
own view of his role, by turning the idealistic dialectic
into a materialistic one, in proposing that material circumstances shape ideas, instead of the other way around.
In this, Marx was following the lead of Feuerbach. His
theory of alienation, developed in the Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (published in 1932),
inspired itself from Feuerbach's critique of the alienation
of Man in God through the objectivation of all his inherent characteristics (thus man projected on God all qualities which are in fact man's own quality which denes the Marx's critique of the ideology of the human rights
thus departs from the counterrevolutionary critique by
"human nature").
Edmund Burke, who dismissed the rights of Manin
But Marx also criticized Feuerbach for being insu- favour of therights of the individual": it is not grounded
ciently materialistic, as Stirner himself had pointed out, on an opposition to the Enlightenment's universalism and
and explained that the alienation described by the Young humanist project on behalf of the right of tradition, as
Hegelians was in fact the result of the structure of the in Burke's case, but rather on the claim that the ideoleconomy itself. Furthermore, he criticized Feuerbach's ogy of economism and the ideology of the human rights
conception of human nature in his sixth thesis on Feuer- are the reverse sides of the same coin. However, as tibach as an abstractkindwhich incarnated itself in each enne Balibar puts it, the accent put on those contradicsingular individual: Feuerbach resolves the essence of tions can not not ring out on the signication of 'human
religion into the essence of man (menschliche Wesen, hu- rights', since these therefore appears both as the language
man nature). But the essence of man is no abstraction in which exploitation masks itself and as the one in which
inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the en- the exploited class struggle express itself: more than a
semble of the social relations.
truth or an illusion, it is therefore a stake".* [12] Das KapThereupon, instead of founding itself on the singu- ital ironizes on the pompous catalogue of the human
lar, concrete individual subject, as did classic philoso- rightsin comparison to the modest Magna Charta of
phy, including contractualism (Hobbes, John Locke and a day work limited by law":
Rousseau) but also political economy, Marx began with
The creation of a normal working-day is,
the totality of social relations: labour, language and all
therefore, the product of a protracted civil war,
which constitute our human existence. He claimed that
more or less dissembled, between the capitalindividualism was the result of commodity fetishism or
ist class and the working-class... It must be ac-

20

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

knowledged that our labourer comes out of the
process of production other than he entered. In
the market he stood as owner of the commoditylabour-powerface to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The
contract by which he sold to the capitalist his
labour-power proved, so to say, in black and
white that he disposed of himself freely. The
bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was
no free agent,that the time for which he
is free to sell his labour-power is the time for
which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him so long as
there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be
exploited.Forprotectionagainstthe serpent of their agonies,the labourers must put
their heads together, and, as a class, compel the
passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier
that shall prevent the very workers from selling,
by voluntary contract with capital, themselves
and their families into slavery and death. In
place of the pompous catalogue of theinalienable rights of mancomes the modest Magna
Charta of a legally limited working-day, which
shall make clear when the time which the
worker sells is ended, and when his own begins. Quantum mutatus ab illo![How changed
from what he/it was!]"* [13]

But the communist revolution does not end with

the negation of individual liberty and equality
("collectivism"* [14]), but with the negation of
the negation": individual propertyin the capitalist
regime is in fact the expropriation of the immediate
producers.Self-earned private property, that is
based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated,
independent laboring-individual with the conditions of
his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private property,
which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor
of others, i.e., on wage-labor... The capitalist mode
of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of
production, produces capitalist private property. This
is the rst negation of individual private property, as
founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist
production begets, with the inexorability of a law of
Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation.
This does not re-establish private property for the
producer, but gives him individual property based on the
acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and
the possession in common of the land and of the means
of production.* [15]
Criticisms of Feuerbach
Main articles:
Feuerbach and Marx's theory of alienation

no less ahistorical and idealist than what it purported

to replace, namely the reied notion of God found in
institutional Christianity that legitimized the repressive
power of the Prussian state. Instead, Marx aspired to give
ontological priority to what he called the real life processof real human beings, as he and Engels said in The
German Ideology (1846):
In direct contrast to German philosophy,
which descends from heaven to earth, here we
ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say,
we do not set out from what men say, imagine,
conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought
of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at
men in the esh. We set out from real, active
men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the
ideological reexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain
are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically veriable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance
of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material
production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this, their real existence, their
thinking, and the products of their thinking.
Life is not determined by consciousness, but
consciousness by life.
Also, in his Theses on Feuerbach (1845), in which the
young Marx broke with Feuerbach's idealism, he writes
that the philosophers have only described the world, in
various ways, the point is to change it,and his materialist
approach allows for and empowers such change. This opposition between various subjective interpretations given
by philosophers, which may be, in a sense, compared
with Weltanschauung designed to legitimize the current
state of aairs, and eective transformation of the world
through praxis, which combines theory and practice in a
materialist way, is what distinguish Marxist philosopherswith the rest of philosophers.

Indeed, Marx's break with German Idealism involves a

new denition of philosophy; Louis Althusser, founder
of "Structural Marxism" in the 1960s, would dene it as
"class struggle in theory. Marx's movement away from
university philosophy and towards the workers' movement
is thus inextricably linked to his rupture with his earlier
writings, which pushed Marxist commentators to speak
Ludwig of a young Marxand a mature Marx, although
the nature of this cut poses problems.

A year before the Revolutions of 1848, Marx and EnWhat distinguished Marx from Feuerbach was his view gels thus wrote The Communist Manifesto, which was
of Feuerbach's humanism as excessively abstract, and so prepared to an imminent revolution, and ended with

1.3. MARXIST PHILOSOPHY

the famous cry: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!".
However, Marx's thought changed again following LouisNapoleon Bonaparte's December 2, 1851 coup, which
put an end to the French Second Republic and created the
Second Empire which would last until the 1870 FrancoPrussian War.
Marx thereby modied his theory of alienation exposed in
the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and
would later arrive to his theory of commodity fetishism,
exposed in the rst chapter of the rst book of Das Kapital (1867). This abandonment of the early theory of
alienation would be amply discussed, and several Marxist
theorists, including Marxist humanists such as the Praxis
School, would return to it. Others, such as Althusser,
would claim that the "epistemological break" between the
young Marxand themature Marxwas such that no
comparisons could be done between both works, marking
a shift to a scientic theoryof society.

21
stage in the development of their material
forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic
structure of society, the real foundation, on
which arises a legal and political superstructure
and to which correspond denite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of
material life conditions the general process of
social, political and intellectual life. It is not
the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
In this brief popularization of his ideas, Marx emphasized
that social development sprang from the inherent contradictions within material life and the social superstructure.
This notion is often understood as a simple historical narrative: primitive communism had developed into slave
states. Slave states had developed into feudal societies.
Those societies in turn became capitalist states, and those
states would be overthrown by the self-conscious portion
of their working-class, or proletariat, creating the conditions for socialism and, ultimately, a higher form of communism than that with which the whole process began.
Marx illustrated his ideas most prominently by the development of capitalism from feudalism, and by the prediction of the development of socialism from capitalism.

In 1844-5, when Marx was starting to settle his account

with Hegel and the Young Hegelians in his writings, he
critiqued the Young Hegelians for limiting the horizon of
their critique to religion and not taking up the critique of
the state and civil society as paramount. Indeed in 1844,
by the look of Marx's writings in that period (most famous
of which is the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
of 1844", a text that most explicitly elaborated his theory
of alienation), Marx's thinking could have taken at least
three possible courses: the study of law, religion, and the The base-superstructure and stadialist formulations in
state; the study of natural philosophy; and the study of the 1859 preface took on canonical status in the subsequent development of orthodox Marxism, in particular in
political economy.
dialectical materialism (diamat, as it was known in the
He chose the last as the predominant focus of his studies
Soviet Union). They also gave way to a vulgar Marxism
for the rest of his life, largely on account of his previas plain economic determinism (or economism), which
ous experience as the editor of the newspaper Rheinische
has been criticized by various Marxist theorists. VulZeitung on whose pages he fought for freedom of expresgar Marxismwas seen as little other than a variety
sion against Prussian censorship and made a rather ideof economic determinism, with the alleged determinaalist, legal defense for the Moselle peasants' customary
tion of the ideological superstructure by the economical
right of collecting wood in the forest (this right was at the
infrastructure. However, this positivist reading, which
point of being criminalized and privatized by the state).
mostly based itself on Engels' latter writings in an attempt
It was Marx's inability to penetrate beneath the legal and
to theorize "scientic socialism" (an expression coined by
polemical surface of the latter issue to its materialist, ecoEngels) has been challenged by Marxist theorists, such as
nomic, and social roots that prompted him to critically
Antonio Gramsci or Althusser.
study political economy.
Some believe that Marx regarded them merely as a shorthand summary of his huge ongoing work-in-progress
Historical materialism
Main articles: Historical (which was only published posthumously over a hunmaterialism and Dialectical materialism
dred years later as Grundrisse). These sprawling, voluminous notebooks that Marx put together for his research
Marx summarized the materialistic aspect of his the- on political economy, particularly those materials assoory of history, otherwise known as historical materialism ciated with the study of primitive communismand
(this term was coined by Engels and popularised by Karl pre-capitalist communal production, in fact, show a more
Kautsky and Georgi Plekhanov), in the 1859 preface to radical turning Hegel on his headthan heretofore acknowledged by most mainstream Marxists and MarxiolA Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
ogists.
In the social production of their existence,
men inevitably enter into denite relations,
which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given

In lieu of the Enlightenment belief in historical progress

and stages espoused by Hegel (often in a racist,
Eurocentric manner, as in his Lectures on the Philosophy
of History), Marx pursues in these research notes a decid-

22

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

edly empirical approach to analyzing historical changes

and dierent modes of production, emphasizing without
forcing them into a teleological paradigm the rich varieties of communal productions throughout the world and
the critical importance of collective working-class antagonism in the development of capitalism.

freedom,and human potentialare pure ideology,

or theoretical versions of the bourgeois economic order.
They feel that such concepts can only condemn Marxism
to theoretical self-contradictions which may also hurt it
politically.

Moreover, Marx's rejection of the necessity of bourgeois revolution and appreciation of the obschina, the 1.3.4 Key works and authors
communal land system, in Russia in his letter to Vera
the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:
Zasulich; respect for the egalitarian culture of North
especially the earlier writings such as The 1844
African Muslim commoners found in his letters from
Manuscripts, The German Ideology and "Theses on
Algeria; and sympathetic and searching investigation of
Feuerbach,
but also the Grundrisse, Das Kapital and
the global commons and indigenous cultures and pracother
works
inspired
tices in his notebooks, including the Ethnological Notebooks that he kept during his last years, all point to a his V.I. Lenin
torical Marx who was continuously developing his ideas
until his deathbed and does not t into any pre-existing
Lev Trotsky
ideological straitjacket.
Rosa Luxemburg

1.3.3

Dierences within Marxist philosophy

Some varieties of Marxist philosophy are strongly inuenced by Hegel, emphasizing totality and even teleology:
for example, the work of Georg Lukcs, whose inuence extends to contemporary thinkers like Fredric Jameson. Others consider totalitymerely another version
of Hegel's spirit,and thus condemn it as a crippling,
secret idealism.
Theodor Adorno, a leading philosopher of the Frankfurt
School, who was strongly inuenced by Hegel, tried to
take a middle path between these extremes: Adorno contradicted Hegel's motto the true is the wholewith his
new version, the whole is the false,but he wished to
preserve critical theory as a negative, oppositional version
of the utopia described by Hegel's spirit.Adorno believed in totality and human potential as ends to be striven
for, but not as certainties.
The status of humanism in Marxist thought has been
quite contentious. Many Marxists, especially Hegelian
Marxists and also those committed to political programs
(such as many Communist Parties), have been strongly
humanist. These humanist Marxists believe that Marxism describes the true potential of human beings, and
that this potential can be fullled in collective freedom after the Communist revolution has removed capitalism's constraints and subjugations of humanity. A
particular version of the humanism within the marxism
is represented by the school of Lev Vygotsky and his
school in theoretical psychology (Alexis Leontiev, Laszlo
Garai* [16]). The Praxis school based its theory on the
writings of the young Marx, emphasizing the humanist
and dialectical aspects thereof.
However, other Marxists, especially those inuenced by
Louis Althusser, are just as strongly anti-humanist. Antihumanist Marxists believe that ideas like humanity,

Karl Korsch
Georg Lukcs: History and Class Consciousness developed the theory of ideology to include a more
complex model of class consciousness
Antonio Gramsci
Laszlo Garai
Ernst Bloch
The Frankfurt School, esp. Theodor Adorno,
Herbert Marcuse and Jrgen Habermas
Walter Benjamin
Bertolt Brecht
Socialisme ou Barbarie (Cornelius Castoriadis,
Claude Lefort, etc.)
Louis Althusser and his students (e.g. tienne
Balibar, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancire, Pierre
Macherey)
Praxis school
Situationist International
Fredric Jameson
Antonio Negri and autonomist Marxism
Helmut Reichelt
Slavoj iek
Mao Zedong

1.4. MARX'S METHOD

1.3.5

See also

Category:Marxist theorists and List of contributors

to Marxist theory
Critical theory
Dialectical materialism

23

1.3.7 Bibliography
Balibar, tienne, The Philosophy of Marx. Verso,
1995 (French edition: La philosophie de Marx, La
Dcouverte, Repres, 1991)
Bottomore, Thomas, ed.. A Dictionary of Marxist
Thought. Blackwell, 1991.

Frankfurt School's critical theory

Freudo-Marxism
Marxist sociology
Neo-Marxism
Orthodox Marxism
Post-Marxism
Analytical Marxism
Rethinking Marxism, a review

1.4 Marx's method

Various Marxist authors have focused on Marx's
method of analysis and presentation (historical materialist and logically dialectical) as key factors both in understanding the range and incisiveness of Karl Marx's theoretical writing in general and Das Kapital in particular.
One of the clearest and most instructive examples of this
is his discussion of the value-form, which acts as a primary guide or key to understanding the logical argument
as it develops throughout the volumes of Das Kapital.

Marx himself presents a simplied explanation in the Appendix to the rst German edition of Das Kapital published in English translation in Capital & Class. The need
[1] tienne Balibar, 1993. La philosophie de Marx, La Dfor
this appendix was suggested by Engels* [1] and there is
couverte, Repres (English edition, The Philosophy of
an exchange of correspondence* [1]* [2]* [3]* [4] concernMarx. Verso, 1995)
ing its purpose and form.

1.3.6

References

[2] Meikle, Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx, Open

Court Publishing Company (1985), 30.
[3] Ibid, 31.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid, 32.
[6] Ibid, 33.
[7] Ibid, 34.
[8] Ibid, 35.
[9] Ibid, 36.
[10] Ibid, 37.
[11] http://www.iep.utm.edu/durkheim/ ; See section onThe
Individual and Society.
[12] tienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, 1993, p.74 original edition
[13] Karl Marx, Das Kapital, chapter X, section 7

1.4.1 Readings on Marxs method

Henryk Grossman focussed considerable eort in
often dicult circumstances in pursuing fundamental research into Marxs method. His studies resulted amongst others in his masterwork: The Law
of Accumulation and the breakdown of the Capitalist
System: Being also a theory of crises Pluto 1992.
Evald Ilyenkov The Dialectics of the Abstract and the
Concrete in Marx's Capital Progress Moscow 1982
Franz Jakubowski in his Ideology and Superstructure
in Historical Materialism Pluto 1990
Karl Korsch Three Essays on Marxism Pluto 1971
and Marxism and Philosophy Monthly Review 1970
Gyrgy Lukcs in "What is Orthodox Marxism?",
dened orthodoxy as the delity to the Marxist
method

[14] Louis Dumont argued that Marx represented exacerbated

individualism instead of holism as the popular interpretation of Marxism as collectivismwould have it

Georey Pilling Marxs Capital: Philosophy and

political economy RKP 1980

[15] Karl Marx, Das Kapital, chapter XXXII, section 1

Roman Rosdolsky particularly in The Making of

Marx's Capital Pluto 1980

[16] Interview with Laszlo Garai on the Activity Theory of

Alexis Leontiev and his own Theory of Social Identity as
referred to the meta-theory of Lev Vygotsky. Journal of
Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 50, no. 1,
JanuaryFebruary 2012, pp. 5064

Isaak Illich Rubin Essays on Marx

s Theory of Value
Black & Red 1972
Jindich Zelen The Logic of Marx Blackwell 1980

24

1.4.2

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

References

[1] Engels to Marx, June 16, 1867 Letters on Capital

[2] Marx to Engels, June 22, 1867 Letters on Capital
[3] Engels to Marx, June 24, 1867 Letters on Capital
[4] Marx to Engels, June 27, 1867 Letters on Capital

Bibliography
Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick 1983 Letters on
Capital New Park

1.4.3

External links

Appendix to the rst German edition

1.5 Marxian economics

those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle, such as creative destruction, have been tted for use
in capitalist systems.
Marx's magnum opus on political economy was Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) in three
volumes, of which only the rst volume was published
in his lifetime (1867); the others were published by
Friedrich Engels from Marx's notes. One of Marx's early
works, Critique of Political Economy, was mostly incorporated into Das Kapital, especially the beginning of volume 1. Marx's notes made in preparation for writing Das
Kapital were published in 1939 under the title Grundrisse.

1.5.1 Marx's response to classical economics

Marx's economics took as its starting point the work of
the best-known economists of his day, the British classical economists Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David
Ricardo.
Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), argued that
the most important characteristic of a market economy
was that it permitted a rapid growth in productive abilities. Smith claimed that a growing market stimulated
a greater "division of labor" (i.e., specialization of businesses and/or workers) and this, in turn, led to greater
productivity. Although Smith generally said little about
laborers, he did note that an increased division of labor
could at some point cause harm to those whose jobs became narrower and narrower as the division of labor expanded. Smith maintained that a laissez-faire economy
would naturally correct itself over time.

Marxian economics or the Marxian school of economics refers to a school of economic thought tracing its
foundations to the critique of classical political economy
rst expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Marxian economics refers to several dierent theories
and includes multiple schools of thought which are sometimes opposed to each other, and in many cases Marxian
analysis is used to complement or supplement other economic approaches.* [1] Because one does not necessarily
have to be politically Marxist to be economically Marxian, the two adjectives coexist in usage rather than being
synonymous. They share a semantic eld while also al- Marx followed Smith by claiming that the most important benecial economic consequence of capitalism was
lowing connotative and denotative dierences.
a rapid growth in productivity abilities. Marx also exMarxian economics concerns itself variously with the
panded greatly on the notion that laborers could come
analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution to harm as capitalism became more productive. Addiof the surplus product and surplus value in various types
tionally, in Theories of Surplus Value, Marx noted, We
of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic see the great advance made by Adam Smith beyond the
value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic
Physiocrats in the analysis of surplus-value and hence of
and political processes, and the process of economic evo- capital. In their view, it is only one denite kind of conlution.
crete labouragricultural labour that creates surplusMarxian economics, particularly in academia, is distin- value....But to Adam Smith, it is general social labour
guished from Marxism as a political ideology as well no matter in what use-values it manifests itselfthe
as the normative aspects of Marxist thought, with the mere quantity of necessary labour, which creates value.
view that Marx's original approach to understanding eco- Surplus-value, whether it takes the form of prot, rent, or
nomics and economic development is intellectually inde- the secondary form of interest, is nothing but a part of
pendent from Marx's own advocacy of revolutionary so- this labour, appropriated by the owners of the material
cialism.* [2]* [3] Marxian economists do not lean entirely conditions of labour in the exchange with living labour.
upon the works of Marx and other widely known Marx- Malthus' claim, in "An Essay on the Principle of Popists, but draw from a range of Marxist and non-Marxist ulation", that population growth was the primary cause
sources.* [4]
of subsistence level wages for laborers provoked Marx
Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox,
ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of the global economy; certain concepts of Marxian economics, especially

to develop an alternative theory of wage determination.

Whereas Malthus presented an ahistorical theory of population growth, Marx oered a theory of how a relative
surplus population in capitalism tended to push wages to

1.5. MARXIAN ECONOMICS

subsistence levels. Marx saw this relative surplus population as coming from economic causes and not from
biological causes (as in Malthus). This economic-based
theory of surplus population is often labeled as Marx's
theory of the reserve army of labour.
Ricardo developed a theory of distribution within capitalism, that is, a theory of how the output of society is distributed to classes within society. The most mature version of this theory, presented in On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, was based on a labour theory of value in which the value of any produced object is
equal to the labor embodied in the object. (Adam Smith
also presented a labor theory of value but it was only incompletely realized.) Also notable in Ricardo's economic
theory was that prot was a deduction from society's output and that wages and prot were inversely related: an
increase in prot came at the expense of a reduction in
wages. Marx built much of the formal economic analysis
found in Capital on Ricardo's theory of the economy.

1.5.2

Marx's theory

Marx employed a labour theory of value, which holds that

the value of a commodity is the socially necessary labour
time invested in it. In this model, capitalists do not pay
workers the full value of the commodities they produce;
rather, they compensate the worker for the necessary labor only (the worker's wage, which cover only the necessary means of subsistence in order to maintain him working in the present and his family in the future as a group).
This necessary labor is, Marx supposes, only a fraction of
a full working day - the rest, the surplus-labor, would be
pocketed by the capitalist.

25
the universe as composed of separate objects, each with
essentially stable unchanging characteristics. One component of dialectics is abstraction; out of an undierentiated mass of data or system conceived of as an organic
whole, one abstracts portions to think about or to refer
to. One may abstract objects, but also and more typically relations, and processes of change. An abstraction may be extensive or narrow, may focus on generalities or specics, and may be made from various points
of view. For example, a sale may be abstracted from a
buyer's or a seller's point of view, and one may abstract
a particular sale or sales in general. Another component is the dialectical deduction of categories. Marx uses
Hegel's notion of categories, which are forms, for economics: The commodity form, the money form, the capital form etc. have to be systematically deduced instead
of being grasped in an outward way as done by the bourgeois economists. This corresponds to Hegel's critique of
Kant's transcendental philosophy.* [7]
Marx regarded history as having passed through several
stages. The details of his periodisation vary somewhat
through his works, but it essentially is: Primitive Communism -- Slave societies -- Feudalism -- Capitalism -Socialism -- Communism (capitalism being the present
stage and communism the future). Marx occupied himself primarily with describing capitalism. Historians
place the beginning of capitalism some time between
about 1450 (Sombart) and some time in the 17th century
(Hobsbawm).* [8]
Marx denes a commodity as a product of human labour
that is produced for sale in a market, and many products
of human labour are commodities. Marx began his major
work on economics, Capital, with a discussion of commodities; Chapter One is called Commodities.

Marx theorized that the gap between the value a worker

produces and his wage is a form of unpaid labour, known
as surplus value. Moreover, Marx argues that markets
tend to obscure the social relationships and processes of Commodities
production; he called this commodity fetishism. People
are highly aware of commodities, and usually don't think The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist
mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an imabout the relationships and labour they represent.
mense accumulation of commodities,' its unit being a sinMarx's analysis leads to the consideration of economic gle commodity.(First sentence of Capital, Volume I.)
crisis. A propensity to crisiswhat we would call business cycleswas not recognised as an inherent feature of The common substance that manifests itself in the excapitalism of by other economist of Marx's time,ob- change value of commodities whenever they are exserved Robert Heilbroner in The Worldly Philosophers, changed, is their value.(Capital, I, Chap I, section 1.)
although future events have certainly indicated his prediction of successive boom and crash.* [5] Marx's theory
of economic cycles was formalised by Richard Goodwin
inA Growth Cycle(1967),* [6] a paper published during the centenary year of Capital, Volume I.

The worth of a commodity can be conceived of in two

dierent ways, which Marx calls use-value and value. A
commodity's use-value is its usefulness for fullling some
practical purpose; for example, the use-value of a piece
of food is that it provides nourishment and pleasurable
taste; the use value of a hammer, that it can drive nails.

Value is, on the other hand, a measure of a commodity's

worth in comparison to other commodities. It is closely
Marx used dialectics, a method that he adapted from the related to exchange-value, the ratio at which commodities
works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Dialectics fo- should be traded for one another, but not identical: value
cuses on relation and change, and tries to avoid seeing is at a more general level of abstraction; exchange-value
Methodology

26
is a realisation or form of it.

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

3. the instruments of labour: tools, labouring domestic
animals like horses, chemicals used in modifying the
subject, etc.

Marx argued that if value is a property common to all

commodities, then whatever it is derived from, whatever
determines it, must be common to all commodities. The
only relevant thing that is, in Marx's view, common to all Some subjects of labour are available directly from Nacommodities is human labour: they are all produced by ture: uncaught sh, unmined coal, etc. Others are rehuman labour.
sults of a previous stage of production; these are known as
Marx concluded that the value of a commodity is simply raw materials, such as our or yarn. Workshops, canals,
the amount of human labour required to produce it. Thus and roads are considered instruments of labour. (Capital,
Marx adopted a labour theory of value, as had his pre- I, VII, 1.) Coal for boilers, oil for wheels, and hay for
decessors Ricardo and MacCulloch; Marx himself traced draft horses is considered raw material, not instruments
the existence of the theory at least as far back as an anony- of labour.
mous work, Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money in If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so to
General, and Particularly the Publick Funds, &c., pub- say, been ltered through previous labour, we call it raw
lished in London around 1739 or 1740.* [9]
material. . . .(Capital, I, Chap VII, section 1.)
Marx placed some restrictions on the validity of his value
theory: he said that in order for it to hold, the commodity
must not be a useless item; and it is not the actual amount
of labour that went into producing a particular individual
commodity that determines its value, but the amount of
labour that a worker of average energy and ability, working with average intensity, using the prevailing techniques
of the day, would need to produce it. A formal statement of the law is: the value of a commodity is equal to
the average socially necessary labour time required for its
production. (Capital, I, Ip 39 in Progress Publishers,
Moscow, ed'n.)
Marx's contention was that commodities tend, at a fairly
general level of abstraction, to exchange at value; that is,
if Commodity A, whose value isV, is traded for Commodity B, it will tend to fetch an amount of Commodity B
whose value is the same,V. Particular circumstances
will cause divergence from this rule, however.
Money

The subjects of labour and instruments of labour together

are called the means of production. Relations of production are the relations human beings adopt toward each
other as part of the production process. In capitalism,
wage labour and private property are part of the relations
of production.
Calculation of value of a product (price not to
be confused with value):
If labour is performed directly on Nature and
with instruments of negligible value, the value
of the product is simply the labour time. If
labour is performed on something that is itself
the product of previous labour (that is, on a raw
material), using instruments that have some
value, the value of the product is the value of
the raw material, plus depreciation on the instruments, plus the labour time. Depreciation
may be gured simply by dividing the value of
the instruments by their working life; e.g. if a
lathe worth 1,000 lasts in use 10 years it imparts value to the product at a rate of 100 per
year.

Marx held that metallic money, such as gold, is a commodity, and its value is the labour time necessary to produce it (mine it, smelt it, etc.). Marx argued that gold and
silver are conventionally used as money because they embody a large amount of labour in a small, durable, form, Eect of technical progress
which is convenient. Paper money is, in this model, a representation of gold or silver, almost without value of its According to Marx, the amount of actual product (i.e.
use-value) that a typical worker produces in a given
own but held in circulation by state decree.
amount of time is the productivity of labour. It has tended
Paper money is a token representing gold or money. to increase under capitalism. This is due to increase in the
(Capital, I, Chap III, section 2, part c.)
scale of enterprise, to specialisation of labour, and to the
introduction of machinery. The immediate result of this
is that the value of a given item tends to decrease, because
Production
the labour time necessary to produce it becomes less.
Marx lists the elementary factors of production as:
1. labour, the personal activity of man.(Capital, I,
VII, 1.)
2. the subject of labour: the thing worked on.

In a given amount of time, labour produces more items,

but each unit has less value; the total value created per
time remains the same. This means that the means of subsistence become cheaper; therefore the value of labour
power or necessary labour time becomes less. If the
length of the working day remains the same, this results

1.5. MARXIAN ECONOMICS

27

in an increase in the surplus labour time and the rate of his conclusion that aggregate price and prot are detersurplus value.
mined by, and equal to, aggregate value and surplus value
Technological advancement tends to increase the amount no longer holds true. This result calls into question his
the exploitation of workers is the sole source
of capital needed to start a business, and it tends to re- theory that
*
of
prot.
[14]
sult in an increasing preponderance of capital being spent
on means of production (constant capital) as opposed to Whether the rate of prot in capitalism has, as Marx prelabour (variable capital). Marx called the ratio of these dicted, tended to fall is a subject of debate. N. Okishio,
two kinds of capital the composition of capital.
in 1961, devised a theorem (Okishio's theorem) showing
that if capitalists pursue cost-cutting techniques and if the
real wage does not rise, the rate of prot must rise.* [15]

1.5.3

Current theorizing in Marxian ecoThe inconsistency allegations have been a prominent feanomics
ture of Marxian economics and the debate surrounding it

Marxian economics has been built upon by many others, beginning almost at the moment of Marx's death.
The second and third volumes of Das Kapital were edited
by his close associate Friedrich Engels, based on Marx's
notes. Marx's Theories of Surplus Value was edited
by Karl Kautsky. The Marxian value theory and the
Perron-Frobenius theorem on the positive eigenvector of
a positive matrix * [10] are fundamental to mathematical
treatments of Marxist economics.
Universities oering one or more courses in Marxian
economics, or teach one or more economics courses on
other topics from a perspective that they designate as
Marxian or Marxist, include Colorado State University,
New School for Social Research, School of Oriental and
African Studies, Universiteit Maastricht, University of
Bremen, University of California, Riverside, University
of Leeds, University of Maine, University of Manchester,
University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Massachusetts Boston, University of MissouriKansas City,
University of Sheeld, University of Utah, and York University (Toronto).* [11]

since the 1970s.* [16]

Among the critics pointing out internal inconsistencies are former and current Marxian and/or Sraan
economists, such as Paul Sweezy,* [17] Nobuo Okishio,* [18] Ian Steedman,* [19] John Roemer,* [20] Gary
Mongiovi,* [21] and David Laibman,* [22] who propose
that the eld be grounded in their correct versions of
Marxian economics instead of in Marx's critique of political economy in the original form in which he presented
and developed it in Capital.* [23]
Proponents of the Temporal Single System Interpretation
(TSSI) of Marx's value theory claim that the supposed
inconsistencies are actually the result of misinterpretation; they argue that when Marx's theory is understood
astemporalandsingle-system,the alleged internal
inconsistencies disappear. In a recent survey of the debate, a proponent of the TSSI concludes thatthe proofs
of inconsistency are no longer defended; the entire case
against Marx has been reduced to the interpretive issue.
*
[24]

English-language journals include Capital & Class,

Historical Materialism, Monthly Review, Rethinking Relevance to economics
Marxism, Review of Radical Political Economics, and
Studies in Political Economy.
Marxist economics was assessed in 1988 by Robert
M. Solow, who criticized the New Palgrave Dictionary
of Economics for over-sampling articles on Marxism
1.5.4 Criticisms
themes, giving a false impression of the state of play
in the economics profession:
Main article: Criticisms of Marxism
See also: Criticisms of Socialism, Criticism of communism, and Criticisms of Communist party rule for
Marx was an important and inuential
specic criticisms of Communist states
thinker, and Marxism has been a doctrine with
intellectual and practical inuence. The fact
Much of the critique of classical Marxian economics
is, however, that most serious English-speaking
came from Marxian economists that revised Marx's origeconomists regard Marxist economics as an irinal theory, or by the Austrian school of economics.
relevant dead end.* [25]
*
V. K. Dmitriev, writing in 1898, [12] Ladislaus von
Bortkiewicz, writing in 1906-07,* [13] and subsequent
critics have shown how Marx's value theory and law of the Economists working in the Marxian-Sraan tradition
tendency of the rate of prot to fall are internally incon- represent a small minority of modern economists, and
sistent. In other words, the critics allege that Marx drew that their writings have virtually no impact upon the proconclusions that actually do not follow from his theoret- fessional work of most economists in major Englishical premises. Once these alleged errors are corrected, language universities, according to George Stigler.* [26]

28

1.5.5

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Neo-Marxian economics

See also: Neo-Marxian economics and Neo-Marxism

The terms Neo-Marxian, Post-Marxian, and Radical Political Economics were rst used to refer to a distinct tradition of economic thought in the 70s and 80s.
In industrial economics, the Neo-Marxian approach
stresses the monopolistic rather than the competitive nature of capitalism. This approach is associated with
Kalecki, and Baran and Sweezy.* [27]* [28]

1.5.6

See also

[6] Screpanti & Zamagni 2005, p. 474.

[7] See Helmut Reichelt, quoted in: Kubota, Ken: Die dialektische Darstellung des allgemeinen Begris des Kapitals im Lichte der Philosophie Hegels. Zur logischen Analyse der politischen konomie unter besonderer Bercksichtigung Adornos und der Forschungsergebnisse von Rubin,
Backhaus, Reichelt, Uno und Sekine, in: Beitrge zur
Marx-Engels-Forschung. Neue Folge 2009, pp. 199-224,
here p. 199.
[8] Angus Maddison, Phases of Capitalist Development. Oxford, 1982. P 256, note.
[9] Capital, Vol I, Chap I (p 39 in the Progress Publishers,
Moscow, edition).

Capitalist mode of production

[10] Fujimori, Y. (1982).Modern Analysis of Value Theory

. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems.
Springer.

Capital accumulation

[11] Schools. HETecon.com. Retrieved on: August 23, 2007.

Evolutionary economics

[12] V. K. Dmitriev, 1974 (1898), Economic Essays on Value,

Competition and Utility. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press.

List of Marxian economists

Surplus product
Surplus labour
Labour power
Law of value
Unequal exchange
Value product
Productive and unproductive labour
Regulation school
Socialist economics
The Accumulation of Capital
Material product

1.5.7

Footnotes

[1] Wol and Resnick, Richard and Stephen (August 1987).

Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 130. ISBN 0801834805. Marxian theory (singular) gave way to Marxian theories (plural).
[2] The Neo-Marxian blood Schools. The New School.
Retrieved 2007-08-23.
[3] Munro, John. Some Basic Principles of Marxian Economics (PDF). University of Toronto. Retrieved 200708-23.
[4] Described in Duncan Foley and Grard Dumnil, 2008,
Marx's analysis of capitalist production,The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition. Abstract.
[5] Heilbroner 2000, p. 164.

[13] Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, 1952 (19061907), Value

and Price in the Marxian System, International Economic
Papers 2, 560; Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, 1984 (1907),
On the Correction of Marxs Fundamental Theoretical
Construction in the Third Volume of Capital". In Eugen
von Bhm-Bawerk 1984 (1896), Karl Marx and the Close
of his System, Philadelphia: Orion Editions.
[14] M. C. Howard and J. E. King. (1992) A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 19291990, chapter 12, sect.
III. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
[15] M. C. Howard and J. E. King. (1992) A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 19291990, chapter 7, sects.
II-IV. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
[16] See M. C. Howard and J. E. King, 1992, A History of
Marxian Economics: Volume II, 19291990. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
[17]Only one conclusion is possible, namely, that the Marxian method of transformation [of commodity values into
prices of production] is logically unsatisfactory.Paul M.
Sweezy, 1970 (1942), The Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 15. New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks.
[18] Nobuo Okishio, 1961, Technical Changes and the Rate
of Prot,Kobe University Economic Review 7, pp. 8599.
[19] "[P]hysical quantities ... suce to determine the rate of
prot (and the associated prices of production) .... [I]t
follows that value magnitudes are, at best, redundant in
the determination of the rate of prot (and prices of production).Marxs value reasoninghardly a peripheral aspect of his workmust therefore be abandoned, in
the interest of developing a coherent materialist theory of
capitalism.Ian Steedman, 1977, Marx after Sraa, pp.
202, 207. London: New Left Books.

1.5. MARXIAN ECONOMICS

29

[20] "[The falling-rate-of-prot] position is rebutted in Chapter 5 by a theorem which states that ... competitive innovations result in a rising rate of prot. . There seems to be
no hope for a theory of the falling rate of prot within the
strict connes of the environment that Marx suggested as
relevant.John Roemer, Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory, p. 12. Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1981.

Diane Flaherty (2008). radical economics,The

New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition,
Abstract.

[21] Vulgar Economy in Marxian Garb: A Critique of Temporal Single System Marxism, Gary Mongiovi, 2002, Review
of Radical Political Economics 34:4, p. 393. Marx did
make a number of errors in elaborating his theory of value
and the prot rate .... [H]is would-be Temporal Single
System defenders ... camouage Marxs errors.
Marx
s value analysis does indeed contain errors.(abstract).

Heilbroner, Robert (2000). The Worldly Philosophers (7th ed.). London: Penguin Books. ISBN
978-0-140-29006-6.

[22]An Error II is an inconsistency, whose removal through

development of the theory leaves the foundations of the
theory intact. Now I believe that Marx left us with a few
Errors II.David Laibman, Rhetoric and Substance in
Value Theoryin Alan Freeman, Andrew Kliman, and
Julian Wells (eds.), The New Value Controversy and the
Foundations of Economics, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2004, p. 17
[23] See Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's Capital": A
Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, esp. pp. 210-211.
[24] Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx'sCapital, Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, p. 208, emphases in original.
[25] Robert M. Solow, The Wide, Wide World of Wealth,
"New York Times, March 28, 1988, excerpt (from a review
of The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1987).
[26] Stigler, George J. (December 1988). Palgrave's Dictionary of Economics. Journal of Economic Literature
(American Economic Association) 26 (4): 17291736.
JSTOR 2726859.
[27] Baran, P. and Sweezy, P. (1966). Monopoly Capital: An
essay on the American economic and social order, Monthly
Review Press, New York
[28] Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler. Capital as power:
a study of order and creorder. Taylor & Francis, 2009, p.
50

1.5.8

References

Andrew Glyn (1987). Marxist economics,The

New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp.
39095.
J.E. Roemer (1987).Marxian value analysis,The
New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp.
38387.
John E. Roemer (2008). socialism (new perspectives),The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,
2nd Edition, Abstract.

Lenny Flank, 'Contradictions of Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics', St Petersburg,

Florida: Red and Black Publishers, 2007. ISBN
978-0-9791813-9-9.

Screpanti, Ernesto; Zamagni, Stefano (2005). An

Outline of the History of Economic Thought (2nd
ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780-199-27913-5.
Thomas T. Sekine, The Dialectic of Capital. A Study
of the Inner Logic of Capitalism, 2 volumes (preliminary edition), Tokyo 1986; OCLC 489902822 (vol.
1), OCLC 873921143 (vol. 2).
Solow, Robert M. (20 March 1988). The Wide,
Wide World Of Wealth (The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman. Four volumes.
4,103 pp. New York: Stockton Press. $650)". New
York Times.

1.5.9 Further reading

Althusser, Louis and Balibar, tienne.
Capital. London: Verso, 2009.

Reading

Bottomore, Tom, ed. A Dictionary of Marxist

Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
Fine, Ben. Marx's Capital. 5th ed. London: Pluto,
2010.
Harvey, David. A Companion to Marx's Capital.
London: Verso, 2010.
Harvey, David. The Limits of Capital. London:
Verso, 2006.
Mandel, Ernest. Marxist Economic Theory. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1970.
Mandel, Ernest. The Formation of the Economic
Thought of Karl Marx. New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1977.
Morishima, Michio. Marx's Economics: A Dual
Theory of Value and Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Postone, Moishe. Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory.
Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press,
1993.

30

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Saad-Filho, Alfredo. The Value of Marx: Political Economy for Contemporary Capitalism. London:
Routledge, 2002.
Wol, Richard D. and Resnick, Stephen A. Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. The MIT Press, 2012. ISBN
0262517833

1.5.10

External links

Marxist Economics Courses, Links and Information

Marxian Economics (archive from Schwartz center of
economic policy analysis)

Marxian Political Economy

The Neo-Marxian Schools (archive from Schwartz center of economic policy analysis)

A Marxian Introduction to Modern Economics

International working group on value theory
An outline of Marxist economics, Chapter 6 of Reformism or Revolution by Alan Woods
The End of the Market A website containing a crit- The production of surplus value,from Karl Marx's 'Capital'
ical evaluation the idea of the market-clearing price in Lithographs, by Hugo Gellert, 1934
which arms Marx's theory that in capitalism profitability would decline
Marx thought that the gigantic increase in wealth and
The Neo-Marxian Schools Radical
(
Political Econ- population from the 19th century onwards was mainly
due to the competitive striving to obtain maximum
omy)
surplus-value from the employment of labor, resulting in
If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Monthly an equally gigantic increase of productivity and capital
Review article detailing the degeneration of Marxian resources. To the extent that increasingly the economic
economics.
surplus is convertible into money and expressed in money,
the amassment of wealth is possible on a larger and larger
scale (see capital accumulation and surplus product).

1.6 Surplus value

1.6.1 Theory

Surplus value is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. Marx did not himself invent
The problem of explaining the source of surplus value is
the term, he developed the concept.* [1]Surplus value
expressed by Friedrich Engels as follows:
is a translation of the German word "Mehrwert", which
simply means value added (sales revenue less the cost of
materials used up). Conventionally, value-added is equal
Whence comes this surplus-value? It
to the sum of gross wage income and gross prot income.
cannot come either from the buyer buying the
However, Marx's use of this concept is dierent, because
commodities under their value, or from the
for Marx, the Mehrwert refers to the yield, prot or reseller selling them above their value. For in
turn on production capital invested, i.e. the amount of
both cases the gains and the losses of each inthe increase in the value of capital. Hence, Marx's use of
dividual cancel each other, as each individual
Mehrwert has always been translated as surplus value
is in turn buyer and seller. Nor can it come
, distinguishing it from value-added. According to
from cheating, for though cheating can enrich
Marx's theory, surplus value is equal to the new value creone person at the expense of another, it cannot
ated by workers in excess of their own labour-cost, which
increase the total sum possessed by both,
is appropriated by the capitalist as prot when products
and therefore cannot augment the sum of the
are sold.* [2]* [3]
values in circulation. (...) This problem must

1.6. SURPLUS VALUE

be solved, and it must be solved in a purely
economic way, excluding all cheating and the
intervention of any force the problem being:
how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than
one has bought, even on the hypothesis that
equal values are always exchanged for equal
values?"* [4]

31
average share of government spending in GDP in the advanced capitalist economies was around 5%; in 1870, a
bit above 8%; on the eve of World War I, just under 10%;
just before the outbreak of World War II, around 20%;
by 1950, nearly 30%; and today the average is around
35-40%. (see for example Alan Turner Peacock, The
growth of public expenditure, in Encyclopedia of Public
Choice, Springer 2003, pp. 594597).

Marx's solution was to distinguish between labor-time

worked and labor power. A worker who is suciently 1.6.3 Interpretations
productive can produce an output value greater than what
it costs to hire him. Although his wage seems to be based Surplus-value may be viewed in ve ways:
on hours worked, in an economic sense this wage does not
As a component of the new value product, which
reect the full value of what the worker produces. EfMarx himself denes as equal to the sum of labor
fectively it is not labour which the worker sells, but his
costs in respect of capitalistically productive labor
capacity to work.
(variable capital) and surplus-value. In production,
Imagine a worker who is hired for an hour and paid
he argues, the workers produce a value equal to
$10. Once in the capitalist's employ, the capitalist can
their wages plus an additional value, the surplushave him operate a boot-making machine using which the
value. They also transfer part of the value of xed
worker produces $10 worth of work every fteen minassets and materials to the new product, equal to
utes. Every hour, the capitalist receives $40 worth of
economic depreciation (consumption of xed capiwork and only pays the worker $10, capturing the retal) and intermediate goods used up (constant capital
maining $30 as gross revenue. Once the capitalist has
inputs). Labor costs and surplus-value are the mondeducted xed and variable operating costs of (say) $20
etary valuations of what Marx calls the necessary
(leather, depreciation of the machine, etc.), he is left with
product and the surplus product, or paid labour and
$10. Thus, for an outlay of capital of $30, the capitalist
unpaid labour.
obtains a surplus value of $10; his capital has not only
been replaced by the operation, but also has increased by
Surplus-value can also be viewed as a ow of net in$10.
come appropriated by the owners of capital in virtue
The worker cannot capture this benet directly because
he has no claim to the means of production (e.g. the
boot-making machine) or to its products, and his capacity to bargain over wages is restricted by laws and the
supply/demand for wage labour. Hence the rise of trade
unions which aim to create a more favourable bargaining
position through collective action by workers.

1.6.2

Denition

Total surplus-value in an economy (Marx refers to the

mass or volume of surplus-value) is basically equal to
the sum of net distributed and undistributed prot, net
interest, net rents, net tax on production and various
net receipts associated with royalties, licensing, leasing,
certain honorariums etc. (see also value product). Of
course, the way generic prot income is grossed and netted in social accounting may dier somewhat from the
way an individual business does that (see also Operating
surplus).
Marx's own discussion focuses mainly on prot, interest
and rent, largely ignoring taxation and royalty-type fees
which were proportionally very small components of the
national income when he lived. Over the last 150 years,
however, the role of the state in the economy increased
in almost every country in the world. Around 1850, the

of asset ownership, comprising both distributed personal income and undistributed business income. In
the whole economy, this will include both income
directly from production and property income.
Surplus-value can be viewed as the source of society's accumulation fund or investment fund; part of
it is re-invested, but part is appropriated as personal
income, and used for consumptive purposes by the
owners of capital assets (see capital accumulation);
in exceptional circumstances, part of it may also be
hoarded in some way. In this context, surplus value
can also be measured as the increase in the value of
the stock of capital assets through an accounting period, prior to distribution.
Surplus-value can be viewed as a social relation of
production, or as the monetary valuation of surpluslabour - a sort of indexof the balance of power
between social classes or nations in the process of
the division of the social product.
Surplus-value can, in a developed capitalist economy, be viewed also as an indicator of the level
of social productivity that has been reached by the
working population, i.e. the net amount of value it
can produce with its labour in excess of its own consumption requirements.

32

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

1.6.4

Equalization of rates of surplus In fact, Marx argues that the whole purpose of production
in this situation becomes the growth of capital, i.e. that
value

Marx believed that the long-term historical tendency

would be for dierences in rates of surplus value between
enterprises and economic sectors to level out, as Marx explains in two places in Capital Vol. 3:
If capitals that set in motion unequal
quantities of living labour produce unequal
amounts of surplus-value, this assumes that the
level of exploitation of labour, or the rate of
surplus-value, is the same, at least to a certain
extent, or that the distinctions that exist here
are balanced out by real or imaginary (conventional) grounds of compensation. This
assumes competition among workers, and
an equalization that takes place by their constant migration between one sphere of production and another. We assume a general rate
of surplus value of this kind, as a tendency,
like all economic laws, as a theoretical simplication; but in any case this is in practice
an actual presupposition of the capitalist mode
of production, even if inhibited to a greater or
lesser extent by practical frictions that produce
more or less signicant local dierences, such
as the settlement laws for agricultural labourers
in England, for example. In theory, we assume
that the laws of the capitalist mode of production develop in their pure form. In reality, this
is only an approximation; but that approximation is all the more exact, the more the capitalist mode of production is developed and the
less it is adulterated by survivals of earlier economic conditions with which it is amalgamated
" - Capital Vol. 3, ch. 10, Pelican edition p.
275.
*

This means, systemically, that the main driving force of

capitalism becomes the quest to maximise the appropriation of surplus-value augmenting the stock of capital. The
overriding motive behind eorts to economise resources
and labor is to obtain the maximum possible increase in
income and capital assets (business growth), and provide a steady or growing return on investment.

1.6.6 Absolute vs. relative

According to Marx, absolute surplus value is obtained
by increasing the amount of time worked per worker in
an accounting period.* [6] Marx talks mainly about the
length of the working day or week, but in modern times
the concern is about the number of hours worked per
year.
In many parts of the world, as productivity rose, the working classes forced a reduction in the workweek, from 60
hours to 50, 40 or 35 hours; but casualisation and exibilisation of working hours also permits higher paid workers
to work less (a fact of concern to statesmen who worry
about international competitiveness, i.e. if we don't work
harder our country will lose business).
Relative surplus value is obtained mainly by:
reducing wages* [7] this can only go to a certain point, because if wages fall below the ability of
workers to purchase their means of subsistence, they
will be unable to reproduce themselves and the capitalists will not be able to nd sucient labor power.
reducing the cost of wage-goods by various means,
so that wage increases can be curbed.* [8]

[5]

So, he assumed a uniform rate of surplus value in his

models of how surplus value would be shared out under
competitive conditions.

1.6.5

production of output becomes conditional on capital accumulation. If production becomes unprotable, capital
will be withdrawn from production sooner or later.

Appropriation from production

Both in Das Kapital and in preparatory manuscripts such

as the Grundrisse and Results of the immediate process of
production, Marx shows how commerce by stages transforms a non-capitalist production process into a capitalist
production process, integrating it fully into markets, so
that all inputs and outputs become marketed goods or services. When that process is complete, the whole of production has become simultaneously a labor process creating use-values and a valorisation process creating new
value, and more specically a surplus-value appropriated
as net income (see also capital accumulation).

increasing the productivity and intensity of labour

generally, through mechanisation and rationalisation, yielding a bigger output per hour worked.
The attempt to extract more and more surplus-value from
labor on the one side, and on the other side the resistance
to this exploitation, are according to Marx at the core of
the conict between social classes, which is sometimes
muted or hidden, but at other times erupts in open class
warfare and class struggle.

1.6.7 Production versus realisation

Marx distinguished sharply between value and price, in
part because of the sharp distinction he draws between
the production of surplus-value and the realisation of

1.6. SURPLUS VALUE

33

prot income (see also value-form). Output may be pro- what is a cost to some, is a source of prot to others.
duced containing surplus-value (valorisation), but selling Marx never analysed all this in detail; but the concept of
that output (realisation) is not at all an automatic process. surplus value will apply mainly to taxes on gross income
Until payment from sales is received, it is uncertain how (personal and business income from production) and on
much of the surplus-value produced will actually be re- the trade in products and services. Estate duty for examalised as prot from sales. So, the magnitude of prot re- ple rarely contains a surplus value component, although
alised in the form of money and the magnitude of surplus- prot could be earned in the transfer of the estate.
value produced in the form of products may dier greatly,
depending on what happens to market prices and the vagaries of supply and demand uctuations. This insight
forms the basis of Marx's theory of market value, prices
of production and the tendency of the rate of prot of
dierent enterprises to be levelled out by competition.

Generally, Marx seems to have regarded taxation imposts

as aformwhich disguised real product values. Apparently following this view, Ernest Mandel in his 1960 treatise Marxist Economic Theory refers to (indirect) taxes as
arbitrary additions to commodity prices. But this is
something of a misnomer, and disregards that taxes become part of the normal cost-structure of production. In
his later treatise on late capitalism, Mandel astonishingly
hardly mentions the signicance of taxation at all, a very
serious omission from the point of view of the real world
of modern capitalism since taxes can reach a magnitude
of a third, or even half of GDP (see E. Mandel, Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 1975)

In his published and unpublished manuscripts, Marx went

into great detail to examine many dierent factors which
could aect the production and realisation of surplusvalue. He regarded this as crucial for the purpose of
understanding the dynamics and dimensions of capitalist competition, not just business competition but also
competition between capitalists and workers and among
workers themselves. But his analysis did not go much
beyond specifying some of the overall outcomes of the
1.6.9
process.
His main conclusion though is that employers will aim
to maximise the productivity of labour and economise on
the use of labour, to reduce their unit-costs and maximise
their net returns from sales at current market prices; at
a given ruling market price for an output, every reduction of costs and every increase in productivity and sales
turnover will increase prot income for that output. The
main method is mechanisation, which raises the xed capital outlay in investment.
In turn, this causes the unit-values of commodities to decline over time, and a decline of the average rate of prot
in the sphere of production occurs, culminating in a crisis of capital accumulation, in which a sharp reduction in
productive investments combines with mass unemployment, followed by an intensive rationalisation process of
take-overs, mergers, fusions, and restructuring aiming to
restore protability.

1.6.8

Relation to taxation

In general, business leaders and investors are hostile to

any attempts to encroach on total prot volume, especially those of government taxation. The lower taxes are,
other things being equal, the bigger the mass of prot that
can be distributed as income to private investors. It was
tax revolts that originally were a powerful stimulus motivating the bourgeoisie to wrest state power from the feudal aristocracy at the beginning of the capitalist era.
In reality, of course, a substantial portion of tax money is
also redistributed to private enterprise in the form of government contracts and subsidies. Capitalists may therefore be in conict among themselves about taxes, since

Relation to the circuits of capital

Generally, Marx focused in Das Kapital on the new

surplus-value generated by production, and the distribution of this surplus value. In this way, he aimed to reveal
the origin of the wealth of nationsgiven a capitalist
mode of production. However, in any real economy, a
distinction must be drawn between the primary circuit
of capital, and the secondary circuits. To some extent,
national accounts also do this.
The primary circuit refers to the incomes and products
generated and distributed from productive activity (reected by GDP). The secondary circuits refer to trade,
transfers and transactions occurring outside that sphere,
which can also generate incomes, and these incomes may
also involve the realisation of a surplus-value or prot.
It is true that Marx argues no net additions to value can
be created through acts of exchange, economic value being an attribute of labour-products (previous or newly
created) only. Nevertheless trading activity outside the
sphere of production can obviously also yield a surplusvalue which represents a transfer of value from one person, country or institution to another.
A very simple example would be if somebody sold a
second-hand asset at a prot. This transaction is not
recorded in gross product measures (after all, it isn't
new production), nevertheless a surplus-value is obtained
from it. Another example would be capital gains from
property sales. Marx occasionally refers to this kind of
prot as prot upon alienation, alienation being used here
in the juridical, not sociological sense. By implication,
if we just focused on surplus-value newly created in production, we would underestimate total surplus-values realised as income in a country. This becomes obvious if
we compare census estimates of income & expenditure

34

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

with GDP data.

tempts by Marxian economists to measure the trend in

This is another reason why surplus-value produced and surplus-value statistically using national accounts data.
that of
surplus-value realised are two dierent things, although The most convincing modern attempt is probably
*
Anwar
Shaikh
&
Ahmet
Tonak.
[9]
Professors
this point is largely ignored in the economics literature.
But it becomes highly important when the real growth Usually this type of research involves reworking the comof production stagnates, and a growing portion of cap- ponents of the ocial measures of gross output and capiital shifts out of the sphere of production in search of tal outlays to approximate Marxian categories, in order to
surplus-value from other deals.
estimate empirically the trends in the ratios thought imNowadays the volume of world trade grows signicantly portant in the Marxian explanation of capital accumulafaster than GDP, suggesting to Marxian economists such tion and economic growth: the rate of surplus-value, the
as Samir Amin that surplus-value realised from com- organic composition of capital, the rate of prot, the rate
mercial trade (representing to a large extent a transfer of increase in the capital stock, and the rate of reinvestof value by intermediaries between producers and con- ment of realised surplus-value in production.
sumers) grows faster than surplus-value realised directly The Marxian mathematicians Emmanuel Farjoun and
from production.
Mosh Machover argue that even if the rate of surplus
value has changed by 10-20% over a hundred years,
Thus, if we took the nal price of a good (the cost to the
the
real
problem [to explain] is why it has changed so litnal consumer) and analysed the cost structure of that
tle
(quoted
from The Laws of Chaos; A Probabilistic Apgood, we might nd that, over a period of time, the direct
proach
to
Political
Economy (1983), p. 192). The answer
producers get less income and intermediaries between
to
that
question
must,
in part, be sought in artifacts (staproducers and consumers (traders) get more income from
tistical
distortion
eects)
of data collection procedures.
it. That is, control over the access to a good, asset or reMathematical extrapolations are ultimately based on the
source as such may increasingly become a very important
factor in realising a surplus-value. In the worst case, this data available, but that data itself may be fragmentary and
not the complete picture.
amounts to parasitism or extortion. This analysis illustrates a key feature of surplus value which is that it accumulated by the owners of capital only within inecient 1.6.11 Dierent conceptions
markets because only inecient markets - i.e. those in
which transparency and competition are low - have prot In neo-Marxist thought, Paul A. Baran for example submargins large enough to facilitate capital accumulation. stitutes the concept ofeconomic surplus" for Marx's surIronically, protable - meaning inecient - markets have plus value. In a joint work, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy
diculty meeting the denition a free market because a dene the economic surplus as the dierence between
free market is to some extent dened as an ecient one: what a society produces and the costs of producing it
one in which goods or services are exchanged without co- (Monopoly Capitalism, New York 1966, p. 9). Much deercion or fraud, or in other words with competition (to pends here on how the costs are valued, and which costs
prevent monopolistic coercion) and transparency (to pre- are taken into account. Piero Sraa also refers to aphysvent fraud).
ical surpluswith a similar meaning, calculated according
to the relationship between prices of physical inputs and
outputs.

1.6.10

Measurement

The rst attempt to measure the rate of surplus-value in

money-units was by Marx himself in chapter 9 of Das
Kapital, using factory data of a spinning mill supplied
by Friedrich Engels (though Marx credits a Manchester spinner). Both in published and unpublished
manuscripts, Marx examines variables aecting the rate
and mass of surplus-value in detail.
Some Marxian economists argue that Marx thought the
possibility of measuring surplus value depends on the
publicly available data. We can develop statistical indicators of trends, without mistakenly conating data with
the real thing they represent, or postulatingperfect measurements or perfect datain the empiricist manner.
Since early studies by Marxian economists like Eugen
Varga, Charles Bettelheim, Joseph Gillmann, Edward
Wol and Shane Mage, there have been numerous at-

In these theories, surplus product and surplus value are

equated, while value and price are identical, but the distribution of the surplus tends to be separated theoretically
from its production; whereas Marx insists that the distribution of wealth is governed by the social conditions in
which it is produced, especially by property relations giving entitlement to products, incomes and assets (see also
relations of production).
In Capital Vol. 3, Marx insists strongly that
the specic economic form, in which
unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of direct
producers, determines the relationship of
rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of
production itself and, in turn, reacts upon
it as a determining element. Upon this,
however, is founded the entire formation of
the economic community which grows up

1.6. SURPLUS VALUE

out of the production relations themselves,
thereby simultaneously its specic political
form. It is always the direct relationship of
the owners of the conditions of production
to the direct producers -- a relation always
naturally corresponding to a denite stage of
the methods of labour and thereby its social
productivity -- which reveals the innermost
secret, the hidden basis of the entire social
structure, and with it the political form of the
relation of sovereignty and dependence, in
short, the corresponding specic form of the
state. This does not prevent the same economic basis -- the same from the standpoint
of its main conditions -- due to innumerable
dierent, empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical
inuence, etc. from showing innite variations
and gradations in appearance, which can be
ascertained only by analysis of the empirically
given circumstances.

35
The problem here is that Thurow doesn't really provide
an objective explanation of prots so much as a moral
justication for prots, i.e. as a legitimate entitlement or
claim, in return for the supply of capital.
He adds thatAttempts have been made to organize productive societies without the prot motive (...) [but] since
the industrial revolution... there have been essentially no
successful economies that have not taken advantage of the
prot motive.The problem here is again a moral judgement, dependent on what you mean by success. Some
societies using the prot motive were ruined; prot is no
guarantee of success, although you can say that it has
powerfully stimulated economic growth.
Thurow goes on to note that When it comes to actually measuring prots, some dicult accounting issues
arise.Why? Because after deduction of costs from gross
income,It is hard to say exactly how much must be reinvested to maintain the size of the capital stock. Ultimately, Thurow implies, the tax department is the arbiter
of the prot volume, because it determines depreciation
allowances and other costs which capitalists may annually
deduct in calculating taxable gross income.

This is obviously a theory very dierent from Marx's.

In Thurow's theory, the aim of business is to maintain
the capital stock. In Marx's theory, competition, desire
and market uctuations create the striving and pressure
to increase the capital stock; the whole aim of capitalist
production is capital accumulation, i.e. business growth
maximising net income. Marx argues there is no evidence
that the prot accruing to capitalist owners is quantitatively connected to the productive contributionof the
capital they own. In practice, within the capitalist rm, no
1.6.12 Morality and power of surplus standard procedure exists for measuring such aproducvalue
tive contributionand for distributing the residual income
accordingly.
A typical textbook-type example of an alternative interIn Thurow's theory, prot is mainly justsomething that
pretation to Marx's is provided by Lester Thurow. He
happenswhen costs are deducted from sales, or else a
argues in an Concise Encyclopedia of Economics artijustly deserved income. For Marx, increasing prots is, at
*
cle: [10] In a capitalistic society, prots - and losses
least in the longer term, thebottom lineof business be- hold center stage.But what, he asks, explains prots?
haviour: the quest for obtaining extra surplus-value, and
There are ve reasons for prot, according to Thurow:
the incomes obtained from it, are what guides capitalist
development (in modern language, creating maximum
capitalists are willing to delay their own personal shareholder value).
gratication, and prot is their reward.
That quest, Marx notes, always involves a power relationship between dierent social classes and nations, inas some prots are a return to those who take risks.
much as attempts are made to force other people to pay
some prots are a return to organizational ability, for costs as much as possible, while maximising one's own
entitlement or claims to income from economic activity.
enterprise, and entrepreneurial energy
The clash of economic interests that invariably results,
some prots are economic rents - a rm that has a implies that the battle for surplus value will always inmonopoly in producing some product or service can volve an irreducible moral dimension; the whole process
set a price higher than would be set in a competitive rests on complex system of negotiations, dealing and barmarket and, thus, earn higher than normal returns. gaining in which reasons for claims to wealth are asserted,
usually within a legal framework and sometimes through
some prots are due to market imperfections - they
wars. Underneath it all, Marx argues, was an exploitative
arise when goods are traded above their competitive
relationship.
equilibrium price.

This is a substantive - if abstract - thesis about the basic social relations involved in giving and getting, taking
and receiving in human society, and their consequences
for the way work and wealth is shared out. It suggests a
starting point for an inquiry into the problem of social order and social change. But obviously it is only a starting
point, not the whole story, which would include all the
variations and gradations.

36

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

That was the main reason why, Marx argues, the real 1.6.14 Notes
sources of surplus-value were shrouded or obscured by
ideology, and why Marx thought that political economy [1] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon already used the idea in a critical
sense..
merited a critique. Quite simply, economics proved unable to theorise capitalism as a social system, at least not [2] Marx, The Capital, Chapter 8
without moral biases intruding in the very denition of
its conceptual distinctions. Hence, even the most sim- [3] "...It was made clear that the wage worker has permission
to work for his own subsistencethat is, to live, only inple economic concepts were often riddled with contrasofar as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist
dictions. But market trade could function ne, even if
(and hence also for the latter's co-consumers of surplus
the theory of markets was false; all that was required
value)...Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme.
was an agreed and legally enforceable accounting system.
Sec.II
On this point, Marx probably would have agreed with
Austrian School economics no knowledge ofmarkets [4] Marxists Internet Archive
in generalis required to participate in markets.
[5] Marxists Internet Archive

1.6.13

See also

Analytical Marxism
Capital accumulation
Capital, Volume I
Character mask
Commodity fetishism
Compensation of employees
Cost of capital
Das Kapital
Labour theory of value
Law of value
Primitive accumulation of capital

[6] Karl Marx and Frederick The Collected Works of Karl

Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 34 (New York: International Publishers, 1994) p. 63.
[7] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works of Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 34, pp. 75-76.
[8] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works of Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 34, p. 77.
[9] http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?
isbn=0521564794
[10] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Profits.html

1.6.15 References
Theories of Surplus-Value (1863)
Value, Price and Prot (1865)
Capital, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3

Productive and unproductive labour

Anwar Shaikh & Ahmet Tonak, Measuring the

Wealth of Nations

Prot

Anwar Shaikh papers

Rate of exploitation

G.A. Cohen (1988), History, Labour and Freedom:

Themes from Marx, Oxford University Press

Relations of production

Superprot

Shane Mage, The Law of the Falling Tendency of

the Rate of Prot; Its Place in the Marxian Theoretical System and Relevance to the US Economy. Phd
Thesis, Columbia University, 1963.

Surplus

Fred Moseley papers

Surplus labour

Gerard Dumenil & Dominique Levy papers

Surplus product

Steve Keen, Debunking Economics; The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences. London: Zed Press,
2004.Economics: Debunking Economics Overview

Return on capital

Surplus economics
Theories of Surplus Value
Valorisation
Value added

Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshe Machover, Laws of

Chaos; A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy, London: Verso, 1983.

1.7. BOURGEOISIE

37

Ian Wright, iwright - Probabilistic Political Economy Laws of Chaosin the 21st Century.
Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, Vol. 1
and Late Capitalism.
Harry W. Pearson,The economy has no surplusin
Trade and market in the early empires. Economies
in history and theory, edited by Karl Polanyi,
Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson (New
York/London: The Free Press: Collier-Macmillan,
1957).
Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth.
Piero Sraa, Production of Commodities by means
of commodities.
Michal Kalecki, The Determinants of Prots,
in Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist
Economy 1933-1970.
John B. Davis (ed), The economic surplus in
advanced economies. Aldershot, Hants, England/Brookeld, Vt., USA : Elgar, 1992.
Anders Danielson, The economic surplus : theory,
measurement, applications. Westport, Connecticut:
Praeger, 1994.
Helen Boss, Theories of surplus and transfer : parasites and producers in economic thought. Boston:
Hyman, 1990.
The prototypical bourgeois: Monsieur Jourdain, the protagonist
in Molire's play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670).

1.6.16

External links

'The Concepts of Alienation and Surplus-value, a

Brief Look' (Archive.org)

1.7 Bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisredirects here. For other uses, see Bourgeois
(disambiguation).
The bourgeoisie (Eng.: /brwzi/; French pronunciation: [buwazi]), is a polysemous French term, because
it means:
originally and generally those who live in the
borough", that is to say, the people of the city (including merchants and craftsmen), as opposed to
those of rural areas; in this sense, the bourgeoisie
began to grow in Europe from the 11th-century
and particularly during the Renaissance of the 12thcentury, with the rst developments of rural exodus
and urbanization;

that of inhabitants having the rights of citizenship

and political rights in a city (comparable to the German term Brgertum and Brger);
and a sociologically dened class, especially in contemporary times, referring to people with a certain
cultural and nancial capital belonging to the middle or upper stratum of the middle class: the upper
(haute), middle (moyenne) and petty (petite) bourgeoisie (which are designated the Bourgeoisie).
An auent and often opulent stratum of the middle class (capitalist class) who stood opposite the
proletariat class.

The bourgeoisiein its original sense, is intimately

linked to the existence of cities recognized as such by
their urban charters (e.g. municipal charter, town privileges, German town law) so there was no bourgeoisie
outside the walls of the citybeyond which the people were "peasants" submitted to the stately courts and
manorialism (except for the travelling "Fair bourgeoisie
a legally dened class of the Middle Ages to the end living outside urban territories, who retained their city
of the "Ancien Rgime" (Old Regime) in France, rights and domicile).

38

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

In Marxist philosophy the bourgeoisie is the social class Bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670.)
who owns the means of production and whose societal
concerns are the value of property and the preservation
of capital, to ensure the perpetuation of their economic
supremacy in society.* [1] Joseph Schumpeter instead saw
the creation of new bourgeoisie as the driving force behind the capitalist engine, particularly entrepreneurs who
took risks to bring innovation to industries and the economy through the process of creative destruction.* [2]

1.7.1

Etymology

The Modern French word bourgeois derived from the Old

French burgeis (walled city), which derived from bourg
(market town), from the Old Frankish burg (town); in
other European languages, the etymologic derivations are
the Middle English burgeis, the Middle Dutch burgher,
the German Brger, the Modern English burgess, and
the Polish buruazja, which occasionally is synonymous
with the intelligentsia.* [3] In English, bourgeoisie(a
French citizen-class) identied a social class oriented to
economic materialism and hedonism, and to upholding
the extreme political and economic interests of the capitalist ruling class.* [4] In the 18th century, before the
French Revolution (178999), in the French feudal order,
the masculine and feminine terms bourgeois and bourgeoise identied the rich men and women who were members of the urban and rural Third Estate the common
people of the French realm, who violently deposed the
absolute monarchy of the Bourbon King Louis XVI (r.
177491), his clergy, and his aristocrats. Hence, since
the 19th century, the termbourgeoisieusually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper
class of a capitalist society.* [5]
Historically, the medieval French word bourgeois denoted
the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the
craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and others, who constituted the bourgeoisie, they were the socio-economic
class between the peasants and the landlords, between
the workers and the owners of the means of production.
As the economic managers of the (raw) materials, the
goods, and the services, and thus the capital (money) produced by the feudal economy, the term bourgeoisie
evolved to also denote the middle class the businessmen
and businesswomen who accumulated, administered, and
controlled the capital that made possible the development
of the bourgs into cities.* [6]
Contemporarily, the terms bourgeoisieand bourgeois(noun) identify the ruling class in capitalist societies, as a social stratum; while bourgeois(adjective / noun modier) describes the Weltanschauung
(worldview) of men and women whose way of thinking is
socially and culturally determined by their economic materialism and philistinism, a social identity catalogued and
described in drame bourgeois (bourgeois drama), which
satirises buying the trappings of a noble-birth identity as
the means climbing the social ladder.* [7]* [8] (See: Le

The 16th-century German banker Jakob Fugger and his principal

accountant, M. Schwarz, registering an entry to a ledger. The
background shows a le cabinet indicating the European cities
where the Fugger Banker conducts business. (1517)

1.7.2 History
Origins and rise
Further information: History of capitalism Origins of
capitalism and Trade History
In the 11th century, the bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon when the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated
to commerce. The organised economic concentration
that made possible such urban expansion derived from
the protective self-organisation into guilds, which became necessary when individual businessmen (craftsmen,
artisans, merchants, et alii) conicted with their rentseeking feudal landlords who demanded greater-thanagreed rents. In the event, by the end of the Middle
Ages (ca. AD 1500), under rgimes of the early national monarchies of Western Europe, the bourgeoisie
acted in self-interest, and politically supported the king or
the queen against the legal and nancial disorder caused
by the greed of the feudal lords. In the late-16th and

1.7. BOURGEOISIE

39

early 17th centuries, the bourgeoisies of England and the

Netherlands had become the nancial thus political
forces that deposed the feudal order; economic power had
vanquished military power in the realm of politics.* [6]

ital and land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed forces and legal system, police forces and
prison system). In such a society, the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production enabled their employment and exploitation of the wage-earning working class
(urban and rural), people whose sole economic means is
From progress to reaction
labour; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the socio-political challenges of the lower
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the bourgeoisie were classes, and so preserved the economic status quo; workthe politically progressive social class who supported the ers remained workers, and employers remained employprinciples of constitutional government and of natural ers.* [9]
right, against the Law of Privilege and the claims of
rule by divine right that the nobles and prelates had In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two types of
autonomously exercised during the feudal order. The bourgeois capitalist: (i) the functional capitalist, the busimotivations for the English Civil War (164251), the ness administrator of the means of production; and (ii)
American War of Independence (177583), and French the rentier capitalist whose livelihood derives either from
interest-income produced
Revolution (178999) partly derived from the desire of the rent of property or from the
*
by
nance
capital,
or
both.
[10]
In the course of ecothe bourgeoisie to rid themselves of the feudal tramnomic
relations,
the
working
class
and the bourgeoisie
mels and royal encroachments upon their personal liberty,
continually
engage
in
class
struggle,
wherein the capitalcommercial rights, and the ownership of property. In the
ists
exploit
the
workers,
whilst
the
workers resist their
19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism, and
economic
exploitation,
which
occurs
because the worker
gained political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties
owns
no
means
of
production,
and,
to
earn a living, he or
for themselves and the lower social classes; thus was the
she
seeks
employment
from
the
bourgeois
capitalist; the
bourgeoisie then a progressive philosophic and political
worker
produces
goods
and
services
that
are
property of
force in modern Western societies.
the employer, who sells them for a price.
By the middle of the 19th century, subsequent to the
Industrial Revolution (17501850), the great expansion Besides describing the social class who own the means
of the bourgeoisie social class caused its self-stratication of production, the Marxist usage of the term bour by business activity and by economic function into geoisalso describes the consumerist style of life dethe haute bourgeoisie (bankers and industrialists) and the rived from the ownership of capital and real property.
petite bourgeoisie (tradesmen and white-collar workers). Marx acknowledged the bourgeois industriousness that
Moreover, by the end of the 19th century, the capitalists created wealth, yet criticised the moral hypocrisy of the
(the original bourgeoisie) had ascended to the upper class, bourgeoisie when they ignored the alleged origins of their
whilst the developments of technology and technical oc- wealth the exploitation of the proletariat, the urban and
cupations allowed the ascension of working-class men rural workers. Further sense denotations ofbourgeois
and women to the lower strata of the bourgeoisie; yet the describe ideological concepts such as bourgeois freedom, which is thought to be opposed to substantive
social progress was incidental.
forms of freedom; bourgeois independence"; bourIn the event, despite its initial philosophic progressivism geois personal individuality"; the bourgeois family";
from feudalism to liberalism to capitalism the bour- et cetera, all derived from owning capital and property.
geoisie social class (haute and petite) became reactionary (See: The Communist Manifesto, 1848.)
in their refusal to allow the ascension (economic, social,
political) of people from the proletariat (peasants and
urban workers) to maintain hegemony.* [6]
Nomenklatura

1.7.3

Denotations

Marxist theory
According to Karl Marx, the bourgeois during Middle
Ages usually was a self-employed businessman such as
a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur whose economic
role in society was being the nancial intermediary to the
feudal landlord and the peasant who worked the ef, the
land of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of
the Industrial Revolution (17501850) and of industrial
capitalism, the bourgeoisie had become the economic
ruling class who owned the means of production (cap-

In the 20th century, some communist states, particularly

the Soviet Union, developed a category of people called
a nomenklatura, the bureaucrats who administered the
country's government, industry, agriculture, education,
system of state capitalism, et cetera.
France and French-speaking countries
In English, the term bourgeoisie is often used to denote
the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses
both the upper and middle classes,* [11] a misunderstanding which has occurred in other languages as well. The
bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking coun-

40

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

tries consists of four evolving social layers: la petite bour- haute bourgeoisie are also referred to as les 200 familles,
geoisie, la moyenne bourgeoisie, la grande bourgeoisie, a term which was coined in the rst half of the 20th cenand la haute bourgeoisie.
tury. Michel Pinon and Monique Pinon-Charlot have
studied the lifestyle of the French bourgeoisie, and how
they boldly guard their world from the nouveau riche, or
La Petite Bourgeoisie The petite bourgeoisie consists of newly rich.
people who have experienced a brief ascension in social
mobility for one or two generations. It usually starts with In the French language, the term bourgeoisie almost desa trade or craft, and by the second and third generation, a ignates a caste by itself, even though social mobility into
family may rise another level. The petite bourgeois would this socio-economic group is possible. Nevertheless, the
belong to the British lower middle class and would be bourgeoisie is dierentiated from la classe moyenne, or
American middle income. They are distinguished mainly the middle class, which consists mostly of white-collar
by their mentality, and would dierentiate themselves employees, by holding a profession referred to as a profrom the proletariat or working class. This class would in- fession librale, which la classe moyenne, in its denition
clude artisans, small traders, shopkeepers, and small farm does not hold. Yet, in English the denition of a whiteowners. They are not employed, but may not be able to collar job encompasses the profession librale. As the
world becomes globalised and society moves towards a
aord employees themselves.
corporate one, the term la bourgeoisie in its pure form
has become a somewhat outdated term, which requires a
La Moyenne Bourgeoisie People who belong to the more up-to-date denition.
moyenne bourgeoisie or middle bourgeoisie, have solid incomes and assets, but without the aura of those who have
become established at a higher level. They tend to be- 1.7.4 Modern history
long to a family that has been bourgeois for three or more
generations. Some members of this class may have rel- Because of their ascribed cultural excellence as a social
atives from similar backgrounds, or may even have aris- class, the Italian fascist rgime (192245) of Prime Mintocratic connections. The moyenne bourgeoisie would be ister Benito Mussolini regarded the bourgeoisie as an obthe equivalent of the British and American upper-middle stacle to Modernism in aid to transforming Italian society.* [12] Nonetheless, despite such intellectual and soclasses.
cial hostility, the Fascist State ideologically exploited the
Italian bourgeoisie and their materialistic, middle-class
La Grande Bourgeoisie The grande bourgeoisie are spirit, for the more ecient cultural manipulation of the
families that have been bourgeois since the 19th century, upper (aristocratic) and the lower (working) classes of
or for at least four or ve generations. Members of these Italy. In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini gave a speech
families tend to marry with the aristocracy or make other wherein he established a clear ideological distinction beadvantageous marriages. This bourgeoisie family has ac- tween capitalism (the social function of the bourgeoisie)
quired an established historical and cultural heritage over and the bourgeoisie (as a social class), whom he dehuthe decades. The names of these families are generally manised by reducing them into high-level abstractions:
known in the city where they reside, and their ancestors a moral category and a state of mind.* [12] Culturally
have often contributed to the region's history. These fam- and philosophically, Mussolini isolated the bourgeoisie
ilies are respected and revered. They belong to the upper from Italian society by portraying them as social paraclass, and in the British class system would be considered sites upon the Fascist Italian State and The People"; as
part of the gentry. In the French-speaking countries they a social class who drained the human potential of Italare sometimes referred la petite haute bourgeoisie.
ian society, in general, and of the working class, in particular; as exploiters who victimised the Italian nation
to life characterised by hedonism and
La Haute Bourgeoisie The haute bourgeoisie is a social with an approach
*
materialism.
[12]
Nevertheless, despite the slogan The
rank in the bourgeoisie that can only be acquired through
Fascist
Man
Disdains
the Comfortable Life, which epittime. In France, it is composed of bourgeois families that
omised
the
anti-bourgeois
principle, in its nal years of
have existed since the French Revolution. They hold only
power,
for
mutual
benet
and
prot, the Mussolini Fascist
honourable professions and have experienced many illusrgime
transcended
ideology
to
merge the political and trious marriages in their family's history. They have rich
nancial
interests
of
Prime
Minister
Benito Mussolini with
cultural and historical heritages, and their nancial means
the
political
and
nancial
interests
of
the bourgeoisie, the
are more than secure. These families exude an aura of
Catholic
social
circles
who
constituted
the ruling class of
nobility, which prevents them from certain marriages or
Italy.
occupations. They only dier from nobility in that due to
circumstances, the lack of opportunity, and/or political
regime, they have not been ennobled. These people nevertheless live a lavish lifestyle, enjoying the company of
the great artists of the time. In France, the families of the

Philosophically, as a materialist creature, the bourgeois

man was irreligious; thus, to establish an existential distinction between the supernatural faith of the Roman
Catholic Church and the materialist faith of temporal re-

1.7. BOURGEOISIE

41

ligion; in The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s, the priest Giuseppe Marino said that:
Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois.
... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a
Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.* [13]

Culturally, the bourgeois man is unmanly, eeminate,

and infantile; describing his philistinism in Bonica antiborghese (1939), Roberto Paravese said that the:
Middle class, middle man, incapable of
great virtue or great vice: and there would be
nothing wrong with that, if only he would be
willing to remain as such; but, when his childlike or feminine tendency to camouage pushes
him to dream of grandeur, honours, and thus
riches, which he cannot achieve honestly with
his own second-ratepowers, then the average man compensates with cunning, schemes,
and mischief; he kicks out ethics, and becomes
a bourgeois.
The bourgeois is the average man who does
not accept to remain such, and who, lacking the
strength sucient for the conquest of essential
valuesthose of the spiritopts for material
ones, for appearances.* [14]

Thomas Mann (18751955) portrayed the moral, intellectual,

and physical decadence of the German upper bourgeoisie in the
novel Buddenbrooks (1926)

The economic security, nancial freedom, and social mobility of the bourgeoisie threatened the philosophic integrity of Italian Fascism, the ideologic monolith that was
the rgime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Any assumption of legitimate political power (government and
rule) by the bourgeoisie represented a Fascist loss of
totalitarian State power for social control through political unityone people, one nation, one leader. Sociologically, to the fascist man, to become a bourgeois was a
character aw inherent to the masculine mystique; therefore, the ideology of Italian Fascism scornfully dened
the bourgeois man as spiritually castrated.* [14]

1.7.5

Bourgeois culture

Cultural hegemony
Karl Marx said that the culture of a society is dominated
by the mores of the ruling-class, wherein their superimposed value system is abided by each social class (the
upper, the middle, the lower) regardless of the socioeconomic results it yields to them. In that sense, contemporary societies are bourgeois to the degree that they
practice the mores of the small-businessshop cultureof
early modern France; which the writer mile Zola (1840
1902) naturalistically presented, analysed, and ridiculed
in the twenty-two-novel series (18711893) about Les

The 17th-century French playwright Molire (162273) catalogued the social-climbing essence of the bourgeoisie in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670).

Rougon-Macquart family; the thematic thrust is the necessity for social progress, by subordinating the economic
sphere to the social sphere of life.* [15]

42

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Two spatial constructs manifest the bourgeois mentality:
(i) the shop-window display, and (ii) the sitting room. In
English, the term sitting-room cultureis synonymous
forbourgeois mentality, a philistine cultural perspective from the Victorian Era (18371901), especially characterised by the repression of emotion and of sexual desire; and by the construction of a regulated social-space
where "propriety" is the key personality trait desired in
men and women.* [16] Nonetheless, from such a psychologically constricted worldview, regarding the rearing of
children, contemporary sociologists claim to have identiedprogressivemiddle-class values, such as respect for
non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy, gender equality and the encouragement of innovation; as in the Victorian Era, the transposition to the US of the bourgeois
system of social values has been identied as a requisite
for employment success in the professions.* [17]* [18]
Representations

The Spanish cinast Luis Buuel (190083) depicted the tortuous

mentality and self-destructive hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie

Conspicuous consumption
The critical analyses of the bourgeois mentality by the
German intellectual Walter Benjamin (18921940) indicated that the shop culture of the petite bourgeoisie established the sitting room as the centre of personal and
family life; as such, the English bourgeois culture is a
sitting-room culture of prestige through conspicuous consumption. The material culture of the bourgeoisie concentrated on mass-produced luxury goods of high quality; between generations, the only variance was the materials with which the goods were manufactured. In the
early part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house contained a home that rst was stocked and decorated with
hand-painted porcelain, machine-printed cotton fabrics,
machine-printed wallpaper, and Sheeld steel (crucible
and stainless). The utility of these things was inherent to
their practical functions. By the latter part of the 19th
century, the bourgeois house contained a home that had
been remodelled by conspicuous consumption. Here, the
goods were bought to display wealth (discretionary income), rather than for their practical utility. The bourgeoisie had transposed the wares of the shop window
to the sitting room, where the clutter of display signalled bourgeois success.* [16] (See: Culture and Anarchy, 1869.)

Beyond the intellectual realms of political economy, history, and political science that discuss, describe, and analyse the bourgeoisie as a social class, the colloquial usage
of the sociological terms bourgeois and bourgeoise describe the social stereotypes of the old money and of the
nouveau riche, who is a politically timid conformist satised with a wealthy, consumerist style of life characterised
by conspicuous consumption and the continual striving
for prestige.* [19]* [20] This being the case, the cultures
of the world describe the philistinism of the middle-class
personality, produced by the excessively rich life of the
bourgeoisie, is examined and analysed in comedic and
dramatic plays, novels, and lms. (See: Authenticity.)
Theatre
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman,
1670) by Molire (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), is a comedyballet that satirises Monsieur Jourdain, the prototypical
nouveau riche man who buys his way up the social-class
scale, to realise his aspirations of becoming a gentleman,
to which end he studies dancing, fencing, and philosophy, the trappings and accomplishments of a gentleman,
to be able to pose as a man of noble birth, someone who,
in 17th-century France, was a man to the manor born;
Jourdain's self-transformation also requires managing the
private life of his daughter, so that her marriage can also
assist his social ascent.* [8]* [21]
Literature
Buddenbrooks (1901), by Thomas Mann (18751955),
chronicles the moral, intellectual, and physical decay of
a rich family through its declines, material and spiritual,
in the course of four generations, beginning with the
patriarch Johann Buddenbrook Sr. and his son, Johann

1.7. BOURGEOISIE

43

Buddenbrook Jr., who are typically successful German 1.7.6 See also
businessmen; each is a reasonable man of solid charac Beurgeois (auent French Muslims of Northter. Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materiAfrican descent)
ally comfortable style of life provided by the dedication
to solid, middle-class values elicits decadence: The ckle
Bildungsbrgertum
daughter, Toni, lacks and does not seek a purpose in life;
son Christian is honestly decadent, and lives the life of a
Burgess
neer-do-well; and the businessman son, Thomas, who
Conspicuous consumption
assumes command of the Buddenbrook family fortune,
occasionally falters from middle-class solidity by being
Conspicuous leisure
interested in art and philosophy, the impractical life of
the mind, which, to the bourgeoisie, is the epitome of so Cultural hegemony
cial, moral, and material decadence.* [22]* [23]* [24]
Economic stratication
Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis (18851951), satirises
the American bourgeois George Follansbee Babbitt, a
Gemtlichkeit
middle-aged realtor, booster, and joiner in the Midwest Grand Burgher (German Grobrger)
ern city of Zenith, who despite being unimaginative,
self-important, and hopelessly conformist and middle Habitus (sociology)
class is aware that there must be more to life than
money and the consumption of the best things that money
Homo economicus
can buy. Nevertheless, he fears being excluded from the
Occupational prestige
mainstream of society more than he does living for himself, by being true to himself his heart-felt irtations
Petite bourgeoisie
with independence (dabbling in liberal politics and a love
aair with a pretty widow) come to naught because he is
Political class
existentially afraid.
The Proletariat, the opposite of the Bourgeoisie
Yet, George F. Babbitt sublimates his desire for selfrespect, and encourages his son to rebel against the conformity that results from bourgeois prosperity, by recommending that he be true to himself:

Rational-legal authority
Social environment
Social structure of the United Kingdom

Don't be scared of the family. No, nor

all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've
been.* [25]

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study

of Institutions (1899)
Vecino

Films
The comedy lms by the Spanish lm director Luis
Buuel (190083) examine the mental and moral eects
of the bourgeois mentality, its culture, and the stylish way
of life it provides for its practitioners.
L'ge d'or (The Golden Age, 1930) illustrates the
madness and self-destructive hypocrisy of bourgeois
society.
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972) explores the timidity instilled by middle-class values.
Cet obscur objet du dsir (That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977) illuminates the practical self-deceptions
required for buying love as marriage.* [26]* [27]

1.7.7 References
Notes
[1] Bourgeois Society
[2] Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and
Democracy',' pages 83-84, 134
[3] The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology C.T. Onions,
Editor (1995) p. 110.
[4] Oxford English Reference Dictionary Second Edition
(1996) p. 196.
[5] Dictionary of Historical Terms Chris Cook, Editor (1983)
p. 267.
[6]Bourgeoisie, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition. (1994) p. 0000.
[7] Bent's Reader's Encyclopedia Third Edition (1987) p.
118, p. 759.

44

[8] Molire, ed. Warren 1899

[9] The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, Works of
Karl Marx, 1850
[10] A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, T.B. Bottomore, p. 272
[11] Batrix Le Wita,J. A. Underwood. French Bourgeois
Culture.
[12] Bellassai, Sandro (2005)The Masculine Mystique: AntiModernism and Virility in Fascist Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 3, pp. 314335.
[13] Marino, Giuseppe Carlo (1983) L'autarchia della cultura.
Intellettuali e fascismo negli anni trenta, Roma: Editori Riuniti.
[14] Paravese, Roberto (1939) Bonica antiborghese, in
Edgardo Sulis (ed.), Processo alla borghesia, Roma: Edizioni Roma, pp. 5170.
[15] mile Zola, Le Rougon-Macquart (18711893).
[16] Walter Benjamin, The Halles Project.
[17] Gilbert, Dennis (1998). The American Class Structure.
New York: Wadsworth Publishing. 0-534-50520-1.
[18] Williams, Brian; Stacey C. Sawyer; Carl M. Wahlstrom
(2005). Marriages, Families & Intimate Relationships.
Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-36674-0.
[19] Howard Zinn. A People's History of the United States
(1980)
[20] Sven Beckert Propertied of Dierent Kind: Bourgeoisie and Lower Middle Class in the NineteenthCentury United Statesin The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class (2001)
Burton J. Bledstein and Robert D. Johnston, Eds. (2001)
[21] Bent's Reader's Encyclopedia Third Edition (1987) p.
118, p. 512.

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Byrne, Frank J. Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865. University Press of
Kentucky. 2006.
Hunt, Margaret R. The Middling Sort: Commerce,
Gender, and the Family in England, 16801780.
University of California Press. 1996.
Kinder, Marsha. (ed.) Luis Buuel's The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Cambridge University
Press. 1999.
Lockwood, David. Cronies or Capitalists? The
Russian Bourgeoisie and the Bourgeois Revolution
from 1850 to 1917. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2009.
Molire, and Warren, Frederick Morris (ed.)
Molire's Le bourgeois gentilhomme. D.C. Heath
& Co. 1899. (full text)
Siegel, Jerrold. Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics,
and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 18301930.
The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999.
Stern, Robert W. Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent. Cambridge University
Press. 2nd edition, 2003.

1.7.8 External links

The Democratic State A Critique of Bourgeois
Sovereignty

1.8 Proletariat
For other uses, see Proletariat (disambiguation).

[22] Bent's Reader's Encyclopedia Third Edition (1987) p.

118, p. 137.

The proletariat (/proltrit/ from Latin proletarius)

is a term used to describe the class of wage-earners
(especially industrial workers), in a capitalist society,
[24] Wolfgang Beutin, A history of German Literature: From whose only possession of signicant material value is
the Beginnings to the Present Day (1993) Routledge, 1993,
their labour-power (their ability to work);* [1] a member
ISBN 0-415-06034-6, p. 433.
of such a class is a proletarian.
[23] Charles Neider, The Stature of Thomas Mann (1968)

[25] Bent's Reader's Encyclopedia Third Edition (1987) p. 65.

[26] see this review by Roger Ebert
[27] Kinder (ed.) 1999

Further reading

1.8.1 Usage in Roman law

As dened in the Constitution of the Roman Republic,
the proletarii constituted a social class of Roman citizens
owning little or no property.

Bledstein, Burton J. and Johnston, Robert D. (eds.) The origin of the name is presumably linked with the
The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of census, which Roman authorities conducted every ve
years to produce a register of citizens and their propthe American Middle Class. Routledge. 2001.
erty from which their military duties and voting privileges
Brooks, David, Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper could be determined. For citizens with property valued
Class and How They Got There. Simon & Schuster. 11,000 asses or less, which was below the lowest census
2001.
for military service, their childrenproles (from Latin

1.8. PROLETARIAT
proli, ospring)were listed instead of their property; hence, the name proletarius,the one who produces
ospring. The only contribution of a proletarius to the
Roman society was seen in his ability to raise children,
the future Roman citizens who can colonize new territories conquered by the Roman Republic and later by the
Roman Empire. The citizens who had no property of signicance were called capite censi because they werepersons registered not as to their property...but simply as to
their existence as living individuals, primarily as heads
(caput) of a family.* [2]* [3]

45
classes by wealth, plus 5 centuriae of support personnel
called adsidui. The top infantry class assembled with full
arms and armor; the next two classes brought arms and armor, but less and lesser; the fourth class only spears; the
fth slings. In voting, the cavalry and top infantry class
were enough to decide an issue; as voting started at the
top, an issue might be decided before the lower classes
voted.* [6] In the last centuries of the Roman Republic
(509-44 B.C.), the Comitia Centuriata became impotent
as a political body, which further eroded already minuscule political power the proletarii might have had in the
Roman society.
Following a series of wars the Roman Republic engaged
since the closing of the Second Punic War (218201),
such as the Jugurthine War and conicts in Macedonia
and Asia, the signicant reduction in the number of Roman family farmers had resulted in the shortage of people
whose property qualied them to perform the citizenry's
military duty to Rome.* [7] As a result of the Marian reforms initiated in 107 B.C. by the Roman general Gaius
Marius (15786), the proletarii became the backbone of
the Roman Army.* [8]
Karl Marx, who studied Roman law at the University of
Berlin,* [9] used the term proletariat in his socio-political
theory of Marxism to describe a working class unadulterated by private property and capable of a revolutionary action to topple capitalism in order to create classless
society.

1.8.2 Usage in Marxist theory

The term proletariat is used in Marxist theory to name the
social class that does not have ownership of the means of
production and whose only means of subsistence is to sell
their labour power* [10] for a wage or salary. Proletarians
are wage-workers, while some refer to those who receive
salaries as the salariat. For Marx, however, wage labor
A manual labourer at work in Venezuela. Manual labourers are may involve getting a salary rather than a wage per se.
Marxism sees the proletariat and bourgeoisie (capitalist
generally considered to be part of the proletariat.
class) as occupying conicting positions, since workers
Although included in one of the ve support centuriae of automatically wish their wages to be as high as possible,
the Comitia Centuriata, proletarii were largely deprived while owners and their proxies wish for wages (costs) to
of their voting rights due to their low social status caused be as low as possible.
by their lack ofeven the minimum property required for In Marxist theory, the borders between the proletariat
the lowest class* [4] and a class-based hierarchy of the and some layers of the petite bourgeoisie, who rely priComitia Centuriata. The late Roman historians, such as marily but not exclusively on self-employment at an inLivy, not without some uncertainty, understood the Comi- come no dierent from an ordinary wage or below it
tia Centuriata to be one of three forms of popular assem- and the lumpen proletariat, who are not in legal employbly of early Rome composed of centuriae, the voting units ment are not necessarily well dened. Intermediate powhose members represented a class of citizens according sitions are possible, where some wage-labour for an emto the value of their property. This assembly, which usu- ployer combines with self-employment. While the class
ally met on the Campus Martius to discuss public policy to which each individual person belongs is often hard to
issues, was also used as a means of designating military determine, from the standpoint of society as a whole,
duties demanded of Roman citizens.* [5] One of recon- taken in its movement (i.e. history), the class divisions
structions of the Comitia Centuriata features 18 centuriae are incontestable; the easiest proof of their existence is
of cavalry, and 170 centuriae of infantry divided into ve the class struggle strikes, for instance. While an em-

46

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

wealth that the proletariat produces through its work, and
the wealth it consumes to survive and to provide labor to
the capitalist companies.* [13] A part of the surplus value
is used to renew or increase the means of production, either in quantity or quality (i.e., it is turned into capital),
and is called capitalised surplus value.* [14] What remains
is consumed by the capitalist class.
The commodities that proletarians produce and capitalists sell are valued for the amount of labor embodied in
them. The same goes for the workers' labor power itself:
it is valued, not for the amount of wealth it produces, but
for the amount of labor necessary to produce and reproduce it. Thus the capitalists earn wealth from the labor of
their employees, not as a function of their personal contribution to the productive process, which may even be null,
but as a function of the juridical relation of property to
the means of production. Marxists argue that new wealth
is created through labor applied to natural resources.* [15]

Marx argued that it was the goal of the proletariat to

displace the capitalist system with the dictatorship of
the proletariat, abolishing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a
communist society in which the free development of
A 1911 Industrial Worker publication advocating industrial each is the condition for the free development of all
unionism based on a critique of capitalism. The proletariat .* [16]

work for alland feed all.

1.8.3 Prole drift

ployee may be subjectively unsure of his class belonging,
when his workmates come out on strike he is objectively
forced to follow one class (his workmates, i.e. the proletariat) over the other (management, i.e. the bourgeoisie).
Marx makes a clear distinction between proletariat as
salaried workers, which he sees as a progressive class, and
Lumpenproletariat, rag-proletariat, the poorest and
outcasts of the society, such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes, which he considers a retrograde class.* [11]* [12] Socialist parties have
often struggled over the question of whether they should
seek to organize and represent all the lower classes, or
just the wage-earning proletariat.
According to Marxism, capitalism is a system based on
the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. This
exploitation takes place as follows: the workers, who own
no means of production of their own, must use the means
of production that are property of others in order to produce, and, consequently, earn their living. Instead of hiring those means of production, they themselves get hired
by capitalists and work for them, producing goods or services. These goods or services become the property of
the capitalist, who sells them at the market.
One part of the wealth produced is used to pay the workers' wages (variable costs), another part to renew the
means of production (constant costs) while the third part,
surplus value is split between the capitalist's private takings (prot), and the money used to pay rents, taxes, interests, etc. Surplus value is the dierence between the

Prole drift, short for proletarian drift, is the trend in which

class and social signiers of membership in the lower
classes are adopted by the middle and upper classes.* [17]

1.8.4 See also

Bourgeoisie
Blue collar
Folk culture
Laborer
Lumpenproletariat
Peasantry
Precariat
Prolefeed
Proles
Proletarianization
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian literature
Slavery
Social Class

1.9. CLASS CONFLICT

Social class in ancient Rome
Working class
Wage slavery

1.8.5

Reference notes

[1] proletariat. Accessed: 6 June 2013.

[2] Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society 1953) at
380; 657.
[3] Arnold J. Toynbee, especially in his A Study of History,
uses the word Proletariat in this general sense of people
without property or a stake in society. Toynbee focuses
particularly on the generative spiritual life of theinternal
proletariat(those living within a given civil society). He
also describes theheroicfolk legends of theexternal
proletariat(poorer groups living outside the borders of
a civilization). Cf., Toynbee, A Study of History (Oxford
University 19341961), 12 volumes, in Volume V Disintegration of Civilizations, part one (1939) at 58194 (internal proletariat), and at 194337 (external proletariat).
[4] Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (1953) at
351; 657 (quote).
[5] Titus Livius (c.59 BC-AD 17), Ab urbe condita, 1, 43;
the rst ve books translated by Aubrey de Slincourt as
Livy, The Early History of Rome (Penguin 1960, 1971) at
8182.
[6] Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic
(Oxford University 1999) at 5561, re the Comitia Centuriata.

47

[14] Luxemburg,
Rosa.
The Accumulation of
Capital.
Chapter 6, Enlarged Reproduction,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/
accumulation-capital/ch06.htm
[15] Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Programme, I.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/
gotha/ch01.htm
[16] Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto, part II, Proletarians and Communists http://www.marxists.org/archive/
marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
[17] Fussell, Paul (October 1992). Class, A Guide Through the
American Status System. New York: Ballantine. ISBN 0345-31816-1.

1.8.6 Further reading

Blackledge, Paul (2011).Why workers can change
the world. Socialist Review 364 (London).
Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol.
2; The Politics of Social Classes. (New York:
Monthly Review Press 1978).

1.8.7 External links

1.9 Class conict

Class struggleredirects here. For other uses, see Class
Struggle.
Class conict, frequently referred to as class warfare

[7] Cf., Theodor Mommsen, Rmisches Geschichte (1854

1856), 3 volumes; translated as History of Rome (1862
1866), 4 volumes; reprint (The Free Press 1957) at vol.III:
4855 (Mommsen's Bk.III, ch.XI toward end).
[8] H. H. Scullard, Gracchi to Nero. A History of Rome from
133 BC to AD 68 (London: Methuen 1959, 4th ed. 1976)
at 5152.
[9] Cf., Sidney Hook, Marx and the Marxists (Princeton: Van
Nostrand 1955) at 13.
[10] Marx, Karl (1887). Chapter Six: The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. In Frederick Engels. Das Kapital,
Kritik der politischen konomie [Capital: Critique of Political Economy]. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Retrieved
10 February 2013.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) demonstration in New

York, 11 April 1914

or class struggle, is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests
and desires between people of dierent classes. The view
[12] Marx, Karl (February 1848). Bourgeois and Proletari- that the class struggle provides the lever for radical soans. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Progress Pubcial change for the majority is central to the work of Karl
lishers. Retrieved 10 February 2013.
Marx and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. However, the
[13] Marx, Karl.
The Capital, volume 1, chapter 6. discovery of the existence of class struggle is not the product of their theories; their theories can instead be seen as
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
ch06.htm
a response to the existence of class struggles.
[11] Lumpen proletariat Britannica Online Encyclopedia

48

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Class conict can take many dierent forms: direct violence, such as wars fought for resources and cheap labor;
indirect violence, such as deaths from poverty, starvation,
illness or unsafe working conditions; coercion, such as the
threat of losing a job or pulling an important investment;
or ideology, either intentionally (as with books and articles promoting capitalism) or unintentionally (as with the
promotion of consumerism through advertising). Additionally, political forms of class conict exist; legally or
illegally lobbying or bribing government leaders for passage of partisan desirable legislation including labor laws,
tax codes, consumer laws, acts of congress or other sanction, injunction or tari. The conict can be open, as with
a lockout aimed at destroying a labor union, or hidden, as
with an informal slowdown in production protesting low
wages or unfair labor practices.

1.9.1

Usage

in the history of class-based hierarchical systems such as

capitalism and feudalism.* [1] Marxists refer to its overt
manifestations as class war, a struggle whose resolution in
favor of the working class is viewed by them as inevitable
under plutocratic capitalism.
Pre-capitalist societies
Where societies are socially divided based on status,
wealth, or control of social production and distribution,
conict arises. This conict is both everyday, such as the
common medieval insistence on the right of lords to control access to grain mills and baking ovens, or it can be
exceptional such as the Roman Conict of the Orders,
the uprising of Spartacus, or the various popular uprisings in late medieval Europe. One of the earliest analysis
of these conicts is Friedrich Engels' The Peasant War
in Germany.* [2] One of the earliest analyses of the development of class as the development of conicts between emergent classes is available in Peter Kropotkin's
Mutual Aid. In this work, Kropotkin analyzes the disposal
of goods after death in pre-class or hunter-gatherer societies, and how inheritance produces early class divisions
and conict.* [3]
21st century USA
Billionaire and friend to Warren Buett, George Soros
addresses the pejorative use of the term by the
conservative-right by stating,Speaking as a person who
would be most hurt by this, I think my fellow hedge fund
managers call this class warfare because they don't like to
pay more taxes.* [4]

Teamsters wild-cat strike in Minneapolis, 1934

In the past the term Class conict was a term used mostly
by socialists, who dene a class by its relationship to the
means of production such as factories, land and machinery. From this point of view, the social control of
production and labor is a contest between classes, and
the division of these resources necessarily involves conict and inicts harm. It can involve ongoing low-level
clashes, escalate into massive confrontations, and in some
cases, lead to the overall defeat of one of the contending
classes. However, in more contemporary times this term
is striking chords and nding new denition amongst capitalistic societies in the United States and other Westernized countries.

The term is not always used as a pejorative in modern times. Bill Moyers, for example, gave a speech at
Brennan Center for Justice in December 2013 which was
titledThe Great American Class War,referring to the
current struggle between democracy and plutocracy in the
U.S.* [5] Chris Hedges wrote a column for Truthdig called
Let's Get This Class War Started,which was a play on
Pink's song "Let's Get This Party Started.* [6]* [7]

Historian Steve Fraser, author of The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power, asserts that class conict is
an inevitability if current political and economic conditions continue, noting that people are increasingly fed
uptheir voices are not being heard. And I think that
can only go on for so long without there being more and
The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued that the class more outbreaks of what used to be called class struggle,
struggle of the working class, peasantry and poor had the class warfare.* [8]
potential to lead to a social revolution involving the overthrow of ruling elites, and the creation of libertarian socialism. This was only a potential, and class struggle was, 1.9.2 Capitalist societies
he argued, not always the only or decisive factor in society, but it was central. By contrast, Marxists argue that The typical example of class conict described is class
class conict always plays the decisive and pivotal role conict within capitalism. This class conict is seen to oc-

1.9. CLASS CONFLICT

49

cur primarily between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat,

and takes the form of conict over hours of work, value
of wages, division of prots, cost of consumer goods, the
culture at work, control over parliament or bureaucracy,
and economic inequality. The particular implementation
of government programs which may seem purely humanitarian, such as disaster relief, can actually be a form of
class conict.* [9] In the USA class conict is often noted
in labor/management disputes. As far back as 1933 representative Edward Hamilton of ALPA, the Airline Pilot's Association, used the term class warfareto describe airline management's opposition at the National
Labor Board hearings in October of that year.* [10] Apart
from these day-to-day forms of class conict, during periods of crisis or revolution class conict takes on a violent
nature and involves repression, assault, restriction of civil
liberties, and murderous violence such as assassinations
or death squads. (Zinn, People's History)

Thomas Jeerson, USA

Warren Buett

Although Thomas Jeerson (17431826) led the United

States as president from 18011809 and is considered one Warren Buett, USA
of the founding fathers, he died with immense amounts
of debt. Regarding the interaction between social classes, The investor, and billionaire , and philanthropist Warren
he wrote,
Buett, one of the 10 wealthiest persons in the
world,* [12] voiced in 2005 and once more in 2006 his
view that his class the rich class is waging class
warfare on the rest of society. In 2005 Buet said to
I am convinced that those societies (as
CNN: "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they
the Indians) which live without government
shouldn't be."* [13] In a November 2006 interview in The
enjoy in their general mass an innitely greater
New York Times, Buett stated that "[t]heres class wardegree of happiness than those who live
fare all right, but it
s my class, the rich class, that
s making
under the European governments. Among
war, and were winning."* [14] Later Warren gave away
the former, public opinion is in the place of
more than half of his fortune to charitable causes through
law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws
a program developed by himself and computer software
ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under
tycoon Bill Gates.* [15] In 2011 Buett called on governpretence of governing they have divided their
ment legislators to, "...stop coddling the super rich."* [16]
nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I
do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of
Noam Chomsky
Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our
people, and keep alive their attention. Do not
Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, and
be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim
political activist has criticized class war in the United
them by enlightening them. If once they
States:
become inattentive to the public aairs, you
& I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges &
Well, theres always a class war going
governors shall all become wolves. It seems to
on. The United States, to an unusual extent,
be the law of our general nature, in spite of
is a business-run society, more so than others.
individual exceptions; and experience declares
The business classes are very class-conscious
that man is the only animal which devours his
theyre constantly ghting a bitter class war
own kind, for I can apply no milder term to
to improve their power and diminish opposithe governments of Europe, and to the general
tion. Occasionally this is recognized....
prey of the rich on the poor.* [11]
Thomas Jeerson, Letter to Edward Carrington - January 16, 1787
The enormous benets given to the very wealthy, the privileges for the very wealthy here, are way beyond those

50

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

of other comparable societies and are part of the ongo- 1.9.3 The Soviet Union and similar sociing class war. Take a look at CEO salaries.... -- Noam
eties
Chomsky in OCCUPY: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, Second Edition (November 5, 2013)* [17]
A variety of predominantly Marxist and anarchist
thinkers argue that class conict exists in Soviet-style societies. These arguments describe as a class the bureaucratic stratum formed by the ruling political party (known
Max Weber, Germany
as the Nomenklatura in the Soviet Union) sometimes
termed a "new class".* [27]that controls the means of
Max Weber (18641920) agrees with the fundamental production. This ruling class is viewed to be in opposiideas of Karl Marx about the economy causing class con- tion to the remainder of society, generally considered the
ict, but claims that class conict can also stem from proletariat. This type of system is referred to by its deprestige and power.* [18] Weber argues that classes come tractors as state capitalism, state socialism, bureaucratic
from the dierent property locations. Dierent locations collectivism or new class societies. (Cli; ilas 1957)
can largely aect one's class by their education and the Marxism was such a predominate ideological power in
people they associate with.* [18] He also states that pres- what became the Soviet Union since a Marxist group
tige results in dierent status groupings. This prestige is known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
based upon the social status of one's parents. Prestige is was formed in the country, prior to 1917. This party soon
an attributed value and many times cannot be changed. divided into two main factions; the Bolsheviks, who were
Weber states that power dierences led to the forma- led by Vladimir Lenin, and the Mensheviks, who were
tion of political parties.* [18] Weber disagrees with Marx led by Julius Martov.
about the formation of classes. While Marx believes that
groups are similar due to their economic status, Weber argues that classes are largely formed by social status.* [18] 1.9.4 Marxist perspectives
Weber does not believe that communities are formed by
economic standing, but by similar social prestige.* [18]
Weber does recognize that there is a relationship between
social status, social prestige and classes.* [18]

Arab Spring
Numerous factors have culminated in what's known as the
Arab Spring. Agenda behind the civil unrest, and the ultimate overthrow of authoritarian governments throughout
the Middle-East included issues such as dictatorship or
absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government
corruption (demonstrated by Wikileaks diplomatic cables),* [19] economic decline, unemployment, extreme
poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors,* [20] such as a large percentage of educated but dissatised youth within the population.* [21] Also, some,
like Slovenian philosopher Slavoj iek attribute the
2009 Iranian protests as one of the reasons behind the
Arab Spring.* [22] The catalysts for the revolts in all
Northern African and Persian Gulf countries have been
the concentration of wealth in the hands of autocrats in
power for decades, insucient transparency of its redistribution, corruption, and especially the refusal of the
youth to accept the status quo.* [23]* [24] as they involve
threats to food security worldwide and prices that approach levels of the 20072008 world food price crisis.* [25] Amnesty International singled out Wikileaks' release of US diplomatic cables as a catalyst for the revolts.* [26] One additional issue is the nancing and arming of rebels by western, non-Arab countries, as well as
favourable media coverage and intense propaganda campaigning by using social networks.

Karl Marx, 1875

Karl Marx (18181883) was a German born philosopher

who lived the majority of his adult life in London, England. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx argued
that a class is formed when its members achieve class consciousness and solidarity.* [18] This largely happens when

1.9. CLASS CONFLICT

the members of a class become aware of their exploitation
and the conict with another class. A class will then realize their shared interests and a common identity. According to Marx, a class will then take action against those that
are exploiting the lower classes.
What Marx points out is that members of each of the two
main classes have interests in common. These class or
collective interests are in conict with those of the other
class as a whole. This in turn leads to conict between
individual members of dierent classes.

51
from the bourgeoisie because production becomes a social enterprise. Contributing to their separation is the
technology that is in factories. Technology de-skills and
alienates workers as they are no longer viewed as having a specialized skill.* [18] Another eect of technology
is a homogenous workforce that can be easily replaceable. Marx believed that this class conict would result
in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and that the private
property would be communally owned.* [18] The mode
of production would remain, but communal ownership
would eliminate class conict.* [18]

Marxist analysis of society identies two main social

Even after a revolution, the two classes would struggle,
groups:
but eventually the struggle would recede and the classes
dissolve. As class boundaries broke down, the state ap Labour (the proletariat or workers) includes anyparatus would wither away. According to Marx, the main
one who earns their livelihood by selling their labor
task of any state apparatus is to uphold the power of the
power and being paid a wage or salary for their labor
ruling class; but without any classes there would be no
time. They have little choice but to work for capineed for a state. That would lead to the classless, statetal, since they typically have no independent way to
less communist society.
survive.
Capital (the bourgeoisie or capitalists) includes anyone who gets their income not from labor as much
as from the surplus value they appropriate from the
workers who create wealth. The income of the cap1.9.5 Non-Marxist perspectives
italists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of
the workers (proletariat).
Social commentators, historians and socialist theorists
Not all class struggle is violent or necessarily radical, as had commented on class struggle for some time before
with strikes and lockouts. Class antagonism may instead Marx, as well as the connection between class strugbe expressed as low worker morale, minor sabotage and gle, property, and law: Augustin Thierry,* [28] Franois
pilferage, and individual workers' abuse of petty author- Guizot, Franois-Auguste Mignet and Adolphe Thiers.
ity and hoarding of information. It may also be expressed The Physiocrats, David Ricardo, and after Marx, Henry
on a larger scale by support for socialist or populist par- George noted the inelastic supply of land and argued
ties. On the employers' side, the use of union busting that this created certain privileges (economic rent) for
legal rms and the lobbying for anti-union laws are forms landowners. According to the historian Arnold Toynbee,
of class struggle.
stratication along lines of class appears only within civilizations, and furthermore only appears during the proNot all class struggle is a threat to capitalism, or even to
not characterizing the
the authority of an individual capitalist. A narrow strug- cess of a civilization's decline while
growth phase of a civilization.* [29]
gle for higher wages by a small sector of the workingclass, what is often called economism, hardly threat- Proudhon, in What is Property? (1840) states that cerens the status quo. In fact, by applying the craft-union tain classes do not relish investigation into the pretended
tactics of excluding other workers from skilled trades, an titles to property, and its fabulous and perhaps scaneconomistic struggle may even weaken the working class dalous history.* [30] While Proudhon saw the solution as
as a whole by dividing it. Class struggle becomes more the lower classes forming an alternative, solidarity econimportant in the historical process as it becomes more omy centered on cooperatives and self-managed workgeneral, as industries are organized rather than crafts, places, which would slowly undermine and replace capias workers' class consciousness rises, and as they self- talist class society, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin while
organize away from political parties. Marx referred to inuenced by Proudhon, insisted that a massive class
this as the progress of the proletariat from being a class struggle, by the working class, peasantry and poor, was
in itself, a position in the social structure, to being essential to the creation of libertarian socialism. This
onefor itself,an active and conscious force that could would require a (nal) showdown in the form of a social
revolution.
change the world.
Marx largely focuses on the capital industrialist society
as the source of social stratication, which ultimately results in class conict.* [18] He states that capitalism creates a division between classes which can largely be seen
in manufacturing factories. The proletariat, is separated

Fascists have often opposed class struggle and instead

have attempted to appeal to the working class while
promising to preserve the existing social classes and have
proposed an alternative concept known as class collaboration.

52

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Middle Ages
Ciompi in Florence 1378
Jacquerie - France 14th century
Modern era

Jobless Black workers in the heat of the Philadelphia summer,

1973

1.9.6

Class vs. race struggle

According to Michel Foucault, in the 19th century the

essentialist notion of the "race" was incorporated by
racists, biologists, and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense ofbiological racewhich was then integrated
to "state racism". On the other hand, Foucault claims
that when Marxists developed their concept of class
struggle, they were partly inspired by the older, nonbiological notions of the raceand the race struggle. In a letter to Friedrich Engels in 1882 Karl Marx
wrote: You know very well where we found our idea of
class struggle; we found it in the work of the French histori- The rebellion of Gyrgy Dzsa in 1514 spread like lightning in
ans who talked about the race struggle.* [31] For Foucault, the Kingdom of Hungary where hundreds of manor-houses and
the theme of social war provides the overriding principle castles were burnt and thousands of the gentry killed.
that connects class and race struggle.* [32]
Moses Hess, an important theoretician of the early socialist movement, in hisEpilogueto "Rome and Jerusalem"
argued thatthe race struggle is primary, the class struggle secondary... With the cessation of race antagonism,
the class struggle will also come to a standstill. The equalization of all classes of society will necessarily follow the
emancipation of all the races, for it will ultimately become a scientic question of social economics.* [33]

German Peasants' War since 1524

In modern times, emerging schools of thought in the U.S.

and other countries hold the opposite to be true.* [34]
They argue that the race struggle is less important, because the primary struggle is that of class since labor of
all races face the same problems and injustices.

Revolutions of 1848 France (et al.)

1.9.7

Chronology

Riots with a basically nationalist background are not included.

English Civil War (16421651) (Diggers)

French Revolution since 1789* [35]
Canut revolts in Lyon since 1831 - often considered
as the beginning of the modern labor movement

Paris Commune 1871

Donghak Peasant Revolution in Korea 1893/94
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
Mexican Revolution since 1910
October Revolution in 1917
Spartacist uprising in Germany 1919
Seattle General Strike of 1919 in Seattle

Classical antiquity

General Strike of 1919 in Spain

Conict of the Orders

Winnipeg General Strike 1919

Roman Servile Wars

Ruhr Uprising in Germany 1920

1.9. CLASS CONFLICT

53

Kronstadt rebellion 1921

Labor union

Hamburg Uprising 1923

No War But The Class War

1926 United Kingdom general strike

Popular revolt in late medieval Europe

1934 West Coast waterfront strike

Revolution

Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

Sharecropping

Uprising of 1953 in East Germany

Slave rebellion

Cuban Revolution 1953-1959

Social class

Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - foundation of

worker's councils

Socialist Harmonious Society

Pozna 1956 protests

Mai 68 in France
Battle of Valle Giulia 1968 Italy
Wild cats in Western Germany in 1969

Taxation

1.9.9 References
[1] Marx, Karl et al. (1848). The Communist Manifesto. :
www.marxists.org.

Winter of Discontent 1978/79

[2] Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, marxists.org

UK miners' strike (19841985)

[3] Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

1993 Russian constitutional crisis

2006 Oaxaca protests in Mexico
2008 Greek riots
Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010
Egyptian Revolution of 2011
2011 England riots

[4] Sahadi, Jeanne (April 12, 2012). Soros: Why I Support

the Buett Rule. CNN. Retrieved 24 May 2012.
[5] Moyers, Bill (12 December 2013). The Great American
Class War. Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved 25 January 2014.
[6] The Pathology of the Rich - Chris Hedges on Reality Asserts Itself pt1 The Real News. 5 December 2013. Retrieved 25 January 2014.

World Civil Class & Race War on a Selection of

Drug Users

[7] Hedges, Chris (20 October 2013). Lets Get This Class
War Started. Truthdig. Retrieved 25 January 2014.

World Social Forum

[8] Full Show: The New Robber Barons. Moyers & Company.
December 19, 2014.

World Economic Forum

1.9.8

See also

Class consciousness
Classism
Classless society
Conict of the Orders
Deformed workers state
Degenerated workers state
Economic inequality
Economic stratication
Exploitation
Johnson County War

[9] Greg Palast, Burn baby burn http://www.gregpalast.com/

burn-baby-burnthe-california-celebrity-fires/
[10] Kaps, Robert W. (1997). Air Transport Labor Relations. Section 3: Major Collective Bargaining Legislation:
Southern Illinois Press. p. 51. ISBN 0-8093-1776-1.
[11] Jeerson, Thomas. Letter to Edward Carrington - January 16, 1787.
[12] http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/
[13] Buett: 'There are lots of loose nukes around the world'
CNN.com
[14] Buett, Warren (Nov 26, 2006). In Class Warfare,
Guess Which Class is Winning. The New York Times.
[15] Warren Buett Gives Away Fortune. Hungton Post.
4/12/2012. Retrieved 16 May 2012. Check date values
in: |date= (help)
[16] Buett, Warren (Nov 2011). Stop Coddling the Super
Rich. The New York Times. Retrieved 16 May 2012.

54

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

[17] Chomsky, Noam (2013), OCCUPY: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, Second Edition (November 5, 2013),
Zuccotti Park Press, retrieved October 14, 2014
[18] Blackwell Reference Online.. Retrieved November 24,
2008.
[19] Cockburn, Alexander (1820 February 2011). The
Tweet and Revolution.
[20] Korotayev A, Zinkina J (2011).Egyptian Revolution: A
Demographic Structural Analysis. Entelequia. Revista
Interdisciplinar 13: 139165.
[21] Demographics of the Arab League, computed by Wolfram Alpha.
[22] Ahmadinejad row with Khamenei intensies.
Jazeera. 6 May 2011.

Al

[23] Ecker, Al-Riai, Perrihan. Economics of the Arab

awakening. International Food Policy Research Institute. Retrieved 25 May 2012.
[24] The Other Arab Spring April 7, 2012 Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times Op Ed
[25] Javid, Salman Ansari (27 January 2011).Arab dictatorships inundated by food price protests. Tehran Times.
Retrieved 13 February 2011.
[26] Peter Walker Amnesty International hails WikiLeaks and
Guardian as Arab spring 'catalysts', in The Guardian, Friday 13 May 2011
[27] ilas, Milovan (1983, 1957). The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (paperback ed.). San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-665489X. Check date values in: |date= (help)
[28] Augustin Thierry: Recueil des monuments indits de
l'histoire du Tiers tat
[29] Toynbee, Arnold (1947). The Nature of Disintegration. In Dorothea Grace Somervell. A Study of History:
Abridgment of Volumes I - VI. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press. p. 365. ISBN 0-19-505081-9.
[30] Pierre Proudhon, What is Property?, chapter 2, remark 2.
[31] Quoted in Society Must be Defended by Michel Foucault
(trans. David Macey), London: Allen Lane, Penguin
Press (1976, 2003), p. 79
[32] Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexualityand the Colonial Order of
Things , Duke University Press (1995), p.71-72
[33] quoted in Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism,
and the Russian Jews by Jonathan Frankel, Cambridge
University Press (1981), p. 22.
[34] Eastwood, John H. (1995).Chapter 3: Ye Are the Salt of
the Earth. The Wonder of Grace. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Companion Press. p. 18. ISBN 1-56043-572-0.
The system that was supposed to treat all men equally actually created a class society.
[35] see Daniel Gurin, Class Struggle in the First French Republic, Pluto Press 1977

1.9.10 Further reading

Class & Class Conict in Industrial Society,Ralf
Dahrendorf, Stanford University Press, 1959, trade
paperback, 336 pages, ISBN 0-8047-0561-5 (also
available in hardback as ISBN 0-8047-0560-7 and
ISBN 1-131-15573-4).
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan
Elite Lost Our Future and What It Will Take to
Win It Back Je Faux, John Wiley and Sons. 2006.
ISBN 978-0-471-69761-9
Li Yi. 2005. The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratication. University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-3331-5
The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and
Protest: 1500 to the Present, ed. by Immanuel Ness,
Malden, MA [etc.]: Wiley & Sons, 2009.
Louis Adamic, Dynamite: The story of class violence
in America, Revised Edition (1934)
Leo Zeilig (Editor), Class Struggle and Resistance in
Africa, New Clarion Press, 2002.
Gerson Antell/Walter Harris, Economics For Everybody, Amsco School Publications, 2007
Mathew Maavak, "Class Warfare, Anarchy and the
Future Society", Journal of Futures Studies, December 2012, 17(2): 15-36
The Black Bloc Papers: An Anthology of Primary
Texts From The North American Anarchist Black
Bloc 1988-2005, by Xavier Massot & David Van
Deusen of the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective
(NEFAC-VT), Breaking Glass Press, 2010.
A Communiqu on Tactics and Organization to the
Black Bloc, from within the Black Bloc, by The
Green Mountain Anarchist Collective (NEFACVT) & Columbus Anti-Racist Action, Black Clover
Press, 2001.
Neither Washington Nor Stowe: Common Sense For
The Working Vermonter, by David Van Deusen and
the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective (NEFACVT), Catamount Tavern Press, 2004.

1.9.11 External links

2008-2010 Study: CEOs Who Fired Most Workers Earned Highest Pay - video report by Democracy
Now!
Blair Community Center and Museum to help preserve and understand the largest labor uprising in US
historythe Battle of Blair Mountain.
Lets Get This Class War Started. Chris Hedges,
Truthdig.

1.11. CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

1.10 Classless society

Classlessnessredirects here. For Internet routing in
which class distinctions are ignored, see Classless routing.
Classless society refers to a society in which no one
is born into a social class. Such distinctions of wealth,
income, education, culture, or social network might arise
and would only be determined by individual experience
and achievement in such a society.
Since these distinctions are dicult to avoid, advocates,
such as anarchists, communists, etc. of a classless society
propose various means to achieve and maintain it and attach varying degrees of importance to it as an end in their
overall programs/philosophy.

1.10.1

Classlessness

The term classlessness has been used to describe dierent social phenomena.
In societies where classes have been abolished it is usually
the result of a voluntary decision by the membership to
form such a society, to abolish a pre-existing class structure in an existing society or to form a new one without any. This would include communes, of the modern period, such as various Utopian communities, the
kibbutzim, etc. as well as revolutionary and political
acts at the nation-state level such as the Paris Commune,
Russian Revolution, etc. The abolition of social classes
and the establishment of a classless society is the primary
goal of communism, libertarian socialism and anarchism.
Classlessness also refers to the state of mind required in
order to operate eectively as a social anthropologist.
Anthropological training includes making assessments of
and therefore becoming aware of one's own class assumptions, so that these can be set aside from conclusions
reached about other societies. This may be compared to
ethnocentric biases or the "neutral axiology" required by
Max Weber. Otherwise conclusions reached about studied societies will likely be coloured by the anthropologist's own class values.

55
the dierent functional assignments of the primitive
mode of production, howsoever rigid and stratied they
might be, did not and could not, simply because of the
numbers, produce a class society as such. With the
transition to agriculture, the possibility to make a surplus
product, i.e. to produce more than what is necessary to
satisfy one's immediate needs, developed in the course
of development of the productive forces. According to
Marxism, this also made it possible for a class society
to develop, because the surplus product could be used
to nourish a ruling class, which did not participate in
production.

1.10.3 See also

1.10.4 References

1.11 Class consciousness

Class consciousness is a term used in social sciences
and political theory, particularly Marxism, to refer to the
beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or
economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and
their class interests.* [1]* [2]

1.11.1 Marxist theory

While German theorist Karl Marx rarely used the term
class consciousness, he did make the distinction betweenclass in itself, which is dened as a category of
people having a common relation to the means of production, and aclass for itself, which is dened as a stratum
organized in active pursuit of its own interests.* [2]
Dening a person's social class can be a determinant for
their awareness of it. Marxists dene classes on the basis
of their relation to the means of production especially on
whether they own capital. Non-Marxist social scientists
distinguish various social strata on the basis of income,
occupation, or status.* [3]

Classlessness can also refer to a society that has acquired

pervasive and substantial social justice; where the economic upper class wields no special political power and
poverty as experienced historically is virtually nonexistent.
Early in the nineteenth century, the labels "working
classes" and "middle classes" were already coming into
common usage. The old hereditary aristocracy, re1.10.2 Marxist denition
inforced by the new gentry who owed their success to
commerce, industry, and the professions, evolved into an
Main article: pure communism
"upper class". Its consciousness was formed in part by
public schools (in the British sense) and Universities. The
In Marxist theory, tribal hunter-gatherer society, upper class tenaciously maintained control over the politprimitive communism, was classless. Everyone was ical system, depriving not only the working classes but the
equal in a basic sense as a member of the tribe and middle classes of a voice in the political process.* [4]

56

1.11.2

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Georg Lukcs' History and Class ism has gone so far as seeing an invisible hand in this collective results, making capitalism the best of all possible
Consciousness (1923)

worlds). By contrast, the proletariat would be, accordClass consciousness, as described by Georg Lukcs's fa- ing to Lukcs, the rst class in history with the possibility
mous History and Class Consciousness (1923), is opposed to achieve a true form of class consciousness, granting it
to any psychological conception of consciousness, which knowledge of the totality of the historical process.
forms the basis of individual or mass psychology (see The proletariat takes the place of Hegel's Weltgeist
Freud or, before him, Gustave Le Bon). According to (World Spirit), which achieves history through
Lukcs, each social class has a determined class con- Volksgeist (the spirit of the people): the idealist consciousness which it can achieve. In eect, as opposed ception of an abstract Spirit making history, which ends
to the liberal conception of consciousness as the basis in the realm of Reason, is replaced by a materialist conof individual freedom and of the social contract, Marxist ception based not on mythical Spirits, but on a concrete
class consciousness is not an origin, but an achievement identical subject-object of history": the proletariat. The
(i.e. it must be earnedor won). Hence, it is never as- proletariat is both the objectof history, created by
sured: the proletariat's class consciousness is the result of the capitalist social formation; but it is also the suba permanent struggle to understand the "concrete totality" jectof history, as it is its labour that shapes the world,
of the historical process.
and thus, knowledge of itself is also, necessarily, knowlAccording to Lukcs, the proletariat was the rst class edge of the reality and of the totality of the historical proin history that may achieve true class consciousness, be- cess. The proletariat's class consciousness is not immedicause of its specic position highlighted in the Communist ate; class consciousness must not be mistaken either with
Manifesto as the living negationof capitalism. All the consciousness of one's future and collective interests,
others classes, including the bourgeoisie, are limited to a opposed to personal immediate interests.
"false consciousness" which impedes them from understanding the totality of history: instead of understanding
each specic moment as a portion of a supposedly deterministic historical process, they universalize it and believe it is everlasting. Hence, capitalism is not thought as
a specic phase of history, but is naturalized and thought
of as an eternal solidied part of history. Says Lukcs,
thisfalse consciousness, which forms ideology itself,
is not a simple error as in classical philosophy, but an
illusion which can't be dispelled.
Marx described it in his theory of commodity fetishism,
which Lukcs completed with his concept of reication:
alienation is what follows the worker's estrangement to
the world following the new life acquired by the product of his work. The dominant bourgeois ideology thus
leads the individual to see the achievement of his labour
take a life of its own. Furthermore, specialization is
also seen as a characteristic of the ideology of modern
rationalism, which creates specic and independent domains (art, politics, science, etc.). Only a global perspective can point out how all these dierent domains interact,
argues Lukcs. He also points out how Kant brought to its
limit the classical opposition between the abstract form
and the concrete, historical content, which is abstractly
conceived as irrational and contingent. Thus, with Kant's
rational system, history becomes totally contingent and is
thus ignored. Only with Hegel's dialectic can a mediation be found between the abstract form and the abstract
notion of a concrete content.* [5]
Even if the bourgeois loses his individual point of view
in an attempt to grasp the reality of the totality of society
and of the historical process, he is condemned to a form
of false consciousness. As an individual, he will always
see the collective result of individual actions as a form of
"objective law" to which he must submit himself (liberal-

The possibility of class consciousness is given by the objective process of history, which transforms the proletariat into a commodity, hence objectifying it. Class consciousness is thus not a simple subjective act: as consciousness here is not the consciousness of an object opposed to itself, but the object's consciousness, the act of
being conscious of oneself disrupts the objectivity form
of its object(in Reication and the Proletariat's Consciousness3, III The proletariat's point of view).
In other words, instead of the bourgeois subject and its
corresponding ideological concept of individual free will,
the proletariat has been transformed into an object (a
commodity) which, when it takes consciousness of itself,
transforms the very structure of objectivity, that is of reality.
This specic role of the proletariat is a consequence of
its specic position; thus, for the rst time, consciousness
of itself (class consciousness) is also consciousness of the
totality (knowledge of the entire social and historical process). Through dialectical materialism, the proletariat understands that what the individual bourgeois conceived as
lawsakin to the laws of nature, which may be only manipulated, as in Descartes's dream, but not changed, is in
fact the result of a social and historical process, which can
be controlled. Furthermore, only dialectical materialism
links together all specialized domains, which modern rationalism can only think as separate instead of as forming
a totality.
Only the proletariat can understand that the so-called
eternal laws of economicsare in fact nothing more than
the historical form taken by the social and economical
process in a capitalist society. Since these lawsare
the result of the collective actions of individuals, and are
thus created by society, Marx and Lukcs reasoned that

1.12. COMMUNE (SOCIALISM)

57

this necessarily meant that they could be changed. Any 1.11.4 See also
attempt in transforming the so-called lawsgoverning
capitalism into universal principles, valid in all times and 1.11.5 References
places, are criticized by Lukcs as a form of false consciousness.
[1] Wright, Erik Olin (2006). Class. In Beckert, Jens &
As the expression of the revolutionary process itself,
dialectical materialism, which is the only theory with an
understanding of the totality of the historical process, is
the theory which may help the proletariat in itsstruggle
for class consciousness. Although Lukcs does not contest the Marxist primacy of the economic infrastructure
on the ideological superstructure (not to be mistaken with
vulgar economic determinism), he considers that there is
a place for autonomous struggle for class consciousness.
In order to achieve a unity of theory and praxis, theory must not only tend toward reality in an attempt to
change it; reality must also tend towards theory. Otherwise, the historical process leads a life of its own, while
theorists make their own little theories, desperately waiting for some kind of possible inuence over the historical
process. Henceforth, reality itself must tend toward the
theory, making it the expression of the revolutionary
process itself. In turn, a theory which has as its goal
helping the proletariat achieve class consciousness must
rst be an objective theory of class consciousness.
However, theory in itself is insucient, and ultimately
relies on the struggle of humankind and of the proletariat
for consciousness: the objective theory of class consciousness is only the theory of its objective possibility
.

1.11.3

Criticism

Economist Ludwig Von Mises* [6] argued that Marx

confus[ed] the notions of caste and class.Mises allowed
that class consciousness, and the associated class struggle, were valid concepts in some circumstances where
rigid social castes exist; e.g., when slavery is legal, and
slaves thus share a common motive for ending their disadvantaged status relative to other castes. But no such
conicts are present in a society in which all citizens are
equal before the law,according to Mises. No logical
objection can be advanced against distinguishing various
classes among the members of such a society. Any classication is logically permissible, however arbitrarily the
mark of distinction may be chosen. But it is nonsensical
to classify the members of a capitalistic society according
to their position in the framework of the social division
of labor and then to identify these classes with the castes
of a status society.

Zarovski, Milan. International encyclopedia of economic

sociology. Psychology Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-41528673-2.
[2] Borland, Elizabeth (2008). Class consciousness. In
Parrillo, Vincent N. Encyclopedia of social problems, Volume 1. SAGE. p. 134. ISBN 978-1-4129-4165-5.
[3] Jon Elster, An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge,
England, 1986.
[4]
[5] Georg Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness Complete
Text.
[6] Ludwig von Mises ([1957], 2007). Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, p.
113. ISBN 978-1-933550-19-0
[7] Leszek Kolakowski,My Correct Views on Everything,
The Socialist Register 1974, pp. 120
[8] Marxism, being a scientic theory, could not be a spontaneous product of the working class [according to Lenin],
but had to be imported from outside, by intellectuals
equipped with scientic knowledge, became the peculiar
ideological instrument to justify a new idea of the party of
manipulators. Since the working class is in principle incapable of articulating theoretically its consciousness, it is
possible and even necessary that thegenuinetheoretical
consciousness of the working class should be incarnated in
a political organism that could consider itself the carrier
of this consciousness regardless of what the empirical
working class thought about it, given that theempirical
consciousness of this class is irrelevant in dening who in
a given moment represents its interest. This is why the
theory of class consciousness instilled from outside and
the whole idea of scientic socialism so conceived served
to justify the fact that in all kinds of political activity and
later in the exercise of political power, the working class
may be and must be replaced by the political apparatus
which is the vehicle of its consciousness at the highest
level. The whole Leninist and then Stalinist principle of
dictatorship which the proletariat exercises through the intermediary of its self-appointed representatives, is only a
development of the idea ofscientic socialismso conceived.Leszek Kolakowski, Althussers MarxThe
Socialist Register 1971, pp. 111128
[9] Haag, Ernest van den (1987) Marxism as pseudoscience, Reason Papers No. 12, Spring 1987

Philosopher Leszek Koakowski argued that thetheory

of class consciousness is false* [7] and that attempts by 1.12 Commune (socialism)
MarxistLeninists to advance the concept of class consciousness necessarily led to totalitarianism.* [8]
The commune is a model of government that is generSociologist Ernest van den Haag has argued:
ally advocated by communists, revolutionary socialists,

58

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

and anarchists. The model is often characterized as being a local and transparent organization composed of delegates bound by mandates. These delegates would be
recallable at any time from their positions. Proponents
view the right of recall as a particularly important safeguard against corruption and unresponsiveness among the
representatives.

the proletarian counterpart to bourgeois political forms

such as parliaments. In his pamphlet, Marx explains the
purpose and function of the commune during the period
that he termed the dictatorship of the proletariat:* [2]
Marx based these ideas on the example of the Paris Commune, which he described in The Civil War in France:* [2]
In addition to local governance, the communes were to
play a central role in the national government:* [2]

1.12.1

Introduction

Almost universally, communists, left-wing socialists, and

anarchists have seen the Commune as a model for the
liberated society that will come after the masses are liberated from capitalism, a society based on participatory
democracy from the grass roots up.
Marx and Engels, Bakunin, and later Lenin and Trotsky
gained major theoretical lessons (in particular as regards
the dictatorship of the proletariatand the "withering
away of the state") from the limited experience of the
Paris Commune.
Nonetheless, these very advocates provided critiques
of the commune. Marx found it aggravating that the
Communards pooled all their resources into rst organizing democratic elections rather than gathering their forces
and attacking Versailles in a timely fashion. Many Marxists, based on their interpretation of the historical evidence and on Marx's writings on the subject, believe that
the Communards were toosofton the non-proletarian
elements in their midst.
But the idea of the commune as a libertarian social
organization has persisted within revolutionary theory.
Kropotkin criticized modern representative democracy as
merely being an instrument for the ruling class, and argued that a new society would have to be organized on entirely dierent principles which involved every individual
more directly.* [1] He treats the nation state as a capitalist territorial organization which imposes itself over many
communities through the spectacle of participation which
elections deceptively provide. Communes on the other
hand are expected to endow communities with autonomy
from external powers and oer each person within them
a part in decision-making processes, through communal
assemblies and easily revocable delegates.

1.12.2

Within Marxism

Karl Marx, in his important pamphlet The Civil War in

France (1871), written during the Commune, advocated
the Commune's achievements, and described it as the
prototype for a revolutionary government of the future,
'the form at last discovered' for the emancipation of the
proletariat.

1.12.3 Bakunin's Revolutionary Catechism

Bakunin eventually diverged sharply both personally and
ideologically from Marx and such a divergence is evident
in his thought. Bakunin never advocated a dictatorship of
the proletariat, but instead a collectivism based on communes and cooperative worker's associations allied together into a decentralized and stateless federation. In
his Revolutionary Catechism he laid down the principles
on which he believed a free, anarchist society should be
founded upon. This included the political organization of
society into communes:* [3]
The autonomous commune is furthermore based upon the
complete liberty of the individual and dedicated to its realization. Bakunin's anarchist commune is not organized
into a dictatorship of the proletariat but a loose, yet cohesive federation that attempts to achieve the aims of the
actively revolutionary class as a whole.

1.12.4 The function of mini-communes

Mini-communes and squats exist all over the world, but
comprise only a marginal pattern of social organization
in relation to society at large. However, many of them
provide a self-conscious example of how a socialist society would function, even if only on a microsociological
level. As they are, socialist mini-communes are, along
with workers' associations, the germs for the development
of mass, socially complex communist communes.* [4]

1.12.5 Contemporary political movements

organized around the idea of the
commune
Abahlali baseMjondolo
Homeless Workers' Movement
Landless Workers' Movement
Occupy Oakland
Zapatista Army of National Liberation

Thus in Marxist theory, the commune is a form of politi- 1.12.6 See also
cal organization adopted during the rst (or lower) phase
Commune
of communism, socialism. Communes are proposed as

1.13. COMMON OWNERSHIP

Workers' council

59

1.13.1 History

Libertarian municipalism
Soviet democracy
Anarchism

1.12.7

References

See also: Communalism

In Marxist theory, Primitive communism was based on
common ownership on a subsistence level. Pre-Neolithic
tribes held property in common. Another term for this
arrangement is a "gift economy" or communalism.

[1] Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (1970), Dover Publications.

[2] Marx and Engels, The Civil War in France
[3] Revolutionary Catechism. Retrieved 7 March 2013.
[4] Shantz, Je (2010) Constructive Anarchy: Building Infrastructures of Resistance

1.12.8

External links

An Anarchist FAQ, Section I: What would an anarchist society look like?

1.13 Common ownership

Movement in the UK
The principle was adopted by the new waveworkersco-operative movement during the 1970s, and continues into the present day, although it is less common.
In 1976, the British Parliament passed the Industrial
Common Ownership Act (ICO Act), which gave
100,000 of seedfunding to the Industrial Common
Ownership Movement (ICOM) and 50,000 to the Scottish Co-operative Development Committee (SCDC), respectively. ICOM was fueled by three strands of thought
Christian socialism, workerscontrol andrice and sandalsalternativismand successfully promoted the creation of over 2,000 workers co-operatives, before merging in 2001 with the Co-operative Union to form Cooperatives UK, thus reuniting the worker co-operative
and consumer co-operative sectors.

Common ownership is a principle according to which

the assets of an organization, enterprise or community
are held indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members. It involves an arrangement whereby the
produce belongs indivisibly to all members.
In parallel, the growth of some 60 local co-operative
The principle of holding the means of production in com- development agencies (CDAs), supported by local aumon with free access to the output produced is a central thorities, gave on-the-spot start-up assistance to groups
goal of many socialist movements and is taken to be a wanting to create a co-operative. Some local retail codening feature of a genuine communist society. Ad- operative societies were also active. By combining pervocates make a distinction between forms of collective sonal, community, and business development, this moveownership (such as corporate/private ownership and state ment brought many disadvantaged people the opportunity
ownership) and common property based on access abun- to go into business for themselves on the basis of economic democracy, equal opportunities, and social includance.* [1]
In political philosophy, common ownership refers to joint sion.
ownership by all individuals in society. Common ownership of the means of production is advocated, or asserted,
by communism and some forms of socialism. Common
ownership diers from collective ownership. The former means property open for access to anyone, and the
latter means property owned jointly by agreement.* [2]
Examples of collective ownership include modern forms
of corporate ownership as well as producer cooperatives,
which are in contrast to forms of common ownership,
such as a public park available to everyone.* [3]
Common ownership of land is an example of customary
land ownership in tribal societies which predates and runs
simultaneously to the arrangement of colonised alienated
land. Tribes and families living on the land have common
ownership through tradition.

Finance: The ICO Act also established a 250,000 rotating loan fund managed by Industrial Common Ownership Finance Ltd (ICOF). ICOF since 2005 trading as
Co-operative and Community Finance- has grown steadily
and now manages a range of funds totalling some 4.5
million. Some of these have been endowed by public bodies, and others were raised through public subscription.
This was the start of the ethical investment movement in
Britain.
Currently, as signalled by the British Labour Partys
abandonment of clause 4of its constitution, which
called for common ownership and was printed on party
membership cards, ideology has given way to pragmatism, and the social enterprise movement focuses on outcomes rather than structures.

60

1.13.2

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Common ownership and socialism

Many socialist movements advocate the common ownership of the means of production by all of society as
an eventual goal to be achieved through the development
of the productive forces, although many socialists classify socialism as public ownership of the means of production, reserving common ownershipfor what Karl
Marx termed "upper-stage communism". From a Marxist
analysis, society based on a superabundance of goods and
common ownership of the means of production would be
devoid of classes based on ownership of productive property.

with a workforce of hundreds.)

In London, Calverts is another rare example of an established worker co-operative with a policy of pay parity.
The John Lewis Partnership is probably the most famous
example of a worker co-operative, albeit one without pay
parity. From the collective movement, one of the most
successful ventures is probably Suma Wholefoods in Elland, West Yorkshire.
UK law

The principle is typically implemented through inserting

two clauses in a companys Memorandum of AssociaTherefore, public or state ownership of industry is seen
tion, or an industrial and provident societys rules.
as a temporary measure to be adopted during the transition from capitalism to socialism, which will eventually
the rst provides that the companys assets shall
be displaced by common ownership as state authority bebe applied solely in furtherance of its objectives and
comes obsolete as class distinctions evaporate. Common
may not be divided among the members or trustees.
ownership in a hypothetical communist society is distinguished from primitive forms of common property that
the second provides for "altruistic dissolution, an
have existed throughout history, such as communalism
asset lock, whereby if the enterprise is wound
and primitive communism, in that Communist common
up, remaining assets exceeding liabilities shall not be
ownership is the outcome of technological developments
divided among the members but shall be transferred
leading to superabundance.
to another enterprise with similar aims or to charity.
It is the practical application of the socialist desire to
achieve the common ownership of the means of production(see Clause IV). Its purpose, by preventing control being obtained through the purchase of a company
s share capital, is to ensure that the foundersaims are
pursued in perpetuity. This is particularly desirable to the
founders of a workersco-operative, who, inspired by solidarity and the desire to create fullling employment, will
typically build the business up through hard and low-paid
work (misleadingly called sweat equity). They may
out of a sense of fairness wish to hinder future generations of employees, or their heirs, from winding up the
co-operative so as to be able to share the sale proceeds
among themselves (see asset stripping).

British law has been reluctant to entrench common ownership, insisting that a three-quarters majority of a companys members, by passing a special resolution,
have the right to amend a companys memorandum of
association. This three-quarters majority above applies
to most limited companies, except that it is possible since
2006 to entrench altruistic dissolution in an industrial and
provident society registered as a 'community benet society' ('bencom'). This statutory asset lock is not available to societies registered as 'bona de' co-operatives.
However such entrenchment has also been written into
the Community interest company (CIC), a new legal status that was introduced in 2005.

1.13.3

1.13.4 See also

In practice

Common ownership is practised by large numbers of voluntary associations and non-prot organizations, by all
charities, as well as implicitly by all public bodies. Most
co-operatives have some element of common ownership,
but some part of their capital may be individually owned.
A very signicant early inuence on the movement
has been the Scott Bader Commonwealth, a composites and speciality polymer plastics manufacturing company in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, which its
owner, Ernest Bader, gave to the workforce in installments through the late 1950s to early 1960s. (Contrary to the popular concept of common ownership organisations as being small organisations, this is a hightechnology chemical manufacturer whose turnover has
exceeded 100 million per annum since the early 1990s

Communism
Common-pool resource
Commons
Commons-based peer production
Cooperative
Creative Commons
Egalitarianism
Georgism / Geolibertarianism
Libertarian socialism
Open source

1.14. DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT

Post-capitalism
Post-scarcity economy
Property rights (economics)
Social ownership
State ownership
Tragedy of the commons

1.13.5

References

61
Karl Marx
Karl Marx did not write much about the nature of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, with his published works
instead largely focusing on analysing and criticising capitalist society. In 1848 he and Engels wrote in the
Communist Manifesto that their ends can be attained
only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.* [6] In the same year, commenting on revolution
in Vienna he again highlighted the role of the violence:
there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of
the new society can be shortened, simplied and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.* [7]

[1] Public Ownership and Common Ownership, Anton Pannekoek, Western Socialist, 1947. Transcribed by Adam
Buick.

On 1 January 1852, the communist journalist Joseph

Weydemeyer published an article entitled Dictatorship
of the Proletariatin the German language newspaper
[2] Holcombe, Randall G. (2005). Common Property in Turn-Zeitung, where he wrote that it is quite plain that
Anarcho-Capitalism(PDF). Journal of Libertarian Stud- there cannot be here any question of gradual, peaceies 19 (2): 10.
ful transitions, and recalled the examples of Oliver
Cromwell (England) and Committee of Public Safety
[3] http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html
(France) as examples ofdictatorshipandterrorism
(respectively) required to overthrow the bourgeoisie.* [8]
In that year, Karl Marx wrote to him, saying:

1.14 Dictatorship of the proletariat

In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship

of the proletariat refers to a state in which the
proletariat, or the working class, has control of political
power.* [1]* [2] The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer,
was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, in the 19th century. In Marxist theory,
the dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism and communism, when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership from privatism to collective ownership.* [3]
Both Marx and Engels argued that the short-lived Paris
Commune, which ran the French capital for over two
months before being repressed, was an example of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
According to Marxist theory, the existence of any
government implies the dictatorship of one social class
over another. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is thus
used as an antonym of the dictatorship of the proletariat.* [4]

Long before me, bourgeois historians had

described the historical development of this
struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois
economists their economic anatomy. My
own contribution was (1) to show that the
existence of classes is merely bound up with
certain historical phases in the development
of production; (2) that the class struggle
necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the
proletariat; [and] (3) that this dictatorship,
itself, constitutes no more than a transition to
the abolition of all classes and to a classless
society
Karl Marx, 1852* [9]
Marx expanded upon his ideas about the dictatorship
of the proletariat in his short 1875 work, Critique of
the Gotha Program, a scathing criticism and attack on
the principles laid out in the programme of the German Workers' Party (predecessor to the SPD). The programme presented a moderate, evolutionary way to socialism, as opposed to revolutionary, violent approach of
the orthodoxMarxists. As result the latter accused
the Gotha program as being revisionistand ineective.* [10]

Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist theorist, emphasized the role

of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the rule of the
whole class, representing the majority, and not a single
party, characterizing the dictatorship of the proletariat as
a concept meant to expand democracy rather than reduce
it, as opposed to minority rule in the dictatorship of the Marx stated that in a proletarian-run society, the state
bourgeoisie, the only other class state power can reside in should control the proceeds of labour(i.e. all the
food and products produced), and take from them that
according to Marxist theory.* [5]
which was an economic necessity, namely enough to
replace the means of production used up, an additional
portion for expansion of productionand in1.14.1 Theoretical approaches
surance fundsto be used in emergencies such as natural

62

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

disasters. Furthermore, he believed that the state should

then take enough to cover administrative costs, funds for
the running of public services, and funds for those who
were physically incapable of working. Once enough to
cover all of these things had been taken out of the proceeds of labour, Marx believed that what was left should
then be shared out amongst the workers, with each individual getting goods to the equivalent value of how much
labour they had invested.* [11] In this meritocratic manner, those workers who put in more labour and worked
harder would get more of the proceeds of the collective
labour than someone who had not worked as hard.
In the Critique, he noted however that defects are inevitableand there would be many diculties in initially
running such a workers' stateas it emerges from capitalistic societybecause it would beeconomically, morally
and intellectually... still stamped with the birth marks of
the old society from whose womb it emerges, thereby
still containing capitalist elements.* [11]

In the 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France (1872)

pamphlet, Friedrich Engels said: Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks
like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"; to avoid bourgeois political
corruption:
the Commune made use of two infallible
expedients. In this rst place, it lled all posts
administrative, judicial, and educational
by election on the basis of universal surage of
all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And, in
the second place, all ocials, high or low, were
paid only the wages received by other workers.
The highest salary paid by the Commune to
anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an eective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was
set up, even apart from the binding mandates to
delegates [and] to representative bodies, which
were also added in profusion.

In other works, Marx stated that he considered the Paris

Commune (a revolutionary socialism supporting government that ran the city of Paris from March to May 1871)
as an example of the proletarian dictatorship. Describing In the same year he criticised anti-authoritarian socialists, again referring to the methods of the Paris Comthe short-lived regime, he remarked that:
mune:
The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal surage
in the various wards of the town, responsible, and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or
acknowledged representatives of the working
class. The Commune was to be a working, not
a parliamentary body, executive, and legislative at the same time.* [12]
This form of popular government, featuring revocable
election of councilors and maximal public participation in
governance, resembles contemporary direct democracy.

Friedrich Engels

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one
part of the population imposes its will upon
the other part by means of ries, bayonets and
cannon authoritarian means, if such there
be at all; and if the victorious party does not
want to have fought in vain, it must maintain
this rule by means of the terror which its arms
inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris
Commune have lasted a single day if it had
not made use of this authority of the armed
people against the bourgeois?
Friedrich Engels, On Authority, 1872* [14]

Marx's attention to the Paris Commune placed the

commune in the centre of later Marxist forms.

Force and violence played an important role in Friedrich This statement was written in Address of the Central
Engels's vision of the revolution and rule of proletariat. Committee to the Communist League, which is credited
In 1877, arguing with Eugen Dhring Engels ridiculed to Marx & Engels:
his reservations against use of force:
That force, however, plays yet another
role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in
the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every
old society pregnant with a new one, that it
is the instrument with the aid of which social
movement forces its way through and shatters
the dead, fossilised political forms
Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1877* [13]

[The workers] must work to ensure that

the immediate revolutionary excitement is not
suddenly suppressed after the victory. On
the contrary, it must be sustained as long as
possible. Far from opposing the so-called
excesses instances of popular vengeance
against hated individuals or against public
buildings with which hateful memories are
associated the workersparty must not only
tolerate these actions but must even give them

1.14. DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT

direction.
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Address of
the Central Committee..., 1850* [15]

1.14.2

Lenin

In the 20th century, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin developed

Leninismthe adaptation of Marxism to the backward
socio-economic and political conditions of Imperial Russia (17211917). This body of theory later became the
ocial ideology of some Communist states.
The State and Revolution (1917) explicitly discusses the
practical implementation of dictatorship of the proletariatthrough means of violent revolution. Lenin denies
any reformist interpretations of Marxism, such as the one
of Kautsky's. Lenin especially focuses on Engels' phrase
of the state withering away, denying that it could
apply to bourgeois stateand highlighting that Engels
work is mostlypanegyric on violent revolution. Based
on these arguments, he denounces reformists asopportunistic, reactionary and points out the red terror as the
only* [16] method of introducing dictatorship of the proletariat compliant with Marx and Engels work.* [17]

63
The use of violence, terror and rule of single communist
party was criticised by Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg
and Mikhail Bakunin. In response Lenin accused Kautsky of being arenegadeandliberal* [19] and these
socialist movements that did not support the Bolshevik
party line were condemned by the Communist International and called social fascism.
No Dictatorship in developed countries
Soviet democracy granted voting rights to the majority of
the populace who elected the local soviets, who elected
the regional soviets, and so on until electing the Supreme
Soviet of the Soviet Union. Capitalists were disenfranchised in the Russian soviet model. However, according to Lenin, in a developed country it would be possible to dispense with the disenfranchisement of capitalists within the democratic proletarian dictatorship; as the
proletariat would be guaranteed of an overwhelming majority. [Notes on Plenkhanov's Second Draft Programme.
Lenin Collected Works. Vol. 6, p. 51]

The Bolsheviks in 19171924 did not claim to have

achieved a communist society; in contrast the preamble to
the 1977 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (theBrezhnev Constitution),
stated that the 1917 Revolution established the dictatorship of the proletariat as a society of true democracy
In Imperial Russia, the Paris Commune model form , and that the supreme goal of the Soviet state is the
of government was realised in the soviets (councils of building of a classless, communist society in which there
workers and soldiers) established in the Russian Revo- will be public, communist self-government.
lution of 1905, whose revolutionary task was deposing
the capitalist (monarchical) state to establish socialism
....Dictatorship does not necessarily mean
the dictatorship of the proletariatthe stage preceding
the
abolition
of democracy for the class that excommunism.
ercises the dictatorship over other classes; but
In Russia the Bolshevik Party (described by Lenin as the
it does mean the abolition of democracy (or
vanguard of the proletariat) elevated the soviets to
very material restriction, which is also a form
power in the October Revolution of 1917. Throughout
of abolition) of democracy for the class over
1917, Lenin argued that the Russian Provisional Governwhich, or against which, the dictatorship is exment was unrepresentative of the proletariat's interests
ercised.
because, in his estimation, they represented the dic Vladimir Lenin* [20]* [21]
tatorship of the bourgeoisie. He argued that because
they continually put o democratic elections, they denied
the prominence of the democratically constituted sovi- Banning of opposition parties and factions
ets, and all the promises made by liberal-bourgeois parties prior to the February revolution remained unfullled, During the Russian Civil War (191822), all the major
the soviets would need to take power for themselves.
opposition parties either took up arms against the new
Soviet Government, took part in sabotage, collaboration
with the deposed Tsarists, or made assassination attempts
Proletarian government
against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders. When opposition parties such as the Cadets and Mensheviks were
Lenin argued that in an underdeveloped country such as democratically elected to the Soviets in some areas, they
Russia, the capitalist class would remain a threat even af- proceeded to use their mandate to welcome in Tsarist and
ter a successful socialist revolution.* [18] As a result, he foreign capitalist military forces. In one incident in Baku,
advocated the repression of those elements of the capital- the British military, once invited in, proceeded to exeist class that took up arms against the new soviet govern- cute members of the Bolshevik party (who had peacefully
ment, writing that as long as classes existed, a state would stood down from the Soviet when they failed to win the
need to exist to exercise the democratic rule of one class elections). As a result, the Bolsheviks banned each oppo(in his view, the working class) over the other (the capi- sition party when it turned against the Soviet government.
talist class).* [18]
In some cases, bans were lifted. This banning of parties

64

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

did not have the same repressive character as later bans Stalinist Communists and Socialistsargue that the Stalunder Stalin would.* [22]
inist USSR and other Stalinist countries used thedictatorship
of the proletariatto justify the monopolisation of
Internally, Lenin's critics argued that such political suppolitical
power by a new ruling layer of bureaucrats, depression always was his plan; supporters argued that
rived
partly
from the old Tsarist bureaucracy and partly
the reactionary civil war of the foreign-sponsored White
created
by
the
impoverished condition of Russia.
Movement required itgiven Fanya Kaplan's unsuccessful assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918, and the However, the rising Stalinist clique rested on other
successful assassination of Moisei Uritsky, the same day. grounds for political legitimacy, rather than a confusion
After 1919, the Soviets had ceased to function as organs between the modern and Marxist use of the termdictaof democratic rule, as the famine induced by forced grain torship. Rather, they took the line that since they were
requisitions led to the Soviets emptying out of ordinary the vanguard of the proletariat, their right to rule could
people. Half the population of Moscow and a third of not be legitimately questioned. Hence, opposition parPetrograd had, by this stage, ed to the countryside to ties could not be permitted to exist. From 1936 onward,
Stalinist-inspired state constitutions enshrined this connd food. Political life ground to a halt.* [22]
cept by giving the various 'Communist Parties' a leadThe Bolsheviks became concerned that under these con- ing rolein societya provision that was interpreted to
ditions the absence of mass participation in political either ban other parties altogether or force them to aclife, and the banning of opposition parties counter- cept the Stalinists guaranteed right to rule as a condition
revolutionary forces would express themselves within the of being allowed to exist.
Bolshevik party itself (some evidence existed for this in
the mass of ex-opposition party members who signed up This justication was adopted by subsequent 'communist'
for Bolshevik membership immediately after the end of parties built upon the Stalinist model, such as the CCP
in China, the CP in North Korea, Vietnam, and the CP
the Civil War).
(initially the 26th of July Movement) in Cuba.
Despite the principle of democratic centralism in the Bolshevik Party, internal factions were banned. This was
considered an extreme measure, and did not fall within Post-Stalin
Marxist doctrine. The ban remained until the USSR's dissolution in 1991.* [23] In 1921, vigorous internal debate At the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soand freedom of opinion were still present within Russia; viet Union (CPSU) Nikita Khrushchev declared an end to
the beginnings of censorship and mass political repres- the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and the establishment
*
sion had not yet emerged. For example, the Workers Op- of the All People's Government. [24]
position faction continued to operate despite being nominally dissolved. The debates of the Communist Party of
1.14.3 See also
the Soviet Union continued to be published until 1923.
Democracy in Marxism
Stalinism and 'dictatorship'

Invisible dictatorship

People's democratic dictatorship

Elements of the later censorship and attacks on political
Trotskyism
expression would appear during Lenin's illness, and after
his death, when members of the future Stalinist clique
Tyranny of the majority
clamped down on party democracy among the Georgian Bolsheviks and began to censor material. Pravda
ceased publishing the opinions of political oppositions 1.14.4 Notes
after 1924, and at the same time, the ruling clique (Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin) admitted large numbers of [1] On Authority. Retrieved 13 September 2014.
new members into the party in order to shout down the [2] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.Manifesto of the Comvoices of oppositionists at party meetings, severely curmunist Party. Retrieved 13 September 2014.
tailing internal debate. Their policies were partly directed
by the interests of the new bureaucracy that had accumu- [3] Critique of the Gotha ProgrammeIV. Critique of
the Gotha Programme. Retrieved 2009-10-18.
lated a great deal of social weight in the absence of an
active participation in politics by the majority of people. [4] Lenin, Vladimir (1918). "Class society and the state".
By 1927 many supporters of the Left Opposition began
The State and Revolution. Lenin Internet Archive (marxto face political repression, and Leon Trotsky was exiled.
ists.org).
Some modern critics of the concept of the dictatorship
of the proletariat
including various Anti-Communists,
Libertarian Marxists, Anarcho-Communists, and anti-

[5] Luxemburg, Rosa (1918). "Democracy and Dictatorship". The Russian Revolution. New York: Workers Age
Publishers.

1.15. COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP

[6] Communist Manifesto, 1848, Chapter IV

65

1.14.5 External links

[7] Karl Marx (1848). The Victory of the CounterRevolution in Vienna. Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Retrieved 2015-04-25.

Critique of the Gotha Programme

[8] Joseph Weydemeyer (1962).

The dictatorship of the proletariat.
Labor History (in English translated from German) 3 (2): 214217.
doi:10.1080/00236566208583900. Retrieved October
15, 2011.

Marxists.org glossary term

[9] See the letter from Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer dated

March 5, 1852 in Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Collected Works Vol. 39 (International Publishers: New York,
1983) pp. 6265.

The Civil War in France

The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' in Marx and

Engelsby Hal Draper

1.15 Collective leadership

Collective leadership is considered an ideal form of ruling a communist party, both within and outside a socialist
state. Its main task is to distribute powers and functions
from the individual to a single group. For instance, in
Marx 1875. Chapter One.
China powers have been distributed from the oce of
Marx, Karl (1986). The Civil War in France. Marx General Secretary of the Communist Party and shared
& Engels Collected Works 22. New York: International
with the Politburo Standing Committee while still retainPublishers. p. 331.
ing one ruler. On the other hand, in Vietnam there is
Engels, Friedrich (1877). Theory of Force (Conclu- not one paramount leader, and power is shared by the
sion)". Retrieved 2013-11-06.
party General Secretary, President and the Prime Minister along with collegial bodies such as the Politburo,
Engels, Friedrich (1872). On Authority. Retrieved
Secretariat and the Central Committee.
2013-11-06.

[10] The Gotha and Erfurt Programs. 1875. Retrieved 13

September 2014.
[11]
[12]

[13]
[14]

[15] Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich (1850). Address of

the Central Committee to the Communist League. Retrieved 2013-11-06.
[16] The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian
state is impossible without a violent revolution (The State
and Revolution, Chapter 1)

1.15.1 Forms
China
Currently, the central authority of the Chinese government is concentrated in the Politburo Standing Committee, which is composed of 7-members of the Communist
Party of China and headed by the General Secretary of
the Central Committee.* [1]

[17] The theory of Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship
of the proletariat) through the process of 'withering away
, but, as a general rule, only through a violent revolution.
The panegyric Engels sang in its honor, and which fully Soviet Union
corresponds to Marx's repeated statements. (The State and
Revolution, Chapter 1)

Main article: Collective leadership in the Soviet Union

[18] "www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/
equality.htm".

Collective leadership (Russian: , kollektivnoye rukovodstvo) or Collectivity of

leadership (Russian: ,
kollektivnost rukovodstva), was considered an ideal form
V. I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade
of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Kautsky. Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 235.
(USSR). Its main task was to distribute powers and funcMarx Engels Lenin on Scientic Socialism. Moscow: tions among the Politburo, the Central Committee, and
Novosti Press Ajency Publishing House. 1974.
the Council of Ministers to hinder any attempts to create a one-man dominance over the Soviet political sysMarcel Leibman (1980) Leninism under Lenin
tem by a Soviet leader, such as that seen under Joseph
A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 7 Stalin's rule. On the national level, the heart of the colThe Communist Party. Democratic Centralism. The lective leadership was ocially the Central Committee
Library of Congress. Country Studies. Retrieved October of the Communist Party, but in practice, was the Polit24, 2005.
buro. Collective leadership is characterised by limiting
Law, David A. (1975). Russian Civilization. Ardent Me- the powers of the General Secretary and the Chairman
dia. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-8422-0529-0.
of the Council of Ministers as related to other oces by

[19] Vladimir Lenin (1918).The Proletarian Revolution and

the Renegade Kautsky. Retrieved 13 September 2014.
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]

[24]

66

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

enhancing the powers of collective bodies, such as the

Politburo.

1.16 Scientic socialism

Lenin was, according to Soviet literature, the perfect

example of a leader ruling in favour of the collective.
Stalin's rule was characterised by one-man dominance,
which was a deep breach of collective leadership; this
made his leadership highly controversial in the Soviet
Union following his death in 1953. At the 20th Party
Congress, Stalin's reign was criticised as the personality cult. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, supported the ideal of collective leadership but increasingly
ruled in an autocratic fashion. In 1964, Khrushchev was
ousted and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and by Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Collective leadership was strengthened during the Brezhnev years and
the later reigns of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms helped spawn factionalism within the Soviet leadership, and members of
Gorbachev's faction openly disagreed with him on key issues. The factions usually disagreed on how little or how
much reform was needed to rejuvenate the Soviet system.

Scientic socialism is the term rst used by Friedrich

Engels* [1] to describe the social-political-economic theory rst pioneered by Karl Marx. The purported reason why this form of socialism is scientic socialism
(as opposed to "utopian socialism") is that it is said to
be based on the scientic method, in that its theories are
held to an empirical standard, observations are essential
to its development, and these can result in changes and/or
falsication of elements of the theory.

Although the term socialism has come to mean specically a combination of political and economic science, it
is also applicable to a broader area of science encompassing what is now considered sociology and the humanities.
The distinction between utopian and scientic socialism
originated with Marx, who criticized the utopian characteristics of French socialism and English and Scottish political economy. Engels later argued that utopian socialists failed to recognize why it was that socialism arose in
the historical context that it did, that it arose as a response
to new social contradictions of a new mode of production, i.e. capitalism. In recognizing the nature of social1.15.2 See also
ism as the resolution of this contradiction and applying
a thorough scientic understanding of capitalism, Engels
asserted that socialism had broken free from a primitive
Federal Council (Switzerland)
state and become a science.* [2] This shift in socialism
was seen as complimentary to shifts in contemporary biology sparked by Charles Darwin and the understanding
1.15.3 Notes
of evolution by natural selection; Marx and Engels saw
this
new understanding of biology as essential to the new
[1] New Politburo Standing Committee decided: Mingjing
understanding
of socialism, and vice versa.
News. Want China Times. 18 October 2012. Retrieved
2 January 2013.
Similar methods for analyzing social and economic trends
and involving socialism as a product of socioeconomic
evolution have also been used by non-Marxist theoreticians, such as Joseph Schumpeter and Thorstein Veblen.
1.15.4 Bibliography
Baylis, Thomas A. (1989). Governing by Committee:
Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies. State 1.16.1 Methodology
University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706Scientic socialism refers to a method for understanding
944-4.
and predicting social, economic, and material phenom Cocks, Paul; Daniels, Robert Vincent; Whittier ena by examining their historical trends through the use
Heer, Nancy (1976). The Dynamics of Soviet Pol- of the scientic method in order to derive probable outitics. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674- comes and probable future developments. It is in contrast to what later socialists referred to as utopian so21881-9.
cialisma method based on establishing seemingly ra Christian, David (1997). Imperial and Soviet Rus- tional propositions for organizing society and convincing
sia: Power, Privilege, and the Challenge of Moder- others of their rationality and/or desirability. It also connity. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-17352- trasts with classical liberal notions of natural law, which
are grounded in metaphysical notions of morality rather
4.
than a dynamic materialist or physicalist conception of
*
Taras, Roy (1989). Leadership Change in Commu- the world. [3]
nist States. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-04-445277-5.

Scientic socialists view social and political developments as being largely determined by economic condi Law, David A. (1975). Russian Civilization. Ardent tions as opposed to ideas in contrast to utopian socialists
Media. ISBN 978-0-8422-0529-0.
and classical liberals, and thus believe that social relations

1.16. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

67

and notions of morality are context-based relative to their

specic stage of economic development. Therefore as
economic systems, socialism and capitalism are not social constructs that can be established at any time based
on the subjective will and desires of the population, but
instead are products of social evolution. An example of
this was the advent of agriculture which enabled human
communities to produce a surplus; this change in material and economic development led to a change in social
relations and rendered the old form of social organization based on subsistence-living obsolete and a hindrance
to further material progress. Changing economic conditions necessitated a change in social organization.* [4]

als, libertarians, social liberals and some early socialist

thought). Specically, these philosophies are based on
metaphysical conceptions of anaturalorder of liberty
that exists irrespective of civilizations' material, technological and productive capabilities. While scientic socialists see economic laws and various forms of social
arrangements as context-based (relative to their specic
stage of human development), and thus relative to specic material conditions, these critics view them as static
and absolute moral values.

ments is similar to that of scientic socialism and also

contrast to neoclassical/classical political economy and
utopian socialism; he believed that society and economics
was constantly evolving and that this process aected the
fundamental basis of established social relations.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics, the ocial

ideology of the Communist Party of China

The philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book The

Open Society and Its Enemies characterized Scientic Socialism as a pseudoscience. He argues that its method is
what he calls "historicism": the method of analyzing historical trends and deriving universal laws from them. He
1.16.2 Similar perspectives
criticizes this approach as unscientic as its claims cannot be tested and, in particular, are not subject to being
Thorstein Veblen, the founder of evolutionary economics,
disproven.
believed that technological developments would eventually lead toward a socialistic organization of economic
aairs. However, his views regarding socialism and the 1.16.4 See also
nature of the evolutionary process of economics diered
sharply from that of Karl Marx; while Marx saw socialism
Critique of Dialectical Reason
as the ultimate goal for civilization and saw the working Evolutionary economics
class as the group that would establish it, Veblen saw socialism as one immediate phase in an ongoing evolution Historical materialism
ary process in society that would be brought about by the
natural decay of the business enterprise system and by the
Lysenkoism
inventiveness of engineers.* [5]
Marxism
Veblen's methodology for analyzing economic develop-

1.16.3

Critique of the notion of socialism

as a science

The argument that socialism whether Marxist,

MarxistLeninist or its other forms is a science is
based on the concepts of dialectical materialism and
historical materialism.* [6]

Scientic Outlook on Development, a socioeconomic concept of the Communist Party of China

Scientic communism, the USSR curriculum requirements for understanding Soviet orthodoxy on
the subject.
Siad Barre, who called his mixture of Marxism and
Islam scientic socialism.
Socialist mode of production

The most one could say is that socialism has historically 1.16.5 References
been an idea that nds expression in various scientic disciplines such as mathematical economics, sociology, and [1] Frederick Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientic.
other like areas of study. Socialism and Marxism are
1880 Full Text
thus better described as theoretical frameworks for understanding and analyzing the social, economic and po- [2] Frederick Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientic.
1880 Full Text
litical world rather than the natural or physical world.
Critique of scientic socialist methodology
The term also refers to an important philosophical difference between proponents of natural law, static human
nature, and static equilibrium (such as classical liber-

[3] Socialism and Modern Science, by Ferri, Enrico. 1912.

From Evolution and Socialism(P.79): Upon what
point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute conict? Political economy has held and holds that
the economic laws governing the production and distribution of wealth which it has established are natural laws ...
not in the sense that they are laws naturally determined by

68

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

the condition of the social organism (which would be correct), but that they are absolute laws, that is to say that they
apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points,
though they may be subject to modication in details. Scientic socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established by classical political economy, since the time of
Adam Smith, are laws peculiar to the present period in
the history of civilized humanity, and that they are, consequently, laws essentially relative to the period of their
analysis and discovery.

communities, and that the market serves as an acid on

those relationships.* [8]

Gift exchange is distinguished from other forms of exchange by a number of principles, such as the form of
property rights governing the articles exchanged; whether
gifting forms a distinct sphere of exchangethat can
be characterized as aneconomic system"; and the character of the social relationship that the gift exchange establishes. Gift ideology in highly commercialized societies diers from theprestationstypical of non-market
societies. Gift economies must also be dierentiated
[4] Frederick Engels. Socialism: Utopian and Scientic. from several closely related phenomena, such as common
Marxists.org. Retrieved 2013-12-22.
property regimes and the exchange of non-commodied
labour.
[5] Wood, John (1993). The life of Thorstein Veblen and perspectives on his thought. introd. Thorstein Veblen. New
York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-07487-8. The decisive
dierence between Marx and Veblen lay in their respective attitudes on socialism. For while Marx regarded socialism as the ultimate goal for civilization, Veblen saw
socialism as but one stage in the economic evolution of
society.
[6] The life of Thorstein Veblen and perspectives on his
thought, Wood, John (1993) (in English). The life of
Thorstein Veblen and perspectives on his thought. introd.
Thorstein Veblen. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-41507487-8. Part III Historical Materialism

1.17 Gift economy

A gift economy, gift culture or gift exchange is a mode
of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given
without an explicit agreement for immediate or future
rewards.* [1] This contrasts with a barter economy or a
market economy, where social norms and custom govern gift exchange. Gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other
commodity.* [2]
The nature of gift economies forms the subject of a foundational debate in anthropology. Anthropological research into gift economies began with Bronisaw Malinowski's description of the Kula ring* [3] in the Trobriand
Islands during World War I.* [4] The Kula trade appeared
to be gift-like since Trobrianders would travel great distances over dangerous seas to give what were considered valuable objects without any guarantee of a return. Malinowski's debate with the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss quickly established the complexity
of gift exchangeand introduced a series of technical terms such as reciprocity, inalienable possessions, and
prestation to distinguish between the dierent forms of
exchange.* [5]* [6]
According to anthropologists Maurice Bloch and
Jonathan Parry, it is the unsettled relationship between
market and non-market exchange that attracts the most
attention. Gift economies are said, by some,* [7] to build

1.17.1 Principles of gift exchange

According to anthropologist Jonathan Parry, discussion
on the nature of gifts, and of a separate sphere of gift
exchange that would constitute an economic system, has
been plagued by the ethnocentric use of modern, western,
market society-based conception of the gift applied as if
it were a cross-cultural, pan-historical universal. However, he claims that anthropologists, through analysis of a
variety of cultural and historical forms of exchange, have
established that no universal practice exists.* [9] His classic summation of the gift exchange debate highlighted
that ideologies of the pure giftare most likely to
arise in highly dierentiated societies with an advanced
division of labour and a signicant commercial sector
and need to be distinguished from non-market prestations.* [10] According to Weiner, to speak of a gift
economyin a non-market society is to ignore the distinctive features of their exchange relationships, as the early
classic debate between Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel
Mauss demonstrated.* [5]* [6] Gift exchange is frequently
"embedded" in political, kin, or religious institutions, and
therefore does not constitute aneconomicsystem per
se.* [11]
Property and alienability
Gift-giving is a form of transfer of property rights over
particular objects. The nature of those property rights
varies from society to society, from culture to culture, and
are not universal. The nature of gift-giving is thus altered
by the type of property regime in place.* [12]
Property is not a thing, but a relationship amongst
people about things.* [13] According to Hann, property is a social relationship that governs the conduct
of people with respect to the use and disposition of
things. Anthropologists analyze these relationships in
terms of a variety of actors' (individual or corporate) "bundle of rights" over objects.* [12] An example is the current debates around intellectual property
rights.* [14]* [15]* [16]* [17]* [18] Hann and Strangelove

1.17. GIFT ECONOMY

both give the example of a purchased book (an object
that he owns), over which the author retains a copyright. Although the book is a commodity, bought and
sold, it has not been completelyalienatedfrom its creator who maintains a hold over it; the owner of the book
is limited in what he can do with the book by the rights
of the creator.* [19]* [20] Weiner has argued that the ability to give while retaining a right to the gift/commodity
is a critical feature of the gifting cultures described by
Malinowski and Mauss, and explains, for example, why
some gifts such as Kula valuables return to their original
owners after an incredible journey around the Trobriand
islands. The gifts given in Kula exchange still remain, in
some respects, the property of the giver.* [6]
In the example used above, copyrightis one of those
bundled rights that regulate the use and disposition of a
book. Gift-giving in many societies is complicated becauseprivate propertyowned by an individual may be
quite limited in scope (see 'The Commons' below).* [12]
Productive resources, such as land, may be held by members of a corporate group (such as a lineage), but only
some members of that group may have "use rights".
When many people hold rights over the same objects gifting has very dierent implications than the gifting of private property; only some of the rights in that object may
be transferred, leaving that object still tied to its corporate
owners. Anthropologist Annette Weiner refers to these
types of objects as "inalienable possessions" and to the
process as keeping while giving.* [6]

69
is no such thing as the free giftgiven without expectation.* [22]
Mauss, in contrast, emphasized that the gifts were not between individuals, but between representatives of larger
collectivities. These gifts were, he argued, atotal prestation.A prestation is a service provided out of a sense of
obligation, like community service.* [23] They were
not simple, alienable commodities to be bought and sold,
but, like the "Crown jewels", embodied the reputation,
history and sense of identity of acorporate kin group,
such as a line of kings. Given the stakes, Mauss asked
why anyone would give them away?" His answer was an
enigmatic concept,the spirit of the gift.Parry believes
that a good part of the confusion (and resulting debate)
was due to a bad translation. Mauss appeared to be arguing that a return gift is given to keep the very relationship
between givers alive; a failure to return a gift ends the
relationship and the promise of any future gifts.
Both Malinowski and Mauss agreed that in non-market
societies, where there was no clear institutionalized economic exchange system, gift/prestation exchange served
economic, kinship, religious and political functions that
could not be clearly distinguished from each other,
and which mutually inuenced the nature of the practice.* [22]
Inalienable possessions

Gift vs prestation

Watercolor by James G. Swan depicting the Klallam people of

chief Chetzemoka at Port Townsend, with one of Chetzemoka's
wives distributing potlatch.
A Kula necklace, with its distinctive red shell-disc beads, from
the Trobriand Islands.

Mauss' concept of total prestationswas further developed by Annette Weiner, who revisited Malinowski's
Malinowski's study of the Kula ring* [21] became the eldsite in the Trobriand Islands. Her critique was
subject of debate with the French anthropologist, Mar- twofold: rst, Trobriand Island society is matrilineal, and
cel Mauss, author of "The Gift" (Essai sur le don, women hold a great deal of economic and political power.
1925).* [5] In Parry's view, Malinowski placed the em- Their exchanges were ignored by Malinowski. Secondly,
phasis on the exchange of goods between individuals, and she developed Mauss' argument about reciprocity and the
their non-altruistic motives for giving the gift: they ex- spirit of the giftin terms of "inalienable possessions:
pected a return of equal or greater value. Malinowski the paradox of keeping while giving.* [6] Weiner constates that reciprocity is an implicit part of gifting; there trasts moveable goodswhich can be exchanged with

70

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

immoveable goodsthat serve to draw the gifts back (in Charity, debt, and the poison of the gift
the Trobriand case, male Kula gifts with women's landed
property). She argues that the specic goods given, like Jonathan Parry has argued that ideologies of the pure
are most likely to arise only in highly dierentiated
Crown Jewels, are so identied with particular groups, gift
that even when given, they are not truly alienated. Not societies with an advanced division of labour and a sigall societies, however, have these kinds of goods, which nicant commercial sectorand need to be distinguished
depend upon the existence of particular kinds of kinship from the non-marketprestationsdiscussed above.* [10]
groups. French anthropologist Maurice Godelier* [24] Parry also underscored, using the example of charitable
pushed the analysis further in The Enigma of the Gift giving of alms in India (Dna), that thepure giftof alms
(1999). Albert Schrauwers has argued that the kinds of given with no expectation of return could bepoisonous.
societies used as examples by Weiner and Godelier (in- That is, the gift of alms embodying the sins of the giver,
cluding the Kula ring in the Trobriands, the Potlatch of when given to ritually pure priests, saddled these priests
the Indigenous peoples of the Pacic Northwest Coast, with impurities that they could not cleanse themselves of.
and the Toraja of South Sulawesi, Indonesia) are all char- Pure giftsgiven without a return, can place recipients
acterized by ranked aristocratic kin groups that t with in debt, and hence in dependent status: the poison of the
Claude Lvi-Strauss' model ofHouse Societies(where gift.* [28] David Graeber points out that no reciprocity is
Houserefers to both noble lineage and their landed es- expected between unequals: if you make a gift of a doltate). Total prestations are given, he argues, to preserve lar to a beggar, he will not give it back the next time you
landed estates identied with particular kin groups and meet. More than likely, he will ask for more, to the detriment of his status.* [29] Many who are forced by circummaintain their place in a ranked society.* [25]
stances to accept charity feel stigmatized. In the Moka
exchange system of Papua New Guinea, where gift givers
become political Big men, those who are in their debt and
Reciprocity and the spirit of the gift
unable to repay withinterestare referred to asRubbish men.
According to Chris Gregory reciprocity is a dyadic ex- In La part Maudite Georges Bataille, the French writer,
change relationship that we characterize, imprecisely, uses Mauss's argument in order to construct a theory of
as gift-giving. Gregory believes that one gives gifts to economy: the structure of gift is the presupposition for
friends and potential enemies in order to establish a rela- all possible economy. Bataille is particularly interested
tionship, by placing them in debt. He also claimed that in the potlatch as described by Mauss, and claims that
in order for such a relationship to persist, there must be its agonistic character obliges the receiver of the gift to
a time lag between the gift and counter-gift; one or the conrm their own subjection. Gift-giving thus embodies
other partner must always be in debt, or there is no rela- the Hegelian dipole of master and slave within the act.
tionship. Marshall Sahlins has stated that birthday gifts
are an example of this.* [26] Sahlins notes that birthday
presents are separated in time so that one partner feels the Spheres of exchange and 'economic systems'
obligation to make a return gift; and to forget the return
gift may be enough to end the relationship. Gregory has The relationship of new market exchange systems to instated that without a relationship of debt, there is no reci- digenous non-market exchange remained a perplexing
procity, and that this is what distinguishes a gift economy question for anthropologists. Paul Bohannan argued that
from a true giftgiven with no expectation of return the Tiv of Nigeria had three spheres of exchange, and
(something Sahlins calls 'generalized reciprocity', see be- that only certain kinds of goods could be exchanged in
low).* [27]
each sphere; each sphere had its own dierent form of
Marshall Sahlins, an American cultural anthropologist, special purpose money. However, the market and uniidentied three main types of reciprocity in his book versal money allowed goods to be traded between spheres
served as an acid on established social relationStone Age Economics (1972). Gift or generalized reci- and thus
*
[30]
Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, argued in
ships.
procity is the exchange of goods and services without
Money
and
the Morality of Exchange(1989), that the
keeping track of their exact value, but often with the extransactional
orderthrough which long-term social repectation that their value will balance out over time. Balproduction
of
the
family takes place has to be preserved as
anced or Symmetrical reciprocity occurs when someone
separate
from
short-term
market relations.* [31] It is the
gives to someone else, expecting a fair and tangible return at a specied amount, time, and place. Market or long-term social reproduction of the family that is sacralNegative reciprocity is the exchange of goods and services ized by religious rituals such baptisms, weddings and fuwhere each party intends to prot from the exchange, nerals, and characterized by gifting.
often at the expense of the other. Gift economies, or
generalized reciprocity, occurred within closely knit kin
groups, and the more distant the exchange partner, the
more balanced or negative the exchange became.* [26]

In such situations where gift-giving and market exchange

were intersecting for the rst time, some anthropologists
contrasted them as polar opposites. This opposition was
classically expressed by Chris Gregory in his bookGifts

1.17. GIFT ECONOMY

and Commodities(1982). Gregory argued that

71

1.17.2 Case studies: Prestations

Marcel Mauss was careful to distinguishgift economies

(reciprocity) in market-based societies from the total
prestationsgiven in non-market societies. A prestation
is a service provided out of a sense of obligation, like
community service.* [23] These prestationsbring
together domains that we would dierentiate as political, religious, legal, moral and economic, such that the
exchange can be seen to be embedded in non-economic
social institutions. These prestations are frequently competitive, as in the Potlatch, Kula exchange, and Moka ex*
Gregory opposes gift and commodity exchange according change. [35]
to ve criteria:
Commodity exchange is an exchange of
alienable objects between people who are in
a state of reciprocal independence that establishes a quantitative relationship between the
objects exchanged... Gift exchange is an exchange of inalienable objects between people
who are in a state of reciprocal dependence that
establishes a qualitative relationship between
the transactors (emphasis added).* [32]

Other anthropologists, however, refused to see these Moka exchange in Papua New Guinea: competitive
dierent "exchange spheres" as such polar opposites. exchange
Marilyn Strathern, writing on a similar area in Papua New
Guinea, dismissed the utility of the opposition in The Main article: Moka exchange
Gender of the Gift(1988).* [33]
The Moka is a highly ritualized system of exchange

Wedding rings: commodity or pure gift?

Rather than emphasize how particular kinds of objects

are either gifts or commodities to be traded in restricted
spheres of exchange, Arjun Appadurai and others began
to look at how objects owed between these spheres of
exchange (i.e. how objects can be converted into gifts
and then back into commodities). They refocussed attention away from the character of the human relationships
formed through exchange, and placed it on the social
life of thingsinstead. They examined the strategies by
which an object could be "singularized" (made unique,
special, one-of-a-kind) and so withdrawn from the market. A marriage ceremony that transforms a purchased
ring into an irreplaceable family heirloom is one example;
the heirloom, in turn, makes a perfect gift. Singularization is the reverse of the seemingly irresistible process of
commodication. They thus show how all economies are
a constant ow of material objects that enter and leave
specic exchange spheres. A similar approach is taken
by Nicholas Thomas, who examines the same range of
cultures and the anthropologists who write on them, and
redirects attention to the entangled objectsand their
roles as both gifts and commodities.* [34]

Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea.

in the Mount Hagen area, Papua New Guinea, that has

become emblematic of the anthropological concepts of
gift economyand of "Big man" political system. Moka
are reciprocal gifts of pigs through which social status is
achieved. Moka refers specically to the increment in
the size of the gift.* [36] Social status in the 'Big man' political system is the result of giving larger gifts than one
has received. These gifts are of a limited range of goods,
primarily pigs and scarce pearl shells from the coast. To
return the same amount as one has received in a moka is
simply the repayment of a debt, strict reciprocity. Moka
is the extra. To some, this represents interest on an investment. However, one is not bound to provide moka, only
to repay the debt. One adds moka to the gift to increase
one's prestige, and to place the receiver in debt. It is this
constant renewal of the debt relationship which keeps the

72
relationship alive; a debt fully paid o ends further interaction. Giving more than one receives establishes a reputation as a Big man, whereas the simple repayment of
debt, or failure to fully repay, pushes one's reputation towards the other end of the scale, Rubbish man.* [37] Gift
exchange thus has a political eect; granting prestige or
status to one, and a sense of debt in the other. A political
system can be built out of these kinds of status relationships. Sahlins characterizes the dierence between status
and rank by highlighting that Big man is not a role; it is
a status that is shared by many. The Big man is not a
prince OF men,but a prince among men.The Big
man system is based upon the ability to persuade, rather
than command.* [38]
Toraja funerals: the politics of meat distribution

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually
attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several
days. The funerals are like Big men competitions where
all the descendants of a Tongkonan will compete through
gifts of sacricial cattle. Participants will have invested
cattle with others over the years, and will now draw on
those extended networks to make the largest gift. The
winner of the competition becomes the new owner of the
Tongkonan and its rice lands. They display all the cattle
horns from their winning sacrice on a pole in front of
the Tongkonan.* [40]
The Toraja funeral diers from the Big Man system in
that the winner of the giftexchange gains control of
the Tongkonan's property. It creates a clear social hierarchy between the noble owners of the Tongkonan and
its land, and the commoners who are forced to rent their
elds from him. Since the owners of the Tongkonan gain
rent, they are better able to compete in the funeral gift
exchanges, and their social rank is more stable than the
Big man system.* [40]

1.17.3 Charity and alms giving

Main article: Alms

Three tongkonan noble houses in a Torajan village.

Anthropologist David Graeber has argued that the great

world religious traditions on charity and gift giving
emerged almost simultaneously during the "Axial age"
(the period between 800 to 200 BCE), which was the
same period in which coinage was invented and market economies established on a continental basis. These
religious traditions on charity emerge, he argues, as a
reaction against the nexus formed by coinage, slavery,
military violence and the market (a military-coinage
complex). The new world religions, including Hinduism,
Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and
Islam all sought to preserve human economieswhere
money served to cement social relationships rather than
purchase things (including people).* [41]
Charity and alms-giving are religiously sanctioned voluntary gifts given without expectation of return. Case studies demonstrate, however, that such gift-giving is not necessarily altruistic.* [42]

Ritual slaughter of gift cattle at a funeral.

Merit making in Buddhist Thailand

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia.* [39] Torajans
are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites
carved into rocky clis, and massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan which are owned by
noble families. Membership in a Tongkonan is inherited
by all descendants of its founders. Any individual Toraja
may thus be a member of numerous Tongkonan, as long
as they contribute to its ritual events. Membership in a
Tongkonan carries benets, such as the right to rent some
of its rice elds.* [40]

Theravada Buddhism in Thailand emphasizes the importance of giving alms (merit making) without any intention of return (a pure gift), which is best accomplished
according to doctrine, through gifts to monks and temples. The emphasis is on the seless gifting whichearns
merit(and a future better life) for the giver rather than
on the relief of the poor or the recipient on whom the gift
is bestowed. Bowie's research among poorer Thai farmers shows, however, that this ideal form of gifting is limited to the rich who have the resources to endow temples,

1.17. GIFT ECONOMY

73
The Children of Peace in Canada

Sharon Temple.
Young Burmese monk

or sponsor the ordination of a monk.* [43] Monks come

from these same families, hence the doctrine of pure gifting to monks has a class element to it. Poorer farmers
place much less emphasis on merit making through gifts
to monks and temples. They equally validate gifting to
beggars. Poverty and famine is widespread amongst these
poorer groups, and by validating gift-giving to beggars,
they are in fact demanding that the rich see to their needs
in hard times. Bowie sees this as an example of a moral
economy (see below) in which the poor use gossip and
reputation as a means of resisting elite exploitation and
pressuring them to ease theirthis worldsuering.* [44]

Charity: Dana in India

Dna is a form of religious charity given in Hindu India.
The gift is said to embody the sins of the giver (the 'poison of the gift'), who it frees of evil by transmitting it to
the recipient. The merit of the gift is dependent on nding a worthy recipient such as a Brahman priest. Priests
are supposed to be able to digest the sin through ritual
action and transmit the gift with increment to someone
of greater worth. It is imperative that this be a true gift,
with no reciprocity, or the evil will return. The gift is
not intended to create any relationship between donor and
recipient, and there should never be a return gift. Dana
thus transgresses the so-called universal 'norm of reciprocity'.* [10]

The Children of Peace (18121889) were a utopian

Quaker sect. Today, they are primarily remembered for
the Sharon Temple, a national historic site and an architectural symbol of their vision of a society based on the
values of peace, equality and social justice. They built
this ornate temple to raise money for the poor, and built
the province of Ontario's rst shelter for the homeless.
They took a lead role in the organization of the province's
rst co-operative, the Farmers' Storehouse, and opened
the province's rst credit union. The group soon found
that the charity they tried to distribute from their Temple
fund endangered the poor. Accepting charity was a sign
of indebtedness, and the debtor could be jailed without
trial at the time; this was the 'poison of the gift.' They
thus transformed their charity fund into a credit union
that loaned small sums like today's micro-credit institutions. This is an example of singularization, as money was
transformed into charity in the Temple ceremony, then
shifted to an alternate exchange sphere as a loan. Interest
on the loan was then singularized, and transformed back
into charity.* [45]

1.17.4 Gifting as non-commodied exchange in market societies

Non-commodied spheres of exchange exist in relation
to the market economy. They are created through the
processes of singularization as specic objects are decommodied for a variety of reasons and enter an alternate exchange sphere. As in the case of organ donation,
this may be the result of an ideological opposition to the
trac in humans.In other cases, it is in opposition to
the market and to its perceived greed. It may, however, be

74
used by corporations as a means of creating a sense of endebtedness and loyalty in customers. It is very interesting
that modern marketing techniques often aim at infusing
commodity exchange with features of gift exchange, thus
blurring the presumably sharp distinction between gifts
and commodities.* [46]
Organ transplant networks, sperm and blood banks

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

Unlike body organs, blood and semen have been successfully and legally commodied in the United States. Blood
and semen can thus be commodied, but once consumed
arethe gift of life.Although both can be either donated
or sold; are perceived as the 'gift of life' yet are stored
in 'banks'; and can be collected only under strict government regulated procedures, recipients very clearly prefer
altruistically donated semen and blood. Ironically, the
blood and semen samples with the highest market value
are those that have been altruistically donated. The recipients view semen as storing the potential characteristics
of their unborn child in its DNA, and value altruism over
greed.* [50] Similarly, gifted blood is the archetype of a
pure gift relationship because the donor is only motivated
by a desire to help others.* [51]
Copyleft vs copyright: the gift of 'free' speech
Main article: Copyleft
Engineers, scientists and software developers have created open-source software projects such as the Linux kernel and the GNU operating system. They are prototypical examples for the gift economy's prominence in the
technology sector and its active role in instating the use
of permissive free software and copyleft licenses, which
allow free reuse of software and knowledge. Other examples include le-sharing and open access.
Points: Loyalty programs
Main article: Loyalty program

Blood donation poster, WW II.

Main article: Organ gifting

Market economies tend to reduce everything -including
human beings, their labor, and their reproductive capacityto the status of commodities. The rapid transfer of
organ transplant technology to the third world has created a trade in organs, with sick bodies travelling to the
global south for transplants, and healthy organs from the
global south being transported to the richer global north,
creating a kind of 'Kula ring' of bodies and body parts.
*
[47] However, all commodities can also be singularized,
or de-commodied, and transformed into gifts. In North
America, it is illegal to sell organs, and citizens are enjoined to give the gift of lifeand donate their organs
in an organ gift economy.* [48] However, this gift economy is a medical realm rife with potent forms of mystied commodication.* [49] This multi-million dollar
medical industry requires clients to pay steep fees for the
gifted organ, which creates clear class divisions between
those who donate (frequently in the global south) and will
never benet from gifted organs, and those who can pay
the fees and thereby receive the gifted organ.* [48]

Many retail organizations havegiftprograms meant to

encourage customer loyalty to their establishments. BirdDavid and Darr refer to these as hybrid mass-gifts
which are neither gift nor commodity. They are called
mass-gifts because they are given away in large numbers free with purchasein a mass-consumption environment. They give as an example two bars of soap in
which one is given free with purchase: which is the commodity and which the gift? The mass-gift both arms
the distinct dierence between gift and commodity while
confusing it at the same time. As with gifting, mass-gifts
are used to create a social relationship. Some customers
embrace the relationship and gift whereas others reject
the gift relationship and interpret thegiftas a 50% o
sale.* [52]
Free shops
Main article: Give-away shop
"Give-away shops", freeshopsor free storesare
stores where all goods are free. They are similar to
charity shops, with mostly second-hand itemsonly everything is available at no cost. Whether it is a book,

1.17. GIFT ECONOMY

Inside Utrecht Giveaway shop. The banner reads The earth

has enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed.

75

Black Rock City, the temporary settlement created in the Nevada

Desert for Burning Man, 2010.

a piece of furniture, a garment or a household item, it 1.17.5 Related concepts

is all freely given away, although some operate a onein, one-outtype policy (swap shops). The free store is Mutual aid
a form of constructive direct action that provides a shopping alternative to a monetary framework, allowing peo- Main article: Mutualism (economic theory)
ple to exchange goods and services outside of a money- Many anarchists, particularly anarcho-primitivists and
based economy. The anarchist 1960s countercultural
group The Diggers* [53] opened free stores which simply gave away their stock, provided free food, distributed
free drugs, gave away money, organized free music concerts, and performed works of political art.* [54] The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers led
by Gerrard Winstanley* [55] and sought to create a minisociety free of money and capitalism.* [56] Although free
stores have not been uncommon in the United States since
the 1960s, the freegan movement has inspired the establishment of more free stores. Today the idea is kept alive
by the new generations of social centres, anarchists and
environmentalists who view the idea as an intriguing way
to raise awareness about consumer culture and to promote
the reuse of commodities.
Burning Man
Main article: Burning Man
Burning Man is a week-long annual art and community
event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada,
in the United States. The event is described as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical
self-reliance. The event outlaws commerce (except for
ice, coee, and tickets to the event itself)* [57] and encourages gifting.* [58] Gifting is one of the 10 guiding
principles,* [59] as participants to Burning Man (both the
desert festival and the year-round global community) are
encouraged to rely on a gift economy. The practice of
gifting at Burning Man is also documented by the 2002
documentary lm Gifting It: A Burning Embrace of
Gift Economy,* [60] as well as by Making Contact's radio show How We Survive: The Currency of Giving
[encore]".* [58]

The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin, inuential work

which presents the economic vision of anarcho-communism.

anarcho-communists, believe that variations on a gift

economy may be the key to breaking the cycle of poverty.
Therefore, they often desire to refashion all of society
into a gift economy. Anarcho-communists advocate a

76
gift economy as an ideal, with neither money, nor markets, nor central planning. This view traces back at least
to Peter Kropotkin, who saw in the hunter-gatherer tribes
he had visited the paradigm of "mutual aid".* [61] In place
of a market, anarcho-communists, such as those who inhabited some Spanish villages in the 1930s, support a
currency-less gift economy where goods and services are
produced by workers and distributed in community stores
where everyone (including the workers who produced
them) is essentially entitled to consume whatever they
want or need as payment for their production of goods
and services.* [62]
As an intellectual abstraction, mutual aid was developed and advanced by mutualism or labor insurance systems and thus trade unions, and has been also used in
cooperatives and other civil society movements. Typically, mutual-aid groups will be free to join and participate in, and all activities will be voluntary. They are often structured as non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic nonprot organizations, with members controlling all resources and no external nancial or professional support. They are member-led and member-organized.
They are egalitarian in nature, and designed to support
participatory democracy, equality of member status and
power, and shared leadership and cooperative decisionmaking. Members' external societal status is considered
irrelevant inside the group: status in the group is conferred by participation.* [63]

Moral economy
English historian E.P. Thompson wrote of the moral
economy of the poor in the context of widespread English
food riots in the English countryside in the late eighteenth
century. According to Thompson these riots were generally peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political
culture rooted in feudal rights to set the priceof essential goods in the market. These peasants held that a
traditional fair pricewas more important to the community than a freemarket price and they punished
large farmers who sold their surpluses at higher prices
outside the village while there were still those in need
within the village. A moral economy is thus an attempt to
preserve an alternate exchange sphere from market penetration.* [64]* [65] The notion of a peasants with a noncapitalist cultural mentalit using the market for their own
ends has been linked to subsistence agriculture and the
need for subsistence insurance in hard times. James C.
Scott points out, however, that those who provide this
subsistence insurance to the poor in bad years are wealthy
patrons who exact a political cost for their aid; this aid is
given to recruit followers. The concept of moral economy has been used to explain why peasants in a number
of colonial contexts, such as the Vietnam War, have rebelled.* [66]

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

The commons
Main articles: Commons and The tragedy of the commons
Some may confuse common property regimes with gift
exchange systems. Commonsrefers to the cultural
and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and
a habitable earth. These resources are held in common,
not owned privately.* [67] The resources held in common can include everything from natural resources and
common land to software.* [68] The commons contains
public property and private property, over which people have certain traditional rights. When commonly held
property is transformed into private property this process
alternatively is termed "enclosure" or more commonly,
privatization.A person who has a right in, or over, common land jointly with another or others is called a commoner.* [69]
There are a number of important aspects that can be used
to describe true commons. The rst is that the commons
cannot be commodied if they are, they cease to be
commons. The second aspect is that unlike private property, the commons are inclusive rather than exclusive
their nature is to share ownership as widely, rather than
as narrowly, as possible. The third aspect is that the assets in commons are meant to be preserved regardless of
their return of capital. Just as we receive them as a shared
right, so we have a duty to pass them on to future generations in at least the same condition as we received them.
If we can add to their value, so much the better, but at
a minimum we must not degrade them, and we certainly
have no right to destroy them.* [70]
The new intellectual commons: Free content
Main article: Free content
Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets
the denition of a free cultural work.* [71] A free cultural
work is one which has no signicant legal restriction on
people's freedom:
to use the content and benet from using it,
to study the content and apply what is learned,
to make and distribute copies of the content,
to change and improve the content and distribute
these derivative works.* [72]* [73]
Although dierent denitions are used, free content is
legally similar if not identical to open content. An analogy is the use of the rival terms free software and open

1.17. GIFT ECONOMY

77

source which describe ideological dierences rather than benets, was more rarely reported. Many of those
legal ones.* [74]
surveyed said things like, Mainly I contribute just to
develop
Free content encompasses all works in the public domain make it work for me, and programmers
*
[80]
The
International
software
to
'scratch
an
itch'".
and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor
and uphold the freedoms mentioned above. Because Institute of Infonomics at the University of Maastricht,
copyright law in most countries by default grants copy- in the Netherlands, reported in 2002 that in addition
right holders monopolistic control over their creations, to the above, large corporations, and they specically
copyright content must be explicitly declared free, usually mentioned IBM, also spend large annual sums employing developers specically for them to contribute to
by the referencing or inclusion of licensing statements
open source projects. The rms' and the employees'
from within the work.
motivations in such cases are less clear.* [81]
Though a work which is in the public domain because its
often speak of their
copyright has expired is considered free, it can become Members of the Linux community
*
[82]
The
IT research rm
community
as
a
gift
economy.
*
non-free again if the copyright law changes. [75]
IDC valued the Linux kernel at $18 billion USD in 2007
Information is particularly suited to gift economies, as in- and projected its value at $40 billion USD in 2010.* [83]
formation is a nonrival good and can be gifted at practi- The Debian distribution of the GNU/Linux operating syscally no cost (zero marginal cost).* [76]* [77] In fact, there tem oers over 37,000 free open-source software packis often an advantage to using the same software or data ages via their AMD64 repositories alone.* [84]
formats as others, so even from a selsh perspective, it
can be advantageous to give away one's information.
Collaborative works Collaborative works are works
created by an open community. For example, Wikipedia
Filesharing Markus Giesler in his ethnography Con a free online encyclopedia features millions of arsumer Gift System, described music downloading as a systicles developed collaboratively, and almost none of its
tem of social solidarity based on gift transactions.* [78]
many authors and editors receive any direct material reAs Internet access spread, le sharing became extremely
ward.* [85]* [86]
popular among users who could contribute and receive
les on line. This form of gift economy was a model for
online services such as Napster, which focused on music sharing and was later sued for copyright infringement. 1.17.6 Characteristics
Nonetheless, online le sharing persists in various forms
such as Bit Torrent and Direct download link. A number Many societies have strong prohibitions against turning
of communications and intellectual property experts such gifts into trade or capital goods. Anthropologist Wendy
as Henry Jenkins and Lawrence Lessig have described James writes that among the Uduk people of northeast
le-sharing as a form of gift exchange which provides Africa there is a strong custom that any gift that crosses
numerous benets to artists and consumers alike. They subclan boundaries must be consumed rather than in*
*
have argued that le sharing fosters community among vested. [87] :4 For example, an animal given as a gift
distributors and allows for a more equitable distribution must be eaten, not bred. However, as in the example
of the Trobriand armbands and necklaces, this perishof media.
ingmay not consist of consumption as such, but of the
gift moving on. In other societies, it is a matter of givFree and open-source software In his essay ing some other gift, either directly in return or to another
"Homesteading the Noosphere", noted computer party. To keep the gift and not give another in exchange
programmer Eric S. Raymond said that free and open- is reprehensible. In folk tales,Lewis Hyde remarks,
source software developers have created a 'gift culture' the person who tries to hold onto a gift usually dies.
in which participants compete for prestige by giving * [87]* :5
time, energy, and creativity away.* [79] Prestige gained
as a result of contributions to source code fosters a social Daniel Everett, a linguist *who studied a small tribe of
network for the developer; the open source community hunter-gatherers in Brazil, [88] reported that, while they
will recognize the developer's accomplishments and are aware of food preservation using drying, salting, and
intelligence. Consequently, the developer may nd more so forth, they reserve the use of these techniques for items
opportunities to work with other developers. However, for barter outside of the tribe. Within the group, when
prestige is not the only motivator for the giving of someone has a successful hunt they immediately share
lines of code. An anthropological study of the Fedora the abundance by inviting others to enjoy a feast. Asked
I
community, as part of a master's study at the University about this practice, one hunter laughed *and replied,
*
[89]
[90]
store
meat
in
the
belly
of
my
brother.
of North Texas in 2010-11, found that common reasons
given by contributors were learning for the joy of Carol Stack's All Our Kin describes both the positive and
learning and collaborating with interesting and smart negative sides of a network of obligation and gratitude
people. Motivation for personal gain, such as career eectively constituting a gift economy. Her narrative of

78

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

The Flats, a poor Chicago neighborhood, tells in pass- [8] J. Parry, M. Bloch (1989). Introductionin Money and
the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge Uniing the story of two sisters who each came into a small
versity Press. pp. 812.
inheritance. One sister hoarded the inheritance and prospered materially for some time, but was alienated from [9] Parry, Jonathan (1986).
The Gift, the Indian
the community. Her marriage ultimately broke up, and
Gift and the 'Indian Gift'". Man 21 (3): 453473.
she integrated herself back into the community largely
doi:10.2307/2803096.
by giving gifts. The other sister fullled the community's expectations, but within six weeks had nothing ma- [10] Parry, Jonathan (1986).The Gift, the Indian Gift and the
'Indian Gift'". Man 21 (3): 467. doi:10.2307/2803096.
terial to show for the inheritance but a coat and a pair of
*
*
shoes. [87] :7576
[11] Gregory, Chris (1982). Gifts and Commodities. London:
Academic Press. pp. 69.

1.17.7

See also

Knowledge market
Basic income
Brownie points
Egoboo
Food swap
Giving circles
History of money
Calculation in kind
Reciprocity in cultural anthropology
Post-scarcity economy
Pay it forward

1.17.8

Notes

[1] Cheal, David J (1988). 1. The Gift Economy. New

York: Routledge. pp. 119. ISBN 0415006414. Retrieved 2009-06-18.
[2] R. Kranton: Reciprocal exchange: a self-sustaining system, American Economic Review, V. 86 (1996), Issue 4
(September), p. 830-51
[3] Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922). Argonauts of the Western
Pacic. London.
[4] Keesing, Roger; Strathern, Andrew (1988). Cultural Anthropology. A Contemporary Perspective. Fort Worth:
Harcourt Brace and Company. p. 165.
[5] Mauss, Marcel (1970). The Gift: Forms and Functions of
Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Cohen & West.
[6] Weiner, Annette (1992). Inalienable Possessions: The
Paradox of Keeping-while-Giving. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
[7] Bollier, David. The Stubborn Vitality of the Gift Economy.Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common
Wealth. First Printing ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.
38-39. Print.

[12] Hann, C.M. (1998). Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 4.
[13] Sider, Gerald M. (1980). The Ties That Bind: Culture and Agriculture, Property and Propriety in the Newfoundland Village Fishery. Social History 5 (1): 23,
17. doi:10.1080/03071028008567469.
[14] Coleman, Gabriella (2004). The Political Agnosticism
of Free and Open Source Software and the Inadvertent
Politics of Contrast. Anthropological Quarterly 77 (3):
50719. doi:10.1353/anq.2004.0035.
[15] Levitt, Leon (1987). On property, Intellectual Property, the Culture of Property, and Software Pirating. Anthropology of Work Review 8 (1): 79.
doi:10.1525/awr.1987.8.1.7.
[16] Friedman, Jonathan (1999). American Ethnologist 26 (4):
10012. Missing or empty |title= (help)
[17] Aragon, Lorraine; James Leach (2008). Arts and Owners: Intellectual property law and the politics of scale in
Indonesian Arts. American Ethnologist 35 (4): 60731.
doi:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2008.00101.x.
[18] Coombe, Rosemary J. (1993). Cultural and Intellectual Properties: Occupying the Colonial Imagination.
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 16 (1):
815. doi:10.1525/pol.1993.16.1.8.
[19] Chris Hann, Keith Hart (2011). Economic Anthropology:
History, Ethnography, Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.
p. 158.
[20] Strangelove, Michael (2005). The Empire of Mind: Digital
Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 926.
[21] Malinowski, Bronislaw (1984) [1922]. Argonauts of the
Western Pacic : an account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea.
Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press.
[22] Parry, Jonathan (1986).
The Gift, the Indian
Gift and the 'Indian Gift'". Man 21 (3): 46669.
doi:10.2307/2803096.
[23] Hann, Chris, Hart, Keith (2011). Economic Anthropology:
History, Ethnography, Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.
p. 50.
[24] Godelier, Maurice (1999). The Enigma of the Gift. Cambridge: Polity Press.

1.17. GIFT ECONOMY

79

[25] Schrauwers, Albert (2004). H(h)ouses, E(e)states and [43] Bowie, Katherine (1998).
The Alchemy of
class: On the importance of capitals in central Sulawesi
Charity: Of class and Buddhism in Northern Thai. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 160 (1):
land. American Anthropologist 100 (2): 4734.
7294. doi:10.1163/22134379-90003735.
doi:10.1525/aa.1998.100.2.469.
[26] Sahlins, Marshall (1972). Stone Age Economics. Chicago:
Aldine-Atherton. ISBN 0-202-01099-6.
[27] Gregory, Chris (1982). Gifts and Commodities. London:
Academic Press. pp. 189194.

[44] Bowie, Katherine (1998).

The Alchemy of
Charity: Of class and Buddhism in Northern Thailand. American Anthropologist 100 (2): 4757.
doi:10.1525/aa.1998.100.2.469.

[28] Parry, Jonathan (1986).

The Gift, the Indian
Gift and the 'Indian Gift'". Man 21 (3): 46367.
doi:10.2307/2803096.

[45] Schrauwers, Albert (2009). 'Union is Strength': W.L.

Mackenzie, The Children of Peace and the Emergence of
Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 97124.

[29] Graeber, David (2001). Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The false coin of our own dreams. New
York: Palgrave. p. 225.

[46] "Features of gift exchange in market economy"

[30] Bohannan, Paul (1959).

The Impact of money
on an African subsistence economy.
The
Journal of Economic History 19 (4):
491503.
doi:10.1017/S0022050700085946.
[31] Parry, Jonathan; Maurice Bloch (1989). Money and the
Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. pp. 2830.
[32] Gregory, Chris (1982). Gifts and Commodities. London:
Academic Press. pp. 100101.
[33] Strathern, Marilyn (1988). The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia.
Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 1437.
[34] Thomas, Nicholas (1991). Entangled Objects: Exchange,
Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[35] Graeber, David (2001). Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value. Basingstoke: Palgrave. p. 153.
[36] Gregory, C.A. (1982). Gifts and Commodities. London:
Academic Press. p. 53.
[37] Gregory, C.A. (1982). Gifts and Commodities. London:
Academic Press. pp. 5354.

[47] Schepper-Hughes, Nancy (2000). The Global Trac

in Human Organs. Current Anthropology 41 (2): 193.
doi:10.1086/300123.
[48] Schepper-Hughes, Nancy (2000). The Global Trac in
Human Organs. Current Anthropology 41 (2): 191224.
doi:10.1086/300123.
[49] Sharp, Lesley A. (2000). The Commodication of the
Body and its Parts. Annual Review of Anthropology 29:
303. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.287.
[50] Tober, Diane M. (2001).
Semen as Gift, Semen as Goods: Reproductive Workers and the Market in Altruism. Body & Society 7 (2-3): 13760.
doi:10.1177/1357034x0100700205.
[51] Titmuss, Richard (1997). The Gift Relationship: From human blood to social policy. New York: The New Press.
[52] Bird-David, Nurit; Darr, Asaf (2009).Commodity, gift
and mass-gift: on gift-commodity hybrids in advanced
mass consumption cultures. Economy and Society 38
(2): 30425. doi:10.1080/03085140902786777.
[53] John Campbell McMillian; Paul Buhle (2003). The new
left revisited. Temple University Press. pp. 112. ISBN
978-1-56639-976-0. Retrieved 28 December 2011.

[38] Sahlins, Marshall (1963). Poor Man, Rich Man, BigMan, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia [54] Lytle 2006, pp. 213, 215.
. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 3 5: 2947.
doi:10.1017/s0010417500001729.
[55] Overview: who were (are) the Diggers?". The Digger
Archives. Retrieved 2007-06-17.
[39] Tana Toraja ocial website(in Indonesian). Archived
from the original on May 29, 2006. Retrieved 2006-10- [56] Gail Dolgin; Vicente Franco (2007). American Experi04.
ence: The Summer of Love. PBS. Retrieved 2007-04-23.
[40] Schrauwers, Albert (2004). H(h)ouses, E(e)states and
class; On the importance of capitals in central Sulawesi [57] What is Burning Man? FAQ - Preparation Retrieved
10/5/11
. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 160 (1):
8386. doi:10.1163/22134379-90003735.
[58] How We Survive: The Currency of Giving (Encore)"
Making Contact, produced by National Radio Project.
[41] Graeber, David (2011). Debt: The rst 5,000 years. New
December 21, 2010.
York: Melville House. pp. 22349.
[42] Bowie, Katherine (1998).
The Alchemy of
Charity: Of class and Buddhism in Northern Thailand. American Anthropologist 100 (2): 46981.
doi:10.1525/aa.1998.100.2.469.

[59] Burning Man principles include Gift Economy

[60] Gifting It: A Burning Embrace of Gift Economy - documentary on IMDB

80

[61] Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1955 paperback

(reprinted 2005), includes Kropotkin's 1914 preface,
Foreword and Bibliography by Ashley Montagu, and
The Struggle for Existence, by Thomas H. Huxley ed.).
Boston: Extending Horizons Books, Porter Sargent Publishers. ISBN 0-87558-024-6. Project Gutenberg e-text,
Project LibriVox audiobook
[62] [Augustin Souchy,A Journey Through Aragon,in Sam
Dolgo (ed.), The Anarchist Collectives, ch. 10]

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

[80] Suehle, Ruth. An anthropologist's view of an open

source community. opensource.com. Retrieved 19
March 2012.
[81] Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and
Study. International Institute of Infonomics, University of Maastricht and Berlecon Research GmbH. 2002.
Retrieved 19 March 2012.
[82] Matzan, Jem (5 June 2004). The gift economy and free
software. Retrieved 3 April 2012.

[63] Turner, Francis J. (2005). Canadian encyclopedia of social work. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University
Press. pp. 3378. ISBN 0889204365.

[83] http://www.cioupdate.com/news/article.php/3660141/
IDC-Linux-Ecosystem-Worth-40-Billion-by-2010.htm

[64] Thompson, Edward P. (1991). Customs in Common. New

York: New Press. p. 341.

[84] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/
ch02.en.html

[65] Thompson, Edward P. (1991). Customs in Common. New

York: New Press.

[85] D. Anthony, S. W. Smith, and T. Williamson, "Explaining

quality in internet collective goods: zealots and good
samaritans in the case of Wikipedia,THanover : Dartmouth College, Technical Report, November 2005.

[66] Scott, James C. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[67] Bollier, David (2002). Reclaiming the commons.
Boston Review.
[68] Berry, David (21 February 2005).The commons. Free
Software Magazine.
[69] Anon. Commoner. Farlex Inc. Retrieved 20 April
2012.
[70] Barnes, Peter (2006). Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ISBN 9781-57675-361-3.
[71] http://freecontentdefinition.org/Definition
[72] Denition of Free Cultural Works. Retrieved 8 December 2011.
[73] Stallman, Richard (November 13, 2008).Free Software
and Free Manuals. Free Software Foundation. Retrieved
March 22, 2009.
[74] Stallman, Richard. Why Open Source misses the point
of Free Software. Free Software Foundation.
[75] Anderson, Nate (July 16, 2008).EU caves to aging rockers, wants 45-year copyright extension. Ars Technica.
Retrieved August 8, 2008.

[86] Anthony, Denise; Smith, Sean W.; Williamson, Tim

(April 2007), The Quality of Open Source Production:
Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia"
(PDF), Technical Report TR2007-606 (Dartmouth College), retrieved 2011-05-29
[87] Lewis Hyde: The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of
Property, pg. 18
[88] Everett, Daniel L. (AugOct 2005).Cultural Constraints
on Grammar and Cognition in Pirah: Another Look at
the Design Features of Human Language. Current Anthropology 46 (4).
[89] Curren, Erik (2012). Charles Eisenstein wants to devalue your money to save the economy. Transition
Voice. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
[90] Eisenstein, Charles (2007). 2. The Ascent of Humanity. Harrisburg, PA: Pananthea Press. ISBN 9780977622207. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

1.17.9 Further reading

The concept of a gift economy has played a large role
in works of ction about alternate societies, especially in
works of science ction. Examples include:

[76] Mackaay, Ejan (1990).Economic Incentives in Markets

for Information and Innovation. Harvard Journal of Law
& Public Policy 13 (909): 867910.

News from Nowhere (1890) by William Morris is a

utopian novel about a society which operates on a
gift economy.

[77] Heylighen, Francis (2007).Why is Open Access Development so Successful?". In B. Lutterbeck, M. Barwol,
and R. A. Gehring. Open Source Jahrbuch. Lehmanns
Media.

The Great Explosion (1962) by Eric Frank Russell

describes the encounter of a military survey ship and
a Gandhian pacist society that operates as a gift
economy.

[78] Markus Giesler, Consumer Gift Systems

[79] http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/
homesteading/

The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin is a

novel about a gift economy society that had exiled
themselves from their (capitalist) homeplanet.

1.18. COMMUNIST SOCIETY

The Mars trilogy, a series of books written by Kim
Stanley Robinson in the 1990s, suggests that new human societies that develop away from Earth could
migrate toward a gift economy.
The movie Pay It Forward (2000) centers on a
schoolboy who, for a school project, comes up with
the idea of doing a good deed for another and then
asking the recipient topay it forward. Although
the phrasegift economyis never explicitly mentioned, the scheme would, in eect, create one.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003) by Cory
Doctorow describes future society where rejuvenation and body-enhancement have made death obsolete, and material goods are no longer scarce, resulting in a reputation-based (whue) economic system.

81
Communism is a specic stage of socioeconomic development predicated upon a superabundance of material
wealth, which is postulated to arise from technological
advances in the productive forces. This would allow for
distribution based on need and social relations based on
freely-associated individuals.* [4]* [5]
The term communist societyshould be distinguished
from "communist state", the latter referring to a state
ruled by a party which professes a variation of MarxismLeninism.* [6]

1.18.1 Economic aspects

A communist economic system is characterized by advanced productive technology that enables material abundance, which in turn enables the free distribution of most
or all economic output and the holding of the means of
Wizard's Holiday (2003) by Diane Duane describes producing this output in common. In this respect commutwo young wizards visiting a utopian-like planet nism is dierentiated from socialism, which, out of ecowhose economy is based on gift-giving and mutual nomic necessity, restricts access to articles of consumpsupport.
tion and services based on one's contribution.* [7]
Voyage from Yesteryear (1982) by James P. Hogan In further contrast to previous economic systems, comdescribes a society of the embryo colonists of Alpha munism would be characterized by the holding of natural
Centauri who have a post-scarcity gift economy.
resources and the means of production in common as opposed to them being privately owned (as in the case of
Cradle of Saturn (1999) and its sequel The Ancapitalism) or owned by public or cooperative organizaguished Dawn (2003) by James P. Hogan describe a
tions that similarly restrict access (as in the case of socialcolonization eort on Saturn's largest satellite. Both
ism). In this sense, communism involves the negation
describe the challenges involved in adopting a new
of propertyinsofar as there would be little economic raeconomic paradigm.
tionale for exclusive control over production assets in an
*
Science ction author Bruce Sterling wrote a story, environment of material abundance. [8]
Maneki-neko, in which the cat-paw gesture is the
sign of a secret AI-based gift economy.

1.18.2 Social aspects

The Gift Economy.

Writings and videos of
Genevieve Vaughan and associated scholars.
Individuality, freedom and creativity
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where
labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies
This article is about the hypothetical stage of socioeco- beyond the sphere of actual material production.
nomic development. For the economic systems of the Capital Volume III, 1894* [9]
former Soviet and Eastern bloc Communist states, see
Soviet-type economic planning.
A communist society would free individuals from long

1.18 Communist society

A communist society or communist system is the type

of society and economic system postulated to emerge
from technological advances in the productive forces in
Marxist thought, representing the ultimate goal of the
political ideology of Communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means
of production with free access* [1]* [2] to the articles of
consumption and is classless and stateless,* [3] implying
the end of the exploitation of labor. In his Critique of
the Gotha Programme Karl Marx referred to this stage of
development as upper-stage communism.* [4]

working hours by rst automating production to an extent that the average length of the working day is reduced
and second by eliminating the exploitation inherent in
the division between workers and owners. A communist system would thus free individuals from alienation
in the sense of having one's life structured around survival (making a wage or salary in a capitalist system),
which Marx referred to as a transition from the realm
of necessityto the realm of freedom. As a result,
a communist society is envisioned as being composed of
an intellectually-inclined population with both the time
and resources to pursue its hobbies and genuine interests,

82

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

and to contribute to creative social wealth in this manner. marginalization of human labor to the highest possible
Karl Marx considered true richnessto be the amount extent, replacing with automated labor.
of time one has at his or her disposal to pursue one's creative passions.* [10] Marx's notion of communism is in
this way radically individualistic.* [11]
1.18.3 Open-source and peer production
Marx's concept of the realm of freedomgoes handin-hand with Marx's idea of the ending of the division Many aspects of a communist economy have emerged
of labor, which would not be required in a society with in recent decades in the form of open-source software
and hardware, where source code and thus the means
highly automated production and limited work roles.
of producing software is held in common and freelyIn a communist society, economic necessity and relaaccessible to everyone; and to the processes of peer
tions would cease to determine cultural and social relaproduction where collaborative work processes produce
*
tions. As scarcity is eliminated, [8] alienated labor would
freely-available software that does not rely on monetary
cease and people would be free to pursue their individual
valuation. Michel Bauwens juxtaposes open source and
*
goals. [12]
peer production with market production.* [15]
Politics, law and the state

Ray Kurzweil posits that the goals of communism will

be realized by advanced technological developments in
the 21st century, where the intersection of low manufacturing costs, material abundance and open-source design philosophies will enable the realization of the maxim
from each according to his ability, to each according to
his needs.* [16]

Marx and Engels maintained that a communist society

would have no need for the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society, which exists to enforce hierarchical economic relations, enforce the exclusive control of
property, and to regulate capitalistic economic activities
- all of which would be non-applicable to a communist
system.* [8]* [12]
1.18.4 In Soviet ideology
Engels noted that in a socialist system the primary function of public institutions will shift from being about The communist economic system was ocially enumerthe creation of laws and control of people into a techni- ated as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party of the
cal role as an administrator of technical production pro- Soviet Union in its party platform. According to the 1986
cesses, with a decrease in the scope of traditional politics Programme of the CPSU:
as scientic administration overtakes the role of political decision-making.* [13] Communist society is characCommunism is a classless social
terized by democratic processes, not merely in the sense
system with one form of public
of electoral democracy, but in being characterized by
ownership of the means of producan open and collaborative social and workplace environtion and with full social equality
ment.* [8]
of all members of society. Under
Marx never clearly said whether communist society
would be just; other thinkers have speculated that he
thought communism would transcend justice and create
society without conicts, thus, without the needs for rules
of justice.* [14]
Transitional stages
Marx also wrote that between capitalist and communist
society, there would be a transitory period known as
the dictatorship of the proletariat.* [8] During this preceding phase of societal development, capitalist economic relationships would be abolished and in place
would arise socialism. Natural resources would become
public property, while all manufacturing centers and
workplaces would become owned by their workers and
democratically managed. Production would be organized
by scientic assessment and planning, thus eliminating
what Marx called the anarchy in production. The
development of the productive forces would lead to the

communism, the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces on the basis of continuous progress in science and technology, all the springs of social wealth
will ow abundantly, and the great
principleFrom each according to
his ability, to each according to his
needswill be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people a society in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labour for
the good of society will become the
prime vital requirement of everyone, a clearly recognised necessity,
and the ability of each person will
be employed to the greatest benet
of the people.

1.18. COMMUNIST SOCIETY

83

The material and technical foundation of communism presupposes

the creation of those productive
forces that open up opportunities
for the full satisfaction of the reasonable requirements of society
and the individual. All productive
activities under communism will be
based on the use of highly ecient technical facilities and technologies, and the harmonious interaction of man and nature will be ensured.

In Vladimir Lenin's political theory, a classless society

would be a society controlled by the direct producers, organized to produce according to socially managed goals.
Such a society, Lenin suggested, would develop habits
that would gradually make political representation unnecessary, as the radically democratic nature of the Soviets
would lead citizens to come to agree with the representatives' style of management. Only in this environment,
Lenin suggested, could the state wither away, ushering in
a period of stateless communism.

In the highest phase of communism the directly social character of

labor and production will become
rmly established. Through the
complete elimination of the remnants of the old division of labor and the essential social dierences associated with it, the process
of forming a socially homogeneous
society will be completed.

Iain M. Banks' Culture series of novels are centered

around a communist post-scarcity economy where technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is
automated and thus any concept of money and property
is nonexistent. Humans in the Culture are free to pursue
their own interests in an open and tolerant society.* [18]

Communism signies the transformation of the system of socialist

self-government by the people, of
socialist democracy into the highest form of organization of society communist public self-government.
With the maturation of the necessary socioeconomic and ideological preconditions and the involvement of all citizens in administration, the socialist state - given appropriate international conditions will, as Lenin noted, increasingly
become a transitional formfrom a
state to a non-state.The activities
of state bodies will become nonpolitical in nature, and the need for
the state as a special political institution will gradually disappear.
The inalienable feature of the communist mode of life is a high level of
consciousness, social activity, discipline, and self-discipline of members of society, in which observance of the uniform, generally accepted rules of communist conduct
will become an inner need and habit
of every person.
Communism is a social system under which the free development of
each is a condition for the free development of all.* [17]

1.18.5 Fictional portrayals

1.18.6 See also

Common ownership
Commons-based peer production
Digital commons (economics)
Lower-stage communism
Marxism
Open source
Post-scarcity economy
Technological determinism

1.18.7 References
[1] Steele, David Ramsay (September 1999). From Marx to
Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court. p. 66. ISBN 9780875484495. Marx distinguishes between two phases
of marketless communism: an initial phase, with labor
vouchers, and a higher phase, with free access.
[2] Busky, Donald F. (July 20, 2000). Democratic Socialism:
A Global Survey. Praeger. p. 4. ISBN 978-0275968861.
Communism would mean free distribution of goods and
services. The communist slogan, 'From each according to
his ability, to each according to his needs' (as opposed to
'work') would then rule
[3] O'Hara, Phillip (September 2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 836. ISBN 0415-24187-1. it inuenced Marx to champion the ideas of
a 'free association of producers' and of self-management
replacing the centralized state.
[4] Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx.

84

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

[5] Full Communism: The Ultimate Goal

[6] Busky, Donald F. (July 20, 2000). Democratic Socialism:
A Global Survey. Praeger. p. 9. ISBN 978-0275968861.
In a modern sense of the word, communism refers to the
ideology of Marxism-Leninism.
[7] Gregory and Stuart, Paul and Robert (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First. South-Western
College Pub. p. 118. ISBN 0-618-26181-8. Communism, the highest stage of social and economic development, would be characterized by the absence of markets
and money and by abundance, distribution according to
need, and the withering away of the stateUnder socialism, each individual would be expected to contribute according to capability, and rewards would be distributed
in proportion to that contribution. Subsequently, under
communism, the basis of reward would be need.
[8] Barry Stewart Clark (1998). Political economy: a comparative approach. ABC-CLIO. pp. 5759. ISBN 9780-275-96370-5. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
[9] Karl Marx (1894). Karl Marx, Capital Volume III, Part
VII. Revenues and their Sources. Capital Volume III.
Marxism.org. Retrieved 20 June 2015.

[17] THE CPSU'S TASKS IN PERFECTING SOCIALISM AND MAKING A GRADUAL TRANSITION TO
COMMUNISM. Eurodos. 1998. Retrieved 26 October
2014.
[18] Cramer & Hartwell, Kathryn & David G. (10 July 2007).
The Space Opera Renaissance. Orb Books. p. 298. ISBN
978-0765306180. Iain M. Banks and his brother-in-arms,
Ken MacLeod, both take a Marxist line: Banks with his
communist-bloc 'Culture' novels, and MacLeod with his
'hard-left libertarian' factions.

1.18.8 Further reading

Ollman, Bertell. Marx's Vision of Communism
Dialetical Marxism, New York University.
Rigi, Jakob. Peer to Peer Production as the Alternative to Capitalism: A New Communist Horizon
Journal of Peer Production.

1.19 Socialist mode of production

[10] Marx, Theorien uber der Mehwert III, ed. K. Kautsky

(Stuttgart, 1910), pp. 303-4.

This article is about socialism as a historical evolutionary

stage of development in Marxist theory. For broader
[11] Karl Marx on Equality, by Woods, Allen. denitions of socialism, see Socialism. For socialism
meaning a method for analyzing socioeconomic develhttp://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/19808/
Allen-Wood-Marx-on-Equality.pdf:
A society opment in Classical Marxism, see Scientic socialism.
that has transcended class antagonisms, therefore, would See also: mode of production
not be one in which some truly universal interest at last
reigns, to which individual interests must be sacriced.
It would instead be a society in which individuals freely
act as the truly human individuals they are. Marxs
radical communism was, in this way, also radically
individualistic.

In Marxist theory, socialism, also called lower-stage

communism or the socialist mode of production, refers
to a specic historical phase of economic development
and its corresponding set of social relations that supersede
capitalism in the schema of historical materialism. So[12] Craig J. Calhoun (2002). Classical sociological theory.
cialism is dened as a mode of production where the sole
Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 2323. ISBN 978-0-631-21348criterion for production is use-value and therefore the law
2. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
of value no longer directs economic activity. Production
[13] Socialism: Utopian and Scientic, on Marxists.org: for use is coordinated through conscious economic planhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/
ning, while distribution of economic output is based on
soc-utop/ch01.htm: In 1816, he declares that politics the principle of To each according to his contribution.
is the science of production, and foretells the complete The social relations of socialism are characterized by the
absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that working-class eectively owning the means of produceconomic conditions are the basis of political institutions tion and the means of their livelihood, either through
appears here only in embryo. Yet what is here already
cooperative enterprises or by public ownership and self
very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion
management, so that the social surplus accrues to the
of political rule over men into an administration of things
working class and society as a whole.* [1]
and a direction of processes of production.
[14] Karl Marx Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy..
First published Tue Aug 26, 2003; substantive revision
Mon Jun 14, 2010. Accessed March 4, 2011.
[15] Michel Bauwens (22 March 2014). From the Communism of Capital to a Capital for the Commons. P2P
Foundation. Retrieved 26 October 2014.

This view is consistent with, and helped to inform, early

conceptions of socialism where the law of value no longer
directs economic activity, and thus monetary relations in
the form of exchange-value, prot, interest and wage labor would not operate and apply to socialism.* [2]

The Marxian conception of socialism stands in contrast to

other early conceptions of socialism, most notably early
[16] Ray Kurzweil (February 1, 2012). Kurzweil: Technology forms of market socialism based on classical economics
Will Achieve the Goals of Communism. FORA TV.
such as Mutualism and Ricardian socialism. Unlike the

1.19. SOCIALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION

85

Marxian conception, these conceptions of socialism retained commodity exchange (markets) for labor and the
means of production, seeking to perfect the market process.* [3] The Marxist idea of socialism was also heavily
opposed to utopian socialism.

damental ways. While socialism implies public ownership (by a state apparatus) or cooperative ownership (by
a worker cooperative enterprise), communism would be
based on common ownership of the means of production.
Class distinctions based on ownership of capital cease to
Although Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote very lit- exist, along with the need for a state. A superabundance
tle on socialism and neglected to provide any details on of goods and services are made possible by automated
how it might be organized,* [4] numerous social scientists production that allow for *goods to be distributed based
on need rather than merit. [8]
and neoclassical economists have used Marx's theory as
a basis for developing their own models of socialist economic systems. The Marxist view of socialism served as a
Intermediate phases
point of reference during the socialist calculation debate.

1.19.1

Mode of production

The period in which capitalism becomes increasingly insucient as an economic system and immediately after
the proletarian conquest of the state, an economic system that features elements of both socialism and capitalism will probably exist until both the productive forces
of the economy and the cultural and social attitudes develop to a point where they satisfy the requirements for a
full socialist society (one that has lost the need for monetary value, wage labor and capital accumulation). Specifically, market relations will still exist but economic units
are either nationalized or re-organized into cooperatives.
This transitional phase is sometimes described as "state
capitalism" or "market socialism". China is ocially in
the primary stage of socialism.

Socialism is a post-commodity economic system, meaning that production is carried out to directly produce usevalue (to directly satisfy human needs, or economic demands) as opposed to being produced with a view to generating a prot. The stage in which the accumulation of
capital was viable and eective is rendered insucient
at the socialist stage of social and economic development, leading to a situation where production is carried
out independently of capital accumulation in a supposedly planned fashion. Although Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels understood planning to involve the input and decisions of the individuals involved at localized levels of production and consumption, planning has been interpreted
to mean centralized planning by Marxist-Leninists during 1.19.2 Social relations
the 20th century. However, there have been other conceptions of economic planning, including decentralized- The fundamental goal of socialism from the view of Marx
and Engels was the realization of human freedom and
planning and participatory planning.
individual autonomy. Specically, this refers to freeIn contrast to capitalism, which relies upon the coercive dom from the alienation imposed upon individuals in the
market forces to compel capitalists to produce use-values form of coercive social relationships as well as material
as a byproduct of the pursuit of prot, socialist produc- scarcity, whereby the individual is compelled to engage
tion is to be based on the rational planning of use-values
in activities merely to survive (to reproduce his or herand coordinated investment decisions to attain economic self). The aim of socialism is to provide an environgoals.* [5] As a result, the cyclical uctuations that occur
ment whereby individuals are free to express their genin a capitalist market economy will not be present in a uine interests, creative freedom, and desires unhindered
socialist economy. The value of a good in socialism is
by forms of social control that force individuals to work
its physical utility rather than its embodied labor, cost of for a class of owners who expropriate and live o the
production and exchange value as in a capitalist system.
surplus product.* [9]
Socialism would make use of incentive-based systems, As a set of social relationships, socialism is dened by the
and inequality would still exist but to a diminishing extent degree to which economic activity in society is planned
as all members of society would be worker-owners. This by the associated producers, so that the surplus product
eliminates the severity of previous tendencies towards in- produced by socialized assets is controlled by a majority
equality and conicts arising ownership of the means of of the population through democratic processes. The sale
production and property income accruing to a small class of labor power would be abolished so that every individof owners.* [6] The method of compensation and reward ual participates in running their institution as stakeholders
in a socialist society would be based on an authentic mer- or members with no one having coercive power over anyitocracy, along the principle of "from each according to one else in a vertical social division of labor (which is to
his ability, to each according to his contribution".* [7]
be distinguished from a non-social, technical division of
The advanced stage of socialism, referred to as "upperstage communism" in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, is based on the socialist mode of production but
is dierentiated from lower-stage socialism in a few fun-

labor which would still exist in socialism).* [10] The incentive structure changes in a socialist society given the
change in the social environment, so that an individual laborers' work becomes increasingly autonomous and cre-

86

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

ative, creating a sense of responsibility for his or her insti- 1.19.4 Notes
tution as a stakeholder. The individual is no longer alienated from his or her work: work becomes a means by [1] Socialism. Marxism.org Glossary of Terms. Marxism.org. Retrieved 20 February 2013.
which the individual fullls his or her humanity (pursues
his or her interests).
Role of the state
In Marxist theory, the state isthe institution of organised
violence which is used by the ruling class of a country
to maintain the conditions of its rule. Thus, it is only in
a society which is divided between hostile social classes
that the state exists.* [11] The state is thus seen as a
mechanism that is dominated by the interests of the ruling
class and utilized to subjugate other classes in order to
protect and legitimize the existing economic system.
After a workers' revolution, the state would initially become the instrument of the working class. Conquest of
the state apparatus by the working class must take place to
establish a socialist system. As socialism is built, the role
and scope of the state changes as class distinctions (based
on ownership of the means of production) gradually deteriorate due to the concentration of means of production
in state hands. From the point where all means of production become state property, the nature and primary
function of the state would change from one of political
rule (via coercion) over men by the creation and enforcement of laws into a scientic administration of things and
a direction of processes of production; that is the state
would become a coordinating economic entity rather than
a mechanism of class or political control, and would no
longer be a state in the Marxian sense.* [12]

1.19.3

See also

Capitalist mode of production

Communism
Economic planning
Law of value
Marxism
Marxian economics
Mode of production
Post-capitalism
Primary stage of socialism
Production for use
Relations of production
Scientic Socialism
Socialist calculation debate
Socialist economics
Socialization (economics)

[2] Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the name of Socialism: The Left-Wing origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-8047-75663. According to nineteenth-century socialist views, socialism would function without capitalist economic categories
- such as money, prices, interest, prots and rent - and
thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science. While some socialists recognized the need for money and prices at least during the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialists
more commonly believed that the socialist economy would
soon administratively mobilize the economy in physical
units without the use of prices or money.
[3] McNally, David (1993). Against the Market: Political
economy, market socialism and the Marxist critique. Verso.
ISBN 978-0-86091-606-2.
[4] Gasper, Phillip (October 2005). The Communist Manifesto: a road map to history's most important political document. Haymarket Books. p. 23. ISBN 1-931859-25-6.
Marx and Engels never speculated on the detailed organization of a future socialist or communist society. The
key task for them was building a movement to overthrow
capitalism. If and when that movement was successful, it
would be up to the members of the new society to decide
democratically how it was to be organized, in the concrete
historical circumstances in which they found themselves.
[5] Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists, by
Schweickart, David; Lawler, James; Ticktin, Hillel; Ollman, Bertell. 1998. From The Dierence Between
Marxism and Market Socialism(P.61-63): More fundamentally, a socialist society must be one in which the
economy is run on the principle of the direct satisfaction
of human needs...Exchange-value, prices and so money
are goals in themselves in a capitalist society or in any market. There is no necessary connection between the accumulation of capital or sums of money and human welfare.
Under conditions of backwardness, the spur of money and
the accumulation of wealth has led to a massive growth
in industry and technology...It seems an odd argument to
say that a capitalist will only be ecient in producing usevalue of a good quality when trying to make more money
than the next capitalist. It would seem easier to rely on the
planning of use-values in a rational way, which because
there is no duplication, would be produced more cheaply
and be of a higher quality.
[6] SCARLETT.Karl Marx Socialism and Scientic Communism. EconomicTheories.org. Retrieved 20 February
2013.
[7] Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx.
[8] Karl Marx - Critique of the Gotha Programme. 1875 Full
Text. Part 1:In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between
mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has

1.20. WORLD REVOLUTION

87

become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the allaround development of the individual, and all the springs
of co-operative wealth ow more abundantly -- only then
can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in
its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
[9] Erich Fromm (1961). Marx's Concept Of Socialism
. Marx's Concept of Man. Frederick Ungar Publishing.
Retrieved 20 February 2013.
[10] Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists, by
Schweickart, David; Lawler, James; Ticktin, Hillel; Ollman, Bertell. 1998. From Denitions of market and
socialism(P.58-59): For an Anti-Stalinist Marxist,
socialism is dened by the degree to which the society
is planned. Planning here is understood as the conscious
regulation of society by the associated producers themselves. Put it dierently, the control over the surplus product rests with the majority of the population through a resolutely democratic process...The sale of labour power is
abolished and labour necessarily becomes creative. Everyone participates in running their institutions and society as a whole. No one controls anyone else.
[11] State. Marxism.org Glossary of Terms. Marxism.org.
Retrieved 20 February 2013.
[12] Socialism: Utopian and Scientic, on Marxists.org: Comrade Lenin Cleanses the Earth of Filth(1920).
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/
soc-utop/ch01.htm: In 1816, he declares that politics
is the science of production, and foretells the complete
1.20.1 Communist movements
absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that
economic conditions are the basis of political institutions
appears here only in embryo. Yet what is here already The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia sparked a
very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion revolutionary wave of socialist and communist uprisof political rule over men into an administration of things ings across Europe, most notably the German Revoluand a direction of processes of production.
tion, the Hungarian Revolution, Biennio Rosso and the

1.20 World revolution

This article is about the concept of world revolution in
Marxist theory. For other uses of the term, see World
revolution (disambiguation).
World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious
revolutionary action of the organized working class.
These revolutions would not necessarily occur simultaneously, but where and when local conditions allowed
a revolutionary party to successfully replace bourgeois
ownership and rule, and install a workers' state based on
social ownership of the means of production. In most
Marxist schools, such as Trotskyism, the essentially international character of the class struggle and the necessity
of global scope are critical elements and a chief explanation of the failure of socialism in one country.

revolutionary war in Finland with the short lived Finnish

Socialist Workers' Republic, which made large gains and
met with considerable success in the early stages; see also
Revolutions of 1917-23.
Particularly in the years 1918-1919, it seemed plausible that capitalism would soon be swept from the European continent forever. Given the fact that European
powers controlled the majority of Earth's land surface
at the time, such an event could have meant the end of
capitalism not just in Europe, but everywhere. Additionally, the Comintern, founded in March 1919, began
as an independent international organization of communists from various countries around the world that evolved
after the Russian Civil War into an essentially Sovietsponsored agency responsible for coordinating the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide.

With the prospect of world revolution so close at hand,

Marxists were dominated by a feeling of overwhelming
optimism, which in the end proved to be quite premature.
The end goal of such internationally oriented The European revolutions were crushed one by one, until
revolutionary socialism is to achieve world social- eventually the Russian revolutionaries found themselves
ism, and later, stateless communism.* [1]* [2]
to be the only survivors. Since they had been relying on

88
the idea that an underdeveloped and agrarian country like
Russia would be able to build socialism with help from
successful revolutionary governments in the more industrialized parts of Europe, they found themselves in a crisis
once it became clear that no such help would arrive; see
Socialism in one country.
After those events and up until the present day, the international situation never came quite so close to a world
revolution again. As fascism grew in Europe in the 1930s,
instead of immediate revolution, the Comintern opted for
a Popular Front with liberal capitalists against fascism;
then, at the height of World War II in 1943, the Comintern was disbanded on the request of the Soviet Union's
Western allies.

CHAPTER 1. CONCEPTS OF MARXISM

itly pursue the goal of worldwide communist revolution,
calling it the truest expression of proletarian internationalism.

1.20.2 See also

Communist revolution
Proletarian internationalism
Revolutionary wave
Stateless communism
Social Patriotism
Workers of the world, unite!

After World War II

World communism

A new upsurge of revolutionary feeling swept across Europe in the aftermath of World War II, though it was not 1.20.3 References
as strong as the one triggered by World War I which resulted in failed (in the socialist sense) revolution in Ger- [1] The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship and Scientic
Communism by Bukharin
many and a successful one (for seventy years) in Russia.
Communist parties in countries such as Greece, France, [2] The State and Revolution Chapter 5
and Italy had acquired signicant prestige and public support due to their activity as leaders of anti-fascist re- [3] Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above 1928-1941
by Robert C. Tucker, W. W. Norton & Company, 1992,
sistance movements during the war; as such, they also
ISBN 0-393-30869-3, pg 608
enjoyed considerable success at the polls and regularly
nished second in elections in the late 1940s. However, none managed to nish in rst and form a government. Communist parties in Eastern Europe, meanwhile,
though they did win elections at around the same time, did
so under circumstances regarded by some as mere show
elections.
Revolts across the world in the 1960s and early 1970s,
coupled with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the establishment of the New Left together with the Civil Rights
Movement, the militancy of the Black Panther Party and
similar armed/insurrectionaryLiberation Frontgroups
around the globe, and even a bit of a resurgence in the
labor movement for a time once again made it seem to
some as though world revolution was not only possible,
but actually imminent; thus, there was a common expression, The East is Red, and the West is Ready.
However, this radical left spirit ebbed by the mid-1970s,
and in 1980s and 1990s there was a return to certain
right-wing, economically conservative ideologies (spearheaded, among other examples, by Thatcherism in the
United Kingdom and Reaganomics in the United States)
and also free-market reforms in China and in Vietnam.
Within Marxist theory, Lenin's concept of the labor aristocracy and his description of imperialism, and separately, but not necessarily unrelatedly Trotsky's theories regarding the deformed workers' state, oer several
explanations as to why the world revolution has not occurred to the present day. Many groups, however, such as
the Progressive Labor Party (United States), still explic-

Chapter 2

Communism & Variants

2.1 Anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism in political science and international
relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually
by nationalist movements, who want to secede from a
larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also
in a multi-ethnic sovereign state) or as a specic theory
opposed to capitalism in MarxistLeninist discourse, derived from Vladimir Lenin's work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. A less common usage is by
isolationists who oppose an interventionist foreign policy.
People who categorise themselves as anti-imperialists,
often state that they are opposed to colonialism, colonial empire, hegemony, imperialism and territorial expansion of a country beyond its established borders.* [1]
The phrase gained a wide currency after the Second
World War and at the onset of the Cold War as political
movements in colonies of European powers promoted national sovereignty. Some anti-imperialistgroups who
opposed the United States, supported the power of the
Soviet Union, such as in Guevarism, while in Maoism,
this was criticised as "social imperialism.In the Arab
and Muslim world, the term is often used in the context
of Anti-Zionist nationalist and religious movements.

2.1.1

Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain from 1874 to 1880,

expanded the British Empire.

Theory

In the late 1870s, the term Imperialism was introduced

to the English language by opponents of the aggressively
imperial policies of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (187480).* [2] It was shortly appropriated by supporters of imperialismsuch as Joseph Chamberlain.
For some, imperialism designated a policy of idealism
and philanthropy; others alleged that it was characterized
by political self-interest, and a growing number associated it with capitalist greed. John A. Hobson and Lenin
added a more theoretical macroeconomic connotation to
the term. Many theoreticians on the left have followed
either or both in emphasizing the structural or systemic
character ofimperialism.Such writers have expanded
the time period associated with the term so that it now
designates neither a policy, nor a short space of decades
in the late 19th century, but a global system extending
over a period of centuries, often going back to Christo-

pher Columbus and, in some facts, to the Crusades. As

the application of the term has expanded, its meaning
has shifted along ve distinct but often parallel axes: the
moral, the economic, the systemic, the cultural, and the
temporal. Those changes reectamong other shifts in
sensibilitya growing unease, even squeamishness, with
the fact of power, specically, Western power.* [3]* [4]
The relationships among capitalism, aristocracy, and
imperialism have been discussed and analysed by theoreticians, historians, political scientists such as John A.
Hobson and Thorstein Veblen, Joseph Schumpeter and
Norman Angell.* [5] Those intellectuals produced much
of their works about imperialism before the First World
War (191418), yet their combined work informed the
study of the impact of imperialism upon Europe, and contributed to the political and ideologic reections on the

89

90

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

rise of the militaryindustrial complex in the US from

the 1950s onwards.
J. A. Hobson said that domestic social reforms could cure
the international disease of imperialism by removing its
economic foundation. Hobson theorized that state intervention through taxation could boost broader consumption, create wealth, and encourage a peaceful multilateral
world order. Conversely, should the state not intervene,
rentiers (people who earn income from property or securities) would generate socially negative wealth that fostered imperialism and protectionism.* [6]* [7]

2.1.2

ernment...
We cordially invite the cooperation of all men
and women who remain loyal to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
the United States.* [12]
Fred Harrington states,the anti-imperialist's did not oppose expansion because of commercial, religious, constitutional, or humanitarian reasons but instead because they
thought that an imperialist policy ran counter to the political doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.* [13]* [14]* [15]

Political movement

As a self-conscious political movement, anti-imperialism 2.1.4

originated in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in opposition to the growing European colonial
empires and the US control of the Philippines after
1898.* [8] However, it reached its highest level of popular
support in the colonies themselves, where it formed the
basis for a wide variety of national liberation movements
during the mid-20th century and later. These movements,
and their anti-imperialist ideas, were instrumental in the
decolonization process of the 1950s and 1960s, which
saw most European colonies in Asia and Africa achieving their independence.* [9]

2.1.3

Marxism, Leninism,
imperialism

and

anti-

Anti-Imperialist League

An early use of the term anti-imperialistoccurred

after the United States entered the SpanishAmerican
War in 1898.* [10] Most activists supported the war itself
but opposed the annexation of new territory, especially
the Philippines.* [11] The Anti-Imperialist League was
founded on June 15, 1898 in Boston, in opposition of the
acquisition of the Philippines, which happened anyway.
The anti-imperialists opposed the expansion because they
believed imperialism violated the credo of republicanism, especially the need for consent of the governed.
Appalled by American imperialism, the Anti-Imperialist
League, which included famous citizens such as Andrew
Carnegie and William James, formed a platform which To the Latin-American revolutionary Ch Guevara, imperialism
stated
was a geopolitical system of control and repression, which must
be understood as such in order to be defeated.

We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory
to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to
rearm that all men, of whatever race or color,
are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed. We insist that the subjugation of any
people iscriminal aggressionand open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Gov-

About the nature of imperialism, and how to oppose and

defeat it, the revolutionary Ch Guevara said:
We must bear in mind that imperialism is
a world system, the last stage of capitalism
and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should
be the destruction of imperialism. Our share,
the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations,

2.1. ANTI-IMPERIALISM
from where they extract capitals, raw materials,
technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they
export new capitalsinstruments of dominationarms and all kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.
Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental, 1967 * [16]

91
acteristic of colonial and neo-colonial empires, as used in
the realm of international relations.* [19]* [20]
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917),
Lenin outlined the ve features of capitalist development
that lead to imperialism:
1. Concentration of production and capital leading to
the dominance of national and multinational monopolies and cartels.
2. Industrial capital as the dominant form of capital has
been replaced by nance capital, with the industrial
capitalists increasingly reliant on capital provided
by monopolistic nancial institutions; Again and
again, the nal word in the development of banking
is monopoly.
3. The export of the aforementioned nance capital is
emphasized over the export of goods;
4. The economic division of the world by between
multinational cartels;
5. The political division of the world into colonies by
the great powers, in which the great powers monopolise investment.* [21]
Generally, the relationship among Marxists and radical, left-wing organisations who are anti-war, often involves persuading such political activists to progress from
pacism to anti-imperialismthat is, to progress from
the opposition of war, in general, to the condemnation of
the capitalist economic system, in particular.* [22]

To the Russian revolutionary Lenin, imperialism was the highest,

but degenerate, stage of capitalism.

In the 20th century, the USSR represented themselves

as the foremost enemy of imperialism, and thus politically and materially supported Third World revolutionary
organisations who fought for national independence; as
such the USSR sent military advisors to Ethiopia, Angola,
Egypt, and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the USSR behaved as an imperialist power, when it asserted sphere-ofinuence dominance upon Afghanistan (197989); and
dominated the countries of Eastern Europe, the Baltic
states, and the Caucasus, as accorded in the Yalta Agreement (411 February 1945) during the Second World
War (193945).

In the mid-19th century, in Das Kapital (186794), Karl

Marx mentioned imperialism to be part of the prehistory
of the capitalist mode of production. Much more important was Lenin, who dened imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, the economic stage in which
monopoly nance capital becomes the dominant application of capital.* [17] As such, said nancial and economic
circumstances impelled national governments and private
business corporations to world-wide competition for con- Such imperialist behaviour, ideologically discredited the
trol of natural resources and human labour by means of USSR for not abiding the principles of Marxism; alternacolonialism.* [18]
tively anarchists presented such Soviet imperialism as evThe Leninist views of imperialism, and related theo- idence that the philosophy of Marxism would not resolve
ries, such as dependency theory, address the economic and eliminate imperialism. Notably, Mao Zedong develdominance and exploitation of a country, rather than the oped the theory that the USSR was a "social-imperialist"
military and the political dominance of a people, their nation, a socialist people with tendencies to imperialcountry, and its natural resources. Hence, the primary ism, an important aspect of Maoist analysis of the hispurpose of imperialism is economic exploitation, rather tory of the USSR.* [23] Contemporarily, the term Antithan mere control of either a country or of a region. The imperialism is most commonly applied by Marxists, and
Marxist and the Leninist denotation thus diers from the political organisations of like ideologic bent, who prousual political-science denotation of imperialism as the pose anti-capitalism, present a class analysis of society,
direct control (intervention, occupation, and rule) char- et cetera.* [24]

92

2.1.5

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Right-wing anti-imperialism

Right-wing nationalists and religious fundamentalist

movements that have emerged in reaction to alleged imperialism might also fall within this category; for example, Khomeinism historically derived much of its popularity from its appeal to widespread anger at American
intervention or inuence in Iran and the Middle East.
The Indian Jamaat-e-Islami Hind launched a 10-day Nationwide campaign titled Anti-Imperialism Campaign in
December 2009.* [25]

2.1.6

Criticism

[3] Mark F. Proudman, Words for Scholars: The Semantics of 'Imperialism'". Journal of the Historical Society,
September 2008, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p395-433
[4] D. K. Fieldhouse, Imperialism": An Historiographical
Revision, South African Journal Of Economic History,
March 1992, Vol. 7 Issue 1, pp 45-72
[5] G.K. Peatling, Globalism, Hegemonism and British
Power: J. A. Hobson and Alfred Zimmern Reconsidered
, History, July 2004, Vol. 89 Issue 295, pp. 38198
[6] P. J. Cain, Capitalism, Aristocracy and Empire: Some
'Classical' Theories of Imperialism Revisited, Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History, March 2007, Vol.
35 Issue 1, pp 25-47
[7] G.K. Peatling, Globalism, Hegemonism and British
Power: J. A. Hobson and Alfred Zimmern Reconsidered
, History, July 2004, Vol. 89 Issue 295, pp 381-398

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt assert that traditional

anti-imperialism is no longer relevant. In the book Empire,* [26] Negri and Hardt argue that imperialism is no
longer the practice or domain of any one nation or state. [8]
Rather, they claim, the Empireis a conglomeration
[9]
of all states, nations, corporations, media, popular and intellectual culture and so forth, and thus, traditional antiimperialist methods and strategies can no longer be ap[10]
plied against them.

Harrington, 1935
Richard Koebner and Helmut Schmidt, Imperialism: The
Story and Signicance of a Political Word, 1840-1960
(2010)
Robert L. Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The AntiImperialists, 18981900 (1968)

French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Lvy also

argues in his book Left in Dark Times* [27] that modern [11] Julius Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of
Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (1936) pp 26678
anti-imperialism is nothing more than thinly disguised
anti-Americanism and has been too commonly evoked by
[12] Platform of the American Antilmperialist League,
Third World dictators and extremist movements to dis1899. Fordham University. Retrieved 2 February 2013.
tract their audiences from their own crimes and abuses of
[13] Harrington, 1935, pp 21112
power.

2.1.7

See also

Empire-building
Colonialism
National liberation wars
National self-determination
Historiography of the British Empire
Anti-Americanism
Anti-Imperialist Camp
League against Imperialism
Antimilitarism

2.1.8

References

[1] Imperialism: The Story and Signicance of a Political

Word, 18401960 (2010), by Richard Koebner and Helmut Schmidt.
[2] Richard Koebner and Helmut Schmidt, Imperialism: The
Story and Signicance of a Political Word, 1840-1960
(2010)

[14] Richard E. Welch, Jr., Response to Imperialism: The

United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899
1902 (1978)
[15] E. Berkeley Tompkins, Anti-Imperialism in the United
States: The Great Debate, 18901920. (1970)
[16] Che Guevara: Message to the Tricontinental Spring of
1967.
[17]Imperialism, The Penguin Dictionary of International
Relations (1998), by Graham Evans and Jerey Newnham. p. 244.
[18]Colonialism, The Penguin Dictionary of International
Relations (1998) Graham Evans and Jerey Newnham, p.
79.
[19]Imperialism, The Penguin Dictionary of International
Relations (1998) Graham Evans and Jerey Newnham, p.
79.
[20]Colonialism, The Penguin Dictionary of International
Relations (1998) Graham Evans and Jerey Newnham, p.
79.
[21] Lenin: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Retrieved 2011-02-13.
[22] https://web.archive.org/web/20020711081333/http:
//www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/403/pacifism_disarms.html

2.1. ANTI-IMPERIALISM

[23] Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United

States (1997), by Michael M. Sheng. p.00.
[24] Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey (1990),
by Anthony Brewer. p. 293.
[25] http://www.zeenews.com/news586298.html

93
Cullinane, Michael Patrick. Liberty and American
Anti-Imperialism, 1898-1909. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012.
Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of
the British World Order and the Lessons for Global
Power (2002), excerpt and text search

[26] Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire, Harvard University Press (2001) ISBN 0-674-00671-2

Hamilton, Richard. President McKinley, War, and

Empire (2006).

[27] Bernard Henri Levy, Left in Dark Times, A Stand Against

the New Barbarism, Random House; Tra edition. (2008)
ISBN 1-4000-6435-X

Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire (2001),

inuential statement from the left

Bibliography
Griths, Martin, and Terry O'Callaghan, and
Steven C. Roach 2008. International Relations: The
Key Concepts. Second Edition. New York: Routledge.
Heywood, C. 2004. Political Theory: An Introduction New York: Palgrave MacMillan
Harrington, Fred H. The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States, 1898-1900, Mississippi
Valley Historical Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Sep.,
1935), pp. 211230 in JSTOR
Proudman, Mark F..Words for Scholars: The Semantics of 'Imperialism'". Journal of the Historical
Society, September 2008, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p395-433

2.1.9

Further reading

Ali, Tariq et al. Anti-Imperialism: A Guide for the

Movement ISBN 1-898876-96-7
Boittin, Jennifer Anne. Colonial Metropolis: The
Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism
in Interwar Paris (2010)
Brendon, Piers.A Moral Audit of the British Empire.History Today, (Oct 2007), Vol. 57 Issue 10,
pp 4447, online at EBSCO

Herman, Arthur. Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age
(2009) [excerpt and text search]
Hobson, J.A. Imperialism: A Study (1905) except
and text search 2010 edition
James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British
Empire (1997).
Karsh, Efraim. Islamic Imperialism: A History
(2007) excerpt and text search
Olson, James S. et al., eds. Historical Dictionary of
European Imperialism (1991) online edition
Owen, Nicholas. The British Left and India:
Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885-1947 (2008)
excerpt and text search
Polsgrove, Carol. Ending British Rule in Africa:
Writers in a Common Cause (2009)
Sagromoso, Domitilla, James Gow, and Rachel
Kerr. Russian Imperialism Revisited: Neo-Empire,
State Interests and Hegemonic Power (2010)
Tompkins, E. Berkeley, ed. Anti-Imperialism in
the United States: The Great Debate, 1890
1920. (1970) excerpts from primary and secondary
sources
Wang, Jianwei. The Chinese interpretation of the
concept of imperialism in the anti-imperialist context of the 1920s.,Journal of Modern Chinese History (2012) 6#2 pp 164181.

Brendon, Piers. The Decline and Fall of the British

Empire, 1781-1997 (2008) excerpt and text search 2.1.10
Cain, P. J. and A.G. Hopkins. British Imperialism,
1688-2000 (2nd ed. 2001), 739pp, detailed economic history that presents the new gentlemanly
capitaliststhesis excerpt and text search
Castro, Daniel, Walter D.Mignolo, and Irene Silverblatt. Another Face of Empire: Bartolom de
Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism (2007) excerpt and text search, Spanish
colonies

External links

The Anti-Imperialists, A Web based guide to American Anti-Imperialism

CWIHP at the Wilson Center for Scholars: Primary Document Collection on Anti-Imperialism in
the Cold War
Pacic Northwest Antiwar and Radical History
Project, multimedia collection of photographs,
video, oral histories and essays.

94

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by socialist states, while paying lip service to the primacy of
V.I. Lenin Full text at marxists.org
ideological change in individuals to sustain a communist
society, actually put productive forces rst, and ideologi How Imperialist 'Aid' Blocks Development in Africa cal change second.
by Thomas Sankara, The Militant, April 13, 2009
The theory of the productive forces is encapsulated in the
Daniel Jakopovich, In the Belly of the Beast: Chal- following quote from The German Ideology:
lenging US Imperialism and the Politics of the Oensive
"...it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world... by employing real
The M and S Collection at the Library of Congress
means... slavery cannot be abolished without
contains materials on anti-imperialism.
the steam-engine and the mule and spinningjenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without
improved agriculture, and... in general, people
2.2 Theory of the productive forces
cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to
obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in
adequate quality and quantity. Liberation
Thetheory of the productive forcesshould not
is a historical and not a mental act, and it is
be confused with the Marxist analysis of probrought about by historical conditions, the deductive forces.
velopment of industry, commerce, agriculture,
the conditions of intercourse [Verkehr]...
The theory of the productive forces (sometimes re1
ferred to as productive force determinism) is a widely
disseminated variation of historical materialism and
Marxism that places primary emphasis on technical advances as the basis for advances and changes in the social
structure and culture of a given civilization. The relative
strength assigned to the role of technical (or technological) progress in impacting society and social advancement
diers among dierent schools of Marxist thinkers. A
related concept is technological determinism.

Socialist states

On a prescriptive level, this view places a strong emphasis on the necessity of strengthening the productive forces
of the economy as a precondition for the realization of
socialism, and within a nominally socialist economy, essential to achieving communism. This theory was held by
many Orthodox Marxists as well as Marxist-Leninists; as
a result, it played a crucial role in informing the economic
policies of current and former socialist states.

Based on the theory of the productive forces and related perspectives, the economic systems of the former
Eastern bloc and the present-day socialist states the state
accumulated capital through forcible extraction of surpluses from the population for the purpose of rapidly
modernizing and industrializing their countries, because
these countries were not technologically advanced to a
point where an actual socialist economy was technically
possible,* [1] or were a socialist state tried to reach the
communist mode of production. The philosophical perspective behind the modernizing zeal of the Soviet Union
and People's Republic of China was based on the desire
to industrialize their countries.* [2]

2.2.1

2.2.2 External links

Empirical support

The most inuential philosophical defence of this idea

has been promulgated by Gerald Cohen in his book Karl
Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. According to this
view, technical change can beget social change; in other
words, changes in the means (and intensity) of production causes changes in the relations of production, i.e., in
people's ideology and culture, their interactions with one
another, and their social relationship to the wider world.
This view point is a foundation of Orthodox Marxism.
In this view, actual socialism, being based on social ownership and a wide distribution of an abundant surplus
product, cannot come to pass until that society's ability to
produce wealth is built up enough to satisfy its whole population and to support socialist production methods. Using this theory as a basis for their practical programmes
meant that communist theoreticians and leaders in most

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm#b1
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj102/
harman.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm

2.2.3 See also

Technological determinism
Economic determinism
Historical materialism
Information revolution

2.3. ECONOMIC PLANNING

Mode of production
Socialism (Marxism)

2.2.4

References

[1] Bertrand Badie; Dirk Berg-Schlosser; Leonardo Morlino (2011). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. SAGE Publications, Inc. p. 2459. ISBN 9781412959636. The repressive state apparatus is in fact acting as an instrument of state capitalism to carry out the
process of capital accumulation through forcible extraction of surplus from the working class and peasantry
[2] Chan (2001). Mao's crusade: politics and policy implementation in China's great leap forward. ISBN 978-0-19924406-5.

2.3 Economic planning

95
on collective-decision making and disaggregated information, to centralized systems of planning conducted by
technical experts who use aggregated information to formulate plans of production. In a fully developed socialist
economy, engineers and technical specialists, overseen or
appointed in a democratic manner, would coordinate the
economy in terms of physical units without any need or
use for nancial-based calculation. The economy of the
Soviet Union never reached this stage of development,
so planned its economy in nancial terms throughout the
duration of its existence.* [5] Nonetheless, a number of
alternative metrics were developed for assessing the performance of non-nancial economies in terms of physical
output (i.e.: net material product versus gross domestic
product).
In general, the various models of socialist economic planning exist as theoretical constructs that have not been implemented fully by any economy, partially because they
depend on vast changes on a global scale (see: mode of
production). In the context of mainstream economics
and the eld of comparative economic systems, socialist planningusually refers to the Soviet-type command
economy, regardless of whether or not this economic system actually constituted a type of socialism or state capitalism or a third, non-socialist and non-capitalist type of
system.

Economic planning is a mechanism for economic coordination contrasted with the market mechanism. There
are various types of planning procedures and ways of conducting economic planning. As a coordinating mechanism for socialism and an alternative to the market, planning is dened as a direct allocation of resources and is In some models of socialism, economic planning comcontrasted with the indirect allocation of the market.* [1] pletely substitutes the market mechanism, supposedly
The level of centralization in decision-making in planning rendering monetary relations and the price system obsodepends on the specic type of planning mechanism em- lete. In other models, planning is utilized as a compleployed. As such, one can distinguish between central- ment to markets.
ized planning and decentralized planning.* [2] An economy primarily based on central planning is referred to
as a planned economy. In a centrally planned economy
the allocation of resources is determined by a comprehensive plan of production which species output requirements.* [3] Planning may also take the form of directive
planning or indicative planning.
Most modern economies are mixed economies incorporating various degrees of markets and planning.
A distinction can be made between physical planning (as
in pure socialism) and nancial planning (as practiced
by governments and private rms in capitalism). Physical planning involves economic planning and coordination conducted in terms of disaggregated physical units;
whereas nancial planning involves plans formulated in
terms of nancial units.* [4]

2.3.1

Socialist economic planning

See also: Socialist economics

Concept of socialist planning

The classical conception of socialist economic planning
held by Marxists involved an economic system where
goods and services were valued, demanded and produced
directly for their use-value, as opposed to being produced
as a by-product of the pursuit of prot by business enterprises. This idea ofproduction for useis a fundamental
aspect of a socialist economy. This involves social control
over the allocation of the surplus product, and in its most
extensive theoretical form, calculation-in-kind in place of
nancial calculation. For Marxists in particular, planning
entails control of the surplus product (prot) by the associated producers in a democratic manner.* [6] This diers
from planning within the framework of capitalism, which
is based on the planned accumulation of capital in order
to either stabilize the business cycle (when undertaken by
governments) or to maximize prots (when undertaken
by rms), as opposed to the socialist concept of planned
production for use.

In such a socialist society based on economic planning,

Dierent forms of economic planning have been fea- the primary function of the state apparatus changes from
tured in various models of socialism. These range one of political rule over people (via the creation and
from decentralized-planning systems, which are based enforcement of laws) into a technical administration of

96

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

production, distribution and organization; that is the state

would become a coordinating economic entity rather than
a mechanism of political and class-based control, thereby
ceasing to be a state in the traditional sense.* [7]

emerged in a haphazard manner during the collectivisation drive under Joseph Stalin, and emphasized rapid
growth and industrialization over eciency. Eventually
this method became an established part of the Soviet conception ofsocialismin the post-war period, and other
Socialist states emulated it in the latter half of the 20th
Planning versus Command
century. Material balancing involves a planning agency
(Gosplan in the case of the USSR) taking a survey of
The concept of a command economy is dierentiated available inputs and raw materials, using a balance-sheet
from the concept of a planned economy (or economic to balance them with output targets specied by industry,
planning), especially by socialists and Marxists, who liken thereby achieving a balance of supply and demand.* [11]
command economies (such as that of the former Soviet
Union) to that of a single capitalist rm, organized in a
top-down administrative fashion based on bureaucratic Lange-Lerner-Taylor model
organization akin to that of a capitalist corporation.* [8]
See also: Lange model
Economic analysts have argued that the economy of the
former Soviet Union actually represented an administered
or command economy as opposed to a planned economy The economic models developed in the 1920s and 1930s
because planning did not play an operational role in the al- by American economists Fred M. Taylor and Abba
location of resources among productive units in the econ- Lerner, and by Polish economist Oskar Lange, involved
omy; in actuality, the main allocation mechanism was a a form of planning based on marginal cost pricing. In
system of command-and-control. As a result, the phrase Lange's model, a central planning board would set prices
administrative command economy gained currency as a for producer goods through a trial-and-error method, admore accurate descriptor of Soviet-type economies.* [9] justing until the price matched the marginal cost, with
the aim of achieving Pareto-ecient outcomes. Although
these models were often described asmarket socialism
, they actually represented a form ofmarket simulation
Decentralized planning
planning.
See also: Decentralized planning (economics)

2.3.2 Planning in capitalism

Decentralized economic planning is a planning process
that starts at the user-level in a bottom-up ow of infor- Intra-rm and intra-industry planning
mation. As such, decentralized planning often appears
as a complement to the idea of socialist self-management See also: Enterprise resource planning
(most notably by libertarian socialists and democratic socialists).
Large corporations use planning to allocate resources inThe theoretical postulates for models of decentralized ternally among its divisions and subsidiaries. Many modsocialist planning stem from the thought of Karl Kaut- ern rms also utilize regression analysis to measure marsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Nikolai Bukharin and Oskar ket demand in order to adjust prices and to decide upon
Lange.* [10] This model involves economic decision- the optimal quantities of output to be supplied. Planned
making based on self-governance from the bottom-up (by obsolescence is often cited as a form of economic planemployees and consumers) without any directing central ning employed by large rms to increase demand for
authority. This often contrasts with the doctrine of or- future products by deliberately limiting the operational
thodox Marxist-Leninism, which advocates directive ad- lifespan of its products.
ministrative planning where directives are passed down The internal structures of corporations have been defrom higher authorities (planning agencies) to agents (en- scribed as centralized command economies that employ
terprise managers), who in turn give orders to workers.
both planning and hierarchical organization and management. According to J. Bradford DeLong, a signicant
portion of transactions in Western economies do not pass
through anything resembling a market. Many transactions are actually movements of value among dierent
branches and divisions within corporations, companies
and agencies. Furthermore, a signicant portion of ecoMaterial balances
nomic activity is planned in a centralized manner by managers within rms in the form of production planning and
Material balance planning was the type of economic plan- marketing management where consumer demand is estining employed by Soviet-type economies. This system mated, targeted and included in the rm's overall plan;
Two contemporary models of decentralized planning are
Participatory economics, developed by the economist
Michael Albert; and negotiated coordination, developed
by the economist Pat Devine.

2.3. ECONOMIC PLANNING

and in the form of production planning.* [12]
In The New Industrial State, the American economist
John Kenneth Galbraith posited that large rms manage
both their prices and consumer demand for their products through sophisticated statistical methods. Galbraith
also pointed out that, because of the increasingly complex
nature of technology and specialization of knowledge,
management had become increasingly specialized and
bureaucratized. The internal structures of corporations
and companies had been transformed into what he called
a "technostructure", where specialized groups and committees are the primary decision-makers, and specialized
managers, directors and nancial advisers operate under
formal bureaucratic procedures, replacing the individual
entrepreneur's role (see also: Intrapreneurship). He states
that both the obsolete notion of entrepreneurial capitalismand democratic socialism (dened as democratic
management) are impossible organizational forms for
managing a modern industrial system.* [13]
Joseph Schumpeter, an economist associated with the
Austrian school and Institutional school of economics,
argued that the changing nature of economic activity
specically the increasing bureaucratization and specialization required in production and management was the
major reason for why capitalism would eventually evolve
into socialism. The role of the businessman was increasingly bureaucratic, and specic functions within the rm
required increasingly specialized knowledge which could
just as easily be supplied by state functionaries in publicly
owned enterprises.

97
mote economic growth in market-based economies. This
involves the use of monetary policy, industrial policy
and scal policy to steerthe market toward targeted
outcomes. Industrial policy includes government taking
measures aimed at improving the competitiveness and
capabilities of domestic rms and promoting structural
transformation.* [16]
In contrast to socialist planning, state development planning does not replace the market mechanism and does
not eliminate the use of money in production. It only applies to privately owned and publicly owned rms in the
strategic sectors of the economy and seeks to coordinate
their activities through indirect means and market-based
incentives (such as tax breaks or subsidies).

2.3.3 Economic planning in practice

Soviet Union
Main articles: Analysis of Soviet-type economic planning and Economy of the Soviet Union

The Soviet model of economic planning is an economic

system where decisions regarding production and investment are embodied in a plan formulated by Gosplan
(State planning agency) through the process of material
balances. Economic information, including consumer demand and enterprise resource requirements, are aggregated and used to balance supply (from available resource
In the rst volume of Capital, Karl Marx identied the inventories) with demand (based on requirements for inprocess of capital accumulation as central to the law of dividual economic units and enterprises) through a sysmotion of capitalism. Increased industrial capacity from tem of iterations.
increasing returns to scale further socializes production. The Soviet economy operated in a centralized and hierarCapitalism eventually socializes labor and production to chical manner where directives were issued to lower-level
a point where the traditional notions of private owner- organizations. As a result, the Soviet economic model
ship and commodity production become increasingly in- was often referred to as a command economy or an adminsucient for further expanding the productive capaci- istered economy because plan directives were enforced
ties of society,* [14] necessitating the emergence of a so- through inducements in a vertical power-structure, where
cialist economy where the means of production are so- planning played little functional role in the allocation of
cially owned and the surplus value is controlled by the resources.* [9]
workforce.* [15] Many socialists viewed these tendencies,
specically the increasing trend toward economic planning in capitalist rms, as evidence of the increasing ob- United States
solescence of capitalism and inapplicability of ideals like
perfect competition to the economy; with the next stage The United States utilized economic planning during the
of evolution being the application of society-wide eco- First World War. The Federal Government supplemented
nomic planning.
the price system with centralized resource allocation and
created a number of new agencies to direct important
economic sectors; notably the Food Administration, Fuel
State development planning
Administration, Railroad Administration and War Industries Board.* [17] During the Second World War, the
See also: Industrial policy and Developmental state
economy experienced staggering growth under a similar
system of planning. In the postwar period, US governState development planning or national planning refers ments utilized such measures as the Economic Stabilizato macroeconomic policies and nancial planning con- tion Program to directly intervene in the economy to conducted by governments to stabilize the market or pro- trol prices, wages, etc. in dierent economic sectors.

98

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

From the start of the Cold War and up until the present
day, the United States Federal Government directs a
signicant amount of investment and funding into research and development (R&D), often initially through
the Department of Defense. The government performs
50% of all R&D in the United States,* [18] with a dynamic state-directed public-sector developing most of the
technology that later becomes the basis of the private sector economy. As a result, Noam Chomsky has referred to
the United States economic model as a form of State Capitalism.* [19] Examples include laser technology, the internet, nanotechnology, telecommunications and computers, with most basic research and downstream commercialization nanced by the public sector. This includes
research in other elds including healthcare and energy,
with 75% of most innovative drugs nanced through the
National Institutes of Health.* [20]

The most notable critique of economic planning came

from Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig
von Mises. Hayek argued that central planners could
not possibly accrue the necessary information to formulate an eective plan for production because they are not
exposed to the rapid changes in the particular time and
place that take place in an economy, and are unfamiliar
with these circumstances. The process of transmitting all
the necessary information to planners is therefore inecient.* [21]
Proponents of de-centralized economic planning have
also criticized central economic planning. For example,
Leon Trotsky believed that central planners, regardless of
their intellectual capacity, operated without the input and
participation of the millions of people who participate in
the economy, and would therefore be unable to respond to
local conditions quickly enough to eectively coordinate
all economic activity.* [22]

East Asian Tigers

See also: State-sponsored capitalism
The development models of the East Asian Tiger
economies involved varying degrees of economic planning and state-directed investment in a model sometimes
described as "state development capitalism" or theEast
Asian Model.
The governments of Malaysia and South Korea instituted
a series of macroeconomic plans (First Malaysia Plan and
Five-Year Plans of South Korea) to rapidly develop and
industrialize their mixed economies.

2.3.5 See also

Calculation in kind
Council democracy
Cybernetics
Decentralized planning (economics)
Dirigisme
Economic democracy

The economy of Singapore was partially based on economic planning involving an active government industrial
policy and high levels of state-owned industry in a freemarket economy.

Econometrics

France

Industrial policy

See also: Dirigisme

Input-output planning

Enterprise resource planning

Indicative planning

Material Product System

Under dirigisme, France utilized indicative planning and
established a number of state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors of the economy. The concept behind indicative planning is the early identication of oversupply, bottlenecks and shortages so that state investment behavior
can be modied in a timely fashion to reduce the incidence of market disequilibrium, with the goal of sustaining stable economic development and growth. Under this
system France experienced its "Trente Glorieuses" period
of economic prosperity.

2.3.4

Criticisms

See also: Economic calculation problem

Material balance planning

Mixed economy
Nonmarket forces
Participatory planning
Peer-to-peer economy
Planned economy
Socialist calculation debate
Socialization (economics)
Socialist economics

2.3. ECONOMIC PLANNING

2.3.6

Notes

[1] Mandel, Ernest (1986). In Defense of Socialist Planning (PDF). New Left Review: 537. Planning is not
equivalent toperfectallocation of resources, norscienticallocation, nor even more humaneallocation.
It simply means directallocation, ex ante. As such, it
is the opposite of market allocation, which is ex post.
[2] Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing
Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Boston:
Houghton Miin. pp. 2324. ISBN 0-618-26181-8.
Centralization is commonly identied with plan and decentralization with market, but there is no simple relationship between the level of decision making and the use
of market or plan as a coordinating mechanism. In some
economies, it is possible to combine a considerable concentration of decision-making authority and information
in a few large corporations with substantial state involvement and yet to have no system of planning as such...To
identify an economy as planned does not necessarily reveal the prevalent coordinating mechanism, or for that
matter, the degree of centralization in decision making.
Both depend on the type of planning mechanism.
[3] Alec Nove (1987), planned economy, The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 879-80.
[4] Ellman, Michael (1989). Socialist Planning. Cambridge
University Press. p. 25. ISBN 0-521-35866-3. Planning
in the traditional model is primarily an activity that takes
place in physical terms. That is, it is concerned with allocating tonnes of this, cubic metres of that, etc. rather than
being concerned with allocating nancial ows.
[5] Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford
University Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-8047-7566-3.
[6] Schweickart, David; Lawler, James; Ticktin, Hillel; Ollman, Bertell (1998). Denitions of Market and Socialism. Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists.
New York: Routledge. pp. 5859. ISBN 0-415-91967-3.
For an Anti-Stalinist Marxist, socialism is dened by the
degree to which the society is planned. Planning here is
understood as the conscious regulation of society by the
associated producers themselves. Put it dierently, the
control over the surplus product rests with the majority of
the population through a resolutely democratic process...
The sale of labour power is abolished and labour necessarily becomes creative. Everyone participates in running
their institutions and society as a whole. No one controls
anyone else.
[7] Socialism: Utopian and Scientic. Marxists.org. In
1816, he declares that politics is the science of production,
and foretells the complete absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that economic conditions are the
basis of political institutions appears here only in embryo.
Yet what is here already very plainly expressed is the idea
of the future conversion of political rule over men into an
administration of things and a direction of processes of
production.
[8]Command Economy, Marxists.org Glossary of Terms:
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm For an

99

overview of the Soviet experience, see Myant, Martin;

Jan Drahokoupil (2010). Transition Economies: Political Economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.
Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 146. ISBN
978-0-470-59619-7.
[9] Wilhelm, John Howard (1985).The Soviet Union Has an
Administered, Not a Planned, Economy. Soviet Studies
37 (1): 118130. doi:10.1080/09668138508411571.
[10] Dowlah, Abu F. (1992).
Theoretical Expositions of Centralized versus Decentralized Strands
of Socialist Economic Systems.
International
Journal of Social Economics 19 (7/8/9): 210258.
doi:10.1108/EUM0000000000497.
[11] Montias, J. M. (1959).Planning with Material Balances
in Soviet-Type Economies. American Economic Review
49 (5): 963985. JSTOR 1813077.
[12] J. Bradford DeLong (1997).The Corporation as a Command Economy (PDF). UC Berkeley and National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
[13] John Kenneth Galbraith Part I: The History and Nature
of the New Industrial State, 1972
[14] Marx and Engels Selected Works, Lawrence and Wishart,
1968, p. 40. Capitalist property relations put a fetter
on the productive forces.
[15] Capital, Volume 1, by Marx, Karl. From Chapter 32:
Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation": Selfearned private property, that is based, so to say, on the
fusing together of the isolated, independent laboringindividual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted
by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation
of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage-labor.
As soon as this process of transformation has suciently
decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon
as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of
labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization
of labor and further transformation of the land and other
means of production into socially exploited and, therefore,
common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That
which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer
working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers.
[16] UNCTAD & UNIDO 2011, p. 34.
[17] Hugh Rocko U.S. Economy in World War I, 2010
[18] Herbert J. Zeh The Federal Funding of R&D: Who Gets
the Patent Rights?
[19] Noam Chomsky State and Corp., 2005
[20] Mariana Mazzucato (June 25, 2013). The Myth of the
MeddlingState. Public Finance International. Retrieved January 5, 2014.
[21] http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
[22] Writings 1932-33, P.96, Leon Trotsky.

100

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

2.4 Commanding heights of the

economy
The Commanding heights of the economy is a
MarxistLeninist phrase rst used during Vladimir
Lenin's New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union.* [1]
It meant that the Communist Party held monopoly over
political power, while retaining control of large enterprises, foreign trade, means of transportation, banks, energy, communications and heavy industry among others.* [1] Private ownership was allowed everywhere else,
including agriculture and trade.* [1] According to Yevgeni
Preobrazhensky, a Bolshevik economist, control over the
commanding heights of the economywould ensure
primitive socialist accumulation.* [2]
Deng Xiaoping, the leader who along with Chen Yun introduced the Chinese economic reforms, was inspired by
this concept, and he (and the Communist Party of China)
still believes to this day that the state needs to control the
economy's commanding heights.

2.4.1

References

[1] Wesson 1978, p. 111.

[2] Bonner 2013, p. 86.

2.4.2

Map of countries that declared themselves to be socialist states

under the MarxistLeninist or Maoist denition - that is to say,
Communist states- between 1979 and 1983. This period
marked the greatest territorial extent of Communist states.

the left; according to many communist and Marxist tendencies, the system in use in the Soviet Union and the
states modeled after it (i.e.,communist states) - which
claimed to have reached socialism, not communism - was
not socialism but rather state capitalism.* [2]
These states did not use the term communist state
to refer to themselves, since they did not claim to have
achieved communism. Instead, they frequently called
themselves socialist states, because they claimed to have
established or to aim at establishing a socialist society,
i.e., a society based on the principles of scientic socialism.

Bibliography

Bonner, Stephen Eric (2013). Socialism Unbound:

Principles, Practices, and Prospects. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231527357.

2.5.1 Communist party as the leader of the

state

In the theories of German philosopher Karl Marx, a state

Wesson, Robert G. (1978). Lenin's Legacy: The in any society is an instrument of oppression by one social
Story of the CPSU. Stanford, Calif: Hoover Press. class over another, historically a minority exploiter class
ruling over a majority exploited class. Marx saw that in
ISBN 978-0817969226.
his contemporary time, the new nation states were characterized by increasingly intensied class contradiction between the capitalist class and the working class it ruled
2.5 Communist state
over. He predicted that if the class contradictions of
the capitalist system continue to intensify, that the workThis article is about sovereign states governed by Com- ing class will ultimately become conscious of itself as
munist parties. For the social movement and political an exploited collective and will overthrow the capitalists
ideology, see Communism. For the hypothetical system and establish collective ownership over the means of propostulated in Marxism, see Communist society.
duction, therein arriving at a new phase of development
called Socialism (in Marxist understanding). The state
Communist state is a term used by historians and po- ruled by the working class during the transition into classlitical scientists to refer to a state that aims to achieve less society is called the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
socialism and then communism, usually with a professed Vladimir Lenin created revolutionary vanguard theory in
allegiance to MarxismLeninism as the guiding ideology an attempt to expand on the concept. Lenin saw that sciof the state. Most communist states have been states ence is something that is initially practicable by only a miwith a form of government characterized by single-party nority of society who happen to be in a position free from
rule or a dominant-party system. None of these states distraction so that they may contemplate it, and believed
achieved communist societies, and the term is used no that scientic socialism was no exception. He therefore
matter to what degree that state or the movement asso- advocated that the Communist party should be structured
ciated with it actually follows communism, if at all.* [1] as a vanguard of those who have achieved full class conThe label is the source of controversy, especially among sciousness to be at the forefront of the class struggle and

2.5. COMMUNIST STATE

101

lead the workers to expand class consciousness and re- applied to an entire state, democratic centralism creates
place the capitalist class as the ruling class, therein estab- a one-party system.* [5]
lishing the Proletarian state.
The constitutions of most socialist states describe their
political system as a form of democracy.* [6] Thus, they
recognize the sovereignty of the people as embodied in a
2.5.2 Development of communist states
series of representative parliamentary institutions. Such
states do not have a separation of powers; instead, they
During the 20th century, the world's rst constitution- have one national legislative body (such as the Supreme
ally socialist state was in Russia in 1917. In 1922, it Soviet in the Soviet Union) which is considered the highjoined other former territories of the empire to become est organ of state power and which is legally superior to
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After the Second the executive and judicial branches of government.* [7]
World War, the Soviet Army occupied much of Eastern
Such national legislative politics in socialist states often
Europe and thus helped establish Communist states in
have a similar structure to the parliaments that exist in
these countries. Most Communist states in Eastern Euliberal republics, with two signicant dierences: rst,
rope were allied with the USSR, except for Yugoslavia
the deputies elected to these national legislative bodies
which declared itself non-aligned. In 1949, after a war
are not expected to represent the interests of any particuagainst Japanese occupation and a civil war resulting in
lar constituency, but the long-term interests of the people
a Communist victory, the People's Republic of China
as a whole; second, against Marx's advice, the legislative
was established. Communist states were also established
bodies of socialist states are not in permanent session.
in Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. A CommuRather, they convene once or several times per year in
nist state was established in North Korea, although it
sessions which usually last only a few days.* [8]
later withdrew from the Communist movement. In 1989,
the Communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed under When the national legislative body is not in session, its
public pressure during a wave of non-violent movements powers are transferred to a smaller council (often called
which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. a presidium) which combines legislative and executive
Today, the existing Communist states in the world are in power, and, in some socialist states (such as the Soviet
Union before 1990), acts as a collective head of state. In
China, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba.
some systems, the presidium is composed of important
These communist states often do not claim to have
communist party members who vote the resolutions of
achieved socialism or communism in their countries;
the communist party into law.
rather, they claim to be building and working toward the
establishment of socialism in their countries. For example, the preamble to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's
State social institutions
constitution states that Vietnam only entered a transition
stage between capitalism and socialism after the country
A feature of socialist states is the existence of numerwas re-unied under the Communist party in 1976,* [3]
ous state-sponsored social organizations (trade unions,
and the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Cuba states
youth organizations, women's organizations, associations
that the role of the Communist Party is to guide the
of teachers, writers, journalists and other professionals,
common eort toward the goals and construction of soconsumer cooperatives, sports clubs, etc.) which are incialism.* [4]
tegrated into the political system.
In some socialist states, representatives of these organi2.5.3 State institutions in Communist zations are guaranteed a certain number of seats on the
national legislative bodies. In socialist states, the social
states
organizations are expected to promote social unity and
cohesion, to serve as a link between the government and
Communist states share similar institutions, which are orsociety, and to provide a forum for recruitment of new
ganized on the premise that the Communist party is a
communist party members.* [9]
vanguard of the proletariat and represents the long-term
interests of the people. The doctrine of democratic centralism, which was developed by Vladimir Lenin as a set Political power
of principles to be used in the internal aairs of the communist party, is extended to society at large.* [5]
Historically, the political organization of many socialist
According to democratic centralism, all leaders must be
elected by the people and all proposals must be debated
openly, but, once a decision has been reached, all people
have a duty to obey that decision and all debate should
end. When used within a political party, democratic centralism is meant to prevent factionalism and splits. When

states has been dominated by a single-party monopoly.

Some communist governments, such as North Korea,
East Germany or the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
have or had more than one political party, but all minor
parties are or were required to follow the leadership of the
communist party. In socialist states, the government may

102

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

not tolerate criticism of policies that have already been of Marxism-Leninism in particular and as such repreimplemented in the past or are being implemented in the sent a particular ideology that many communists may not
present.* [10]
share. They are listed here together with the year of their
*
Nevertheless, communist parties have won elections and founding and their respective ruling parties: [19]
governed in the context of multi-party democracies, without seeking to establish a one-party state. Examples in- North Korea
clude San Marino, Republic of Nicaragua,* [11] Moldova,
Nepal (presently), Cyprus,* [12] and the Indian states of

Democratic People's Republic of Korea (since

Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura.* [13] However, for the
1948) asserts that its system is socialist although
purposes of this article, these entities do not fall under the
the government's ocial ideology is now the Juche
denition of socialist state.
policy of Kim Il-sung, as opposed to traditional
MarxismLeninism. In 2009, the constitution of
the DPRK was quietly amended so that not only did
2.5.4 Critiques
it disavow all Marxist-Leninist references present
in the rst draft, but it also dropped all reference
Main article: Criticisms of communist party rule
to 'Communism'.* [20] Similar to ocially MarxistLeninist states, the Workers' Party governs the counCommunist states were criticized as one-party dictatortry as a single-party state although it hasn't been verships, with totalitarian control of the economy and soied that the country's actual working-class governs.
ciety and repression of civil liberties,* [14] economic focus on heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods,
sometimes resulting in shortages of vital products or even Multi-party states with governing communist parties
famine,* [15] and militarism and propaganda to cover up
the mistakes of the government .* [16] Some historians ar- There are multi-party states with communist parties leadgued that economic systems of communist states actually ing the government. Such states are not considered to be
communist states as the countries themselves allow for
represented state capitalism rather than socialism.* [2]
multiple parties, and do not provide a constitutional role
In his critique of states run under Marxist-Leninist ideolfor their communist parties.
ogy, economist Michael Ellman of the University of Amsterdam notes that such states compared favorably with
Guyana: The Guyanese democratically-elected
Western states in some health indicators such as infant
People's Progressive Party claims to be Marxistmortality and life expectancy.* [17] Similarly, Amartya
Leninist* [21] but seemingly continues following
Sen's own analysis of international comparisons of life
capitalist characteristics. It was in power most reexpectancy found that several Marxist-Leninist states
cently between 1992 and 2015, but is not part of the
made signicant gains, and commentedone thought that
Government of Guyana as of the 2015 general elecis bound to occur is that communism is good for poverty
tion.
removal.* [18]

2.5.5

Modern period

2.5.6 See also

Capitalist state
Communist society
Criticisms of communist party rule
List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with
national parliamentary representation
List of communist parties

A map of states claiming to be communist as of 2012

List of socialist countries, which includes a list of

current and former socialist states.

List of current states claiming to be communist

People's democracy (MarxismLeninism)

The following countries are one-party states in which the

institutions of the ruling communist party and the state
have become intertwined. They are generally adherents

Socialist state
Socialism in one country

2.6. DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM

2.5.7

References

[1] Steele, David (1992). From Marx to Mises: PostCapitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court Publishing Company. p. 45. ISBN
978-0875484495. Among Western journalists the term
Communistcame to refer exclusively to regimes and
movements associated with the Communist International
and its ospring: regimes which insisted that they were
not communist but socialist, and movements which were
barely communist in any sense at all
[2] State capitalismin the Soviet Union, M.C. Howard and
J.E. King
[3] VN Embassy - Constitution of 1992 Full Text. From
the Preamble: On 2 July 1976, the National Assembly of reunied Vietnam decided to change the country's
name to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; the country
entered a period of transition to socialism, strove for national construction, and unyieldingly defended its frontiers
while fullling its internationalist duty.
[4] Cubanet - Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1992 Full
Text. From Article 5: The Communist Party of Cuba,
a follower of Marts ideas and of Marxism-Leninism,
and the organized vanguard of the Cuban nation, is the
highest leading force of society and of the state, which
organizes and guides the common eort toward the goals
of the construction of socialism and the progress toward a
communist society,
[5] Furtak, Robert K. The political systems of the socialist
states, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986, pp. 8-9.
[6] Furtak, Robert K. The political systems of the socialist
states, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986, p. 12.
[7] Furtak, Robert K. The political systems of the socialist
states, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1987, p. 13.
[8] Furtak, Robert K. The political systems of the socialist
states, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986, p. 14.
[9] Furtak, Robert K. The political systems of the socialist
states, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986, p. 16-17.
[10] Furtak, Robert K. The political systems of the socialist
states, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986, p. 18-19.
[11] Kinzer, Stephen (15 January 1987). NICARAGUA'S
COMMUNIST PARTY SHIFTS TO OPPOSITION.
The New York Times.

103

[17] Michael Ellman. Socialist Planning. Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 1107427320 p. 372.
[18] Richard G. Wilkinson. Unhealthy Societies: The Aictions of Inequality. Routledge, November 1996. ISBN
0415092353. p. 122
[19] Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook: FIELD
LISTING :: GOVERNMENT TYPE
[20] DPRK has quietly amended its Constitution. Leonid
Petrov's KOREA VISION.
[21] Contribution of PeoplesProgressive Party of Guyana
. Solidnet.org.

2.6 Democratic centralism

Democratic centralism is the name given to the
deontological principles of internal organization used by
Leninist political parties, and the term is sometimes used
as a synonym for any Leninist policy inside a political party. The democratic aspect of this organizational
method describes the freedom of members of the political party to discuss and debate matters of policy and direction, but once the decision of the party is made by
majority vote, all members are expected to uphold that
decision. This latter aspect represents the centralism. As
Lenin described it, democratic centralism consisted of
freedom of discussion, unity of action.* [1]

2.6.1 Before Stalin

The Sixth Party Congress of the Russian SocialDemocratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) held at Petrograd
between July 26 and August 3, 1917 dened democratic
centralism as follows:
1. That all directing bodies of the Party, from top to
bottom, shall be elected;
2. That Party bodies shall give periodical accounts of
their activities to their respective Party organizations;

[12] Cyprus elects its rst communist president, The

Guardian, 25 February 2008.

3. That there shall be strict Party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority;

[13] Kerala Assembly Elections-- 2006

4. That all decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all Party members.* [2]

[14] Assemble parlementaire du Conseil de l'Europe.

coe.int.
[15] The Economics of Soviet Agriculture by Leonard E. Hubbard, p. 117-18
[16] Kenez, Peter (1985). The Birth of the Propaganda State:
Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-31398-8.

The text What Is to Be Done? from 1902 is popularly

seen as the founding text of democratic centralism. At
this time, democratic centralism was generally viewed as
a set of principles for the organizing of a revolutionary
workers' party. However, Lenin's model for such a party,

104

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

which he repeatedly discussed as beingdemocratic cen- 2.6.3 In China

tralist, was the German Social Democratic Party, inspired by remarks made by the social-democrat Jean Bap- Democratic centralism is also stated in Article 3 of the
present Constitution of the People's Republic of China:
tista von Schweitzer.
The doctrine of democratic centralism served as one of
the sources of the split between the Bolsheviks and the
Mensheviks. The Mensheviks supported a looser party
discipline within the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party in 1903, as did Leon Trotsky, in Our Political
Tasks,* [3] although Trotsky joined ranks with the Bolsheviks in 1917.
After the successful consolidation of power by the Communist Party following the Russian Revolution of 1917
and the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik leadership, including Lenin, instituted a ban on factions in the Russian Communist Party as Resolution No. 12 of the 10th
Party Congress in 1921. It was passed in the morning
session on March 16, 1921.* [4] Supporters of Trotsky
sometimes claim that this ban was intended to be temporary. But there is no language in the discussion at the
10th Party Congress suggesting that it was intended to be
temporary.* [5]

Article 3. The state organs of the People's Republic of China apply the principle of
democratic centralism. The National People's
Congress and the local people's congresses at
dierent levels are instituted through democratic election. They are responsible to the
people and subject to their supervision. All administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs
of the state are created by the people's congresses to which they are responsible and under
whose supervision they operate. The division
of functions and powers between the central
and local state organs is guided by the principle
of giving full play to the initiative and enthusiasm of the local authorities under the unied
leadership of the central authorities.* [8]

Its principal practice exists as the supremacy of theNaThe Group of Democratic Centralism was a group in the tional People's Congress,which represents the people
Soviet Communist Party who advocated dierent con- and exercises legislative authority on their behalf. Other
cepts of party democracy.
powers, including the power to appoint the head of state
and head of government, are also vested in this body.

2.6.4 See also

2.6.2

In the Soviet Union

During Joseph Stalin's time, the principle of democratic

centralism had evolved to the point that the Supreme Soviet, while nominally vested with great legislative powers,
did little more than approve decisions already made at the
highest levels of the Communist Party. This de facto arrangement soon became the norm in nearly all Communist states.

21 Conditions given in 1920 by the Third International to all socialist parties

Cabinet collective responsibility, a similar concept
in parliamentary government
Eastern Bloc politics
One party state

Spontaneism
By the Leonid Brezhnev period democratic centralism
was described, in the 1977 Soviet Constitution, as a prin Autonomy
ciple for organizing the state: The Soviet state is orga Federalism
nized and functions on the principle of democratic centralism, namely the electiveness of all bodies of state authority from the lowest to the highest, their accountability
to the people, and the obligation of lower bodies to ob- 2.6.5 References
serve the decisions of higher ones.Democratic central[1] Lenin, V. (1906). Report on the Unity Congress of the
ism combines central leadership with local initiative and
R.S.D.L.P.. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
creative activity and with the responsibility of each state
[2] History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolbody and ocial for the work entrusted to them.
The democratic centralist principle extended to elections.
All Communist countries were either de jure or de facto
single-party states. In most cases, the voters were presented with a single list, which usually won 90 percent
or more of the vote. In some countries, those who voted
against the lone candidate on the ballot could face serious
reprisals.* [6]* [7]

sheviks). Short Course. New York: International Publishers, 1939, p. 198

[3] Leon Trotsky (1904). Our Political Tasks. Retrieved
2008-08-09.
[4] Protokoly 1933 ed. 5857; 1963 ed. 5713
[5] Protokoly 1933 ed. 523548

2.7. MARXISTLENINIST ATHEISM

[6] Sebetsyen, Victor (2009). Revolution 1989: The Fall of

the Soviet Empire. New York City: Pantheon Books.
ISBN 0-375-42532-2.
[7] Nohlen, D & Stver, P (2010) Elections in Europe: A data
handbook, p457 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
[8] English-language text of Constitution of the People's Republic of China, adopted 4 December 1982, Chapter 1,
Article 3. Accessed 29 December 2014

2.6.6

External links

10-iy s"ezd RKP(b). Protokoly. Transcript of 10th

Party Congress, 1933 edition (in Russian)
Transcript of 10th Party Congress, 1963 edition (in
Russian).
On Democratic-Centralism & The Regime Leon
Trotsky.
Notes on democratic centralism Tony Cli, June
1968.
Bolshevism, Fraudulent Practice Of Democratic
Centralism Albert Weisbord, 1976.
On Democratic Centralism PL Magazine, 1982.
On democratic centralism Mick Armstrong, 2000.
Democratic Centralism Glossary of Terms on http:
//www.marxists.org

2.7 MarxistLeninist atheism

MarxistLeninist atheism (Russian: ) is a part of the wider Marxist
Leninist philosophy (the type of Marxist philosophy
found in the Soviet Union), which rejects religion* [1]* [2]
and clergymen as well as advocates a materialist understanding of nature.* [3] MarxismLeninism holds that religion is the opium of the people, in the sense of promoting passive acceptance of suering on Earth in the
hope of eternal reward. Therefore, MarxismLeninism
advocates the abolition of religion and the acceptance of
atheism.* [4]* [5] MarxistLeninist atheism has its roots
in the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, G.W.F. Hegel,
Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin.* [6]

105

2.7.1 Inuence of Feuerbach and Left

Hegelians
Marx, from the earliest times in his career, had been
heavily involved in debates surrounding the philosophy
of religion in early-19th century Germany. Bitter controversies surrounding the proper interpretation of the
Hegelian philosophical legacy greatly formed Marxs
thinking about religion. The Hegelians considered philosophy as an enterprise meant to serve the insights of
religious comprehension, and Hegel had rationalized the
fundamentals of the Christian faith in his elaborate philosophy of spirit. Hegel, while being critical of contemporary dogmatic religion, retained an intellectual interest
in the ontological and epistemological beliefs of Christianity.* [8] His philosophy was compatible with theological views, and religious explanations of the deepest questions of being were considered unquestionably valuable
by him, but needing additional clarication, systematization and argumentative justication.* [9] His philosophy worked as a conceptual enterprise based upon the
truths of his faith. His legacy was debated after his death
in 1831 between the Young Hegeliansand materialist atheists, including especially the German philosopher
Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx sided with the materialist atheists in his rejection of all forms of religious philosophy,
including the most liberal forms of such, and Feuerbach
greatly inuenced him. Feuerbach wanted to separate
philosophy from religion and to give philosophers intellectual autonomy from religion in their interpretation of
reality. Feuerbach objected to Hegels philosophical notions that he believed were based on his religious views.
Feuerbach attacked the conceptual foundations of theology and wanted to undermine religion by introducing a
new religion of humanity by redirecting fundamental human concerns of dignity, the meaning of life, morality
and purpose of existence within an invented atheistic religion that did not hold belief in anything supernatural, but
which would serve as an answer to these concerns. Feuerbach considered that the antithesis of human and divine
was based on an antithesis between human nature generally and individual humans,* [10] and came to the conclusion that humanity as a species (but just not as individuals) possessed within itself all the attributes that merited
worship and that people had created God as a reection
of these attributes.* [11] He wrote:
But the idea of deity coincides with the idea
of humanity. All divine attributes, all the attributes which make God God, are attributes of
the species attributes which in the individual
are limited, but the limits of which are abolished in the essence of the species, and even
in its existence, in so far as it has its complete
existence only in all men taken together.* [12]

Some non-Soviet Marxists opposed this antireligious

stance, and in certain forms of Marxist thinking, such
as the liberation theology movements in Latin America
among others, MarxistLeninist atheism was rejected en- Feuerbach wanted to destroy all religious commitments
tirely.* [7]
and to encourage an intensive hatred towards the old God.

106

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

All religious institutions needed to be eradicated from

the earth and from the memory of coming generations,
so that they would never again nd power over people
s minds through their deception and promotion of fear
from the mystical forces of God.* [13] It was this thinking that the young Karl Marx was deeply attracted by,
and Marx adopted much of Feuerbachs thought into
his own philosophical worldview. Marx considered that
the higher goals of humanity would justify any radicalism, both intellectual as well as social/political radicalism
in order to achieve its ends.* [14]* [15]

2.7.2

Marx

In his rejection of all religious thought, Marx considered the contributions of religion over the centuries to
be unimportant and irrelevant to the future of humanity.* [16]* [17] The autonomy of humanity from the realm
of supernatural forces was considered by Marx as an
axiomatic ontological truth that had been developed since
ancient times, and he considered it to have an even more
respectable tradition than Christianity. He argued that religious belief had been invented as a reaction against the
suering and injustice of the world. In Marx's view, the
poor and oppressed were the original creators of religion,
and they used it as a way to reassure themselves that they
would have a better life in the future, after death. Thus,
it served as a kind of opium,or a way to escape the
harsh realities of the world.
Religious suering is, at one and the same
time, the expression of real suering and a
protest against real suering. Religion is the
sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.* [18]
Furthermore, in his view, atheistic philosophy had liberated human beings from suppressing their natural potential and allowed for people to realize that they, rather than
any supernatural force that required obedience, were the
masters of reality. Marxs opposition to religion was
based especially upon this view in that he believed religion alienated humans from reality and held them back
from their true potential. He therefore considered that
religion needed to be removed from society.
The decomposition of man into Jew and
citizen, Protestant and citizen, religious man
and citizen, is neither a deception directed
against citizenhood, nor is it a circumvention
of political emancipation, it is political emancipation itself, the political method of emancipating oneself from religion. Of course, in periods when the political state as such is born violently out of civil society, when political liberation is the form in which men strive to achieve

their liberation, the state can and must go as

far as the abolition of religion, the destruction
of religion. But it can do so only in the same
way that it proceeds to the abolition of private
property, to the maximum, to conscation, to
progressive taxation, just as it goes as far as the
abolition of life, the guillotine. At times of special self-condence, political life seeks to suppress its prerequisite, civil society and the elements composing this society, and to constitute itself as the real species-life of man, devoid of contradictions. But, it can achieve this
only by coming into violent contradiction with
its own conditions of life, only by declaring the
revolution to be permanent, and, therefore, the
political drama necessarily ends with the reestablishment of religion, private property, and
all elements of civil society, just as war ends
with peace.* [19]
Marx came to see that religion was determined by the
economic superstructure and therefore he believed abolishing class society would lead to an end to religion. He
wrote much about these things before he had much developed his ideas concerning the abolition of private property and communism. Hostility towards religion was in
fact the beginning of Marxs philosophical career and it
preceded dialectic materialism. It became critically fused
with his economic and social ideas in his claim that religion, along with all other forms of thought, was the product of material conditions and the distribution of property. When the economic structures that created religion
were destroyed, religion assumedly would disappear with
it. He therefore believed that religion needed to be combated through a pragmatic approach of attacking the economic base of religion and to attack the causes of religion. He considered that religion was an opiate that
people needed in order to support themselves in harsh
conditions of life, and he furthermore held the view that
these harsh conditions were kept in place with the support of religion. In order to eliminate religion, he therefore held that he needed to eliminate the harsh conditions
that caused people to hold illusory superstitions that comforted them, and in order to eliminate these conditions he
concluded that religion, since it supported the existence
of such conditions, therefore needed to be eliminated.
The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of the people is the demand for their
real happiness. To call on them to give up their
illusions about their condition is to call on them
to give up a condition that requires illusions.
The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo.* [20]
In this way he transformed Feuerbachs attack on religion from a mainly philosophical critique into a call for

2.7. MARXISTLENINIST ATHEISM

physical action. He therefore held that atheism was the
philosophical foundation stone of his ideology, but in itself was insucient.

107
the isolated individual, the image of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the
mode of production of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move.* [23]

Communism begins from the outset

(Owen) with atheism; but atheism is at rst far
from being communism; indeed, that atheism
is still mostly an abstraction.* [21]

The Christian religion had begun as spiritual protests

against the conditions of life, wherein lower classes believed that they were supernaturally favoured over the
richer ruling classes. However, it had deteriorated from
its original goals into a kind of false consolation for peoThe intellectual atheism held by Feuerbach and others of
ple who accepted their subjection. This degeneration was
his time, was transformed by Marx into a more sophisviewed negatively in the later MarxistLeninist tradition,
ticated consideration and critique of material conditions
as a kind of perversion of the original noble goals of reliresponsible for religion.
gion by the social and cultural elite. This view that Christianity had been perverted by the elite partly justied revFeuerbach starts out from the fact of reliolutionary action in order to abolish it and replace it with
gious self-alienation, of the
atheism.* [24]
duplication of the world into a religious
Marxs hostility towards religion lessened in his later caworld and a secular one. His work consists in
reer when he wrote less about the subject and showed less
resolving the religious world into its secular baenthusiasm about combating religious belief. He came
sis. But that the secular basis detaches itself
to consider later in his life that religion would disappear
from itself and establishes itself as an indepennaturally through the richness of ideas that would emerge
dent realm in the clouds can only be explained
from a rationalized order of communistic social life. This
by the cleavages and self-contradictions within
idea, however, would later be attacked by Lenin and the
this secular basis. The latter must, therefore,
succeeding Soviet establishment even to the point of viin itself be both understood in its contradicolence and purges directed at proponents of this righttion and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for
istor mechanicistidea of religion disappearing on
instance, after the earthly family is discovered
its own.* [25]
to be the secret of the holy family, the former
must then itself be destroyed in theory and in
In his later life he wrote only about a need to separate
practice.
religion from the state, but he was still hostile to religious
Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that
belief. He believed that belief in the existence of God
thereligious sentimentis itself a social prodwas immoral and anti-human.
uct, and that the abstract individual whom he
Near the end of his life, Marx adopted the views that
analyses belongs to a particular form of sociChristians oered human sacrices and consumed huety.* [22]
man blood and esh.* [26]* [27] He believed that knowledge of these practices had dealt a deathblow to ChrisDialectical materialism had the task of oering itself as tianity.
an alternative to religious views of creation. Human beThe atheistic element of Communism would be intensiings were the natural products of the interplay of mateed in some Marxist movements after his death.
rial forces and there was no room for supernatural interference in human destiny. Religion had originally come
about, according to Marx, as a kind of escape of the ex- 2.7.3 Engels
ploited classes from the harsh realities of existence and an
illusion that comforted one in the hope of a future reward. Friedrich Engels wrote, independently of Marx, on conAlthough this was its origin with the oppressed classes, temporary issues, including religious controversies. In his
the ruling classes had taken control of religion and used worksAnti-DhringandLudwig Feuerbach and the
it as a tool of emotional and intellectual control of the End of Classical German Ideology, he engaged in critimasses. Marx considered Christianity to have been like cism on the idealistic worldview in general, including rethis, in its origin as a religion for slaves hoping for a re- ligious outlooks on reality. He considered that religion
ward after their harsh existence, but in later becoming a was a fantastic reection in the mind of the powers which
kind of deceptive ideology that the ruling classes used to caused miserable conditions in earlier stages of history.
maintain the status quo.
He believed that increasing humanitys control over its
It is self-evident, moreover, that spectres,bonds,the higher being,concept,
scruple,are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the conception apparently of

existence, would eliminate these fantasies that were produced as a result of humanitys desperation with the
world it lived in. Since belief in God came about as a result of a need in people for there to be some control over
their existence, he therefore reasoned that by eliminat-

108

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

ing this need, religion (the reection of this need) would scientic rather than being a philosophy apart from the
gradually disappear.
sciences.
And when this act has been accomplished,
when society, by taking possession of all means
of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from
the bondage in which they are now held by
these means of production which they themselves have produced but which confront them
as an irresistible alien force, when therefore
man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes only then will the last alien force which
is still reected in religion vanish; and with it
will also vanish the religious reection itself,
for the simple reason that then there will be
nothing left to reect.* [28]
Engels considered religion as a false consciousness, and
incompatible with communism. Engels, in his lifelong
contacts with leaders of Social Democratic and Communist parties in Europe as well as the founders of the First
International (the 19th century political union of communist movements), urged them to disseminate and cultivate atheism.* [29] He also called for scientic education on a massive scale in order to overcome the fears
and illusions of people who required a religious explanation for the world around them. He believed that science would provide an explanation for things that people
had formerly required religious concepts to fulll, and by
providing this explanation, people would no longer feel a
need to have religion for this purpose. He wrote much
about contemporary great scientic discoveries and used
them to support the principles of dialectical materialism
in all his popular works intended for the ordinary masses
in the Communist movements. These included discoveries in biology, physics, chemistry, anthropology and psychology, all of which Engels used to argue against a need
for religious explanations of the world.* [30] He believed
that science would make humanity condent of its own
self and to embrace its proper lordship over reality. It
would give humanity the ability to control the world he
lived in and therefore to overcome the harsh conditions
that produced a need in people to believe in a God who
controlled the universe. In his view scientic advancement in his time was justifying the materialist and atheistic outlook on the world that dialectical materialism held.
Speculative philosophy and rational theology became obsolete in light of scientic advancement.
The real unity of the world consists in its
materiality, and this is proved not by a few
juggled phrases, but by a long and wearisome
development of philosophy and natural science.* [31]
He also believed that scientic advancement required
atheistic materialism to be changed as well and to become

This modern materialism, the negation of

the negation, is not the mere re-establishment
of the old, but adds to the permanent foundations of this old materialism the whole thoughtcontent of two thousand years of development
of philosophy and natural science, as well as of
the history of these two thousand years. It is no
longer a philosophy at all, but simply a world
outlook which has to establish its validity and
be applied not in a science of sciences standing apart, but in the real sciences. Philosophy
is thereforesublatedhere, that is,both overcome and preserved{D. K. G. 503}; overcome as regards its form, and preserved as regards its real content.* [32]
Engelsviews on the need for scientic education and the
need for materialistic atheism to rely on science, spread
widely among Communists and it would later become a
fundamental position of Soviet education, which was hostile to religious belief.

2.7.4 Lenin
Vladimir Lenin followed this tradition, and considered
religion as an opiate that must be always combated by
true socialists.* [33] He adapted the ideological ideas of
Marx and Engels to the particular context of Russia and
his interpretation of Marxism and its anti-religious doctrine was inuenced by the intellectual tradition of his
own country. Lenin considered that religion in Russia
was the chief ideological tool of the ruling classes to exploit the masses in that it taught subjects to be submissive
to their exploiters and it assisted the conscience of the exploiters to believe that acts of charity would merit eternal
life.

Boris Kustodiev's 1920 painting Bolshevik,depicting a revolutionary with the red ag, glaring at an Orthodox Christian
church.

2.7. MARXISTLENINIST ATHEISM

Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by
want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited
classes in their struggle against the exploiters
just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage
in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in
gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who
toil and live in want all their lives are taught
by religion to be submissive and patient while
here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope
of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the
labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus oering them
a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort
of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for
a life more or less worthy of man.* [34]

Since religion was the ideological tool that kept the system in place, Lenin believed atheistic propaganda to be
of critical necessity. To this eect, before the revolution
Lenins faction devoted a signicant portion of their
meagre resources to antireligious propaganda, and even
during the civil war, Lenin devoted much of his personal
energy towards the anti-religious campaign. The inuence of the Orthodox Church especially needed to be
weakened in order to undermine the Tsarist rgime. The
populace also needed to be prepared in order to make a
transition from religious beliefs to atheism, as Communism would require of them.* [35]
Lenin considered atheism and theoretical ideas, not as important in themselves, but as weapons to use in the class
struggle in order to overthrow the ruling classes that supported themselves with religion. For this reason he considered it important to maintain an intellectually enlightened Party that did not hold religious superstitions, and he
considered that a true socialist must be an atheist. Theoretical debates and abstract philosophical or theological
ideas could not be understood in isolation from the material conditions of society. Lenin did not believe in the
existence of objective and neutral academic research, because he considered, in the tradition of historical materialism, that all intellectual activity was perpetrated and
maintained by class interests. He believed that philosophical debates were always partisan, and his 1909 work
Materialism and Empirio-criticismwas written from
this perspective and he also kept extensive notes from
the works of Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and Hegel, in
which he believed questions concerning the ideological
class struggle could be answered.* [36]

109
Lenin had no tolerance for any trace of idealism in the
views of either his opponents or his collaborators, and
considered that anything short of a fully atheistic materialist outlook was a concession to the ideological dominance of the ruling classes and their religious beliefs.
He considered religion to be political by nature and the
primary target of ideological attacks. Lenin considered
militant atheism to be so critical to his faction that he
went beyond the Russian atheist tradition of Belinsky,
Herzen, and Pisarev and organized a systematic, aggressive and uncompromising movement of antireligious agitation. He founded a whole institution of professional
atheist propagandists in the USSR who spread all over
the country after 1917 and who were the foot-soldiers
of the antireligious campaigns meant to eliminate religion
so as to make the populace atheists.
Lenins unequivocal hostile intolerance towards religious
belief became a distinctive feature of ideological Soviet
atheism, which was contrasted with milder antireligious
views of Marxists outside the USSR. His hostility to religion allowed no compromises, such that it even alienated
leftist religious believers who sympathised with the Bolsheviks. It even alienated some leftist atheists who were
willing to accommodate religious beliefs.* [36] Attacking
religion became far more important for Lenin than it had
been for Marx.
A prominent Bolshevik leader and later USSR Commissar for Enlightenment, Anatoli Lunacharsky, was attacked by Lenin for attempting to accommodate pseudoreligious sentiments in the world-view of Communism.
Lunacharsky had carried ideas similar to Feuerbachs
notion of replacing religion with a new atheistic religion that had a place for the sentiments, ceremonies and
meanings of religion, but which was compatible with science and possessed no supernatural beliefs (see: GodBuilding). Lunacharsky considered that while religion
was false and was used as a tool of exploitation, it still cultivated emotion, moral values and desires among masses
of people, which the Bolsheviks should take over and
manipulate rather than abolish. These products of religion should have been transformed into humanistic values of a communist morality rather than abolished, when
they formed the basis of the psychological and moral
integrity of masses of people. By replacing traditional
religion with a new atheistic religion wherein humanity
was worshiped rather than God, socialism would achieve
much better success, according to Lunacharsky. He believed this would have less confrontation and abuse of
the culture and historical tradition of European civilization.* [37]
Lenin was enraged with this idea of Lunacharsky, however, because he considered it a concession to religious belief, and therefore harmful in the extreme. He
claimed it ignored the fact that religion was an ideological tool of suppression of the masses, and he claimed that
Lunacharskys ideas were a dangerous and unnecessary
compromise with the reactionary forces of the Russian

110

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Empire. Militant atheism became the testing principle

of sincerity of Marxist commitment to Lenin, and it was
a violation of the principles of socialism to compromise
even in this way, wherein no supernatural beliefs were invoked, with religious ideas.* [37]
Marx had earlier rejected Feuerbachs proposal for an
atheistic religion, and Lenin looked to Marx as his example. He believed that even the slightest compromise with
religious belief would degenerate under intense political
pressure into a betrayal of the cause of Communism altogether.* [38] A true communist had to be an atheist according to Lenin.* [39]

2.7.5

Soviet Union

of history, to the domain of the social sciences.

We must combat religion that is the ABC
of all materialism, and consequently of Marxism. But Marxism is not a materialism which
has stopped at the ABC. Marxism goes further. It says: We must know how to combat
religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among
the masses in a materialist way. The combating
of religion cannot be conned to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced
to such preaching. It must be linked up with
the concrete practice of the class movement,
which aims at eliminating the social roots of
religion.* [33]
Marxism as interpreted by Lenin and his successors required changes in social consciousness and the redirection of peoples beliefs. Soviet Marxism was considered
incompatible with belief in the Supernatural. Communism required a conscious rejection of religion or else it
could not be established.* [43] This was not a secondary
priority of the system, nor was it a hostility developed towards religion as a competing or rival system of thought,
but it was a core and fundamental teaching of the philosophical doctrine of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union.* [44] Marxist philosophy traditionally involved a
thorough scientic critique of religion and an attempt to
demystifyreligious belief.

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow during its 1931

demolition.

The policy that began with Lenin and continued for the
course of Soviet history was that religion was to be tolerated by the state, but the Party was to do whatever it
deemed necessary in order to gradually remove it from
society.* [40]* [41] Thus, the Soviet state and the Communist Party - which were two separate institutions - were
supposed to have two dierent attitudes towards religion, with the rst being neutral and the second being
hostile to it. However, since the USSR was a one-party
state, the distinction between Party and state became very
blurred over time, with the result that religion was sometimes repressed and sometimes tolerated, to varying degrees.* [42] When writing about the Party's anti-religious
stance, Lenin did not see the replacement of religion with
atheism as an end to itself, but wrote that it needed to be
accompanied by a materialist world-view.
Marxism is materialism. As such, it is
as relentlessly hostile to religion as was the
materialism of the eighteenth-century Encyclopaedists or the materialism of Feuerbach.
This is beyond doubt. But the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels goes further than
the Encyclopaedists and Feuerbach, for it applies the materialist philosophy to the domain

The membership card of the League of Militant Atheists (Soyuz

Voinstvuyushchikh Bezbozhnikov) in the USSR

2.7. MARXISTLENINIST ATHEISM

111

According to Marxist theory, religion was a product of

USSR anti-religious campaign (192128)
material conditions and the organization of private prop USSR anti-religious campaign (192841)
erty. Working with this premise, the militant atheism
of the Soviet leadership initially considered that religion
USSR anti-religious campaign (195864)
would disappear on its own through the coming of the
socialist system. Therefore after the revolution, initially
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s87)
the Bolsheviks gave tolerance to religion, with the exception of Orthodoxy (which was subject to persecutions due
to its links with Tsarism). When it became clear after the
USSR was established that religion was not dying away 2.7.7 References
on its own, the USSR began general antireligious cam[1] (1965). paigns.* [45]
Combating religious beliefs was considered an absolute
duty by Lenin.* [46] The campaigns involved extensive
amounts of antireligious propaganda, antireligious legislation, atheistic education, antireligious discrimination,
harassment, arrests and also campaigns of violent terror.* [47] Soviet leaders, propagandists and other militant
atheists debated for years over the question of what approach was most pragmatic in order to eliminate religion.
The state recruited millions of people, spent billions of
roubles, and made incredible eorts towards this end, although it ultimately failed to achieve their goal.
The pragmatic nature of the militant atheism of the
USSR, meant that some cooperation and tolerance could
exist between the rgime and religion when it was deemed
to be in the best interests of the state or it was found that
certain antireligious tactics would deal more harm than
good towards the goal of eliminating religion (e.g. hardening believersreligious feelings). These forms of cooperation and tolerance by no means meant that religion
did not need to be eliminated ultimately.* [44] Militant
atheism was a profound and fundamental philosophical
commitment of the ideology, and not simply the personal
convictions of those who ran the regime.* [48]

2.7.6

See also

God-Building
Marxism and religion
Opium of the people
Persecution of Christians in the Eastern Bloc
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union
Persecution of Muslims in the former USSR
Polish anti-religious campaign
Red Terror
Religion in the Soviet Union
Religious persecution in Communist Romania
State atheism
Soviet anti-religious legislation

(in Russian). .
-
,
...

[2] (
) (1981). (in Russian). - "". -

.
, ,
...
[3] (1983).
(in Russian).
.
-
*.
(
) , .
...
[4] Vladimir Lenin, in Novaya Zhizn No. 28, December 3,
1905, as quoted in Marxists Internet Archive. Religion
is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by
want and isolation... Those who toil and live in want all
their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope
of a heavenly reward... Religion is opium for the people.
Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of
capital drown their human image, their demand for a life
more or less worthy of man.
[5] Brad Olsen. Sacred Places Europe. CCC Publishing.
p117. Soviet policy toward religion was based on the
ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which promoted atheism
as the ocial doctrine of the Soviet Union. MarxismLeninism consistently advocated the control, suppression,
and, ultimately, the elimination of all religious doctrines.
[6] Slovak Studies, Volume 21. The Slovak Institute in North
America. p231.The origin of Marxist-Leninist atheism
as understood in the USSR, is linked with the development
of the German philosophy of Hegel and Feuerbach.
[7] Richard L. Rubenstein, John K. Roth (1988). The Politics of Latin American Liberation Theology. Washington
Institute Press. ISBN 0-88702-040-2. There were, however, Marxist voices that pointed out the disadvantages of
such antireligious policies.

112

[8] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in

Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 9
[9] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 910
[10] L. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper
Torch Books, 1957) pp. 1314.
[11] L. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper
Torch Books, 1957) pp. 152.
[12] Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, chapter
16 found at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/
feuerbach/works/essence/index.htm
[13] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History
of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious
Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 11 "
religious commitments should be intellectually and emotionally destroyed the catharsis of an intensive hatred
towards the old God All previous religious institutions
should be ruthlessly eradicated from the face of the earth
and from the face of the earth and from the memory of
coming generations, so that they could never regain power
over people's minds through deception and the promotion
of fear from the mystical forces of the Heaven.
[14] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 13 It was
obvious at this point that reading Feuerhach was not the
only source of inspiration for Marx's atheism. The fascination with Feuerbach's war against Christianity was for
young Marx nothing more than an expression of his own
readiness to pursue in an antireligious struggle all the social and political extremes that materialistic determination required in principle. Yet, as David Aikman, in his
most profound and erudite study of Marx and Marxism,
notes, the clue to Marx's passionate and violent atheism,
or rather anti-theism, cannot be found in an intellectual
tradition alone. He traces Marx's anti-theism to the young
Marx's preoccupation with the Promethean cult of 'Satan
as a destroyer "
[15] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 11 At this
point young Marx was completely fascinated by Feuerbach's 'humanistic zest', and he adopted Feuerbach's open
rebellion against the powerful tradition of Christianity unconditionally as an intellectual revelation. Very early in
his career, Marx bought the seductive idea that the higher
goals of humanity would justify any radicalism, not only
the intellectual kind but the social and political as well.
[16] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 12 " Obviously Marx began his own theory of reality with an incomplete intellectual disdain for everything that religious
thought, represented, theoretically, practically or emotionally. The cultural contributions of religion over the
centuries were dismissed as unimportant and irrelevant to
the well-being of the human mind.
[17] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 12 The
cultural contributions of religion over the centuries were
dismissed as unimportant and irrelevant to the well-being
of the human mind.
[18] Marx, K. 1976. Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right. Collected Works,
v. 3. New York.
[19] Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, http://www.marxists.
org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
[20] Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel
s Philosophy of Right: Introduction, December 1843
January 1844, Deutsch-Franzsische Jahrbcher, 7 &
10 February 1844, found at: http://www.marxists.org/
archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
[21] Karl Marx. Private Property and Communism, found
at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/
manuscripts/comm.htm
[22] Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, http://marx.eserver.org/
1845-feuerbach.theses.txt
[23] Marx, The German Ideology, http://www.marxists.org/
archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
[24] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History
of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious
Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 23 " It
had been taken over, however, by the ruling classes, says
Marx, and gradually turned into a tool for the intellectual
and emotional control of the masses. Marx insists on perceiving the history of Christianity as an enterprise for the
preservation of the status quo, as an elaborate "
[25] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 24
[26] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 25
[27] The Damascus Aair, by Jonathan Frankel. Cambridge
University Press, 1997. Page 413. 'Daumer, Geheimnisse
des christlichen Altertums. The 1923 edition included a
speech delivered on 30 November 1847 by Karl Marx who
said, inter alial:We know that human sacrice holds the
highest place in Christianity. Daumer demonstrated that
the Christians in actual reality slaughtered human beings,

2.7. MARXISTLENINIST ATHEISM

they consumed human esh and human blood in the Eucharist(p. v).'
[28] Anti-Dhring, Friedrich Engels, http://www.marxists.
org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch27.htm
[29] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 16
[30] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 17
[31] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dhring, http://www.marxists.
org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm
[32] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dhring, 1,13, Negation of a
Negation, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
1877/anti-duhring/index.htm
[33] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The Attitude of the Workers' Party
to Religion. Proletary, No. 45, May 13 (26), 1909.
Found at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/
1909/may/13.htm
[34] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Socialism and Religion Found
at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/
dec/03.htm
[35] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 18
[36] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 1819
[37] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 20
[38] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 21
[39] Essays in Russian and Soviet History: In Honor of Geroid
Tanquary Robinson, by John Shelton Curtiss. Brill
Archive, 1965. Page 173.
[40] Gerhard Simon. Church, State, and Opposition in the
U.S.S.R., University of California Press, Berkeley and
Los Angeles (1974) pg 64 The political situation of the
Russian Orthodox Church and of all other religious groups
in the Soviet Union is governed by two principles which
are logically contradictory. On the one hand the Soviet
Constitution of 5 December 1936, Article 124, guarantees 'freedom to hold religious services'. On the other
hand the Communist Party has never made any secret of
the fact, either before or after 1917, that it regards 'militant atheism' as an integral part of its ideology and will regard 'religion as by no means a private matter'. It therefore

113

uses 'the means of ideological inuence to educate people

in the spirit of scientic materialism and to overcome religious prejudices..' Thus it is the goal of the C.P.S.U. and
thereby also of the Soviet state, for which it is after all the
'guiding cell', gradually to liquidate the religious communities.
[41] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 34
[42] James Thrower. Marxist-Leninist 'Scientic Atheism' and
the Study of Religion and Atheism in the U. S. S. R., Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin (1983) pg 118Many of the
previous - and often tactical - restraints upon the Party's
anti-religious stance disappeared, and as time went by,
the distinction which Lenin had earlier drawn, between
the attitude of the Party and the attitude of the State toward religion, became meaningless as the structures of the
Party and the structures of the State increasingly began to
coincide. Whilst the original constitution of the Russian
Federal Republic guaranteed freedom of conscience and
included the right to both religious and anti-religious propaganda, this in reality meant freedom from religion - as
was evidence when the decree proclaiming the new constitution forbade all private religious instruction for children
under the age of eighteen, and when, shortly afterwards,
Lenin ordered all religious literature which had been previously published - along with all pornographic literature
to be destroyed. Eventually - in the Stalin constitution of
1936 - the provision for religious propaganda, other than
religious worship, was withdrawn.
[43] Douglas Arnold Hyde. Communism Today, University of
Notre Dame Press, South Bend (1973) pg 74 The conscious rejection of religion is necessary in order for communism to be established.
[44] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 8
[45] Sabrina Petra Ramet, Ed., Religious Policy in the Soviet
Union. Cambridge University Press (1993). P 4
[46] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, On the Signicance of Militant
Materialism, March 12, 1922. Found at: http://www.
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/12.htm
[47] De James Thrower (1983). Marxist-Leninist Scientic
Atheism and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR.
Walter de Gruyter. p. 135. ISBN 90-279-3060-0.
[48] Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of
Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 89

2.7.8 Further reading

Husband, William.Godless communists": atheism
and society in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 Northern

114

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Illinois University Press. 2002. ISBN 0-87580-595- 2.8.1 Marx and Engels
7.
Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan
Marsh, Christopher. Religion and the State in Rus- coined by Marx and Engels, Workers of all countries,
sia and China: Suppression, Survival, and Revival. unite!, the last line of The Communist Manifesto, pubContinuum International Publishing Group. 2011. lished in 1848. However, Marx and Engels' approach to
ISBN 1-4411-1247-2.
the national question was also shaped by tactical considerations in their pursuit of a long-term revolutionary strat Pospielovsky, Dimitry. A History of Marxist
egy. In 1848, the proletariat was a small minority in all
Leninist atheism and Soviet antireligious policies.
but a handful of countries. Political and economic condiMacmillan. 1987. ISBN 0-333-42326-7.
tions needed to ripen in order to advance the possibility
Thrower, James. MarxistLeninist scientic athe- of proletarian revolution.
ism and the study of religion and atheism in the Thus, for example, Marx and Engels supported the emerUSSR. Walter de Gruyter. 1983. ISBN 90-279- gence of an independent and democratic Poland, which
3060-0.
at the time was divided between Germany, Russia and

2.7.9

External links

Theomachy of Leninism - .Ru

Marxist-Leninist Scientic Atheism - Thomas J.
Blakeley
:
(in Russian)

Austria-Hungary. Rosa Luxemburg's biographer Peter

Nettl writes,In general, Marx and Engels' conception of
the national-geographical rearrangement of Europe was
based on four criteria: the development of progress, the
creation of large-scale economic units, the weighting of
approval and disapproval in accordance with revolutionary possibilities, and their specic enmity to Russia.* [3]
Russia was seen as the heartland of European reaction at
the time.

University of Cambridge: MarxistLeninist atheism 2.8.2

First International

Militant Atheist Objects: Anti-Religion Museums in

The trade unionists who formed the International Workthe Soviet Union (Present Pasts, Vol. 1, 2009, 61ingmen's Association (IWA), sometimes called the First
76, doi:10.5334/pp.13)
International, recognised that the working class was an
international class which had to link its struggle on an
international scale. By joining together across national
2.8 Proletarian internationalism
borders, the workers would gain greater bargaining power
and political inuence.
International socialismredirects here. For the journal Founded in 1864, the IWA was the rst mass movement
of the same name, see International Socialism (journal). with a specically international focus. At its peak, the
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to
as international socialism, is a socialist form of
internationalism, based on the view that capitalism is a
global system, and therefore the working class must act as
a global class if it is to defeat it in class conict. Workers
thus should struggle in solidarity with their fellow workers
in other countries on the basis of a common class interest,
to avoid continued subjugation via divide and rule.
Proletarian internationalism is closely linked to goals
of world revolution, to be achieved through successive
or simultaneous communist revolutions in all nations.
Marxist theory argues that world revolution would lead
to world communism, and later still, stateless communism.* [1]* [2] Workers of all countries, unite! thus became a Marxist cry.

IWA had 5 million members, according to police reports

from the various countries in which it had a signicant
presence.* [4] Repression in Europe and internal divisions
between the anarchist and Marxist currents led eventually
to its dissolution in 1876. Shortly thereafter, the Marxist and revolutionary socialist tendencies continued the
internationalist strategy of the IWA through the successor organisation of the Second International, though without the inclusion of the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist
movements.

2.8.3 Second International

Proletarian internationalism was perhaps best expressed

in the resolution sponsored by Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg at the Seventh Congress of the Second International
Marxists regard proletarian internationalism as the at Stuttgart in 1907. This asserted that:
antonym of bourgeois nationalism but the term has been
Wars between capitalist states are, as a
subjected to dierent interpretations by various currents
rule, the outcome of their competition on the
of Marxist thoughts.

2.8. PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM

world market, for each state seeks not only to
secure its existing markets, but also to conquer
new ones. In this, the subjugation of foreign
peoples and countries plays a prominent role.
These wars result furthermore from the incessant race for armaments by militarism, one of
the chief instruments of bourgeois class rule
and of the economic and political subjugation
of the working class.
Wars are favored by the national prejudices which are systematically cultivated
among civilized peoples in the interest of the
ruling classes for the purpose of distracting the
proletarian masses from their own class tasks
as well as from their duties of international solidarity.
Wars, therefore, are part of the very nature of capitalism; they will cease only when
the capitalist system is abolished or when the
enormous sacrices in men and money required by the advance in military technique
and the indignation called forth by armaments,
drive the peoples to abolish this system.
The resolution concluded that:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the
duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved, supported by the coordinating activity
of the International Socialist Bureau, to exert
every eort in order to prevent the outbreak of
war by the means they consider most eective,
which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of
the general political situation.

115
contrast, Luxemburg broke with the mainstream Polish
Socialist Party (PPS) in 1893 on the national question.
Luxemburg argued in that the nature of Russia had
changed since Marxs day. Russia was now fast developing as a major capitalist nation, while the Polish bourgeoisie now had its interests linked to Russian capitalism.
This had opened the possibility of a class alliance between
the Polish and Russian working class.
In the event the leading party of the Second International,
the SPD, voted overwhelmingly in support of Germany's
entry into the First World War by approving war credits on 4 August 1914. Many other member parties of
the Second International followed suit by supporting national governments and the Second International was dissolved in 1916. Proletarian internationalists characterized the combination of social democracy and nationalism as social chauvinism.

2.8.4 First World War

The hopes of internationalists such as Lenin, Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were dashed by the initial enthusiasm for war. Lenin tried to re-establish socialist unity against the war at the Zimmerwald conference
but the majority of delegates took a pacist rather than a
revolutionary position.
In prison, Luxemburg deepened her analysis with the Junius Pamphlet of 1915. In this document she specically rejects the notion of oppressor and oppressed states:
Imperialism is not the creation of one or any group of
states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness
in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable
only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold
aloof at will.* [7]

Proletarian internationalists now argued that the alliances

of the First World War had proved that socialism and
nationalism were incompatible in the imperialist era,
that the concept of national self-determination had become outdated, and in particular, that nationalism would
prove to be an obstacle to proletarian unity. Anarchosyndicalism was a further working class political current
that characterised the war as imperialist on all sides, ndIn fact, Luxemburg and Lenin had very dierent inter- ing organisational expression in the Industrial Workers of
pretations of the national question. Lenin and the Bol- the World.
sheviks opposed imperialism and chauvinism by advocat- The internationalist perspective inuenced the revoluing a policy of national self-determination, including the tionary wave towards the end of the First World War, noright of oppressed nations to secede from Russia. They tably with Russia's withdrawal from the conict followbelieved this would help to create the conditions for unity ing the Bolshevik revolution and the revolt in Germany
between the workers in both oppressing and oppressed beginning in the naval ports of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven
nations. Specically, Lenin claimed The bourgeois na- that brought the war to an end in November 1918. Howtionalism of any oppressed nation has a general demo- ever, once this revolutionary wave had receded in the
cratic content that is directed against oppression and it early 1920s, proletarian internationalism was no longer
is this content that we unconditionally support.* [6] By mainstream in working class politics.
In case war should break out anyway, it
is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy
termination and with all their powers to utilize
the economic and political crisis created by the
war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten
the downfall of capitalist class rule.* [5]

116

2.8.5

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Third International: Leninism ver- 2.8.8 Leftist opposition to proletarian insus Left Communism
ternationalism

Following the First World War the international socialist movement was irreconcilably split into two hostile
factions: on the one side, the social democrats, who
broadly supported their national governments during the
conict; and on the other side Leninists and their allies
who formed the new Communist Parties that were organised into the Third International, which was established
in March 1919. However, during the Russian Civil War
Lenin and Trotsky more rmly embraced the concept of
national self-determination for tactical reasons. In the
Third International the national question became a major bone of contention between mainstream Leninists and
"left communists". However the latter soon became an
isolated minority, either falling into line or leaving the
International.
By the time the Second World War broke out in 1939 only
a few prominent communists such as the Italian Marxist Amadeo Bordiga and the Dutch council communist
Anton Pannekoek remained opponents of Russia's use of
the tactics of national self-determination. But in 1943,
following the collapse of the Mussolini regime in Italy,
Bordigists regrouped and founded the Internationalist
Communist Party (PCInt). The rst edition of the party
organ, Prometeo (Prometheus) proclaimed: Workers!
Against the slogan of a national war which arms Italian
workers against English and German proletarians, oppose
the slogan of the communist revolution, which unites the
workers of the world against their common enemy capitalism.* [8] The PCInt took the view that Luxemburg,
not Lenin, had been right on the national question.

In contrast, some socialists have pointed out that social

realities such as local loyalties and cultural barriers militate against proletarian internationalism. For example,
George Orwell believed that in all countries the poor
are more national than the rich.* [10] To this, Marxists might counter that while the rich may have historically had the awareness and education to recognize crossnational interest of class, the poor of those same nations
likely have not had this advantage, making them more
susceptible to what Marxists would describe as the false
ideology of patriotism. Marxists assert that patriotism
and nationalism serve precisely to obscure opposing class
interests that would otherwise pose a threat to the ruling
class order.
Marxists would also point out that in times of intense revolutionary struggle (the most evident being the revolutionary periods of 1848-9, 19171923 and 1968) internationalism within the proletariat can overtake petty nationalisms as intense class struggles break out in multiple
nations at the same time and the workers of those nations
discover that they have more in common with other workers than with their own bourgeoisie.

On the question of imperialism and national determination, proponents of third worldism argue that workers in
oppressornations (such as the USA or Israel) must rst
support national liberation movements inoppressednations (such as Afghanistan or Palestine) before there can
be any basis for proletarian internationalism. For example, Tony Cli, a leading gure of the British Socialist
Workers Party, denied the possibility of solidarity between Palestinians and Israelis in the current Middle East
situation, writing Israel is not a colony suppressed by
imperialism, but a settlers citadel, a launching pad of
imperialism. It is a tragedy that some of the very people
2.8.6 Socialist internationalism
who had been persecuted and massacred in such bestial
fashion should themselves be driven into a chauvinistic,
Socialist internationalism allegedly regulated relationship
militaristic fervour, and become the blind tool of imperi*
between socialist countries. [9] In reality Soviet Union
alism in subjugating the Arab masses.* [11]
controlled smaller countries using the Warsaw Pact and
Comecon, invading Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia Trotskyists argue that there must be a permanent revoluin 1968. The Sino-Soviet split in 1950s and 1960s pro- tion in third world countries, in which a bourgeoisie revolution will inevitably lead to a worker's revolution with
duced two groups of socialist countries.
an international scope. We may see this in the Bolshevik
Revolution before the movement was stopped by Stalin,
a proponent of Socialism in One Country. Because of
this threat, the bourgeoisie in third world countries will
willingly subjugate themselves to national and capitalist
2.8.7 Proletarian internationalism today
interests in order to prevent a proletarian uprising.
Some political groupings such as the International Communist Party, the International Communist Current and
the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party
(which includes the PCInt) follow the Luxemburgist and
Bordigist interpretations of proletarian internationalism,
as do some libertarian communists.

Internationalists would respond that capitalism has

proved itself incapable of resolving the competing claims
of dierent nationalisms, and that the working class (of
all countries) is oppressed by capitalism, not by other
workers. Moreover, the global nature of capitalism and
international nance make national liberationan im-

2.9. SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM

117

possibility.* [12] For internationalists, all national libera- 2.8.11 References and external links
tion movements, whatever theirprogressivegloss, are
Internationalism and Nationalism by Liu Shaoqi
therefore obstacles to the communist goal of world revolution.
Marxism and Nationalism by Tom Lewis

2.8.9

See also

Marxism
Communism
Global Citizens Movement
Socialist International

The Importance of Ideas in Party Building Marry

Scully discusses proletarian internationalism
Without anti-capitalist theory and practice no anticapitalist victory is possible Ernest Mandel discusses
proletarian internationalism
Dan Jakopovich, In the Belly of the Beast: Challenging US Imperialism and the Politics of the Oensive'
The Proletariat and War by the International Communist Current

Social Patriotism

2.9 Socialist patriotism

2.8.10

Footnotes

Socialist patriotism refers to a form of civic patriotism

*
[1] N.I. Bukharin, Marx's Teaching and its Historical Impor- promoted by MarxistLeninist movements. [1] Socialist
patriotism
promotes
people
living
within
Marxisttance, Chapter 4: The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship
and Scientic Communism in Nikolai Bukharin and Oth- Leninist countries to adopt a boundless love for
ers, Marxism and Modern Thought (George Routledge & the socialist homeland, a commitment to the revoluSons Ltd., 1935), page 1-90.
tionary transformation of society [and] the cause of
communism".* [2] Socialist patriotism is supposedly not
[2] Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution: The Marxist connected with nationalism, as Marxists and MarxistTheory of the State & the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Leninists denounce nationalism as a bourgeois ideology
Revolution (1918), Chapter V: The Economic Basis of the
developed under capitalism that sets workers against each
Withering Away of the State, Collected Works, Volume
other.* [3] Socialist patriotism is commonly advocated di25, p. 381-492
rectly alongside proletarian internationalism, with communist parties regarding the two concepts as compatible
[3] J.P Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, Oxford University Press
*
by
1969. Nettl is quoting Hans-Ulrich Wehler's study, with each other. [4] The concept has been attributed
*
Soviet
writers
to
Karl
Marx
and
Vladimir
Lenin.
[1]
Sozialdemokratie and Nationalstaat(Wrzburg, 1962)
[4] Payne, Robert.Marx: A Biography. Simon and Schuster. New York, 1968. p372
[5] International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, August 18
24, 1907 Vorwrts Publishers, Berlin, 1907, pp. 64-66.
[6] Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination.
[7] Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet1915.

Lenin separated patriotism into what he dened as

proletarian, socialist patriotism from bourgeois nationalism.* [5] Lenin promoted the right of all nations to
self-determination and the right to unity of all workers
within nations, however he also condemned chauvinism
and claimed there were both justied and unjustied feelings of national pride.* [6] Lenin believed that nations
subjected to imperial rule had the right to seek national
liberation from imperial rule.* [7]

[8] Prometeo, 1 November 1943.

2.9.1 Countries' variants

[9] http://tapemark.narod.ru/kommunizm/198.html

Soviet Union

[10] George Orwell, Collected Essays, "The Lion and the Unicorn".

Main article: Soviet socialist patriotism

Socialist patriotism was promoted by Joseph Stalin,

Stalinists claimed that socialist patriotism would serve
both national interest and international socialist inter*
[12] International Communist Current,Nation of Class2nd est. [8] While promoting socialist patriotism for the SoEnglish edition, 1977
viet Union as a whole, Stalin repressed nationalist senti[11] Israeli society: no possibility of change, Socialist Worker,
2 February 2009.

118

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

ments in fteen republics of the Soviet Union.* [9] How- Ethiopia

ever, Soviet patriotism had in practice Russian nationalist
overtones. * [10]
The Derg and the People's Democratic Republic of
Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam advocated socialist patriotism.* [17]* [18] The Derg declared that socialist patriotismmeant true love for one's motherChina
land...[and]...free[dom] from all forms of chauvinism and
racialism".* [18]
North Korea

National Day celebrations in Tianamen Square, Beijing in 2004.

The Communist Party of China and the government of

China advocate socialist patriotism.* [11]* [12] The Communist Party of China describes the policy of socialist patriotism as the following: Socialist patriotism has three
levels. At the rst level, individuals should subordinate
their personal interests to the interests of the state. At
the second level, individuals should subordinate their personal destiny to the destiny of our socialist system. At the
third level, individuals should subordinate their personal
future to the future of our communist cause.* [11] The
PRC portrays the Communist government as the embodiment of the will of the Chinese people.* [11]
Mao Zedong spoke of a Chinese nation, but specied
that the Chinese are a civic-based nation of multiple ethnic groups, and explicitly condemned Han ethnocentrism,
that Mao called Han chauvinism that he claimed had
become widespread in China.* [13] The constitution of
China states that China is a multi-ethnic society and that
the state is opposed to national chauvinism and species
Han chauvinism in particular.* [14]

East Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany ocially had socialist patriotism within its party statutes.* [15] The SED
expanded on this by emphasizing a socialist national
consciousnessinvolving a love for the GDR and
pride in the achievements of socialism.* [16] However the
GDR claimed that socialist patriotism was compatible
with proletarian internationalism and stated that it should
not be confused with nationalism that it associated with
chauvinism and xenophobia.* [16]

Arirang Festival mass games display in Pyongyang, they take

place each year on Kim Il-sung's birthday.

Kim Il-sung promoted socialist patriotism while he condemned nationalism in claiming that it destroyed fraternal
relations between people because of its exclusivism.* [19]
In North Korea, socialist patriotism has been described as
an ideology meant to serve its own people, be faithful to
their working class, and to be loyal to their own (communist) party.* [19]
Patriotism is not an empty concept. Education in patriotism cannot be conducted simply
by erecting the slogan, Let us arm ourselves
with the spirit of socialist patriotism!" Educating people in the spirit of patriotism must begin with fostering the idea of caring for every
tree planted on the road side, for the chairs and
desks in the school... There is no doubt that a
person who has formed the habit of cherishing
common property from childhood will grow up
to be a valuable patriot.* [20]
Kim Il Sung
Vietnam
The Communist Party of Vietnam and the government of Vietnam advocate socialist patriotismof the
Vietnamese people.* [21] Vietnamese Communist leader
Ho Chi Minh emphasized the role of socialist patriotism

2.9. SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM

119
Anti-nationalism
Marxism-Leninism
National liberation (Marxism)
Patriotism
Proletarian internationalism

2.9.3 References
[1] Robert A. Jones. The Soviet concept of limited
sovereigntyfrom Lenin to Gorbachev: the Brezhnev Doctrine. MacMillan, 1990. Pp. 133.
The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.

to Vietnamese communism, and emphasized the importance of patriotism, saying:In the beginning it was patriotism and not communism which impelled me to believe
in Lenin and the Third International.* [22]

[2] Stephen White. Russia's new politics: the management of a

postcommunist society. Fourth edition. Cambridge, England, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 182.
[3] Stephen White. Understanding Russian Politics. Cambridge, England, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Pp. 220.

After the collapse of the Indochinese Communist Party

[4] William B. Simons, Stephen White. The Party statutes
in 1941, the Vietnamese Communist movement since
of the Communist world. BRILL, 1984. Advocacy of
the 1940s fused the policies of proletarian internationsocialist patriotism alongside proletarian internationalism
alism and Vietnamese patriotism together.* [23] Vietshown on Pp. 180 (Czechoslovakia), Pp. 123 (Cuba), Pp.
namese Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh was re192 (German Democratic Republic).
sponsible for the incorporation of Vietnamese patriotism into the Party, he had been born into a family with [5] The Current digest of the Soviet press , Volume 39, Issues 126. American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
strong anticolonial political views towards French rule in
Studies, 1987. Pp. 7.
*
Vietnam. [23] The incorporation of Vietnamese patriotism into the Communist Party's agenda t in with the [6] Christopher Read. Lenin: a revolutionary life. Digital
longstanding Vietnamese struggle against French colonial
Printing Edition. Oxon, England, UK; New York, New
York, USA: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 115.
rule.* [24] Through Ho opposed French colonial rule in
Vietnam, he harboured no dislike of France as a whole,
[7] Terry Eagleton. Why Marx Was Right. Yale University
he claimed that French colonial rule wascruel and inhuPress, 2011. Pp. 217.
manebut that the French people at home were good people.* [24] He had studied in France as a youth where he [8] Sabrina P. Ramet. Religion and nationalism in Soviet and
East European politics. Duke University Press, 1989. Pp.
became an adherent to Marxism-Leninism, and he per294.
sonally admired the French Revolutionary motto oflib*
erty, equality, fraternity. [24] He witnessed the Treaty
[9] Gi-Wook Shin. Ethnic nationalism in Korea: genealogy,
of Versailles that applied the principles of Woodrow
politics, and legacy. Stanford, California, USA: Stanford
Wilson's Fourteen Points that advocated national selfUniversity Press, 2006. Pp. 82.
determination, resulting in the end of imperial rule over
many peoples in Europe.* [25] He was inspired by the [10] Motyl, Alexander J. (2001). Encyclopedia of Nationalism,
Volume II. Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-227230-7.
Wilsonian concept of national self-determination* [25]
Yugoslavia
Main article: Yugoslavism
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia endorsed
socialist patriotism.* [26]

2.9.2

See also

Anti-imperialism

[11] Suisheng Zhao. A nation-state by construction: dynamics of modern Chinese nationalism. Stanford, California,
USA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp. 28.
[12] Jan-Ingvar Lfstedt. Chinese educational policy: changes
and contradictions, 1949-79. Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1980. Pp. 25.
[13] Li, Gucheng (1995). A Glossary of Political Terms of The
People's Republic of China. Chinese University Press. pp.
3839.
[14] Ghai, Yash (2000). Autonomy and Ethnicity: Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic States. Cambridge
University Press. p. 77.

120

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

[15] William B. Simons, Stephen White. The Party statutes of

the Communist world. BRILL, 1984. Pp. 192.
[16] Paul Cooke. East German distinctiveness in a unied Germany. Birmingham, England UK: University of Birmingham, 2002. Pp. 18.
[17] Edmond Joseph Keller. Revolutionary Ethiopia: from empire to people's republic. Indiana University Press, 1988.
Pp. 212.
[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

allows (at least nominally) democratic multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political
power eectively prevent the opposition from winning
the elections.

2.10.1 Concept

Single-party states justify themselves through various

Edward Kissi. Revolution and genocide in Ethiopia and methods. Most often, proponents of a single-party state
Cambodia. Lanham, Maryland, USA; Oxford, England, argue that the existence of separate parties runs counter
UK: Lexington Books, 2006. Pp. 58.
to national unity. Others argue that the single party is
the vanguard of the people, and therefore its right to rule
Dae-Sook Suh. Kim Il Sung: the North Korean leader. cannot be legitimately questioned. The Marxist theory
New York, New York, USA: West Sussex, England, UK:
states that political parties represent the interests, most
Columbia University Press, 1988. Pp. 309.
of which, in a liberal system, respond to the economic
Joel H. Spring. Pedagogies of globalization: the rise of power and are part of the system (the superstructure)
the educational security state. Mahwah, New Jersey, USA: where whoever wins there will be no substantial changes,
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2006. Pp. 186.
once abolished class distinctions no place for the struggle
for multiparty own economic interests, however, an orMark Moyar. Triumph forsaken: the Vietnam war, 1954- ganization that is able to formulate national policies and
1965. New York, New York, USA: Cambridge University
manage their reins to ensure the development of socialism
Press, 2006. Pp. 437.
is necessary, this organization is the only party to be the
William Warbey. Ho Chi Minh and the struggle for an only existing single social class and the common interest
of progress.
independent Vietnam. Merlin Press, 1972.

Some single party states only outlaw opposition parties,

while allowing subordinate allied parties to exist as part
of a permanent coalition such as a popular front. Examples of this are the People's Republic of China under the
[24] Kim Khnh Hunh. Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945. United Front, or the National Front in former East GerIthaca, New York, USA: Cornell University Press, 1982. many. Others may allow non-party members to run for
Pp. 59
legislative seats, as was the case with Taiwan's Tangwai
[25] Kim Khnh Hunh. Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945. movement in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ithaca, New York, USA: Cornell University Press, 1982. Within their own countries, dominant parties ruling over
Pp. 60
single-party states are often referred to simply as the
Party. For example, in reference to the Soviet Union, the
[26] Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone. Communism in Eastern
Europe. Indiana University Press, 1984. Manchester, Party meant the Communist Party of the Soviet Union;
England, UK: Manchester University Press ND, 1984. in reference to the former People's Republic of Poland it
referred to the Polish United Workers' Party.
Pp. 267.
[23] Kim Khnh Hunh. Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945.
Ithaca, New York, USA: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Pp. 58

Most single-party states have been ruled either by parties following the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and
international solidarity (such as the Soviet Union for most
2.10 Single-party state
of its existence), or by parties following some type of
This article is about single-party political states. For nationalist or fascist ideology (such as Italy under Benito
telephone recording laws and notication requirements, Mussolini), or by parties that came to power in the wake
see Telephone recording laws#One-party notication of independence from colonial rule. One-party systems
often arise from decolonization because one party has had
states.
an overwhelmingly dominant role in liberation or in independence struggles.
A single-party state, one-party state, one-party system, or single-party system is a type of state in which Single-party states are often, but not always, considered
a single political party has the right to form the govern- to be authoritarian or totalitarian. However, not all aument, usually based on the existing constitution. All other thoritarian or totalitarian states operate based on singleparties are either outlawed or allowed to take only a lim- party rule. Some, especially absolute monarchies and cerited and controlled participation in elections. Sometimes tain military dictatorships, have made all political parties
the term de facto single-party state is used to describe a illegal.
dominant-party system that, unlike the single-party state, The term "communist state" is often used in the west to

2.10. SINGLE-PARTY STATE

apply to states in which the ruling party subscribes to a
form of Marxism-Leninism. However, such states do not
use that term themselves, seeing communism as a phase
to develop after the full maturation of socialism, and instead often use the titles of "people's republic", "socialist
republic", or "democratic republic". One peculiar example is Cuba, where the role of the Communist Party
is enshrined in the constitution, and no party is permitted to campaign or run candidates for election, including
the Communist party. Candidates are elected on an individual referendum basis without formal party involvement, though elected assemblies predominantly consist of
members of the dominant party alongside non-aliated
candidates.* [1]

121

Benin (People's Revolutionary Party of

Benin) 1975-1990

Upper Volta (African Democratic Rally)

19601966

Burundi (Union for National Progress)

1966-1992

Cameroon (Cameroon National Union)

1966-1985, (Cameroon People's Democratic
Movement) 1985-1990

Cape Verde (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) 19751981, (African Party for the Independence of
Cape Verde) 1981-1990

Central African Republic (Movement for

the Social Evolution of Black Africa) 19621980, (Central African Democratic Union)
1980-1981, (Central African Democratic
Rally) 1987-1991

Chad (Chadian Progressive Party) 19621973, (National Movement for the Cultural
and Social Revolution) 1973-1975, (National
Union for Independence and Revolution)
1984-1990

Comoros (Comorian Union for Progress)

1982-1990

Countries by their form of government. Current single-party

states are marked in brown.

Congo-Brazzaville (Congolese Party of

Labour) 1969-1990

The True Whig Party of Liberia is considered the founder

of the rst single-party state in the world, as despite opposition parties never being outlawed, it completely dominated Liberian politics from 1878 until 1980.* [2] The
party was conceived by the original Black American settlers and their descendants who referred to themselves as
Americo-Liberians. Initially, its ideology was heavily inuenced by that of the Whig Party in the United States.
Over time it developed into a powerful Masonic Order
that ruled every aspect of Liberian society for well over a
century until it was overthrown in 1980. While the True
Whig Party still exists today, its inuence has substantially declined.

Zaire (Popular Movement of the Revolution) 19701990

Djibouti (People's Rally for Progress)

1977-1992

Equatorial Guinea (Worker's National

United Party) 1970-1979, (Democratic Party
of Equatorial Guinea) 1987-1991

Ethiopia (Workers' Party of Ethiopia)

1984-1991

Gabon (Gabonese Democratic Party)

1968-1990

Ghana (Convention People's Party) 19641966

2.10.2

Examples

Current single-party states

As of 2013 the following countries are legally constituted

as single-party states and the name of the single party in
power:

Guinea (Democratic Party of Guinea

African Democratic Rally) 1958-1984

Guinea-Bissau (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) 19741991

Former single-party states

Ivory Coast (Democratic Party of Cte

d'Ivoire African Democratic Rally) 1960
1990

Kenya (Kenya African National Union)

1982-1991

Most states in Sub-Saharan Africa after independence, although all except Eritrea have eventually
converted to a de jure multi-party system;

Angola (MPLA) 1975-1991

Liberia (True Whig Party) 1878-1980

122

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Madagascar (National Front for the Defense of the Revolution) 1976-1989

Iran (Rastakhiz Party) 1975-1978,

(Islamic Republican Party) 1981-1987

Malawi (Malawi Congress Party) 1964-

Mali (Sudanese Union African Democratic Rally) 1960-1968, (Democratic Union

of the Malian People) 1976-1991

Iraq (Iraqi Arab Socialist Union) 19641968, (Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party Iraq Region led the National Progressive Front) 19682003

Libya (Arab Socialist Union) 1971-1977

1993

North Yemen
Congress) 1982-1988

Niger (Nigerien Progressive Party

African Democratic Rally) 1960-1974,
(National Movement for the Development of
Society) 1989-1991

South Yemen (Yemeni Socialist Party)

1978-1990

Rwanda (Parmehutu) 1965-1973,

(National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development) 1975-1991

Syria (Arab Liberation Movement) 19531954, (Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party Syria Region led the National Progressive Front) 19632012

Tunisia (Neo Destour) 1963-1964,

(Socialist Destourian Party) 1964-1981

So Tom and Prncipe (Movement

for the Liberation of So Tom and
Prncipe/Social Democratic Party) 19751990

Turkey (Republican People's Party)

1934-1950

United Arab Republic (National Union)

1958-1961

Mauritania (Mauritanian People's Party)

1961-1978

Mozambique (FRELIMO) 1975-1990

Senegal (Socialist Party of Senegal)

1966-1974

Seychelles (Seychelles People's Progressive Front) 1977-1991

Sierra Leone (All People's Congress)

1978-1991

Somalia (Somali Revolutionary Socialist

Party) 1976-1991

Sudan (Sudanese Socialist Union) 19711985, (National Congress Party) 1989-2005

Tanzania (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) 19771992

Tanganyika (Tanganyika African

National Union) 1961-1977

Zanzibar (Afro-Shirazi Party) 19641977

(General

People's

One state in Central Asia;

Turkmenistan (Democratic Party of

Turkmenistan) 1991-2012

One state in South Asia;

Bangladesh (Bangladesh Krishak Sramik

Awami League) 1974-1975

Two states in Southeast Asia;

Burma (now known as Myanmar) (Burma

Socialist Programme Party) 1964-1988

Indonesia (Indonesian National Party)

August 18 - September 1, 1945

The former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact-States and

other Communist states;

Togo (Party of Togolese Unity) 19621963, (Rally of the Togolese People) 19691991

Afghanistan (People's Democratic Party

of Afghanistan led the National Front) 19781992

Uganda (Uganda People's Congress)

1969-1971

Zambia (United National Independence

Party) 1972-1990

Albania (Party of Labour of Albania led

the Democratic Front) 1944-1991

Bulgaria (Bulgarian Communist Party led

the Fatherland Front) 1946-1990

Cambodia (Communist Party of Kampuchea) 1975-1979, (Kampuchean People's

Revolutionary Party) 1979-1993

Czechoslovakia (Communist Party of

Czechoslovakia led the National Front) 19481989

Some Middle Eastern and North African states;

Algeria (National Liberation Front)

1962-1989

Egypt (National Union) 1956-1958 and

1961-1962, (Arab Socialist Union) 19621976

2.11. SOCIALIST STATE

East Germany (Socialist Unity Party of

Germany led the National Front) 1949-1989

Grenada (New Jewel Movement) 19791983

123

San Marino (Sammarinese Fascist Party)

1926-1943, (Republican Fascio of San
Marino) 1944

Hungary (Hungarian Working People's Party) 1948-1956, (Hungarian Socialist

Workers' Party) 1956-1989

Slovakia (Slovak People's Party) 19391945

Spain (Spanish Patriotic Union) 19241930 Francos and Landesma Ramoes and Jose
Antonio de Rivera Falanga (in fascist version)
1937-1945

Mongolia (Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party) 1921-1990

North Vietnam (Workers' Party of VietBulgaria 1937-1944

nam) 1945-1976

Poland (Polish United Workers' Party led

the Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth) 2.10.3 See also
1948-1989
Ban on factions in the Communist Party of the So
Romania (Romanian Communist Party)
viet Union
1947-1989

Soviet Union (Communist Party of the

Soviet Union) 1922-1990

Yugoslavia (League of Communists of

Yugoslavia led the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia) 1945-1990

Several nationalist and fascist states;

Afghanistan (National Revolutionary

Party of Afghanistan) 1974-1978

Political organisation
Dominant-party system
Political factionalism
Outline of democracy
Multi-party system
Two-party system

Austria (Fatherland's Front) 1934-1938

Republic of China (Kuomintang) 1928-

2.10.4 Notes

1948

NDH (Ustaa) 1941-1945

Dominican Republic (Dominican Party)
1931-1961

Nazi Germany (Nazi Party) 1933-1945

Haiti (National Unity Party) 1957-1985

Hungary (Arrow Cross Party) 1944-1945

Italy (National Fascist Party) 1922-1943

and
Italian Social Republic (Republican
Fascist Party) 1943-1945

Japan (Imperial Rule Assistance Association) 1940-1945

Manchukuo (Concordia Association)

1932-1945

Norway (National Gathering) 1942-1945

Paraguay (Colorado Party) 1947-1962

[1] Cuba: Elections and Events 1991-2001 Latin American

Election Statistics Home
[2] Liberia Country Study: The True Whig Ascendancy
Global Security

2.10.5 External links

Map of One Party States, 1945-95
Single party states in Africa
List of One-Party Regimes

2.11 Socialist state

The term socialist state or socialist republic usually

refers to any state that is constitutionally dedicated to the
construction of a socialist society. It is closely related to

Philippines (KALIBAPI) 1943-1945

the political ideology of state socialism, the view that so
Portugal (National Union) 1933-45, cialism can be established through the existing state or
19481974
by government policies. Alternatively, the term Work
Romania (National Renaissance Front) ers' State is used to describe a state where the work1938-1940, (National Legionary State) 1940- ing class controls the machinery of government but has
1944
not yet established a socialist economic system. Both of

124

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

these concepts are distinguished from a socialist government, which generally refers to a liberal democratic state
governed by an elected majority socialist party or social
democratic party which need not pursue the development
of socialism - in any case, the distinguishing feature between a socialist state and a socialist government is that in
the latter the state apparatus is not constitutionally bound
to the construction of a socialist system.

would have to take control of the state apparatus and machinery of government in order to transition out of capitalism and to socialism. This transitional stage would
involve working-class interests dominating the government policy (the "Dictatorship of the proletariat"), in the
same manner that capitalist-class interests dominate government policy under capitalism. Fredrick Engels argued
that the state under socialism is not a government of
people, but the administration of things, and thus would
A variety of non-state socialist positions, such as social
anarchism, libertarian socialism, and council commu- not be a state in the traditional sense of the term.
nism reject the concept of a socialist state" altogether, One of the most inuential modern visions of a socialbelieving that the modern state is a byproduct of capital- ist state was based on the Paris Commune, in which the
ism and cannot be used for the establishment of a socialist workers and poor took control of the city of Paris in 1871
system. They reason that a socialist stateis antithet- in reaction to the Franco-Prussian War. Karl Marx deical to socialism, and that socialism will emerge sponta- scribed the Paris Commune as the prototype for a revneously from the grass-roots level in an evolutionary man- olutionary government of the future, the form at last
ner, developing its own unique political and economic in- discoveredfor the emancipation of the proletariat.* [6]
stitutions for a highly organized stateless society.
Friedrich Engels noted that all ocials, high or low,
The phrase Socialist state, or Communist state in the West,
is widely used by Leninists and MarxistLeninists in reference to a state under the control of a vanguard party that
is organizing the economic, social, and political aairs of
said state toward the construction of socialism. This often
includes at least thecommanding heightsof the economy to be nationalised, usually operated according to a
plan of production, at least in the major production and
social spheres.* [1] Under the Leninist denition, the socialist state presides over a state capitalist economy structured upon state-directed accumulation of capital, with
the goal of building up the country's productive forces and
promoting worldwide socialist revolution, with the eventual long-term goal of building a socialist economy.* [2]
Most theories assume widespread democracy, and some
assume workers' democratic participation at every level
of economic and state administration, while varying in
the degree to which economic planning decisions are delegated to public ocials and administrative specialists.
States where democracy is lacking, yet the economy is
largely in the hands of the state, are termed by orthodox
Trotskyist theories as workers' statesbut not socialist
states,* [3] using the terms "degenerated" or "deformed"
workers' states.

2.11.1

Marxist concept of a socialist state

Henri de Saint-Simon, a pre-Marxian socialist, understood that the nature of the state would change under socialism from that of political rule (via coercion) over people to a scientic administration of things and a direction
of processes of production; specically, the state would
become a coordinating entity for production as opposed
to a mechanism for political control.* [4]* [5]
Karl Marx understood the state to be an instrument of the
class rule, dominated by the interests of the ruling class in
any mode of production. Although Marx never referred
to a socialist state, he argued that the working-class

were paid only the wages received by other workers...

In this way an eective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up.* [7]
Commenting on the nature of the state, Engels continued:
From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could
not manage with the old state machine.
In order not to be overthrown once having conquered
power, Engels argues, the working classmust, on the one
hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard
itself against its own deputies and ocials, by declaring
them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment.* [8]
Such a state would be a temporary aair, Engels argued.
A new generation, he suggested, brought up innew and
free social conditions, will be able tothrow the entire
lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.

Leninist conception of a socialist state

The Leninist conception of a socialist state is tied to
Vladimir Lenin's theory of the revolutionary party and
democratic centralism. The objective of Marxism is to
build a mass workers' movement which can smash the
capitalist state, replace it with a revolutionary socialist
workers' state based on workers councils, and bring production under control by the workers and peasants. According to Lenin's April Theses, the goal of the revolution and vanguard party is not the introduction of socialism, which could only be established on a worldwide
scale, but to bring production and the state under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies. Following the
October revolution in Russia, the Bolsheviks consolidated
their power and sought to control and direct the social and
economic aairs of the state and broader Russian society
in order to safeguard against counterrevolutionary insur-

2.11. SOCIALIST STATE

125

rection, foreign invasion, and to promote socialist con- well-known example is the People's Republic of China,
sciousness among the Russian population.
which proclaims itself to be asocialist statein its 1982
These ideas were adopted by Vladimir Lenin in 1917 Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In the
just prior to the October Revolution in Russia and pub- West, such states are commonly known as "communist
lished in The State and Revolution, a central text for many states" (though they do not use this term to refer to themMarxists. With the failure of the worldwide revolution selves).
envisaged by Lenin and Trotsky, the Civil War, and nally Lenin's death, war measures that were deemed to
be temporary, such as forced requisition of food and the
lack of democratic control, became permanent and a tool
to boost Stalin's power , leading to the emergence of
MarxismLeninism and Stalinism, as well as the notion
that socialism can be created and exist in a single state.
Vladimir Lenin argued that as socialism is replaced by
communism, the state wouldwither away* [9] as strong
centralized control progressively reduces as local communities gain more empowerment. As he put succinctly:
So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When
there is freedom, there will be no state.
MarxistLeninist states
Main article: Communist state
States run by Communist parties that adhere to

These Communist statesoften don't claim to have

achieved socialism in their countries; rather, they claim to
be building and working toward the establishment of socialism (and the development towards communism thereafter) in their countries. For example, the preamble to the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam's constitution states that
Vietnam only entered a transition stage between capitalism and socialism after the country was re-unied under
the Communist party in 1976,* [10] and the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Cuba states that the role of the
Communist Party is toguide the common eort toward
the goals and construction of socialism (and the progress
toward a communist society)".* [11]
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) used to be a MarxistLeninist state. In 1972, the
country adopted a new constitution, which changed the
ocial state ideology to "Juche".* [12]

2.11.2 Non-Leninist countries

Countries such as Portugal (which states that one of the
primary roles of the Constituent Assembly is to open the
way to socialist society),* [13] India and Algeria have used
the term socialistin their ocial name or constitution without claiming to follow Communism or any of its
derivatives.
In such cases, the intended meaning of socialismcan
vary widely, and sometimes the constitutional references
to socialism are left over from a previous period in the
country's history. In the case of many Middle-Eastern
states, socialismwas often used in reference to an
Arab-socialist/nationalist philosophy adopted by specic
regimes, such as that of Gamal Abdel Nasser and that of
the various Ba'ath Parties.
Examples of countries using the wordsocialistin a noncommunist sense in their names include the Democratic
Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Countries with nonLeninist/communist references to socialism in their constitutions include India* [14] and Portugal.
Post-war European countries
Symbolics on the banknotes of socialist states (V.I.Lenin in the In the post-war period, when nationalisation of large inSoviet note and a worker with a female co-operative farmer
dustries was relatively widespread, it was not uncommon
on the Czechoslovak one).

for commentators to describe some European countries

MarxismLeninism, or some variation thereof, refer to as socialist states seeking to move their countries toward
themselves as socialist states. The Soviet Union was the a socialist economy.
rst to proclaim itself asocialist statein its 1936 Con- In 1956, for example, leading British Labour Party politistitution and a subsequent 1977 Constitution. Another cian and author Anthony Crosland claimed that capital-

126

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

ism had been abolished in Britain, although others, such

as Welshman Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the
rst post-war Labour government, disputed the claim that
Britain was a socialist state.* [15]* [16] For Crosland and
others who supported his views, Britain was a socialist
state. For Bevan, Britain had a socialist National Health
Service which stood in opposition to the hedonism of
Britain's capitalist society. He stated:
The National Health service and the
Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of
some people as terms of reproach. Why this
is so it is not dicult to understand, if you
view everything from the angle of a strictly
individualistic competitive society. A free
health service is pure Socialism and as such
it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist
society.
Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, p. 106

When the Socialist Party was in power in France in the

post-war period, some commentators claimed that France
was a socialist country, although, as in the rest of Europe,
the laws of capitalism still operated fully and private enterprises dominated their economy. Mitterrand Government scheduled to nationalize all banks but this attempt
faced opposition of the European Economic Community.

2.11.3

Establishing a socialist state by reformism or revolution

Proletarians

However, on the other hand, in the orthodox Marxist

conception, these battles of the workers reach a point at
which a revolutionary movement arises. A revolutionary
movement is required, in the view of Marxists, to sweep
away the capitalist state, which must be smashed, so as to
begin to construct a socialist society:
In depicting the most general phases of
the development of the proletariat, we traced
the more or less veiled civil war, raging within
existing society, up to the point where that war
breaks out into open revolution, and where the
violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the
foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter I. Bourgeois and
Proletarians

In this view, only in this way can a socialist state be established.

2.11.4 Controversy with the term

Within the socialist movement, a number of criticisms are
maintained towards the use of the termsocialist states
in relation to countries such as China and previously of
Soviet Union and Eastern and Central European states before what some term the 'collapse of Stalinism' in 1989.
Democratic Socialists, left communists,* [18] Anarchists
and some Trotskyists* [19] claim that the so-called socialist statesorpeople's statesactually presided over
state capitalist economies and thus cannot be calledsocialist.

Reformist socialists, exemplied by Eduard Bernstein,

take the view that a socialist state will evolve out of political reforms won by the struggle of the socialists. The
socialist movement is everything to me while what people commonly call the goal of Socialism is nothing.
*
[17] These views are considered arevisionof Marxist Other Trotskyists, while agreeing that these states could
not be described as socialist, deny that they were
thought.
state capitalist.* [20] They support Trotsky's analysis of
Revolutionary Marxists, following Marx, take the view (pre-restoration) USSR as a workers' state that had
that, on the one hand, the working class grows stronger degenerated into a monstrousbureaucratic dictatorthrough its battle for reforms, (such as, in Marx's time, ship which rested on a largely nationalised industry run
the ten-hours bill):
according to a plan of production, and claimed that the
former Staliniststates of Central and Eastern Europe
Now and then the workers are victorious,
were deformed workers' states based on the same relabut only for a time. The real fruit of their
tions of production as USSR.
battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in
the ever expanding union of the workers... it
ever rises up again, stronger, rmer, mightier.
2.11.5 See also
It compels legislative recognition of particular
interests of the workers, by taking advantage
Bureaucratic collectivism
of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself.
Communist state
Thus, the ten-hoursbill in England was
carried.
Soviet republic
Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Com Democratic centralism
munist Party, Chapter I. Bourgeois and

2.12. VANGUARDISM
List of socialist states
Legislatures in communist states
Leninism
Deformed workers' state
Degenerated workers' state
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Reformism
Socialism in one country
State capitalism
State socialism

2.11.6

References

[1] C.J. Atkins, 'The Problem of Transition: Development,

Socialism and Lenin's NEP', Political Aairs Magazine, April 2009, http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/
articleview/8331/ accessed 30/7/09
[2] Lenin's Collected Works Vol. 27, p. 293, quoted by
Aufheben
[3] Leon Trotsky, The WorkersState, Thermidor and Bonapartism, (February 1935), New International (New York),
Vol.2 No.4, July 1935, ppp.116-122. Trotsky argues
that the Soviet Union was, at that time, a deformed
workers' stateor degenerated workers' state, and not
a socialist republic or state, because the bureaucracy
wrested the power from the hands of mass organizations,
thereby necessitating only political revolution rather than
a completely new social revolution, for workers' political control (i.e. state democracy) to be reclaimed. He
argued that it remained, at base, a workers' state because the capitalists and landlords had been expropriated. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/02/
ws-therm-bon.htm accessed 30/7/09
[4] Encyclopdia Britannica, Saint Simon; Socialism
[5] Socialism: Utopian and Scientic, on Marxists.org:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/
soc-utop/ch01.htm: In 1816, he declares that politics
is the science of production, and foretells the complete
absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that
economic conditions are the basis of political institutions
appears here only in embryo. Yet what is here already
very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion
of political rule over men into an administration of things
and a direction of processes of production.
[6] Marx, The Civil War in France (1871)
[7] Marx, The Civil War in France (1871), 1891 Introduction
by Frederick Engels, 'On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris
Commune'
[8] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/
civil-war-france/postscript.htm

127

[9] Lenin, Vladimir, The State and Revolution, p70, cf,

Chapter V, The economic basis for the withering away of
the state.
[10] VN Embassy - Constitution of 1992 Full Text. From
the Preamble: On 2 July 1976, the National Assembly of reunied Vietnam decided to change the country's
name to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; the country
entered a period of transition to socialism, strove for national construction, and unyieldingly defended its frontiers
while fullling its internationalist duty.
[11] Cubanet - Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1992 Full
Text. From Article 5: The Communist Party of Cuba,
a follower of Marts ideas and of MarxismLeninism,
and the organized vanguard of the Cuban nation, is the
highest leading force of society and of the state, which
organizes and guides the common eort toward the goals
of the construction of socialism and the progress toward a
communist society,
[12] http://www.freemediaproductions.
info/Editorials/2009/08/30/
juche-is-third-position-ideology-built-on-marx-not-marxist-leninism/
[13] The Preamble to the 1976 Constitution of Portugal stated:
The Constituent Assembly arms the Portuguese people's decision to defend their national independence, safeguard the fundamental rights of citizens, establish the basic principles of democracy, secure the primacy of the rule
of law in a democratic state, and open the way to socialist
society.
[14] The Preamble of the Constitution of India reads : We,
the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic,
republic...See Preamble to the Constitution of India.
[15] The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Retrieved 31
October 2013.
[16] Crosland, Anthony, The Future of Socialism, pp.9, 89.
Constable (2006); Bevan, Aneurin, In place of Fear.
[17] Steger, Manfred. Selected Writings Of Eduard Bernstein,
1920-1921. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996.
[18] STATE CAPITALISM | International Communist Current
[19] Tony Cli, for example.
Archive

See: Tony Cli's Internet

[20] For instance, Peter Taae: The Soviet bureaucracy and

Western capitalism rested on mutually antagonistic social
systems, The Rise of Militant, Chapter 34, Russia, Trotsky and the collapse of Stalinism

2.12 Vanguardism
In the context of the theory of Marxist revolutionary
struggle, vanguardism is a strategy whereby the most
class-conscious and politically advanced sections of the
proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations in order to draw larger

128
sections of the working class towards revolutionary politics and serve as manifestations of proletarian political
power against its class enemies.
In theory, the revolutionary vanguard is not intended to
be an organization separate from the working class that
attempts to place itself at the center of the movement and
steer it in a direction consistent with its own ideology. It
is instead intended to be an organic part of the working
class that comes to socialist consciousness as a result of
the dialectic of class struggle.

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Our task is not to champion the degrading
of the revolutionary to the level of an amateur,
but to raise the amateurs to the level of revolutionaries. * [3]
If the party is successful in this goal, on the eve of revolution, a critical mass of the working class population would
be prepared to usher forth the transformation of society.
Furthermore, a great number of them, namely their most
dedicated members, would belong to the party cadres as
professional revolutionaries and would be elected to leadership positions by the mass party membership. Thus
the organization would quickly include the entire working class.* [4]

Vanguardism may also more generally refer to cooperation between avant-garde individuals advancing in any
eld. Innovative writers and artists are often described as
being in the vanguard of development of new forms and
styles of art.
Once the proletariat gained class consciousness and thus
was prepared to revolt against the ruling classes, the vanguard party would serve another purpose. The party
2.12.1 Foundations
would coordinate the proletariat through its revolution by
acting as a military command hub of sorts. This is, acVladimir Lenin popularized political vanguardism as cording to Leninists, a vital function as mass revolutions
conceptualized by Karl Kautsky, detailing his thoughts can sometimes be easily crushed by the disciplined miliin one of his earlier works, What is to be done?. Lenin tary of the ruling classes. The vanguards would serve as
argued that Marxism's complexity and the hostility of commanders of the revolt, chosen to their positions by
the establishment (the autocratic, semi-feudal state of democratic natural selection.
Imperial Russia,) required a close-knit group of individuals pulled from the working class vanguard to safeguard In Lenin's view, after the revolution the working class
the revolutionary ideology within the particular circum- would implement the dictatorship of the proletariat to rule
stances presented by the Tsarist rgime at the time. While the new worker's state through the rst phase of commuLenin allegedly wished for a revolutionary organization nism, socialism. Here it can be said that the vanguard
akin to the contemporary Social Democratic Party of disappears, as all of society now consists of revolutionarGermany, which was open to the public and more demo- ies.
cratic in organization, the Russian autocracy prevented
this.
Leninists argue that Lenin's ideal vanguard party would
be one where membership is completely open: The
members of the Party are they who accept the principles
of the Party programme and render the Party all possible
support.* [1] This party could, in theory, be completely
transparent: the entire political arena is as open to the
public view as is a theater stage to the audience.* [2]
A party that supposedly implemented democracy to such
an extent thatthe general control (in the literal sense of
the term) exercised over every act of a party man in the
political eld brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called
thesurvival of the ttest.This party would be completely open to the public eye as it conducted its business
which would mainly consist of educating the proletariat
to remove the false consciousness that had been instilled
in them.* [3]
In its rst phase, the vanguard party would exist for two
reasons. Firstly, it would protect Marxism from outside
corruption from other ideas as well as advance its concepts. Secondly, it would educate the proletariat in Marxism in order to cleanse them of their false individual
consciousnessand instill the revolutionary "class consciousness" in them.

2.12.2 Current use

Vanguardism continues to be used as a political strategy
by Leninist parties of just about all varieties.
Although anarchists and radical libertarians reject party
vanguardism in principle as inherently authoritarian, the
practices of some anarchist groups have been criticized by their peers for constituting vanguardism of
the intellectual, if not organizational, variety. Vanguardism is in fact an intrinsic element of anarchosyndicalism and revolutionary syndicalism. Theorists
such as Georges Sorel and vanguard groups such as the
Spanish Federacin Anarquista Ibrica viewed the ordinary worker as being too complacent to revolt spontaneously, due to his having been 'brainwashed' by capitalism and reformism, and it was thus seen to be the duty of
the 'enlightened' anarchist to prepare a revolutionary situation in which spontaneous mass rebellion could erupt.
At times, this even led to an ostensibly elitist anarchism:
the French CGT's reformist majority was excluded from
input in the pivotal 1906 Amiens Congress, as the Union's
anarchosyndicalist leaders considered moderate workers
to be unqualied to decide policy for a Union whose direction was to be revolutionary.

2.12. VANGUARDISM

2.12.3

Political party

A vanguard party is a political party at the fore of a massaction political movement and of a revolution. In the
praxis of political science, the concept of the vanguard
party, composed of professional revolutionaries, was rst
eected by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), the rst
leader of the Bolsheviks, coined the term vanguard party,
and argued that such a party was necessary in order to
provide the practical and political leadership that would
impel the proletariat to achieve a communist revolution.
Hence, as a political-science concept and term, vanguard
party most often is associated with Leninism; however,
similar concepts (under dierent names) also are present
in other revolutionary ideologies.
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx presented the concept of
the vanguard party as solely qualied to politically lead
the proletariat in revolution; in Chapter II: Proletarians
and Communistsof The Communist Manifesto (1848),
they said:
The Communists, therefore, are, on the
one hand, practically the most advanced and
resolute section of the working-class parties of
every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding
the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists
is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class,
overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

129
society), which featured the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.
Marxist/Leninist
As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s,
Lenin found several theoretic problems with the Marxism
of the late 19th century. Contrary to what Karl Marx had
predicted, capitalism had become stronger in the last third
of the 19th century. In Western Europe, the working
class had become poorer, rather than becoming politically progressive, thinking people; hence, the workers and
their trade unions, although they had continued to militate
for better wages and working conditions, had failed to develop a revolutionary class consciousness, as predicted by
Marx. To explain that undeveloped political awareness,
Lenin said that the division of labour in a bourgeois capitalist society prevented the emergence of a proletarian
class consciousness, because of the ten-to-twelve-hour
workdays that the workers laboured in factories, and so
had no time to learn and apply the philosophic complexities of Marxist theory. Finally, in trying to eect a revolution in Tsarist Imperial Russia (17211917), Lenin faced
the problem of an autocratic rgime that had outlawed
almost all political activity. Although the Tsarist autocracy could not enforce a ban on political ideas, until 1905
when Tsar Nicholas II (18941917) agreed to the formation of a national duma the Okhrana, the Tsarist
secret police, suppressed every political group seeking social and political changes, including those with a democratic program.
To counter such political conditions, Lenin said that a
professional revolutionary organisation was necessary to
organise and lead the most class-conscious workers into a
politically coherent movement. About the Russian class
struggle, in the book What Is to Be Done? (1902), against
the economisttrend of the socialist parties (who proposed that the working class would develop a revolutionary consciousness from demanding solely economic improvements), Lenin said that the history of all countries bears out the fact that, through their own powers
alone, the working class can develop only a trade-union
consciousness; and that under reformist, trade-union
leadership, the working class could only engage spontaneous local rebellions to improve their political position
within the capitalist system, and that revolutionary consciousness developed unevenly. Nonetheless, optimistic
about the working classs ability to develop a revolutionary class consciousness, Lenin said that the missing element for escalating the class struggle to revolution was a
political organisation that could relate to the radicalism of
political vanguard of the working class, who then would
attract many workers from the middling policies of the
reformist leaders of the trade unions.

According to Vladimir Lenin, the purpose of the vanguard party is to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat;
supported by the working class. The change of ruling
class, from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, makes possible the full development of socialism. In early 20th century Russia, Lenin argued that the vanguard party would
lead the revolution to depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and transfer government power to the working
class.* [5] In the pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902),
Lenin said that a revolutionary vanguard party, mostly
recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the
proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade union struggle advocated by other socialist political parties and later by
the anarcho-syndicalists. Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the two aspects of a revolution, the economic campaign (labour strikes for increased wages and It is often believed that Lenin thought the bearers of
work concessions), which featured diused plural lead- class consciousness were the common intellectuals who
ership; and the political campaign (socialist changes to made it their vocation to conspire against the capitalist

130
system, educate the public in revolutionary theory, and
prepare the workers for the proletarian revolution and
the dictatorship of the proletariat that would follow. Yet,
unlike his Menshevik rivals, Lenin distinguished himself
by his hostility towards the bourgeois intelligentsia, and
was routinely criticised for placing too much trust in the
intellectual ability of the working class to transform society through its own political struggles.
Like other political organisations that sought to change
Imperial Russian society, Lenin's Bolshevik Party resorted to conspiracy, and operated in the political underground. Against Tsarist repression, Lenin argued for
the necessity of conning membership to people who
were professionally trained to combat the Okhrana secret
police; however, at its core, the Bolshevik Party was
an exceptionally exible organisation who pragmatically
adapted policy to changing political situations. After the
Revolution of 1905, Lenin proposed that the Bolshevik
Partyopen its gatesto the militant working class, who
were rapidly becoming political radicals, in order for the
Party to become a mass-action political party with genuine roots in the working class movement.
The concept of a vanguard party was used by the Bolsheviks to justify their suppression of other parties. They
took the line that since they were the vanguard of the proletariat, their right to rule could not be legitimately questioned. Hence, opposition parties could not be permitted
to exist. From 1936 onward, Communist-inspired state
constitutions enshrined this concept by giving the Communist parties a leading rolein societya provision
that was interpreted to either ban other parties altogether
or force them to accept the Communists' guaranteed right
to rule as a condition of being allowed to exist.

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

countries of the world. Although the Fourth International
faded from the public upon the death of Trotsky, there
continued some eorts to revive the concept of an international vanguard party.
Other uses
Although Lenin honed the idea in terms of a class leadership forged out of a proletarian vanguard specically
to describe Marxist-Leninist parties,* [6] the term is also
used for many kinds of movement conceiving themselves
as initially guided by a small elite. Theodor Herzl, the
theorist of Zionism, thought legitimation from the majority would only hinder from the outset his movement,
and therefore advised that:
'we cannot all be of one mind; the gestor
will therefore simply take the leadership into
his hands and march in the van.'
This principle antedated by some years the Leninist idea
of Bolshevism as the vanguard of the revolution by characterizing the 'Zionist movement as a vanguard of the
Jewish people.'* [7] The Youth Guard at the forefront of
Zionist mobilization in the Yishuv likewise conceived of
itself as a revolutionary vanguard,* [8] and the kibbutz
movement itself is said to have thought of itself as a 'selfless vanguard'.* [9] It is occasionally used with of certain
Islamist parties. Writers Abul Ala Maududi and Sayyid
Qutb both urged the formation of an Islamic vanguard to
restore Islamic society. Qutb talked of an Islamist vanguard in his book Ma'alim al-Tariq (Milestones)* [10]
and Maududi formed the radical Islamist party Jamaate-Islami* [11] in Pakistan whose goal was to establish a
pan-Ummah worldwide Islamist ideological state starting from Pakistan, administered for God solely by Muslimswhose whole life is devoted to the observance and
enforcementof Islamic law (Shari'ah), leading to the
world becoming the House of Islam. The party members formed an elite group (called arkan) withaliates
(mutaq) and then sympathisers(hamdard) beneath
them.* [11] Today, the JI has spread wings to other South
Asian countries with large Muslim populations, such as
Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India.

In the 20th century, the Communist Party of the Soviet

Union (CPSU) continued regarding itself as the institutionalization of Marxist-Leninist political consciousness
in the Soviet Union; therein lay the justication for its
political control of Soviet society. Article 6 of the 1977
Soviet Constitution refers to the CPSU as the leading
and guiding force of Soviet society, and the nucleus of
its political system, of all state organizations and public
organizations. The CPSU, precisely because it was the
bearer of Marxist-Leninist ideology, determined the general development of society, directed domestic and foreign policy, andimparts a planned, systematic, and theAnother elite or vanguard Islamist party is Hizb ut-Tahrir,
oretically substantiated characterto the struggle of the
which seeks to take power for a pan-Islamic state not by
Soviet people for the victory of Communism.
a vanguard-led armed struggle, but by a Coup d'tat. The
Nonetheless, the political role of the vanguard party, as party seeks to obtainssupport from army generals, leadoutlined by Lenin, is disputed among the contemporary ers, and other inuential gures or bodies to facilitate the
communist movement. Lenin's contemporary in the Bol- change of the government.* [12] According to Roger
shevik Party, Leon Trotsky, further developed and es- Eatwell, some fascist parties have also operated in ways
tablished the vanguard party with the creation of the similar to the concept of a vanguard party.* [13]
Fourth International. Trotsky, who believed in worldwide
permanent revolution, proposed that a vanguard party
must be an international political party who organised 2.12.4 See also
the most militant activists of the working classes of the
Antonio Gramsci

2.13. LENINISM
Blanquism
Democratic centralism

2.12.5

References

[1] Vladimir Lenin, What is to be Done? ch.IV, quoting

Clause 1 of the Rules of the German Social-Democratic
Party
[2] Vladimir Lenin, What is to be Done? ch.IV
[3] Vladimir Lenin, What is to be Done?
[4] Vladimir Lenin, What is to be Done?
[5] Townson, D. The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern History: 17891945 London:1994 pp. 462464
[6] Jonathan Joseph, Hegemony: A Realist Analysis, Routledge 2002 p.45.
[7] David Biale, Power & Powerlessness in Jewish History,
(1986) Random House 2010 p.136.
[8] Sasson Sofer, Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli
Diplomacy, 1998 pp.160-178, p.160.
[9] Joshua Muravchik, Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall
of Socialism, Encounter Books, 2013 p.263.
[10] Fundamentalist Islam at Large: The Drive for Power by
Martin Kramer, Middle East Quarterly, June 1996
[11] GlobalSecurity.org: Jamaat-e-Islami
[12] (untitled HT pamphlet
[13] Roger Eatwell. Fascism: a history. Allen Lane, 1996. Pp.
215.

2.12.6

Further reading

Arts
Burger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Theory & History of Literature Series. 135 pages.
University of Minnesota Press, February 1, 1984.
ISBN 0-8166-1068-1.
Forster, Merlin H. and K. David Jackson, compilers.
Vanguardism in Latin American Literature : An Annotated Bibliographic Guide. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature Series. 232 pages. Greenwood Press, May 23, 1990. ISBN 0-313-24861-3.

131
Bakunin, Mikhail. Letter to Albert Richard.
August 1870. Reprinted in Bakunin on Anarchy,
translated and edited by Sam Dolgo. A. A. Knopf,
1st edition, 1972. ISBN 0-394-41601-5. Retrieved
May 17, 2005.
Mandel, Ernest. Trotskys conception of selforganisation and the vanguard party. Originally
published in French in Quatrime Internationale,
No.36, pp. 3549. November 1989. Translated by
Mike Murray, marked up by Einde OCallaghan
for the MarxistsInternet Archive. Retrieved May
24, 2005.
Mitchell, Roxanne and Frank Weiss. Two, Three,
Many Parties of a New Type? Against the Ultra-Left
Line. Publisher: United Labor Press. 1977. Retrieved May 25, 2005.
Slaughter, Cli. What is Revolutionary Leadership?". Labour Review. Socialist Labor League.
1964?. Retrieved May 17, 2005.
Polemics
Mythology of the White-LedVanguard": A Critical
Look at the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
Anarchist People of Color website. Retrieved May
17, 2005.
Cooper, Nick. Critique of Revolutionary Communism . Belgium Indymedia. Sep. 23, 2004. Retrieved June 3, 2005.

2.13 Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political
theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary
vanguard party, and the achievement of a dictatorship of
the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment
of socialism. Developed by, and named for, the Russian
revolutionary and later Soviet premier Vladimir Lenin,
Leninism comprises socialist political and economic theories, developed from Marxism, as well as Lenins interpretations of Marxist theory for practical application to
the socio-political conditions of the agrarian early-20thcentury Russian Empire. In February 1917, for ve years,
Leninism was the Russian application of Marxist economics and political philosophy, eected and realised by
the Bolshevik party, the vanguard party who led the ght
for the political independence of the working class.

Maerhofer, John. 2009. Rethinking the Vanguard: Aesthetic and Political Positions in the Mod- Functionally, the Leninist vanguard party provided to
ernist Debate, 1917-1962. New Castle: Cambridge the working class the political consciousness (education
Scholars Press. ISBN 1-4438-1135-1
and organisation), and the revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in Imperial Russia. After
Politics
the October Revolution of 1917, Leninism was the dominant version of Marxism in Russia; in fact, the Bolshe Vladimir Lenin What is to be done?
viks considered it the only legitimate form and persecuted

132

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

came the ocial state ideology of Soviet democracy (by
workerscouncil) in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), before its unitary amalgamation
into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in
1922.* [1] In 192529 post-Lenin Russia, Joseph Stalin
reinforced the assertion that Leninism was the only legitimate form of Marxism by recasting them as one indivisible entity called MarxismLeninism, which then became
the state ideology of the Soviet Union.
As a political-science term, Leninism entered common
usage in 1922, after inrmity ended Lenins participation
in governing the Russian Communist Party. Two years
later, in July 1924, at the fth congress of the Communist
International, Grigory Zinoviev popularized the term to
denotevanguard-party revolution. Leninism was composed as and for revolutionary praxis, and originally was
neither a rigorously proper philosophy nor discrete political theory. After the Russian Revolution, in History
and Class Consciousness (1923), Gyrgy Lukcs ideologically developed and organised Lenins pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguardparty revolution (Leninism). As a work of political science and philosophy, History and Class Consciousness illustrated Lenins 1915 dictum about the commitment to
the cause of the revolutionary man, and said of Lukcs:

The Russian revolutionary and later Soviet premier Lenin

(Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) c. 1920.

One cannot be a revolutionary Social

Democrat without participating, according to
ones powers, in developing this theory [Marxism], and adapting it to changed conditions.
Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971)
p. 35.* [2]

2.13.1 Historical background

In the 19th century, The Communist Manifesto (1848),
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, called for the international political unication of the European working
classes in order to achieve a Communist revolution; and
proposed that, because the socio-economic organization
of communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workersrevolution would rst occur in the economically advanced, industrialized countries. Yet, in the
early 20th century, the socio-economic backwardness of
Imperial Russia (uneven and combined economic development) facilitated rapid and intensive industrialization,
which produced a united, working-class proletariat in a
predominantly rural, agrarian peasant society.
Moreover, because the industrialization was nanced
mostly with foreign capital, Imperial Russia (17211917)
did not possess a revolutionary bourgeoisie with political and economic inuence upon the workers and the
peasants (as occurred in the French Revolution, 1789).
non-Leninist Marxists such as Mensheviks and some fac- So, although Russia's political economy principally was
tions of Socialist Revolutionaries. The Russian Civil War agrarian and semi-feudal, the task of democratic revoluthus included various left-wing uprisings against the Bol- tion therefore fell to the urban, industrial working class,
sheviks, but they were overpowered, and Leninism be- as the only social class capable of eecting land reform
Leninism codied: the intellectual Gyrgy Lukcs, the
philosopher of Leninism, c. 1952.

2.13. LENINISM
and democratization, in view that the Russian propertied
classes would attempt to suppress any revolution, in town
and country. In April 1917, Lenin published the April
Theses, the strategy of the October Revolution, which
proposed that the Russian revolution was not an isolated
national event, but a fundamentally international event
the rst world socialist revolution. Thus, Lenin's practical application of Marxism and working-class urban revolution to the social, political, and economic conditions
of the agrarian peasant society that was Tsarist Russia
sparked the revolutionary nationalism of the poorto
depose the absolute monarchy of the three-hundred-year
Romanov dynasty (16131917).* [3]
Imperialism
In the course of developing the Russian application of
Marxism, the pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism (1916) presented Lenins analysis of an economic development predicted by Karl Marx: that capitalism would become a global nancial system, wherein
advanced industrial countries export nancial capital to
their colonial countries, to nance the exploitation of their
natural resources and the labour of the native populations.
Such superexploitation of the poor (undeveloped) countries allows the wealthy (developed) countries to maintain
some homeland workers politically content with a slightly
higher standard of living, and so ensure peaceful labour
capital relations in the capitalist homeland. (see: labour
aristocracy, globalization) Hence, a proletarian revolution
of workers and peasants could not occur in the developed
capitalist countries, while the imperialist global-nance
system remained intact; thus an underdeveloped country would feature the rst proletarian revolution; and, in
the early 20th century, Imperial Russia was the politically weakest country in the capitalist global-nance system.* [4] In the United States of Europe Slogan (1915),
Lenin said:
Workers of the world, unite! Uneven
economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory
of socialism is possible, rst in several, or
even in one capitalist country taken separately.
The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised
its own socialist production, would stand up
against the rest of the world, the capitalist
world.
Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 232.* [5]
The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost eort, and
by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful
and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift
between the enemies, any conict of interests
among the bourgeoisie of the various countries

133
and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by
taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though
this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not
understand this reveal a failure to understand
even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientic socialism in general. Those who
have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth
in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all
toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this
applies equally to the period before and after
the proletariat has won political power.
Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)* [6]

2.13.2 Leninist theory

The vanguard party
In Chapter II: Proletarians and Communistsof The
Communist Manifesto (1848), Engels and Marx presented
the idea of the vanguard party as solely qualied to politically lead the proletariat in revolution:
The Communists, therefore, are, on the
one hand, practically the most advanced
and resolute section of the working-class
parties of every country, that section which
pushes forward all others; on the other hand,
theoretically, they have over the great mass
of the proletariat the advantage of clearly
understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of
the proletarian movement. The immediate
aim of the Communists is the same as that
of all other proletarian parties: Formation of
the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the
bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political
power by the proletariat.

Hence, the purpose of the Leninist vanguard party is to

establish a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat; supported by the working class, the vanguard party would
lead the revolution to depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and then transfer power of government to the
working class, which change of ruling class from
bourgeoisie to proletariat makes possible the full development of socialism.* [7] In the pamphlet What is to
be Done? (1902), Lenin proposed that a revolutionary
vanguard party, mostly recruited from the working class,
should lead the political campaign, because it was the

134

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve

a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of tradeunion-struggle advocated by other socialist political parties; and later by the anarcho-syndicalists. Like Karl
Marx, Lenin distinguished between the aspects of a revolution, the economic campaign(labour strikes for
increased wages and work concessions), which featured
diused plural leadership; and the political campaign
(socialist changes to society), which required the decisive
revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.
Democratic centralism
As epitomised in the slogan Freedom in Discussion,
Unity in Action, Lenin followed the example of the
First International (IWA, International Workingmens
Association, 18641876), and organised the Bolsheviks
as a democratically centralised vanguard party, wherein
free political-speech was recognised legitimate until policy consensus; afterwards, every member of the Party
would be expected to uphold the ocial policy established in consensus. In the pamphlet Freedom to Criticise
and Unity of Action (1905), Lenin said:
Of course, the application of this principle in practice will sometimes give rise to
disputes and misunderstandings; but only on
the basis of this principle can all disputes and
all misunderstandings be settled honourably
for the Party.... The principle of democratic
centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom
to criticise, so long as this does not disturb
the unity of a denite action; it rules out all
criticism which disrupts or makes dicult the
unity of an action decided on by the Party.* [8]

Full, inner-party democratic debate was Bolshevik Party

practice under Lenin, even after the banning of party factions in 1921. Although a guiding inuence in policy,
Lenin did not exercise absolute power, and continually
debated and discussed to have his point of view accepted.
Under Stalin, the inner-party practice of democratic free
debate did not continue after the death of Lenin in 1924.
Revolution
Before the Revolution, despite supporting political reform (including Bolsheviks elected to the Duma, when
opportune), Lenin proposed that capitalism could ultimately only be overthrown with revolution, not with gradual reforms from within (Fabianism) and from without
(social democracy) which would fail, because the ruling capitalist social class, who hold economic power (the
means of production), determine the nature of political
power in a bourgeois society.* [9] As epitomised in the

slogan,For a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat

and Peasantry, a revolution in underdeveloped Tsarist
Russia required an allied proletariat of town and country
(urban workers and peasants), because the urban workers would be too few to successfully assume power in the
cities on their own. Moreover, owing to the middle-class
aspirations of much of the peasantry, Leon Trotsky proposed that the proletariat should lead the revolution, as
the only way for it to be truly socialist and democratic;
although Lenin initially disagreed with Trotskys formulation, he adopted it before the Russian Revolution in
October 1917.
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Main article: Dictatorship of the proletariat
In the Russian socialist society, government by direct
democracy was eected by elected soviets (workers
councils), which soviet governmentform Lenin described as the manifestation of the Marxist democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat.* [10] As political organisations, the soviets would comprise representatives of
factory workersand trade union committees, but would
exclude capitalists, as a social class, in order to ensure the
establishment of a proletarian government, by and for the
working class and the peasants. About the political disenfranchisement of the Russian capitalist social classes,
Lenin said that depriving the exploiters of the franchise is a purely Russian question, and not a question of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, in general.... In which
countries... democracy for the exploiters will be, in one or
another form, restricted... is a question of the specic national features of this or that capitalism.* [11] In chapter
ve of The State and Revolution (1917) Lenin describes:
...the dictatorship of the proletariat
i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of
the oppressed as the ruling class for the
purpose of crushing the oppressors.... An
immense expansion of democracy, which
for the rst time becomes democracy for
the poor, democracy for the people, and not
democracy for the rich:... and suppression by
force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the
exploiters and oppressors of the people
this is the change which democracy undergoes
during the transitionfrom capitalism to
communism.* [12]

Soviet constitutionalism was the collective government

form of the Russian dictatorship of the proletariat, the opposite of the government form of the dictatorship of capital (privately owned means of production) practised in
bourgeois democracies. In the soviet political system, the
(Leninist) vanguard party would be one of many political

2.13. LENINISM
parties competing for elected power.* [1]* [10]* [13] Nevertheless, the circumstances of the Red vs. White Russian
Civil War, and terrorism by the opposing political parties, and in aid of the White Armies' counter-revolution,
led to the Bolshevik government banning other parties;
thus, the vanguard party became the sole, legal political party in Russia. Lenin did not regard such political
suppression as philosophically inherent to the dictatorship of the proletariat; yet the Stalinists retrospectively
claimed that such factional suppression was original to
Leninism.* [14]* [15]* [16]

Democracy for the vast majority of the

people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion
from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.
Lenin, The State and Revolution. Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp.461462.* [17]

Economics
Soviet democracy nationalised industry and established
a foreign-trade monopoly to allow the productive coordination of the national economy, and so prevent Russian national industries from competing against each
other. To feed the populaces of town and country, Lenin
instituted War Communism (191821) as a necessary
condition adequate supplies of food and weapons
for ghting the Russian Civil War (191723).* [13] Later,
in March 1921, he established the New Economic Policy (NEP, 192129), which allowed measures of private
commerce, internal free trade, and replaced grain requisitions with an agricultural tax, under the management of
State banks. The purpose of the NEP was to resolve foodshortage riots among the peasantry, and allowed measures of private enterprise, wherein the prot motive encouraged the peasants to harvest the crops required to
feed the people of town and country; and to economically re-establish the urban working class, who had lost
many men (workers) to the counter-revolutionary Civil
War.* [18]* [19] With the NEP, the socialist nationalisation of the economy could then be developed to industrialise Russia, strengthen the working class, and raise standards of living; thus the NEP would advance socialism
against capitalism. Lenin regarded the appearance of new
socialist states in the developed countries as necessary to
the strengthening Russia's economy, and the eventual development of socialism. In that, he was encouraged by
the German Revolution of 19181919, the Italian insurrection and general strikes of 1920, and industrial unrest
in Britain, France, and the U.S.

135
National self-determination
Lenin recognized and accepted the existence of
nationalism among oppressed peoples, advocated their
national rights to self-determination, and opposed the
ethnic chauvinism of Greater Russiabecause such
ethnocentrism was a cultural obstacle to establishing the
proletarian dictatorship in the territories of the deposed
Tsarist Russian Empire (17211917).* [20]* [21] In The
Right of Nations to Self-determination (1914), Lenin said:
We ght against the privileges and violence
of the oppressor nation, and do not in any
way condone strivings for privileges on the
part of the oppressed nation.... The bourgeois
nationalism of any oppressed nation has a
general democratic content that is directed
against oppression, and it is this content that
we unconditionally support. At the same time,
we strictly distinguish it from the tendency
towards national exclusiveness....
Can a
nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It
cannot.* [22]

The internationalist philosophies of Bolshevism and

of Marxism are based upon class struggle transcending nationalism, ethnocentrism, and religion, which are
intellectual obstacles to class consciousness, because the
bourgeois ruling classes manipulated said cultural status
quo to politically divide the proletarian working classes.
To overcome the political barrier of nationalism, Lenin
said it was necessary to acknowledge the existence of
nationalism among oppressed peoples, and to guarantee
their national independence, as the right of secession; and
that, based upon national self-determination, it was natural for socialist states to transcend nationalism and form a
federation.* [23] In The Question of Nationalities, orAutonomisation (1923), Lenin said:
...nothing holds up the development and
strengthening of proletarian class solidarity
so much as national injustice; oended
nationals are not sensitive to anything, so much
as to the feeling of equality, and the violation
of this equality, if only through negligence or
jest to the violation of that equality by their
proletarian comrades.* [24]

Socialist culture
The role of the Marxist vanguard party was to politically
educate the workers and peasants to dispel the societal
false consciousness of religion and nationalism that constitute the cultural status quo taught by the bourgeoisie
to the proletariat to facilitate their economic exploitation

136

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

of peasant and worker. Inuenced by Lenin, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party stated that the development of the socialist workersculture should not
behamstrung from above, and opposed the Proletkult
(191725) organisational control of the national culture.* [25]

2.13.3

Leninism after 1924

Stalin aligned with Lenins advocacy of the right of selfdetermination for the national and ethnic groups of the
former Tsarist Empire, which was a key theoretic concept
of Leninism.* [28] Lenin warned that Stalin has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure
whether he will always be capable of using that authority
with sucient caution, and formed a factional bloc with
Leon Trotsky to remove Stalin as the General Secretary
of the Communist Party.* [16]* [29] To that end followed
proposals reducing the administrative powers of Party
posts, in order to reduce bureaucratic inuence upon the
policies of the Communist Party. Lenin advised Trotsky to emphasize Stalins recent bureaucratic alignment
in such matters (e.g. undermining the anti-bureaucratic
Workersand PeasantsInspection), and argued to depose Stalin as General Secretary. Despite advice to refuse
any rotten compromise, Trotsky did not heed Lenins
advice, and General Secretary Stalin retained power over
the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the soviet
government.* [16]
Trotskyism vs. Stalinism
After Lenins death (21 January 1924), Trotsky ideologically battled the inuence of Stalin, who formed
ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party (with
Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, then with Nikolai
Bukharin, and then by himself) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards. The ruling
blocs continually denied Stalins opponents the right
to organise as an opposition faction within the Party
thus, the re-instatement of democratic centralism and free
speech within the Communist Party were key arguments
of Trotskys Left Opposition, and the later Joint Opposition.* [16]* [30]

Leon Trotsky (ca. 1929)

In postRevolutionary Russia, Stalinism (Socialism in

one country) and Trotskyism (Permanent world revolution) were the principal philosophies of Communism that
claimed legitimate ideological descent from Leninism'
thus, within the Communist Party, each ideological faction denied the political legitimacy of the opposing faction.* [26]
Lenin vs. Stalin
Until shortly before his death, Lenin worked to counter
the disproportionate political inuence of Joseph Stalin in
the Communist Party and in the bureaucracy of the soviet
government, partly because of abuses he had committed
against the populace of Georgia, and partly because the
autocratic Stalin had accumulated administrative power
disproportionate to his oce of General Secretary of the
Communist Party.* [27]* [28] The counter-action against

In the course of instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of Socialism in One Country (adopted
1925), wherein the USSR would establish socialism upon
Russias economic foundations (and support socialist
revolutions elsewhere). Conversely, Trotsky held that socialism in one country would economically constrain the
industrial development of the USSR, and thus required
assistance from the new socialist countries that had arisen
in the developed world, which was essential for maintaining Soviet democracy, in 1924 much undermined by
civil war and counter-revolution. Furthermore, Trotsky
s theory of Permanent Revolution proposed that socialist
revolutions in underdeveloped countries would go further
towards dismantling feudal rgimes, and establish socialist democracies that would not pass through a capitalist
stage of development and government. Hence, revolutionary workers should politically ally with peasant political organisations, but not with capitalist political parties. In contrast, Stalin and allies proposed that alliances
with capitalist political parties were essential to realising
a revolution where Communists were too few; said Stalinist practice failed, especially in the Northern Expedition
portion of the Chinese Revolution (19251927), wherein

2.13. LENINISM
it resulted in the right-wing Kuomintangs massacre of
the Chinese Communist Party; nonetheless, despite the
failure, Stalins policy of mixed-ideology political alliances, became Comintern policy.

137
The People's Action Party (PAP) of Singapore was
originally organized on Leninist lines, with internal democracy, and initiated a legacy of single-party
dominance over the government that continues to
the present.* [34]

The Oppositionists
Until exiled from Russia in 1929, Leon Trotsky helped
develop and led the Left Opposition (and the later Joint
Opposition) with members of the WorkersOpposition,
the Decembrists, and (later) the Zinovievists.* [16] Trotskyism ideologically predominated the political platform
of the Left Opposition, which demanded the restoration of soviet democracy, the expansion of democratic
centralism in the Communist Party, national industrialisation, international permanent revolution, and socialist internationalism. The Trotskyist demands countered
Stalins political dominance of the Russian Communist
Party, which was ocially characterised by the cult
of Lenin, the rejection of permanent revolution, and
the doctrine of Socialism in One Country. The Stalinist
economic policy vacillated between appeasing capitalist
kulak interests in the countryside, and destroying them.
Initially, the Stalinists also rejected the national industrialisation of Russia, but then pursued it in full, sometimes
brutally. In both cases, the Left Opposition denounced
the regressive nature of the policy towards the kulak social class of wealthy peasants, and the brutality of forced
industrialisation. Trotsky described the vacillating Stalinist policy as a symptom of the undemocratic nature of
a ruling bureaucracy.* [31]
During the 1920s and the 1930s, Stalin fought and defeated the political inuence of Leon Trotsky and of
the Trotskyists in Russia, by means of slander, antiSemitism, programmed censorship, expulsions, exile (internal and external), and imprisonment. The anti
Trotsky campaign culminated in the executions (ocial
and unocial) of the Moscow Trials (193638), which
were part of the Great Purge of Old Bolsheviks (who had
led the Revolution).* [16]* [32] Once established as ruler
of the USSR, General Secretary Stalin re-titled the ofcial Socialism in One Country doctrine as MarxismLeninism, to establish ideologic continuity with Leninism, whilst opponents continued calling it Stalinism
.

2.13.4

Philosophic successors

In political practice, Leninism (vanguard-party revolution), despite its origin as Communist revolutionary
praxis, was adopted throughout the political spectrum.
In China, the Communist Party of China was organised as a Leninist vanguard party, based upon Mao
Zedong Thought, the Chinese practical application
of Marxism-Leninism, specic to Chinese socioeconomic conditions.* [33]

In turn, Maoism became the theoretical basis of some

third world revolutionary vanguard parties, such as the
Communist Party of Peru Red Fatherland and others.* [35]

2.13.5 Criticism
In several works, including an essay written from jail and
published posthumously by her last companion, Paul Levi
(publication of which precipitated his expulsion from the
Third International) titled The Russian Revolution
,* [36] the Marxist Rosa Luxemburg sharply criticized
some Bolshevik policies, such as their suppression of the
Constituent Assembly in January 1918, their support for
the partition of the old feudal estates to the peasant communes, and their policy of supporting the purported right
of all national peoples toself-determination.According
to Luxemburg, the Bolsheviks' strategic mistakes created
tremendous dangers for the Revolution, such as its bureaucratisation.
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints
held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from
a position that is asserted to be more authentically
Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held
by the Communist International after its rst and during its second congress. Proponents of left communism have included Amadeo Bordiga, Herman Gorter,
Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rhle, Sylvia Pankhurst and Paul
Mattick.* [37] Left-WingCommunism: An Infantile
Disorder is a work by Vladimir Lenin attacking assorted
critics of the Bolsheviks who claimed positions to their
left.
Critics of Lenin, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and
Noam Chomsky, have argued that Stalinism (i.e., a political system which includes forced collectivization, a
police state, a totalitarian political ideology, forced labor camps and mass executions) was not a deviation
from Lenin's policies, but merely a logical extension of
them.* [38]* [39]
The call-up of 1937was very loquacious, and having access to the press and radio created the legend of 1937, a legend
consisting of two points: 1) If they arrested
people at all under the Soviet government, it
was only in 1937, and it is necessary to speak
out and be indignant only about 1937; 2) In
1937 they were the only ones arrested. Here's
what they write: That terrible year when

138

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

they arrested the most devout Communist executives: Secretaries of the Central Committees of the Union Republics, Secretaries of the
Provincial Party Committees, Chairmen of the
Provincial Executive Committees; all the commanders of the military districts, marshals and
generals; provincial prosecutors; Secretaries of
District Party Committees...At the very beginning of our book, we gave a conspectus of
the waves pouring into the Archipelago [labor
camps] during the two decades up to 1937.
How long all that dragged on! And how many
millions there were! But the future call-up of
1937 didn't bat an eye and found it all normal.... And for a long time after, as they became convinced of the irrevocability of their
fate, they sighed and groaned, If only Lenin
were alive, this would never have happened!"
What did they mean by this? Was it not precisely this that had happened to the others before them?" Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 2, p. 328

[8] Lenin, V.I. (1905) Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action, from Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers,
1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 442-443. Available
online at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/
1906/may/20c.htm (Retrieved 30 November 2011)
[9] Lenin, V.I. (1917) The State and Revolution, from Lenin
Collected Works, Volume 25, pp. 381-492. Available
online at http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/
staterev/index.htm (Retrieved 30 November 2011)
[10] Isaac Deutscher, 1954. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky
1879-1921, Oxford University Press
[11] Lenin, V.I. The Proletarian Revolution and the
Renegade Kautsky, from Lenins Collected Works,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 28, 1974, pages
227-325.Available online at: http://marxists.org/archive/
lenin/works/1918/prrk/ (Retrieved 2 December 2011)
[12] Hill, Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971)
Penguin Books:London p. 86.
[13] Carr, Edward Hallett. The Russian Revolution From Lenin
to Stalin: 1917-1929. (1979)
[14] Lewin, Moshe. Lenins Last Struggle. (1969)

2.13.6

See also

An equal amount of products for an equal amount

of labor
Anti-Leninism
Democratic centralism
He who does not work neither shall he eat
Lenin's national policy
New Economic Policy
The State and Revolution (1917)

2.13.7

Notes

[1] The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Third

Edition (1999) pp. 476477
[2] Hill, Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971)
Penguin Books:London p. 35.
[3] Faces of Janus p. 133.
[4] Tomasic, D. The Impact of Russian Culture on Soviet Communism(1953), The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 6, No. 4 December, pp. 808809.
[5] Lenin, V. I.United States of Europe Slogan, Collected
Works, Vol. 18, p. 232.
[6] Lenin, Vlaimir (1920). No Compromises?". Left-Wing
Communism: an Infantile Disorder. USSR: Progress Publishers. Retrieved 5 January 2013.
[7] Townson, D. The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern History: 17891945 London:1994 pp. 462464

[15] Carr, Edward Hallett. The Russian Revolution, from Lenin

to Stalin: 19171929. (1979)
[16] Deutscher, Isaac 1959. The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky
1921-1929, Oxford University Press
[17] Marx Engels Lenin on Scientic Socialism. Moscow:
Novosti Press Ajency Publishing House. 1974.
[18] Dictionary of Historical Terms Chris Cook, editor (1983)
Peter Bedrick Books:New York p. 205.
[19] Lenin, V.I. The New Economic Policy and the Tasks of
the Political Education Departments, Report to the Second All-Russia Congress of Political Education Departments, 17 October 1921, from Lenins Collected Works,
2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,
Volume 33, pp. 6079. Available at http://marxists.org/
archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm (Retrieved 2 December 2011)
[20] Lenin, V.I. (1914) The Right of Nations to SelfDetermination, from Lenins Collected Works, Progress
Publishers, 1972, Moscow, Volume 20, pp. 393-454.
Available online at: http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/
works/1914/self-det/index.htm (Retrieved 30 November
2011)
[21] Harding, Neil (ed.) The State in Socialist Society, second
edition (1984) St. Antony's College: Oxford, p. 189.
[22] Lenin, V.I. (1914) The Right of Nations to SelfDetermination, Chapter 4: 4. Practicalityin The National Question; from Lenins Collected Works, Progress
Publishers, 1972, Moscow, Volume 20, pp. 393454.
Available online at: http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/
works/1914/self-det/index.htm (Retrieved 30 November
2011)
[23] Lewin, Moshe. Lenins Last Struggle (1969)

2.13. LENINISM

[24] Lenin, V.I. (1923) The Question of Nationalities or Autonomisationin Last Testament Letters to the
Congress, from Lenin Collected Works, Volume 36, pp.
593-611. Available online at: http://marxists.org/archive/
lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/index.htm (Retrieved 30
November 2011)
[25] Central Committee, On Proletcult Organisations, Pravda
No. 270 1/12/1920
[26] Chambers Dictionary of World History (2000) p. 837.

139
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of
Marxism, 1913
The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1914
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1917
The State and Revolution, 1917
The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution
(The April Theses), 1917

[27] Lewin, Moshe. Lenin's Last Struggle. (1969)

Left-WingChildishness and the Petty Bourgois

Mentality, 1918

[28] Carr, Edward Hallett. The Russian Revolution From Lenin

to Stalin: 1917-1929. (1979)

Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920

[29] Lenin, V.I. 1923-24 Last TestamentLetters to the

Congress, in Lenin Collected Works, Volume 36 pp.
593611. Available online at: http://www.marxists.org/
archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/congress.htm
(Retrieved 30 November 2011)
[30] Trotsky, Leon 1927. Platform of the Joint Opposition,
available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/
1927/opposition/index.htm (Retrieved 28 November
2011)
[31] Trotsky, L.D. (1938) The Revolution Betrayed
[32] Rogovin, Vadim Z. Stalins Terror of 1937-1938: Political Genocide in the USSR. (2009) translated to English by
Frederick S. Choate, from the Russian-language Party of
the Executed by Vadim Z. Rogovin.

Last TestamentLetters to the Congress, 192324

Histories
Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky
18791921, 1954
Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky
19211929, 1959
Moshe Lewin. Lenin's Last Struggle, 1969
Edward Hallett Carr. The Russian Revolution From
Lenin to Stalin: 19171929, 1979
Other authors

[33] Zheng Yongnian, The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor (2009) p 61

Paul Blackledge.What was Done an extended review

of Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered from International
Socialism

[34] Peter Wilson, Economic growth and development in Singapore (2002) p 30

Marcel Liebman. Leninism Under Lenin. The Merlin Press. 1980. ISBN 0-85036-261-X

[35] Kenneth M. Roberts, Deepening Democracy?: The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (1988)
pp 288-89

Roy Medvedev. Leninism and Western Socialism.

Verso Books. 1981. ISBN 0-86091-739-8

[36] The Nationalities Question in the Russian Revolution

(Rosa Luxemburg, 1918)". Libcom.org. 2006-07-11.
Retrieved 2010-01-02.
[37]The 'Advance Without Authority': Post-modernism,
Libertarian Socialism and Intellectualsby Chamsy Ojeili,
Democracy & Nature vol.7, no.3, 2001.
[38] Steven Merritt Miner (May 11, 2003).The Other Killing
Machine. The New York Times.
[39] Noam Chomsky (SpringSummer 1986). The Soviet
Union Versus Socialism. Our Generation.

2.13.8

Further reading

Key works by Lenin

Neil Harding. Leninism. Duke University Press.

1996. ISBN 0-8223-1867-9
Joseph Stalin. Foundations of Leninism. University
Press of the Pacic. 2001. ISBN 0-89875-212-4
CLR James. Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx,
Lenin. Pluto Press. 2005. ISBN 0-7453-2491-6
Edmund Wilson. To the Finland Station: A Study in
the Writing and Acting of History. Phoenix Press.
2004. ISBN 0-7538-1800-0
Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers
Councils (texts by Gorter, Pannekoek, Pankhurst
and Rhle), Red and Black Publishers, St Petersburg, Florida, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9791813-6-8

The Development of Capitalism in Russia, 1899

Paul Le Blanc. Lenin and the Revolutionary Party.

Humanities Press International, Inc. 1990. ISBN
0-391-03604-1.

What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our

Movement, 1902

A. James Gregor. The Faces of Janus. Yale University Press. 2000. ISBN 0-300-10602-5.

140

2.13.9

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

External links

Stalinist industrialization was ocially designed to accelerate the development towards communism, stressing
Works by Vladimir Lenin:
that such rapid industrialization was needed because the
country was previously economically backward in comparison with other countries; and that it was needed in
What is to be Done?
order to face the challenges posed by internal and ex Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
ternal enemies of communism.* [4] Rapid industrialization was accompanied with mass collectivization of agri The State and Revolution
culture and rapid urbanization.* [5] Rapid urbanization
converted many small villages into industrial cities.* [5]
The Lenin Archive at Marxists.org
To accelerate the development of industrialization, Stalin
First Conference of the Communist International
pragmatically created joint venture contracts with major
American private enterprises, such as Ford Motor ComOther thematic links:
pany, that under state supervision assisted in developing
the basis of industry of the Soviet economy from the late
1920s to 1930s.* [6] After the American private enter Marcel Liebman on Lenin and democracy
prises completed their tasks, Soviet state enterprises took
An excerpt on Leninism and State Capitalism from over.* [6]
the work of Noam Chomsky
Organizational Questions of the Russian Social
Democracy by Rosa Luxemburg
Lenin's Philosophy by Karl Korsch
Cyber Leninism
Leninist Ebooks
Lenin as a Philosopher by Anton Pannekoek
The Lenin Legend by Paul Mattick
Dead Labor: Marx and Lenin Reconsidered by Paul
Craig Roberts

2.14 Stalinism

The Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action) during May

Day demonstration in Santiago, Chile, carrying a banner with
the portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

For the architecture, see Stalinist architecture. For the 2.14.1 Etymology
album by The Stalin, see Stalinism (album). For the EP
by The Stalin, see Stalinism (EP).
The term came into prominence during the mid-1930s,
when Lazar Kaganovich, a Soviet politician and associate
Stalinism is the means of governing and related policies of Stalin, reportedly declared, Let's replace Long Live
*
implemented by Joseph Stalin. Stalinist policies in the Leninism with Long Live Stalinism!" [7] Stalin initially
Soviet Union included: state terror, rapid industrializa- met this usage with hesitancy, dismissing it as excessively
*
tion, the theory of socialism in one country, a centralized praiseful and contributing to a cult of personality. [7]
state, collectivization of agriculture, cult of personality,
and subordination of interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 2.14.2 History
deemed by Stalinism to be the most forefront vanguard
Stalinism is used to describe period Stalin was acting
party of communist revolution at the time.* [1]
leader of the Soviet Union while serving as General SecStalinism promoted the escalation of class conict, uti- retary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
lizing state violence to forcibly purge society of claimed from 1922 to his death in 1953.
supporters of the bourgeoisie, regarding them as threats
to the pursuit of the communist revolution that resulted in substantial political violence and persecution of 2.14.3 Stalinist policies
such people.* [2] These included not only bourgeois people but also working-class people accused of counter- Stalinism usually denotes a style of a government, and
revolutionary sympathies.* [3]
an ideology. While Stalin claimed to be an adherent to

2.14. STALINISM

141
the ideas of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, and hence
purported that his policies were merely a style of government, critics say that many of his policies and beliefs
were dierent or in direct opposition to those of Lenin
and Marx.* [9] Stalin's idea of Socialism in one country,
and his turn to overt centralization were all in stark contradiction to the theories put forth by Lenin or Marx.* [9]
From 1917 to 1924, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin often appeared united, but had had discernible ideological differences. In his dispute with Leon Trotsky, Stalin deemphasized the role of workers in advanced capitalist
countries (for example, he considered the U.S. working
class asbourgeoisiedlabour aristocracy). Also, Stalin
polemicized against Trotsky on the role of peasants, as in
China, whereas Trotsky's position was in favor of urban
insurrection over peasant-based guerrilla warfare.

Manipulated photo intended to show Vladimir Lenin with Stalin

in the early 1920s.* [8]

While traditional Communist thought holds that the state

will gradually wither awayas the implementation of
socialism reduces class distinction, Stalin argued that the
state must become stronger before it can wither away.
In Stalin's view, counterrevolutionary elements will try
to derail the transition to full Communism, and the state
must be powerful enough to defeat them. For this reason, Communist regimes inuenced by Stalin have been
widely described as totalitarian.
Soviet puppet Sheng Shicai extended Stalinist rule in
Xinjiang province in the 1930s. Stalin opposed the Chinese Communist Party, and Sheng conducted a purge
similar to Stalin's Great Purge in 1937.* [10]

Class-based violence, purges, and deportations

Members of the Communist Party of China celebrating Stalin's

birthday, in 1949.

Class-based violence Stalin blamed the Kulaks as the

inciters of reactionary violence against the people during
the implementation of agricultural collectivisation.* [11]
In response, the state under Stalin's leadership initiated
a violent campaign against the Kulaks, which has been
labeled as "classicide".* [12]

Purges and executions Main article: Great Purge

Communists in a parade in London carrying a poster of Stalin.

142

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

listed prohibited anti-Soviet activities as counterrevolutionary crime, was applied in the broadest manner.* [22]
The imsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "enemy of the people", starting the cycle of public
persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation,
torture and deportation, if not death. The Russian word
troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplied trial
by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD -NKVD
troika- with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.* [21]
Stalin's hand-picked executioner, Vasili Blokhin, was entrusted with carrying out some of the high prole executions in this period.* [23]

Left: Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin asking

permission to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and
of the Soviet authorities" who conducted counterrevolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying
activities
Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "" (support).
Right: The Politburo's decision is signed by Stalin
Stalin, as head of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s with
a Great Purge of the party that claimed to expel
opportunistsand counter-revolutionary inltrators
.* [13]* [14] Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, however more severe measures
ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas.* [13]* [15]* [16]
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of the Leningrad party
boss Sergei Kirov. At the 1934 Party Congress where
the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov
received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received at least over a hundred negative votes.* [17]* [18] After the assassination of Kirov,
which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev.* [19] The investigations and trials expanded.* [20]
Stalin passed a new law on terrorist organizations and
terrorist actsthat were to be investigated for no more
than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or
appeals, followed by a sentence to be executedquickly.
*
[21]

Nikolai Yezhov, walking with Stalin in the top photo

from the 1930s, was killed in 1940. Following his
execution, Yezhov was edited out of the photo by
Soviet censors.* [24] Such retouching was a common
occurrence during Stalin's rule.
Many military leaders were convicted of treason and a
large-scale purge of Red Army ocers followed.* [25]
The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim
that a river of bloodseparated Stalin's regime from
that of Lenin.* [26] In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January
1937; this eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among
the former Party leadership.* [27]
With the exception of Vladimir Milyutin (who died in
prison in 1937) and Joseph Stalin himself, all of the members of Lenin's original cabinet who had not succumbed
to death from natural causes before the purge were executed.

Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted national

contingents(foreign ethnicities) such as Poles, ethnic
Germans,
Koreans, etc. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of
Thereafter, several trials known as the Moscow Trials
them
Poles)
were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles)
were held, but the procedures were replicated through*
[28] Many Americans who had emiwere
executed.
out the country. Article 58 of the legal code, which

2.14. STALINISM

143

grated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great

Depression were executed; others were sent to prison
camps or gulags.* [29]* [30] Concurrent with the purges,
eorts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people
executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and
photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the
history of revolution was transformed to a story about just
two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.
In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians
now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in
1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course
of the terror,* [31] with the great mass of victims merely
ordinarySoviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, beggars.* [32]* [33] Many of the executed
were interred in mass graves, with some of the major
killing and burial sites being Bykivnia, Kurapaty and
Butovo.* [34]

1941 June deportation in Latvia

Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration

with the invading Germans were cited as the ocial reasons for the deportations. Individual circumstances of
those spending time in German-occupied territories were
Some Western experts believe the evidence released from not examined. After the brief Nazi occupation of the
the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreli- Caucasus, the entire population of ve of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars more than a milable.* [35]* [36]* [37]* [38]* [39]
lion people in total were deported without notice or any
Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 opportunity to take their possessions.* [47]
and 1938 that condemned to execution some 40,000
people, and about 90% of these are conrmed to have As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in the loyalty of particubeen shot.* [40] At the time, while reviewing one such lar ethnicities, ethnic groups such as the Soviet Koreans,
list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens,
Who's going to remember all this ri-ra in ten or and many Poles were forcibly moved out of strategic artwenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names eas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union,
now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No especially Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia. By some
one.* [41] In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have
*
of NKVD operatives to Mongolia, established a Mon- died en route. [44]
golian version of the NKVD troika, and unleashed a According to ocial Soviet estimates, more than 14 milbloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as lion people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953,
Japanese Spies.Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibal- with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled
san closely followed Stalin's lead.* [42]
to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including the entire
*
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent nationalities in several cases). [48]
NKVD squads into other countries to murder defectors In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deand other opponents of the Soviet regime. Victims of portations as a violation of Leninism, and reversed most
such plots included Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, of them, although it was not until 1991 that the Tatars,
Rudolf Klement, Alexander Kutepov, Evgeny Miller, Meskhetians and Volga Germans were allowed to return
Leon Trotsky and the Workers' Party of Marxist Uni- en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a procation (POUM) leadership in Catalonia (e.g., Andreu found eect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The
Nin).* [43]
memory of the deportations has played a major part in
the separatist movements in the Baltic States, Tatarstan
and Chechnya, even today.
Deportations Main article: Population transfer in the
Soviet Union
Shortly before, during and immediately after World War
II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge
scale that profoundly aected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949
nearly 3.3 million* [44]* [45] were deported to Siberia
and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up
to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and
malnutrition.* [46]

Economic policy
At the start of the 1930s, Stalin launched a wave of radical economic policies that completely overhauled the industrial and agricultural face of the Soviet Union. This
came to be known as the 'Great Turn' as Russia turned
away from the near-capitalist New Economic Policy. The
NEP had been implemented by Lenin in order to ensure
the survival of the Socialist state following seven years of

144

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, 1933.

war (19141921, World War I from 1914 to 1917, and

the subsequent Civil War) and had rebuilt Soviet production to its 1913 levels. However, Russia still lagged far
behind the West, and the NEP was felt by Stalin and the
majority of the Communist party, not only to be compromising Communist ideals, but also not delivering sufcient economic performance, as well as not creating the
envisaged Socialist society. It was therefore felt necessary to increase the pace of industrialisation in order to
catch up with the West.
Fredric Jameson has said that Stalinism was [...] a
success and fullled its historic mission, socially as well
as economicallygiven that it modernised the Soviet
Union, transforming a peasant society into an industrial
state with a literate population and a remarkable scientic
superstructure.* [49] Robert Conquest disputed such
a conclusion and noted that Russia had already been
fourth to fth among industrial economies before World
War Iand that Russian industrial advances could have
been achieved without collectivisation, famine or terror.
The industrial successes were, according to Conquest, far
less than claimed, and the Soviet-style industrialisation
was an anti-innovative dead-end.* [50]
According to several Western historians, Stalinist agricultural policies were a key factor in causing the Soviet
famine of 19321933, which the Ukrainian government
now calls the Holodomor, recognizing it as an act of
genocide.

2.14.4

Legacy

After Stalin's death in 1953, his successor Nikita

Khrushchev repudiated his policies, condemned Stalin's
cult of personality in his Secret Speech to the Twentieth
Party Congress in 1956, and instituted destalinisation and
relative liberalisation (within the same political framework). Consequently, some of the world's Communist
parties, who previously adhered to Stalinism, abandoned
it and, to a greater or lesser degree, adopted the positions
of Khrushchev.

TheBig ThreeAllied leaders during World War II at the Yalta

Conference, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin, February 1945.

The Socialist People's Republic of Albania took the

Chinese party's side in the Sino-Soviet Split and remained
committed, at least theoretically, to Hoxhaism, its brand
of Stalinism, for decades thereafter, under the leadership
of Enver Hoxha. Despite their initial cooperation against
revisionism,Hoxha denounced Mao as a revisionist,
along with almost every other self-identied Communist
organization in the world. This had the eect of isolating
Albania from the rest of the world, as Hoxha was hostile to both the pro-USA and pro-Soviet spheres of inuence, as well as the Non-Aligned Movement under the
leadership of Josip Broz Tito, whom Hoxha had also denounced.
The ousting of Khrushchev in 1964 by his former partystate allies has been described as a Stalinist restoration
by some, epitomised by the Brezhnev Doctrine and the
apparatchik/nomenklatura stability of cadres,lasting
until the period of glasnost and perestroika in the late
1980s and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Some historians and writers (like German Dietrich
Schwanitz* [51]) draw parallels between Stalinism and
the economic policy of Tsar Peter the Great, although
Schwanitz in particular views Stalin asa monstrous reincarnationof him. Both men wanted Russia to leave the
western European states far behind in terms of development. Both largely succeeded, turning Russia into Europe's leading power. Others compare Stalin with Ivan
the Terrible because of his policies of oprichnina and restriction of the liberties of common people.
Stalinism has been considered by some reviewers as a
"Red fascism".* [52] Though fascist regimes were ideologically opposed to the Soviet Union, some of them positively regarded Stalinism as evolving Bolshevism into a
form of fascism. Benito Mussolini positively reviewed
Stalinism as having transformed Soviet Bolshevism into
a Slavic fascism.* [53]
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in writing The Mortal Danger:

2.14. STALINISM
Misconceptions about Soviet Russia and the Threat to
America, argues that the use of the term Stalinismis
an excuse to hide the inevitable eects of communism as
a whole on human liberties. He writes that the concept of
Stalinism was developed after 1956 by western intellectuals so as to be able to keep alive the communist ideal.
The termStalinismhowever was in use as early as 1937
when Leon Trotsky wrote his pamphlet Stalinism and
Bolshevism.* [54]

Trotskyism
Trotskyists argue that the Stalinist USSRwas not
socialist (and not communist), but a bureaucratised
degenerated workers' statethat is, a non-capitalist state
in which exploitation is controlled by a ruling caste which,
although not owning the means of production and not
constituting a social class in its own right, accrued benets and privileges at the expense of the working class.
Trotsky believed that the Bolshevik revolution needed to
be spread all over the globe's working class, the proletarians for world revolution; but after the failure of the
revolution in Germany Stalin reasoned that industrializing and consolidating Bolshevism in Russia would best
serve the proletariat in the long run. The dispute did not
end until Trotsky's assassination in his Mexican villa by
the Stalinist assassin, Ramon Mercader in 1940.* [55]
In the United States, Max Shachtman, at the time one
of the principal Trotskyist theorists in the United States,
argued that the Soviet Union had evolved from a degenerated worker's state to a new mode of production he called
bureaucratic collectivism": where orthodox Trotskyists
considered the Soviet Union an ally gone astray, Shachtman and his followers argued for the formation of a Third
Camp opposed equally to both the Soviet and capitalist
blocs. By the mid-20th century, Shachtman and many of
his associates identied as social democrats rather than
Trotskyists, and some ultimately abandoned socialism altogether. In the United Kingdom, Tony Cli independently developed a critique of state capitalism that resembled Shachtman's in some respects but retained a commitment to revolutionary communism.

145
Anarchism
Anarchists like Emma Goldman were initially enthusiastic about the Bolsheviks, particularly after dissemination
of Lenin's pamphlet State and Revolution, which painted
Bolshevism in a very libertarian light. However, the relations between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks soured
in Soviet Russia (e.g., in the suppression of the Kronstadt
rebellion and the Makhnovist movement). Anarchists and
Stalinist Communists were also in armed conict during
the Spanish civil war. Anarchists are critical of the statist,
totalitarian nature of Stalinism, as well as its cult of personality around Stalin (and subsequent leaders seen by anarchists as Stalinists, such as Mao).
Social anarchism sees individual freedom as conceptually connected with social equality and emphasize community and mutual aid..* [57] Social anarchists argue
that this goal can be achieved through the decentralization of political and economic power, distributing power
equally among all individuals, and nally abolishing
authoritarian institutions which control certain means of
production.* [58] Social anarchism rejects private property, seeing it as a source of social inequality.* [59]
Social Anarchism political philosophies almost always
share strong characteristics of anti-authoritarianism, anticapitalism and anti-statism. As the Soviet Union under
Stalin manifested itself as a strong centralized authoritarian state, Stalinism and libertarian socialism are almost
directly opposed.

2.14.5 Relationship to Leninism

The historiography of Stalin is diverse, with many dierent aspects of continuity and discontinuity between the
regimes of Stalin and Lenin proposed. Totalitarian historians such as Richard Pipes tend to see Stalinism as the
natural consequence of Leninism, that Stalin faithfully
implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programmes.* [60] More nuanced versions of this general
view are to be found in the works of other Western historians, such as Robert Service, who notes that institutionally and ideologically, Lenin laid the foundations for a
Stalin ... but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable.* [61]
Likewise, historian Edvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin
was a real follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed himself.* [62] Stalin's biographer Stephen Kotkin wrote that
Maoism
his violence was not the product of his subconscious but
engagement with MarxistLeninist ideMao Zedong famously declared Stalin to be 70% good, of the Bolshevik
*
ology.
[63]
30% bad. Maoists criticised Stalin chiey regarding his
views that bourgeois inuence within the Soviet Union Proponents of continuity cite a variety of contributory
was primarily a result of external forces (to the almost factors: it is argued that it was Lenin, rather than Stalin,
complete exclusion of internal forces) and that class con- whose civil war measures introduced the Red Terror with
tradictions ended after the basic construction of social- its hostage taking and internment camps, that it was Lenin
ism. They however praise Stalin for leading the USSR who developed the infamous Article 58, and who esand the international proletariat, defeating fascism in tablished the autocratic system within the Communist
Party.* [64] They also note that Lenin put a ban on facGermany, and his anti-revisionism.* [56]

146

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

tions within the Russian Communist Party and introduced 2.14.7 References
the one-party state in 1921a move that enabled Stalin
to get rid of his rivals easily after Lenin's death, and cite [1] T. B. Bottomore. A Dictionary of Marxist thought.
Malden, Massaschussetts, USA; Oxford, England, UK;
Felix Dzerzhinsky, who, during the Bolshevik struggle
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Berlin, Germany: Wileyagainst opponents in the Russian Civil War, exclaimed
Blackwell, 1991. Pp. 54.
We stand for organised terrorthis should be frankly
*
stated. [65]
[2] Stephen Kotkin. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism As a Civilization. First Paperback Edition. Berkeley and Los AngeOpponents of this view include revisionist historians and
les, California, USA: University of California Press, 1997.
a number of postCold War and otherwise dissident
ISBN 9780520208230. Pp. 71, 307, 81.
Soviet historians including Roy Medvedev, who argues
that although one could list the various measures car- [3] Jerey Rossman. Worker Resistance Under Stalin: Class
ried out by Stalin that were actually a continuation of
and Revolution on the Shop Floor. Harvard University
anti-democratic trends and measures implemented under
Press, 2005 ISBN 0674019261.
Lenin ... in so many ways, Stalin acted, not in line with
Lenin's clear instructions, but in deance of them. In [4] Stephen Kotkin. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism As a Civilization. First Paperback Edition. Berkeley and Los Angedoing so, some historians have tried to distance Stalinles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1997.
ism from Leninism in order to undermine the Totalitarian
ISBN 9780520208230. Pp. 70-71.
view that the negative facets of Stalin (terror, etc.) were
inherent in Communism from the start. Critics of this [5] Stephen Kotkin. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism As a Civikind include anti-Stalinist communists such as Leon Trotlization. First Paperback Edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1997.
sky, who pointed out that Lenin attempted to persuade the
ISBN 9780520208230. Pp. 70-79.
CPSU to remove Stalin from his post as its General Secretary. Lenin's Testament, the document which contained
[6] LTC Roy E Peterson. Russian Romance: Danger and
this order, was suppressed after Lenin's death. British
Daring. AuthorHouse, 2011. Pp. 94.
historian Isaac Deutscher, in his biography of Trotsky,
says that on being faced with the evidence only the [7] Monteore, Simon Sebag (2004). Stalin: The Court of the
Red Tsar. Knopf. p. 164. ISBN 1-4000-4230-5.
blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism.* [66] A similar analysis
is present in more recent works, such as those of Graeme [8] Gilbert, Felix; Large, David Clay (2008). The End of the
European Era: 1890 to the Present (6th ed.). New York
Gill, who argues that "[Stalinism was] not a natural owCity: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 213. ISBN 978on of earlier developments; [it formed a] sharp break re0393930405.
sulting from conscious decisions by leading political actors.* [67]
[9] Amadon, Phil (April 4, 2011). How Stalin Distorted
Marxism.

2.14.6

See also

Anti-revisionism
Anti-Stalinist left
Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism
Cult of personality
Joseph Stalin
Maoism
Mass killings under Communist regimes

[10] Andrew D. W. Forbes (1986). Warlords and Muslims

in Chinese Central Asia: a political history of Republican Sinkiang 1911-1949. Cambridge, England: CUP
Archive. p. 151. ISBN 0-521-25514-7. Retrieved December 31, 2010.
[11] Jerey Zuehlke. Joseph Stalin. Twenty-First Century
Books, 2006. Pp. 63.
[12] Jacques Semelin, Stanley (INT) Homan. Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide. New
York, New York, USA: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Pp. 37.
[13] Figes, Orlando The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's
Russia, 2007, ISBN 0-8050-7461-9

Neo-Stalinism

[14] Gellately 2007.

Soviet Empire

[15] Kershaw, Ian and Lewin, Moshe (1997) Stalinism and

Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-56521-9, p. 300

Stalin Society
Stalinist architecture

[16] Kuper, Leo (1982) Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-03120-3

Totalitarianism

[17] Brackman 2001, p. 204.

2.14. STALINISM

[18] The exact number of negative votes is unknown. In his

memoirs Anastas Mikoian writes that out of 1225 delegates, around 270 voted against Stalin and that the ofcial number of negative votes was given as three, with
the rest of ballots destroyed. Following Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956, a commission of the central committee investigated the votes and found that 267 ballots were
missing.

147

[35] Roseelde, Stephen (1996).

Stalinism in PostCommunist Perspective: New Evidence on Killings,
Forced Labour and Economic Growth in the
1930s" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies 48 (6): 959.
doi:10.1080/09668139608412393.
[36] Comment on Wheatcroft by Robert Conquest, 1999

[19] Brackman 2001, pp. 2056.

[37] Pipes, Richard (2003) Communism: A History (Modern

Library Chronicles), p. 67 ISBN 0-8129-6864-6

[20] Brackman 2001, p. 207.

[38] Applebaum 2003, p. 584.

[21] Overy 2004, p. 182.

[22] Tucker 1992, p. 456.
[23] Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and
Stalin. Basic Books, 2010. ISBN 0-465-00239-0 p. 137
[24] Newseum: The Commissar Vanishes. Retrieved July
19, 2008.
[25] The scale of Stalin's purge of Red Army ocers was exceptional90% of all generals and 80% of all colonels
were killed. This included three out of ve Marshals, 13
out of 15 Army commanders, 57 of 85 Corps commanders, 110 of 195 divisional commanders and 220 of 406
brigade commanders as well as all commanders of military districts: p. 195, Carell, P. (1964) Hitler's War on
Russia: The Story of the German Defeat in the East. translated from German by Ewald Osers, B.I. Publications New
Delhi, 1974 (rst Indian edition)
[26] Tucker, Robert C. (1999) Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, , American Council of Learned Societies Planning Group on Comparative Communist Studies, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0483-2, p. 5

[39] Keep, John (1997). Recent Writing on Stalin's Gulag:

An Overview. Crime, History & Societies 1 (2): 91112.
doi:10.4000/chs.1014.
[40] Ellman, Michael (2007). Stalin and the Soviet Famine
of 193233 Revisited (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies 59
(4): 663693. doi:10.1080/09668130701291899.
[41] Quoted in Volkogonov, Dmitri (1991) Stalin: Triumph
and Tragedy, New York, p. 210 ISBN 0-7615-0718-3
[42] Kuromiya, Hiroaki (2007) The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's
Great Terror in the 1930s. Yale University Press, ISBN 0300-12389-2 p. 2
[43] Ellman, Michael (2005). The Role of Leadership
Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of
19311934 (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies 57 (6): 826.
doi:10.1080/09668130500199392.
[44] Boobbyer 2000, p. 130.
[45] Pohl, Otto, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 19371949,
ISBN 0-313-30921-3
[46] Soviet Transit, Camp, and Deportation Death Rates.
Retrieved June 25, 2010.

[27] Overy 2004, p. 338.

[47] Bullock 1962, pp. 904906.
[28] Monteore 2004
[29] Tzouliadis, Tim (August 2, 2008) Nightmare in the workers paradise, BBC
[30] Tzouliadis, Tim (2008) The Forsaken: An American
Tragedy in Stalin's Russia. The Penguin Press, ISBN 159420-168-4
[31] McLoughlin, Barry and McDermott, Kevin, ed. (2002).
Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the
Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 141. ISBN 1-40390119-8.
[32] Kuromiya, Hiroaki (2007) The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's
Great Terror in the 1930s. Yale University Press, ISBN 0300-12389-2 p. 4

[48] Conquest, Robert (1997). Victims of Stalinism: A

Comment. Europe-Asia Studies 49 (7): 13171319.
doi:10.1080/09668139708412501. We are all inclined to
accept the Zemskov totals (even if not as complete) with
their 14 million intake to Gulag 'camps' alone, to which
must be added 45 million going to Gulag 'colonies', to say
nothing of the 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labour settlements'. However taken, these are surely 'high' gures.
[49] Fredric Jameson, collected in Marxism Beyond Marxism
(1996) ISBN 0-415-91442-6, page 43
[50] Robert Conquest Reections on a Ravaged Century (2000)
ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 101

[33] McLoughlin, Barry and McDermott, Kevin, ed. (2002).

Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the
Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 6. ISBN 1-40390119-8.

[51] Dietrich Schwanitz, Bildung. Alles, was man wissen

muss. At the same time, Stalin was a kind of monstrous reincarnation of Peter the Great. Under his tyranny,
Russia transformed into a country of industrial slaves, and
the gigantic empire was gifted with a network of working
camps, the Gulag Archipelago.

[34] Snyder, Timothy (2010) Bloodlands: Europe Between

Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-00239-0 p.
101

[52] Fried, Richard M. (1991). Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. Oxford University Press. p.
50. ISBN 0-19-504361-8.

148

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

[53] MacGregor Knox. Mussolini Unleashed, 1939-1941:

Politics and Strategy in Italy's Last War. Pp. 63-64.

Philip Ingram, Russia and the USSR 19051991,

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997

[54] Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism (1937). Marxists.org (August 28, 1937). Retrieved on 2013-07-12.

Lankov, Andrei N., Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956. Honolulu: Hawaii
University Press (2004)

[55] Faria, MA (January 8, 2012). Stalin, Communists, and

Fatal Statistics. Retrieved September 5, 2012.
[56] Maos Evaluations of Stalin. MassLine. Retrieved
August 3, 2014.
[57] Suissa, Judith (2001). Anarchism, Utopias and Philosophy of Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education
35 (4): 627646. doi:10.1111/1467-9752.00249.
[58] Mendes, Silva. Socialismo Libertrio ou Anarchismo Vol.
1 (1896): Society should be free through mankind's
spontaneous federative aliation to life, based on the
community of land and tools of the trade; meaning: Anarchy will be equality by abolition of private property and
liberty by abolition of authority

Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, Alliance Book, 1939

Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography, Belknap Press,
2002 ISBN 0-330-49139-3
Robert Service. Stalin: A Biography, Belknap Press,
2005 ISBN 0-674-01697-1
Vladimir Tismneanu (2003). Stalinism for all seasons: a political history of Romanian Communism.
Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520-23747-1.

[59] Ostergaard, Georey. Anarchism. A Dictionary of

Marxist Thought. Blackwell Publishing, 1991. p. 21.

Allan Todd, The European Dictatorships: Hitler,

Stalin, Mussolini, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2003

[60] Pipes, Richard. Three Whys of the Russian Revolution.

pp. 834.

John Traynor, Challenging History: Europe 1890

1990, Nelson Thornes Ltd, Cheltenham, 2002

[61]Lenin: Individual and Politics in the October Revolution

. Modern History Review 2 (1): 1619. 1990.

C.L.R. James. State Capitalism and World Revolution. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co.,
1950.

[62] Edvard Radzinsky Stalin: The First In-depth Biography

Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret
Archives, Anchor, (1997) ISBN 0-385-47954-9
[63] Anne Applebaum (2014-10-14).Understanding Stalin
. The Atlantic. Retrieved 2015-04-04.
[64] Pipes, Richard (2001). Communism: A History. pp. 73
74. ISBN 0-8129-6864-6.

2.14.9 External links

Stalin, Joseph V. Stalin Reference Archive at
Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved May 11, 2005.
Joseph Stalin on Spartacus Schoolnet

[65] George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police

Joseph Stalin by the BBC

[66] Deutscher, Isaac (1959). Trotsky: The Prophet Unarmed.

pp. 4645.

Basic Economic Precepts of Stalinist Socialism by

Pedro Campos, Havana Times, June 21, 2010

[67] Gill, Graeme J. (1998). Stalinism. Palgrave Macmillan.

ISBN 978-0-312-17764-5. Retrieved October 1, 2010.

2.15 Maoism
2.14.8

Further reading

Not to be confused with the political theory based in part

Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, written on Mao Zedong Thought, MarxismLeninismMaoism.
For the ancient Chinese utilitarian philosophy, see
in 1951
Mohism.
Vincent Barnett, Understanding Stalinism: The Maoistredirects here. For the novel by Roopesh, see
'Orwellian Discrepancy' and the 'Rational Choice Maoist (novel).
Dictator',Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 58, no. 3, May
2006 (online abstract).
Mao Zedong Thought (simplied Chinese:
Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin:
Mo Zdng Sxing), or Maoism, is a political theGoldmann
ory derived from the teachings of the Chinese polit Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography, Di- ical leader Mao Zedong (18931976). Its followers,
etz, 1990
known as Maoists, consider it an anti-Revisionist form of

2.15. MAOISM

149

Chinese model.* [6] Vital to understanding Chinese nationalist sentiments of the time is the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in 1919. The Treaty aroused
a wave of bitter nationalist resentment in Chinese intellectuals as lands formerly ceded to Germany in Shandong
were, without consultation with the Chinese, transferred
to Japanese control rather than returned to Chinese
sovereignty.* [7] The negative reaction culminated in the
May 4th Incident which occurred on that day in 1919.
The protest began with 3,000 students in Beijing displaying their anger at the announcement of the Versailles
2.15.1 Origins
Treaty's concessions to Japan yet rapidly took a violent
turn as protesters began attacking the homes and oces
Further information: Ideology of the Communist Party of ministers who were seen as cooperating with, or in the
of China
direct pay of the Japanese.* [7] The May 4th Incident and
Movement which followed,catalyzed the political awakening of a society which had long seemed inert and dormant* [7]
The modern Chinese intellectual tradition
Yet another international event would have a large impact
The modern Chinese intellectual tradition of the turn of on not only Mao but also the Chinese intelligensia was the
the twentieth century is dened by two central concepts, Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Although the revolution
did elicit interest among Chinese intellectuals, socialist
iconoclasm and nationalism.* [1]
revolution in China was not considered a viable option
until after the May 4th Incident.* [8] Afterwards, To
Iconoclastic revolution/anti-Confucianism By the become a Marxist was one way for a Chinese intellectual
turn of the twentieth century, a proportionately small yet to reject both the traditions of the Chinese past and Westsocially signicant cross-section of China's traditional ern domination of the Chinese presentMaurice Meisner,
elite (i.e. landlords and bureaucrats), found themselves Mao's China and After, page 18.
increasingly skeptical of the ecacy and even the moral
validity of Confucianism.* [2] These skeptical iconoclasts
formed a new segment of Chinese society, a modern in- The Yan'an period
telligentsia, whose arrival, or as lauded historian of China
Maurice Meisner would label it, their defection, heralded During the period immediately following the Long
the beginning of the destruction of the gentry as a social March, Mao and the Communist Party of China were
class in China.* [3] The fall of the last Chinese imperial headquartered in Yan'an, which is a prefecture-level city
dynasty in 1911 marked the nal failure of the Confu- in the Shaanxi province. During this period Mao clearly
cian moral order, and did much to make Confucianism established himself as a Marxist theoretician and prosynonymous with political and social conservatism in the duced the bulk of the works which would later be canminds of Chinese intellectuals. It was this association of onized into the thought of Mao Zedong.* [9] The
conservatism and Confucianism which lent to the icono- rudimentary philosophical base of Chinese Communist
clastic nature of Chinese intellectual thought during the ideology is laid down in Mao's numerous dialectical trearst decades of the twentieth century.* [4]
tises and was conveyed to newly recruited party memindepenChinese iconoclasm was expressed most clearly and bers. This period truly established ideological
*
dence
from
Moscow
for
Mao
and
the
CPC.
[9]
Although
vociferously by Chen Duxiu during the New Culture
Movement which occurred between 1915 and 1919.* [5] the Yan'an period did answer some of the questions,
Proposing thetotal destruction of the traditions and val- both ideological and theoretical, which were raised by
ues of the past,the New Culture Movement was spear- the Chinese Communist Revolution, it left many of the
headed by the New Youth, a periodical which was pub- crucial questions unresolved; including how the Comlished by Chen Duxiu and which was profoundly inuen- munist Party of China was supposed to launch a socialwhile completely separated from the urban
tial on a young Mao Zedong whose rst published work ist revolution
*
[9]
sphere.
*
appeared on the magazine's pages. [5]
Marxism-Leninism. Developed during from 1950s until
the Deng Xiaoping reforms in the 1970s, it was widely applied as the guiding political and military ideology of the
Communist Party of China (CPC), and as theory guiding
revolutionary movements around the world. The essential
dierence between Maoism and other forms of Marxism
is that Mao claimed that instead of the peasants being
a revolutionary class, hand in hand with their industrial
workingcomrades, they were the revolutionary class.

Nationalism and the appeal of Marxism Along with

iconoclasm, radical anti-imperialism dominated the Chinese intellectual tradition and slowly evolved into a erce
nationalist fervor which inuenced Mao's philosophy immensely and was crucial in adapting Marxism to the

Mao's intellectual Marxist development

Mao's Intellectual Marxist development can be divided
into ve major periods: (1) The Initial Marxist Period
from 19201926; (2) the formative Maoist period from

150
19271935; (3) the mature Maoism period from 1935
1940; (4) the civil war period from 19401949; and (5)
the post-1949 period, following the revolutionary victory.
1. The Initial Marxist Period from 19201926:
Marxist thinking employs imminent socioeconomic
explanations; Mao's reasons were declarations of his
enthusiasm. Mao did not believe education alone
would bring about the transition from capitalism to
communism because of three main reasons. (1) Psychologically: the capitalists would not repent and
turn towards communist on their own; (2) the rulers
must be overthrown by the people; (3) the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and had already become a fact.
*
[10] These reasons do not provide socioeconomic
explanations, which usually forms the core of Marxist ideology.

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

emphasis was Mao's concern with two types of subjectivist deviation: (1) Dogmatism, the excessive reliance upon abstract theory; (2) Empiricism, excessive dependence on experience.
5. The post-1949 period, following the revolutionary victory: The victory of 1949 was a conformation of theory and practice. Optimism is the
keynote to Mao's intellectual orientation in the post1949 period.* [14] Mao assertively revised theory
to relate it to the new practice of socialist construction. These revisions are apparent in the 1951 version of On Contradiction. In the 1930s, when
Mao talked about contradiction, he meant the contradiction between subjective thought and objective
reality. In Dialectal Materialismof 1940, he
saw idealism and materialism as two possible correlations between subjective thought and objective
reality. In the 1940s he introduced no new elements
into his understanding of the subject-object contradiction. Now, in the 1951 version of On Contradiction, he saw contradiction as a universal principle underlying all processes of development, yet
with each contradiction possessed of its own particularity.* [15]

2. The Formative Maoist Period from 19271935:

In this period, Mao avoided all theoretical implications in his literature and employed a minimum of
Marxist category thought. His writings in this period
failed to elaborate what he meant by the Marxist
method of political and class analysis.* [11] Prior to
this period, Mao was concerned with the dichotomy
between knowledge and action. Now, he was more
concerned with the dichotomy between revolution- 2.15.2 Components
ary ideology and counter-revolutionary objective
conditions. There was more correlation drawn be- New Democracy
tween China and the Soviet model.
The theory of the New Democracy was known to the Chi3. The Mature Maoist Period from 19351940: In- nese revolutionaries from the late 1940s. This thesis held
tellectually, this was Mao's most fruitful time. The that for the majority of the peoples of the planet, the long
shift of orientation was apparent in his pamphlet road to socialism could only be opened by a 'national,
Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War popular, democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist rev(Dec, 1936). This pamphlet tried to provide a olution, run by the communists.'* [16]
theoretical veneer for his concern with revolutionary
And in the context of New Democratic revolution, the rapractice.* [12] Mao started to separate from the Sotionality of such economic policies as to destroy feudalviet model since it was not automatically applicable
ism on the basis of land to the tiller, to conscate all forto China. China's unique set of historical circumeign and domestic economic establishments with a mostances demanded a correspondingly unique applinopolistic character and to limit, control and guide private
cation of Marxist theory, an application that would
capital that do not control public life, have been proved
have to diverge from the Soviet approach.
in practice.* [17]
4. The Civil-War Period from 1940-1949: Unlike
the Mature period, this period was intellectually barren. Mao focused more on revolutionary practice
and paid less attention to Marxist theory. He
continued to emphasize theory as practice-oriented
knowledge.* [13] The biggest topic of theory he
delved into was in connection with the Cheng Feng
movement of 1942. It was here that Mao summarized the correlation between Marxist theory and
Chinese practice; The target is the Chinese revolution, the arrow is Marxism-Leninism. We Chinese communists seek this arrow for no other purpose than to hit the target of the Chinese revolution
and the revolution of the east.* [13] The only new

People's War
Holding that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a
gun",* [18] Mao Zedong Thought emphasizes the revolutionary struggle of the vast majority of people against
the exploiting classes and their state structures, which
Mao termed a "People's War". Mobilizing large parts of
rural populations to revolt against established institutions
by engaging in guerrilla warfare, Mao Zedong Thought
focuses onsurrounding the cities from the countryside
.
Maoism views the industrial-rural divide as a major di-

2.15. MAOISM

151

vision exploited by capitalism, identifying capitalism as

involving industrial urban developed "First World" societies ruling over rural developing "Third World" societies.* [19] Maoism identies peasant insurgencies in particular national contexts were part of a context of world
revolution, in which Maoism views the global countryside would overwhelm the global cities.* [20] Due to this
imperialism by the capitalist urban First World towards
the rural Third World, Maoism has endorsed national liberation movements in the Third World.* [20]

economic production and should not be radically disconnected from the former) and nally, class struggle. These
may be considered the proper objects of economy, scientic knowledge, and politics.* [23]

Mass Line

Knowledge results from hypotheses veried in the contrast with a real object; this real object, despite being mediated by the subject's theoretical frame, retains its materiality and will oer resistance to those ideas that do
not conform to its truth. Thus, in each of these realms
(economic, scientic and political practice), contradictions (principle and secondary) must be identied, explored and put to function to achieve the communist goal.
This involves the need to know,scientically, how the
masses produce (how they live, think, and work), to obtain knowledge of how class struggle (the main contradiction that articulates a mode of production, in its various
realms) expresses itself.

The theory of the Mass Line holds that party must not be
separate from the popular masses, either in policy or in
revolutionary struggle. To conduct a successful revolution
the needs and demands of the masses must be the most
important issues.
Cultural Revolution
The theory of the Cultural revolution states that the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat
does not wipe out bourgeois ideology; the class-struggle
continues, and even intensies, during socialism. Therefore, a constant struggle against these ideologies and their
social roots must be conducted. Cultural Revolution is
directed also against traditionalism.
Contradiction
Mao Zedong drew from the writings of Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin in elaborating his
theory. Philosophically, his most important reections
emerge on the concept ofcontradiction(maodun). In
two major essays, On contradiction and On the correct
handling of contradictions among the people, he adopts
the positivist-empiricist idea (shared by Engels) that contradiction is present in matter itself (and thus, also in the
ideas of the brain). Matter always develops through a dialectical contradiction:
Furthermore, each contradiction (including class struggle, the contradiction holding between relations of production and the concrete development of forces of production) expresses itself in a series of other contradictions, some dominant, others not.
Thus, the principal contradiction should be tackled with
priority when trying to make the basic contradictionsolidify. Mao elaborates further on this theme in the essay On Practice. On the relation between knowledge and
practice, between knowing and doing. Here, Practiceconnectscontradictionwithclass strugglein
the following way: Inside a mode of production, there are
three realms where practice functions: economic production, scientic experimentation (which also takes place in

These three spheres deal with matter in its various forms,

socially mediated. As a result, they are the only realms
where knowledge may arise (since truth and knowledge
only make sense in relation to matter, according to Marxist epistemology). Mao emphasizeslike Marx in trying
to confront thebourgeoisie idealismof his timethat
knowledge must be based on empirical evidence.

Mao held that contradictions were the most important

feature of society, and since society is dominated by a
wide range of contradictions, this calls for a wide range of
varying strategies. Revolution is necessary to fully resolve
antagonistic contradictions such as those between labour
and capital. Contradictions arising within the revolutionary movement call for ideological correction to prevent
them from becoming antagonistic.
Three Worlds Theory
Three Worlds Theory states that, during the Cold War,
two imperialist states formed therst world"; the United
States and the Soviet Union. The second world consisted
of the other imperialist states in their spheres of inuence. The third world consisted of the non-imperialist
countries. Both the rst and the second world exploit the
third world, but the rst world is the most aggressive part.
The workers in the rst and second world arebought up
by imperialism, preventing socialist revolution. The people of the third world, on the other hand, have not even
a short-sighted interest in the prevailing circumstances.
Hence revolution is most likely to appear in third world
countries, which again will weaken imperialism opening
up for revolutions in other countries too.* [24]
Agrarian socialism
Maoism departs from conventional European-inspired
Marxism in that its focus is on the agrarian countryside,
rather than the industrial urban forces. This is known
as Agrarian socialism. Notably, Maoist parties in Peru,

152

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Nepal and Philippines have adopted equal stresses on urban and rural areas, depending on the country's focus of
economic activity. Maoism broke with the state capitalist
framework of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev,
dismissing it as revisionist, a pejorative term among communists referring to those who ght for capitalism in the
name of socialism and who depart from historical and dialectical materialism.
Although Maoism is critical of urban industrial capitalist powers, it views urban industrialization as a prerequisite to expand economic development and socialist reorganization to the countryside, with the goal being the
achievement of rural industrialization that would abolish
the distinction between town and countryside.* [25]

2.15.3

Maoism in China

In its post-revolutionary period, Mao Zedong's thought is

dened in the CPC's Constitution as "Marxism-Leninism
applied in a Chinese context, synthesized by Mao Zedong and China's "rst-generation leaders". It asserts
that class struggle continues even if the proletariat has already overthrown the bourgeoisie, and there are capitalist
restorationist elements within the Communist Party itself.
Maoism provided the CPC's rst comprehensive theoretical guideline with regards to how to continue socialist revolution, the creation of a socialist society, socialist military construction, and highlights various contradictions in
society to be addressed by what is termedsocialist construction. While it continues to be lauded to be the
major force that defeated imperialism and feudalism
and created a New Chinaby the Communist Party of
China, the ideology survives only in name on the Communist Party's Constitution; Deng Xiaoping abolished most
Maoist practices in 1978, advancing a guiding ideology
called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics.* [26]

Some Maoists claim that Deng Xiaoping's Reform and

Opening economic policies that introduced market principles were the end of Maoism in China, although Deng
Xiaoping himself asserted that his reforms were upholding Mao Zedong Thought in accelerating the output of
the country's productive forces.
In addition, the party constitution has been rewritten to
give the socialist ideas of Deng Xiaoping prominence
over those of Mao. One consequence of this is that groups
outside China which describe themselves as Maoist generally regard China as having repudiated Maoism and restored capitalism, and there is a wide perception both
in and out of China that China has abandoned Maoism.
However, while it is now permissible to question particular actions of Mao and to talk about excesses taken in the
name of Maoism, there is a prohibition in China on either
publicly questioning the validity of Maoism or questioning whether the current actions of the CPC areMaoist.
Although Mao Zedong Thought is still listed as one of
the four cardinal principles of the People's Republic of
China, its historical role has been re-assessed. The Communist Party now says that Maoism was necessary to
break China free from its feudal past, but that the actions of Mao are seen to have led to excesses during the
Cultural Revolution.* [28]
The ocial view is that China has now reached an economic and political stage, known as the primary stage of
socialism, in which China faces new and dierent problems completely unforeseen by Mao, and as such the solutions that Mao advocated are no longer relevant to China's
current conditions. The ocial proclamation of the new
CPC stand came in June 1981, when the Sixth Plenum of
the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee took place. The 35,000-wordResolution on Certain
Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding
of the People's Republic of China reads:

Scholars outside China see this re-working of the denition of Maoism as providing an ideological justica2.15.4 Maoism after Mao
tion for what they see as the restoration of the essentials
of capitalism in China by Deng and his successors, who
China
sought toeradicate all ideological and physiological obstacles to economic reform.* [30] In 1978 this led to the
Shortly after Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping iniSino-Albanian Split when Albanian leader Enver Hoxha
tiated socialist market reforms in 1978, thereby begindenounced Deng as a revisionist and formed Hoxhaism
ning the radical change of Mao's ideology in the People's
as an anti-revisionist form of Marxism.
Republic of China (PRC).* [27] Although Mao Zedong
Thought nominally remains the state ideology, Deng's ad- Mao himself is ocially regarded by the CPC as agreat
monition to "seek truth from facts" means that state poli- revolutionary leaderfor his role in ghting the Japanese
cies are judged on their practical consequences; the role and creating the People's Republic of China, but Maoof ideology in determining policy, in many areas, has thus ism as implemented between 1959 and 1976 is regarded
been considerably reduced. Deng also separated Mao by today's CPC as an economic and political disaster.
from Maoism, making it clear that Mao was fallible and In Deng's day, support of radical Maoism was regarded
hence that the truth of Maoism comes from observing so- as a form of left deviationismand being based on a
cial consequences rather than by using Mao's quotations cult of personality, although these 'errors' are ocially
attributed to the Gang of Four rather than to Mao himas holy writ, as was done in Mao's lifetime.* [28]
self.* [31] Thousands of Maoists were arrested in the Hua
Contemporary Maoists in China criticize the social inGuofeng period after 1976. The prominent Maoists,
equalities created by the revisionist Communist Party.

2.15. MAOISM

153
of the second camp the parties that opposed Deng and
claimed to uphold the true legacy of Mao.

2.15.5 Maoism's International Impact

Tiananmen with a portrait of Mao Zedong

Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing were sentenced to death Maoist leader Prachanda speaking at a rally in Pokhara, Nepal
with two-year-reprieve while some others were sentenced
to life imprisonment or imprisonment over 15 years.
From 1962 onwards, the challenge to the Soviet
hegemony in the World Communist Movement made by
the CPC resulted in various divisions in communist parInternationally
ties around the world. At an early stage, the Albanian
After the death of Mao in 1976 and the resulting power- Party of Labour sided with the CPC. So did many of
struggles in China that followed, the international Maoist the mainstream (non-splinter group) communist parties
movement was divided into three camps. One group, in South-East Asia, like the Burmese Communist Party,
composed of various ideologically nonaligned groups, Communist Party of Thailand, and Communist Party of
gave weak support to the new Chinese leadership under Indonesia. Some Asian parties, like the Workers Party
Deng Xiaoping. Another camp denounced the new lead- of Vietnam and the Workers Party of Korea attempted to
ership as traitors to the cause of Marxism-Leninism-Mao take a middle-ground position.
Zedong Thought. The third camp sided with the Albani- The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia is said to have been a
ans in denouncing the Three Worlds Theory of the CPC replica of the Maoist regime. According to the BBC
(see Sino-Albanian Split.)
The Communist Party of Kampuchea (Cambodia), better
Che Guevara, though initially praising the Soviet Union known as the Khmer Rouge, identied strongly with
Maoism, and is generally labeled aMaoistmovement
prior to, during and shortly after the Cuban Revolution,
*
today.
[33]* [34] Maoists (and Marxists generally), conlater came out in support of Maoism, and advocated
tend that the CPK strongly deviated from Marxist docthe adoption of the ideology throughout Latin AmerChina in CPK
ica. The pro-Albanian camp would start to function as trine, and that the few references to Maoist
propaganda were critical of the Chinese.* [35]
*
an international group as well, [32] led by Enver Hoxha
and the APL, and was also able to amalgamate many In the west and south, a plethora of parties and organiof the communist groups in Latin America, including zations were formed that upheld links to the CPC. Ofthe Communist Party of Brazil and the Marxist-Leninist ten they took names such as Communist Party (MarxistCommunist Party in Ecuador. Later Latin American Leninist) or Revolutionary Communist Party to distinguish
Communists such as Peru's Shining Path also embraced themselves from the traditional pro-Soviet communist
the tenets of Maoism.
parties. The pro-CPC movements were, in many cases,
The new Chinese leadership showed little interest in the based among the wave of student radicalism that engulfed
various foreign groups supporting Mao's China. Many of the world in the 1960s and 1970s.
the foreign parties that were fraternal parties aligned with
the Chinese government before 1975 either disbanded,
abandoned the new Chinese government entirely, or even
renounced Marxism-Leninism and developed into noncommunist, social democratic parties. What is today
called theinternational Maoist movementevolved out

Only one Western classic communist party sided with the

CPC, the Communist Party of New Zealand. Under the
leadership of the CPC and Mao Zedong, a parallel international communist movement emerged to rival that of
the Soviets, although it was never as formalized and homogeneous as the pro-Soviet tendency.

154

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Afghanistan

Turkey

The Progressive Youth Organization was a maoist organization in Afghanistan. It was founded in 1965 with
Akram Yari as its rst leader. the overthrow of the thencurrent order by means of people's war.

Communist
Party
of
Turkey/MarxistLeninist
(TKP/ML) is a maoist organization in Turkey currently waging a people's war against the Turkish
Government. It was founded in 1972 with brahim
Kaypakkaya as its rst leader. The armed wing of the
party is named Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army
in Turkey (TIKKO).

Bangladesh

Purba Banglar Sarbahara Party is a maoist party in

Bangladesh. It was founded in 1968 with Siraj Sikder as Maoist organizations
its rst leader. The party played a role in the Bangladesh
Various eorts have sought to regroup the international
Liberation War.
communist movement under Maoism since the time of
Mao's death in 1976.
Ecuador
Another eort at regrouping the international communist
The Communist Party of Ecuador Red Sun also known movement is the International Conference of Marxistas Puka Inti is a small maoist guerrilla organization in Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO). Three
notable parties that participate in the ICMLPO are
Ecuador.
the Marxist Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), the
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and Marxist
Iran
Leninist Communist Organization Proletarian Way.
The ICMLPO seeks to unity around Marxism-Leninism,
Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran) was an Iran not Maoism. However, some of the parties and orgamaoist organization. UIC (S) was formed in 1976 after nizations within the ICMLPO identify as Mao Zedong
the alliance of a number of Maoist groups carrying out Thought or Maoist.
military actions within Iran. In 1982 the UIC (S) mobilized forces in forests around Amol and launched an insurgency against the Islamist Government. The uprising 2.15.6 Criticisms and interpretations
was eventually a failure and many UIC (S) leaders were
Maoism has fallen out of favour within the Communist
shot.
Party of China, beginning with Deng Xiaoping's reforms
in 1978. Deng believed that Maoism showed the danPalestine
gers of ultra-leftism, manifested in the harm perpetrated by the various mass movements that characterized
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a the Maoist era. In Chinese Communism, the termleft
maoist political and military organization. The PDFLP's can be taken as a euphemism for Maoist policies. Howoriginal political orientation was based on the view that ever, Deng stated that the revolutionary side of Maoism
Palestinian national goals could be achieved only through should be considered separate from the governance side,
revolution of the masses and people's war.
leading to his famous epithet that Mao was 70% good,
30% bad. China scholars generally agree that Deng's interpretation of Maoism preserves the legitimacy of ComUnited States
munist rule in China but at the same time criticizes Mao's
In the United States during the late 1960s, parts of the brand of economic and political governance.
emerging New Left rejected the Marxism espoused by Critic Graham Young claims that Maoists see Joseph
the Soviet Union and instead adopted pro-Chinese Com- Stalin as the last true socialist leader of the Soviet Union,
munism. The Black Panther Party, especially under the but allows that the Maoist assessments of Stalin vary
leadership of Huey Newton, was inuenced by Mao Ze- between the extremely positive and the more ambivadong Thought. Into the 1970s, Maoists in the US formed lent.* [36] Some political philosophers, such as Martin
a large part of the New Communist Movement.
Cohen, have seen in Maoism an attempt to combine
Confucianism and Socialism - what one such called 'a
third way between communism and capitalism'.* [37]
Spain
Enver Hoxha critiqued Maoism from a Marxist-Leninist
The Communist Party of Spain (Reconstituted) was a perspective, arguing that New Democracy halts class
Spanish clandestine maoist party. The armed wing of struggle, the theory of the three worlds is counterthe party was First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance revolutionaryand questioned Mao's guerilla warfare
Groups.
methods.

2.15. MAOISM

155

Some say Mao departed from Leninism not only in his

History of the People's Republic of China
near-total lack of interest in the urban working class but
Three Represents
also in his concept of the nature and role of the Party.
For Lenin, the Party was sacrosanct because it was the
incarnation of theproletarian consciousness,and there
2.15.8 References
was no question about who were the teachers and who
were the pupils. For Mao, on the other hand, this question [1] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
would always be virtually impossible to answer.* [38]
Free Press, 1999. Pages 12-16.
Some say the implementation of Maoist thought in China
was responsible for as many as 70 million deaths during peacetime,* [39]* [40] with the Cultural Revolution,
Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957-58,* [41] and the Great
Leap Forward. Because of Mao's land reforms during
the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in famines, thirty
million perished between 1958 and 1961. By the end of
1961 the birth rate was nearly cut in half because of malnutrition.* [42] Active campaigns, including party purges
and reeducationresulted in imprisonment and/or the
execution of those deemed contrary to the implementation of Maoist ideals.* [43] The incidents of destruction of
cultural heritage, religion, and art remain controversial.
Populism

[2] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:

Free Press, 1999. Page 10.
[3] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Page 11.
[4] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Page 14.
[5] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Pages 14.
[6] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Page 44.
[7] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Page 17.
[8] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Pages 18.

Mao also believed strongly in the concept of a unied

people. These notions were what prompted him to in- [9] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Page 45.
vestigate the peasant uprisings in Hunan while the rest of
the China's communists were in the cities and focused on
[10] Lowe, Donald M. The Function of Chinain Marx,
the orthodox Marxist proletariat.* [44] Many of the pilLenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press,
lars of Maoism such as the distrust of intellectuals and
1966. Page 109
the abhorrence of occupational specialty are typical populist ideas.* [6] The concept of People's Warwhich is [11] Lowe, Donald M. The Function of Chinain Marx,
Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press,
so central to Maoist thought is directly populist in its ori1966. Page 111
gins. Mao believed that intellectuals and party cadres had
to become rst students of the masses to become teachers [12] Lowe, Donald M. The Function of Chinain Marx,
of the masses later. This concept was vital to the strategy
Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press,
of the People's War.* [6]
1966. Page 113
Nationalism

[13] Lowe, Donald M. The Function of Chinain Marx,

Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1966. Page 117

Mao's nationalist impulses also played a crucially impor[14] Lowe, Donald M. The Function of Chinain Marx,
tant role in the adaption of Marxism to the Chinese model
Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press,
*
and in the formation of Maoism. [45] Mao truly believed
1966. Page 118
that China was to play a crucial preliminary role in the socialist revolution internationally. This belief, or the fer- [15] Lowe, Donald M. The Function of Chinain Marx,
Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press,
vor with which Mao held it, separated Mao from the other
1966. Page 119
Chinese Communists and led Mao onto the path of what
Leon Trotsky called, Messianic Revolutionary Nation- [16] Amin, Samir (October 2009). The Countries of the
alismwhich was central to his personal philosophy.
South Must Take Their Own Independent Initiatives.
The Third World Forum. Retrieved 2011-02-22.

2.15.7

See also

Chinese New Left

Cult of Personality
Deng Xiaoping Theory

[17] Dahal, Pushpa Kamal(Prachanda). On Maoism.

PROBLEMS & PROSPECTS OF REVOLUTION IN NEPAL
(Published by (Printed Version): Janadisha Publications,
Nepal, 2004). Retrieved 2011-02-22.
[18] Quotations From Chairman Mao. Peking Foreign Languages Press.

156

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

[19] Alexander C. Cook, Third World Maoismin A Critical Introduction to Mao. Cambridge, England, UK; New
York, New York, USA: Cambridge University, 2011. P.
290.

[33] Khmer Rouge Duch trial nears end. BBC News. 200911-23. Retrieved 2010-05-12.

[20] Alexander C. Cook, Third World Maoismin A Critical Introduction to Mao. Cambridge, England, UK;
New York, New York, USA: Cambridge University Press,
2011. P. 289-290.

[35] What Went Wrong with the Pol Pot Regime. Aworldtowin.org. Archived from the original on August 10,
2011. Retrieved 2011-11-10.

[21] Mao Tse Tung, On contradiction, Selected

Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1967, p.
75, or
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/
selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm.
[22] Mao Tse-Tung, On contradiction, Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, op. cit., p.
89, or http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/
selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm.
[23] Cfr. Mao Tse-Tung, On practice. On the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and doing, Selected Readings from the Works of
Mao Tse-Tung, op.cit., p. 55: Man's social practice is not conned to activity in production, but takes
many formsclass struggle, political life, scientic and
artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society.
Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through
his material life but also though his political and cultural
life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life)", or http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/
mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm.
[24] Maoism Glossary of Terms, Encyclopedia of Marxism
[25] John H. Badgley, John Wilson Lewis. Peasant Rebellion
and Communist Revolution in Asia. Stanford, California,
USA: Stanford University Press, 1974. P. 249.

[34] Archived November 29, 2009 at the Wayback Machine

[36] Graham Young, On Socialist Development and the Two

Roads, The Australian Journal of Chinese Aairs, No. 8
(Jul., 1982), pp. 75-84, doi:10.2307/2158927
[37] Political Philosophy from Plato to Mao, by Martin Cohen, page 206, published 2001 by Pluto Press, London
and Sterling VA ISBN 0-7453-1603-4
[38]Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Page 44.
[39] Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Untold Story
(Jonathan Cape, 2005) Page 3.
[40] policy autumn 06_Edit5.indd
[41] Teiwes, Frederick C., and Warren Sun. 1999. 'China's
road to disaster: Mao, central politicians, and provincial
leaders in the unfolding of the great leap forward, 19551959. Contemporary China papers. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E.
Sharpe. pp 52-55.
[42] MacFarquhar, Roderick. 1974. The origins of the Cultural Revolution. London: Published for Royal Institute
of International Aairs, East Asian Institute of Columbia
University and Research Institute on Communist Aairs
of Columbia by Oxford University Press. p 4.
[43] Link, Perry (2007-07-18). Legacy Of a Maoist Injustice. The Washington Post.
[44] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
Free Press, 1999. Page 43.

[26] Xinhua: Constitution of the Communist Party of China [45] Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After. New York:
. News.xinhuanet.com. Retrieved 2011-11-10.
Free Press, 1999. Page 42.
[27] UC Berkeley Journalism -Faculty - Deng's Revolution at
the Wayback Machine (archived January 4, 2009)
[28] Maoism. Citizendia. Retrieved 2011-11-10.
[29] China the Four Modernizations, 1979-82. Countrystudies.com. Retrieved 2011-11-10.
[30] S. Zhao, A State-Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in Post-Tiananmen China, Communist
and Post-Communist Studies, 1998, 31(3): pp. 288
[31] For a newest expression of the ocial judgment, see

" "
(History of China Communist Party, Vol.
2, Party History Research Centre (Nov. 2010), Chap 28
Analysis on Cultural Revolution)
[32] ROMA OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA Author: Judith
Latham doi:10.1080/009059999109037. Published in:
journal Nationalities Papers, Volume 27, Issue 2 June
1999 , pages 205 - 226

2.15.9 Further reading

Marxism in the Chinese Revolution by Arif Dirlik
Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's
Thought by Nick Knight
The Function ofChinain Marx, Lenin, and Mao
by Donald Lowe
Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism by
Maurice Meisner
Mao's China and After by Maurice Mesiner
The Political Thought of Mao Tse-Tung by Stuart
Schram
Mao Tse-Tung, The Marxist Lord of Misrule. On
Practice and Contradiction by Slavoj Zizek

2.16. ANTI-REVISIONISM
Gregor, A. James and Maria Hsia Chang. Maoism and Marxism in Comparative Perspective.The
Review of Politics. Cambridge University Press for
the University of Notre Dame du Lac on behalf of
Review of Politics. Vol. 40, No. 3, July 1978. 307327. Available at Jstor.
Meisner, Maurice.
Leninism and Maoism:
Some Populist Perspectives on Marxism-Leninism
in China.The China Quarterly. Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and
African Studies. No. 45, January - March 1971. p.
2-36. Available at Jstor.
Steiner, H. Arthur.Maoism or Stalinism for Asia?"
Far Eastern Survey. Institute of Pacic Relations.
Vol. 22, No. 1, January 14, 1953. P. 1-5. Available
at Jstor.
Lee Feigon,Mao, A ReinterpretationIvan R. Dee,
Publisher
Mao Tse-Tung Unrehearsed by Stuart Schram (Pelican)

2.15.10

External links

Guiding thought of revolution: the heart of Maoism

international project
Marx2Mao.org Mao Internet Library
The Encyclopedia of Marxism Mao Zedong
Thought.
The Encyclopedia of Marxism Mao's life.
Monthly Review January 2005 Text of the leaets
distributed by the Zhengzhou Four.
World Revolution Media Maoist revolutionary lm,
music, and art archive
Batchelor, J. Maoism and Classical Marxism, Clio
History Journal, 2009.

157
and de-Stalinization; however, some uphold the works
of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao (Maoism or
MarxismLeninismMaoism), and some the works of
Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin while rejecting Mao
(MarxismLeninism). In addition, other groups uphold
various less well-known historical leaders, such as Enver
Hoxha (Hoxhaism).
Historically, anti-revisionists presented a critique of the
ocial Communist Parties from the leftfor having
abandoned orthodox MarxismLeninism (becomingrevisionistand insuciently revolutionary). The terminological disagreement can be confusing because dierent
versions of a left-right political spectrum are used. Antirevisionists consider themselves the ultimate leftists on a
spectrum from communism on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right. But Stalinism is often labeled rightist within the communist spectrum and left communism
leftist. In the 1935 to 1960's period, the defense of Stalin
and his legacy became a hallmark of anti-revisionism. In
the 1970s the anti-revisionist movement expanded and diversied to encompass those communists who rejected
a pro-Soviet orientation for one aligned either with Chinese or Albanian positions, or who returned to Marxism
Leninism .
Anti-revisionism enjoyed its moment of greatest size and
inuence with numerous MarxistLeninist and Maoist
parties, groups and publications springing up around the
world in the period which began with the Sino-Soviet split
of the early 1960s. Its growth was greatly accelerated by
international enthusiasm for the Cultural Revolution in
China, but it began to decline in response to controversial Chinese foreign policy decisions in the last years of
Mao Zedong's life, his death and the subsequent defeat
of the Gang of Four. Some anti-revisionists responded
to these events with little change to their theoretical orientation, others adjusted their orientation based on world
events, while still remaining in the greater anti-revisionist
milieu, while yet others took up a non-Trotskyist leftwingcommunism, independent of allegiance to foreign
authorities or models, usually abandoning their claim to
anti-revisionism in the process.

2.16.1 Background

2.16 Anti-revisionism
In the communist lexicon, anti-revisionism is opposition
to attempts to revise, modify or abandon the fundamentals of revolutionary theory and practice. In this view,
reformism within communism is rejected as representing
dangerous concessions to communism's adversaries.
Because dierent political trends trace the historical
roots of revisionism to dierent eras and leaders, there
is signicant disagreement today as to what constitutes
anti-revisionism. Therefore modern groups which describe themselves as anti-revisionist fall into several categories. They universally tend to oppose Trotskyism

Self-proclaimed anti-revisionists rmly oppose the reforms initiated in Communist countries by leaders like
Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and Deng Xiaoping in China. They generally refer to such reforms
and states as state capitalist and social-imperialist. They
also reject Trotskyism and its "Permanent Revolution" as
"hypocritical" by arguing that Leon Trotsky had at one
time thought it acceptable that socialism could work in a
single country as long as that country was industrialized,
but that Trotsky had considered Russia too backward to
achieve such industrialization what it later in fact did
achieve, mostly through his archenemy Joseph Stalin's
Five Year Plans.

158

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

tended to take a careful, selective approach to the Cuban
Revolution and the way it soon aligned itself with Soviet
ideas and practice, criticizing the latter action, while simultaneously acknowledging some aspects of Cuban selfdescribed socialism as genuinely revolutionaryin particular the writing and thinking of Che Guevara. Antirevisionists also took a hopeful approach towards the
Vietnamese communists, expressing condence that they
too were genuinely revolutionary-communist in their aspirations, and supported their struggle against the United
States in the Vietnam Wara side which, ironically, got
a lot of support from the Soviet Union, anti-revisionists'
"state capitalist" enemy.
Several present-day communist parties worldwide still
see themselves as explicitly anti-revisionist, but not every such party adhering to elements of anti-revisionism
necessarily adopts the label anti-revisionist. Many
such organizations may call themselves Maoist, Marxist
Leninist or even just simply revolutionary communist
.

nti-revisionist caricature of 1976 by Albanian cartoonist Zef

Bumi depicting Nikita Khrushchev as a servant of the bourgeoisie

In their own right, anti-revisionists also acknowledge that

the Soviet Union contained a "new class" or "'red' bourgeoisie,but they generally place the blame for the formation of that class on Khrushchev and his successors,
and not on Stalin. Therefore, in anti-revisionist circles,
there is very little talk of class conict in the Soviet Union
before 1956, except when talking about specic contexts
such as the Russian Civil War (when some agents of the
former feudal ruling class tried to retake state power from
the Bolsheviks) and World War II (fought principally between communists and fascists, representing the interests
of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie respectively).
During the Sino-Soviet split, the governments of the
People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong and
the People's Republic of Albania under Enver Hoxha
proclaimed themselves to be taking an anti-revisionist
line and denounced Khrushchev's policies in the Soviet
Union. In the United States, those who supported China
or Albania at the time were expelled from the United
States Communist Party under orders from Moscow, and
in 1961 they formed the Progressive Labor Movement
and other "new communist movement" communist parties. A short time later, anti-revisionist groups were further divided by the Sino-Albanian split, with those following Albania being loosely described as Hoxhaist.
On the whole, the original 1960s-era anti-revisionists

The Workers Party of Korea still claims an antirevisionist political line, but the communist movement as
a whole and anti-revisionists from the Maoist and Hoxhaist camps in particular tend to insist North Korea is
a revisionist state, however many if not most Hoxhaists
and Maoists are critically supportive of North Korea on
grounds of Anti-imperialism.
Anti-revisionists aligned with Enver Hoxha and the line
of the Albanian party of labor argue that Mao Zedong
thought is itself a form of revisionism. Hoxhaists insist
that Mao's Three Worlds Theory contradicted Marxism
Leninism and existed only to justify Mao's alliance with
the United States that began in the early 1970s and his
meeting with Nixon during the Sino-Soviet split that Enver Hoxha and the Hoxhaists opposed. Hoxhaists also argue that the theory of New Democracy and People's War
were revisionist and anti-scientic. The Hoxhaist camp
came into existence during the Sino-Albanian split.

Supporters of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action),

an anti-revisionist party, march during the May Day 2007 manifestations in Santiago, Chile, carrying a banner with the portraits
of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

2.16. ANTI-REVISIONISM

2.16.2

Anti-revisionist groups

Main article: List of anti-Revisionist groups

Afghanistan
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan
Albania
Communist Party of Albania
Argentina
Revolutionary Communist Party of Argentina
Benin
Communist Party of Benin
Bhutan
Bhutan Communist Party (MarxistLeninist
Maoist)
Brazil
Revolutionary Communist Party
Burkina Faso
Voltaic Revolutionary Communist Party
Burma
Communist Party of Burma
Canada
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist
Leninist)
Parti marxistelniniste du Qubec
Chile
Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)
Colombia
Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist
Leninist)
Cte d'Ivoire
Revolutionary Communist Party of Cte
d'Ivoire
Denmark
Workers' Communist Party
Dominican Republic
Communist Party of Labour
Ecuador

159
MarxistLeninist
Ecuador

Communist

Party

of

France
Workers' Communist Party of France
Georgia
New Communist Party of Georgia
Germany
MarxistLeninist Party of Germany
Greece
Movement for the Reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece 19181955
India
Communist Party of India (MarxistLeninist)
Communist Party of India (Maoist)
Iran
Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas
Labour Party of Iran
Italy
Communist Platform
Mexico
Communist Party of Mexico (Marxist
Leninist)
Nepal
Unied Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
Norway
MarxistLeninist Group Revolution
Pakistan
Communist Party of Pakistan
Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party
Philippines
Communist Party of the Philippines
Russia
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Russian Maoist Party
Spain
Communist Party of Spain (MarxistLeninist)
Sweden
Communist Party

160

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Tunisia
Tunisian Workers' Communist Party
Turkey
MarxistLeninist Communist Party
United Kingdom
Communist Party of Britain (Marxist
Leninist)
Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist
Leninist)
Stalin Society
Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain
(MarxistLeninist)
New Communist Party of Britain

2.17 MarxismLeninismMaoism
MarxismLeninismMaoism (MLM or MLM) is
a theoretical tendency which builds upon MarxismLeninism and some aspects of Mao Zedong Thought.

2.17.1 Origin

Maoism was considered synonymous with Mao Zedong

Thought (also known as Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought) from the 1960s onwards when many
anti-revisionist Marxist organisations sided with China
following the Sino-Soviet split until 1993, when
the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) formalised Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a new and higher
stage of Marxism-Leninism.* [1] This caused a split in the
United States
Maoist movement, with the adherents of Mao Zedong
Thought leaving the RIM and congregating around the
American Party of Labor
International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and
Communist Voice Organization (commuOrganizations.* [2]
nistvoice.org)
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
(frso.org)
2.17.2 Components
Progressive Labor Party
Mass Line
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Revolutionary Organization of Labor (Ray O.
Building on the theory of the vanguard party by Vladimir
Light)
Lenin, the theory of the Mass Line outlines a strategy
U.S. MarxistLeninist Organization
for the mass popularisation of revolutionary ideology,
Workers Party, USA
consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and
strengthening of the party, and for the building of social Venezuela
ism.
Communist Party of Venezuela
The Mass Line can be summarised by the phrase from
MarxistLeninist Communist Party of the masses, to the masses. It has three components (or
Venezuela
stages), as follows:* [3]
Historical anti-revisionist groups
Party of Labour of Albania
Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands
Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Stalin's
leadership. (See also, Soviet Revolutionary Communists (Bolsheviks))
Communist Party of China under Mao's leadership
Communist Party of Indonesia

2.16.3

External links

Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

1. gathering the diverse ideas of the masses

2. processing or concentrating these ideas from the
perspective of revolutionary Marxism, in light of the
long-term, ultimate interests of the masses (which
the masses themselves may sometimes only dimly
perceive), and in light of a scientic analysis of the
objective situation
3. returning these concentrated ideas to the masses in
the form of a political line which will actually advance the mass struggle toward revolution
These three steps should be applied over and over again,
reiteratively uplifting practice and knowledge to higher
and higher stages.

Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union by

the Stalin Society
Protracted People's War
Stand for Socialism Against Modern Revisionism
List of Anti-Revisionist Parties/Groups

Protracted People's War, a strategy for guerilla warfare,

holds that:

2.17. MARXISMLENINISMMAOISM
Any attempt to ght with the bourgeoisie on its own
terms, using the same tactics and strategies as they
do, will be crushed (Maoists cite that, apart from
the October Revolution, every single revolutionary
attempt that used conventional warfare was crushed
by the bourgeoisie).
It cannot be predicted when the objective conditions
for revolution will exist. Thus the subjective conditions i.e. class consciousness must be built long
in advance.
Seizure of state power generally does not happen in
one fell swoop. A situation of dual power through
the course of protracted people's war arises when the
proletarian vanguard controls sections of the country
at the same time as the bourgeoisie.
The party cannot possibly hope to lead the proletariat in a seizure of power if it itself has no military
experience. Thus, military experience i.e. experienced gained through actually ghting, even if on
a limited scale must be gained long in advance of
a seizure of power. Dual power, in addition to being
a necessary development towards the dictatorship of
the proletariat, is invaluable in providing this military experience (along with civil knowledge, fuel for
propaganda eorts, material aid for the party, and
the expansion and improvement of the mass line).

161
for the overthrow of imperialism but eventually turned
on the proletariat once they felt their long-term existence
in the new society would be threatened.
Much like the New Economic Policy in Russia, New
Democracy is conceived of as a necessary (but temporary) evil for the long-term development of socialism,
or in this case, for the construction and consolidation
of socialism in the rst place. Maoism holds that the
national-bourgeois in the New-Democratic stage must always be rmly under the command of the proletariat,
and they must be rmly dispensed with as soon as the
national situation allows (in other words, when the contradiction between the comprador class and the people
is no longer the primary contradiction of the nation, or
when the bourgeois-democratic revolution is at a suciently advanced stage) for an outright dictatorship of the
proletariat.

Cultural Revolution
Maoists draw heavily from the experiences and lessons of
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which sought
to eradicate the bourgeois that arose within the vanguard
party itself and to transform all aspects of the social superstructure. The catchphraseclass struggle continues,
and is intensied, under socialismis frequently used.
Maoists hold the primacy of the relations of production
over the productive forces, criticise Stalin's line that bourgeois inuence under an advanced stage of socialism is
primarily due to external forces (to the almost complete
exclusion of internal forces), and strongly rearm the
base-superstructure dialectic (that the conscious transformation of the base on its own is not enough, but the superstructure must also be consciously transformed).

On a national scale, protracted people's war envisions a

surrounding of the cities from the countryside, as history
has shown that pockets of proletarian control generally
develop in the countryside rst. The phrase the surrounding of the cities from the countrysideis sometimes
applied on a global scale, with the cities as a metaphor for
the rst world (both generally the bourgeois hold-outs),
and the countryside for the third world (both commonly
the rst stages of proletarian control).
Philosophy

Maoists uphold Mao's philosophical works, particularly his work on dialectics in On Contradiction and on
The theory of New Democracy holds that the national- epistemology in On Practice.
bourgeois in semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries has
a dual character in that although it is an exploitative capitalist force, it can also (though not always) side with 2.17.3 Dierences from Mao Zedong
Thought
the proletariat against colonialism, imperialism, and the
comprador-bourgeoisie (whose existence is due to impeThe three most notable dierences between Marxism
rialism).
LeninismMaoism and Mao Zedong Thought are
The role of the national-bourgeoisie as a progressive asthat:* [4]* [5]* [6]
set in the proletarian struggle to overthrow imperialism
is of course never guaranteed, and will eventually, when
1. MarxismLeninismMaoism is considered to be
the anti-imperialist situation progresses, turn on the proa higher stage of Marxism-Leninism, much like
letariat. The Balli Kombtar in Albania in 1943 and the
Kuomintang in China in the 1920s are examples of this.
Marxism-Leninism is considered a higher stage of
These national bourgeois forces temporarily allied with
Marxism. Mao Zedong Thought is however conthe proletariat of their countries (the Albanian Party of
sidered to just be Marxism-Leninism applied to the
Labor and the Chinese Communist Party, respectively)
particularities of the Chinese revolution.
New Democracy

162

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

2. MarxismLeninismMaoism is considered to be
universally applicable (particularly the theory of
Protracted People's war) whilst the aspects of Mao
Zedong Thought are generally not.
3. MarxismLeninismMaoism completely rejects the
Three Worlds Theory of Mao Zedong Thought, considering it part of the right-wards turn Mao took near
the end of his life and a deviation from MarxistLeninist theories of imperialism.

2.17.4

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Internationally

a fusion of Marxism and Maoism as its main ideological line, the merger of Manipur with the Union of India
was in blatant contradiction of relevant international law
as the then king of Manipur no longer had the authority to sign the agreement following the establishment of a
democratically elected government.Moreover, the then
king signed the merger instrument only under duress, or
more precisely, at gunpoint and so the so-called Manipur
merger agreement was null and void from the very beginning, claims Ibungo Ngangom, the group's chairman.
The group is currently at war with the Union of India and
its express primary goal is not only to liberate Kangleipak
(Manipur) from the semi-colonial yoke of India but also
to bring about a communist state in Kangleipak through
the scientic socialism of Karl Marx.

Internationals
Perhaps the most notable Marxist-Leninist-Maoist international was the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). RIM was founded in 1984 and included such
organizations as the Communist Party of Peru (PCP),
also known asSendero LuminosoorShining Path,
and the then Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), now
known as the Unied Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
UCPN(M). Today, the RIM appears to be defunct or
near defunct. The magazine associated with the RIM,
A World To Win, has not published an issue since 2006,
though A World To Win News Service still publishes regularly on the internet.* [7]

Peru
The Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path is a guerrilla
insurgent organization in Peru. It was founded in 1980
with Abimael Guzmn as its leader. The Shining Path is
currently waging a war against the Peruvian Government.
Nepal

The Unied Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), a national communist party with a revolutionary background,
is a follower of MarxismLeninismMaoism, although it
In addition, many of the one-time RIM organizations is believed that the party has developed its own ideology,
have become increasingly critical of each other. This has Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Prachanda Path, which was
developed taking Nepal's political, sociological and georesulted in many public splits.
graphical constraints into consideration.
India
Philippines
See also: Maoism in India
The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is a political
party which aims to overthrow the government of
India.* [8] It was founded on September 21, 2004,
through the merger of the Communist Party of India
(MarxistLeninist) People's War and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCC). The merger was announced to the public on October 14 the same year. In the
merger a provisional central committee was constituted,
with the erstwhile People's War leader Muppala Lakshmana Rao (alias Ganapathi) as General Secretary. It is
currently proscribed as a terrorist organization by the Indian government.
Kangleipak (Manipur)
It is claimed by the Kangleipak Communist Party (Ibungo
Ngangom) that Kangleipak (Manipur) was annexed by
the Union of India under the guise of Manipur Merger
Agreement 1949. According to this group, which follows

In the Philippines, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its New People's Army (NPA) has been
waging a revolutionary war since 1968. Its strength
peaked during the dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos
and was the main bulk of the opposition against the dictatorship. However due to controversies regarding massive purges of its members in the mid-1980s and political
miscalculations, it suered several splits within its ranks
in 1992 and 1997 forming several separate communist
parties. It maintains active guerrilla fronts throughout the
Philippines until today and is still considered by the military as the main threat to national security. The CPP,
according to the military also allegedly has been leading
and inuencing legal left-wing political organizations and
engages in elections.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of the Philippines (MLPP),
formed by former Central Luzon Regional Committee
members of the CPP after the split in 1997 maintained
much of the Maoist orientation from the CPP most especially on the concept of People's War. However it has
put equal emphasis on legal political struggles along with

2.18. HOXHAISM

163

armed revolution and it sees the proletariat as the leader [9] What breakthroughs are at the core of Maoism-Third
Worldism?". anti-imperialism.com. RAIM. Retrieved 18
of the Philippine revolution in union with the peasantry.
June 2014.
The Rebolusyonaryong Hukbo ng Bayan (People's Revolutionary Army, RHB) is the armed wing of the MLPP [10] The Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons
and according to military intelligence sources, the most
active and fastest growing insurgent force in the Philip- [11] Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement
pines recently next to the CPP. Like its estranged political
sibling the MLPP is said to be organizing legal organiza2.17.6 External links
tions but does not engage in electoral processes.
United States
The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) was an
early Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party. Of particular theoretical note it expanded on Lenin's theses on the labor
aristocracy and more contemporary works such as J.
Sakai's Settlers, the Mythology of the White Proletariat,
claiming that the workers in modern imperialist countries
form a new type of labor aristocracy and cannot be considered proletarianin the traditional marxist sense of
the term, only sometimes oppressedworkers.
Concurrent to the collapse of MIM in 2008, some groups
began using the term Maoism (Third Worldism) to describe this trend.* [9] Today, Maoist (Third Worldist)
groups in the USA include the Maoist Internationalist
Ministry of Prisons* [10] and the Revolutionary AntiImperialist Movement.* [11]

Revolutionary Internationalist Movement:

Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!

Long

Communist Party of Peru: On Marxism-LeninismMaoism

Communist Party of India (Maoist): MarxismLeninism-Maoism Basic Course

2.18 Hoxhaism
Hoxhaism is a variant of anti-revisionist Marxism
Leninism that developed in the late 1970s due to a split
in the Maoist movement, appearing after the ideological
row between the Communist Party of China and the Party
of Labour of Albania in 1978.* [1] It is a separate international tendency within Marxism-Leninism, and is sometimes compared to Titoism.* [2]

Hoxhaism demarcates itself by a strict defense of the

legacy of Joseph Stalin, the organisation of the Soviet
Union under Stalin,* [3] and erce criticism of virtually
[1] Moufawad-Paul, Joshua. Onwards Maoist Century!". all other communist groupings as revisionist.

2.17.5

References

Retrieved 15 June 2014.

Maoism today. PCR-RCP. Retrieved 18 June 2014. Critical of the United States, the Soviet Union, China,
International Situation of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Yugoslavia, Enver Hoxha labeled the latter three
social-imperialist and condemned the Soviet invasion
. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
Maoism or Trotskyism(PDF). Retrieved 18 June 2014. of Czechoslovakia in 1968 before withdrawing from the
[2] Cailmail, Benot. A History of Nepalese Maoism since
its Foundation by Mohan Bikram Singh (PDF). European Bulletin of Himalayan Research. Retrieved 20 June
2014.

Warsaw Pact in response. Hoxhaism, like Titoism, asserts the right of nations to pursue socialism by dierent
paths, dictated by the conditions in that country* [4]although Hoxha personally held that Titoism, in practice,
was anti-Marxistoverall.* [5]

[3] Short Denitions of the Mass Lineand a Mass

Perspective". massline.info. Retrieved 15 June 2014.

Hoxha declared Albania the only state legitimately adhering to MarxismLeninism after 1978. The Albanians
[4] Brown, Nikolai.
What is Maoism?".
anti- succeeded in ideologically winning over a large share of
Maoists, mainly in Latin America (such as the Popular
imperialism.com. RAIM. Retrieved 15 June 2014.
Liberation Army and Marxist-Leninist Communist Party
[5] Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Basic Course. Massalijn. of Ecuador, as well as the Communist Party of Brazil),
Communist Party of India (Maoist). Retrieved 16 June
but they also had a signicant international following in
2014.
general.
[6] The ve main contributions of Maoism to communist
thought. nuovopci.it. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
[7] AWorld To Win News Service. Aworldtowin.org.
2006-04-03. Retrieved 2011-11-10.
[8] Maoists looking at armed overthrow of state by 2050
. The Times of India (The Times of India). 2010-03-06.
Retrieved 2010-03-06.

Following the fall of the People's Socialist Republic of

Albania in 1991, the Hoxhaist parties grouped themselves
around an international conference and the publication
Unity and Struggle.

2.18.1 List of Hoxhaist parties

164
Active

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Historical

Albania: Communist Party of Albania

Albania: Party of Labour of Albania

Benin: Communist Party of Benin, Marxist

Leninist Communist Party of Benin

Bolivia: Communist Party (MarxistLeninist) of

Bolivia

Brazil: Revolutionary Communist Party

Brazil: Communist Party of Brazil

Burkina Faso: Voltaic Revolutionary Communist

Party

Denmark: Communist Party of Denmark/MarxistLeninists

Canada: Communist Party of Canada (Marxist

Leninist)

Ethiopia: Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray

Chile: Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)

Faroe Islands: Advancement for the Islands

(MarxistLeninist)

Colombia:
Communist Party of Colombia
(MarxistLeninist), Popular Liberation Army
(guerrilla group)

Germany: Communist Party of Germany/MarxistsLeninists, Communist Party of Germany (Roter

Morgen)

Cte d'Ivoire: Revolutionary Communist Party of

Cte d'Ivoire

Greece: Organisation of Communists MarxistsLeninists of Greece

Denmark: Workers' Communist Party

Iceland: Communist Unity (Marxist-Leninist)

Dominican Republic: Communist Party of Labour

Ireland: Communist Party of Ireland (MarxistLeninist)

Ecuador: MarxistLeninist Communist Party of

Ecuador (Group of Popular Combatants)
France: Workers' Communist Party of France
Greece: Movement for the Reorganization of the
Communist Party of Greece 19181955

Italy: Organization for the Communist Party of the

Proletariat of Italy, Lenin Circle
Japan: Japan Communist Party (Left Faction)

India: Communist Ghadar Party of India

Netherlands: Workers Party of the Netherlands

(build-up organisation)

Iran: Labour Party of Iran

New Zealand: Communist Party of New Zealand

Italy: Communist Platform

Norway: Communist Workers League, Marxist

Leninist League, MarxistLeninist Group Revolution

Mali: Malian Party of Labour

Mexico: Communist Party of Mexico (Marxist
Leninist)
Nicaragua: MarxistLeninist Popular Action Movement
Spain: Communist Party of Spain (Marxist
Leninist)
Togo: Communist Party of Togo
Tunisia: Workers' Party

Portugal: Communist Party (Reconstructed)

Spain: Communist Party of Spain (marxist-leninist)
Suriname: Communist Party of Suriname
Sweden: Communist Party in Sweden
Trinidad and Tobago: Communist Party of Trinidad
and Tobago

Turkey: Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey,

MarxistLeninist Communist Party

Turkey: Communist Party of Turkey/MarxistLeninist Movement

United Kingdom: Revolutionary Communist Party

of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

United Kingdom: Communist League of Great

Britain

United States: U.S. MarxistLeninist Organization

United States: Revolutionary Organization of Labor, MarxistLeninist Party

Venezuela: MarxistLeninist Communist Party of

Venezuela

Venezuela: Red Flag Party

2.19. TROTSKYISM

2.18.2

165

See also

Soviet Red Army in the direct aftermath of the Revolutionary period.

Enver Hoxha

Trotsky originally opposed some aspects of Leninism.

Later, he concluded that unity between the Mensheviks
and Bolsheviks was impossible, and joined the Bolshe Party of Labour of Albania
viks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in the revolution. Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote, Trotsky long
Sino-Albanian Split
ago said that unication is impossible. Trotsky under International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Par- stood this and from that time on there has been no better
ties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle)
Bolshevik.* [2]
Socialist Albania

2.18.3

External links

enver-hoxha.net
ENVER HOXHA multilingual website
Communist International (Stalinist-Hoxhaists)
Revolutionary Democracy

Trotsky's Fourth International was established in France

in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or
Third International had become irretrievablylost to Stalinismand thus incapable of leading the international
working class to political power.* [3] In contemporary
English language usage, an advocate of Trotsky's ideas
is often called a Trotskyist"; a Trotskyist can be called
aTrotskyiteorTrot, especially by a critic of Trotskyism.* [4]

ALLIANCE!" MARXIST-LENINIST (NORTH

AMERICA)
2.19.1

2.18.4

Denition

References

[1] Communism for Know-It-Alls.

LLC. 2008. p. 23.

Filiquarian Publishing,

[2] Ascoli, Max (1961). The Reporter, Volume 25. p. 30.

[3] Pridham, Georey (2000). The Dynamics of Democratization: A Comparative Approach. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 70.
[4] A Brief Guide to Hoxhaism. The Red Star Vanguard.
Retrieved 23 May 201. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
[5] Hoxha, Enver. Enver Hoxha: Eurocommunism is Anticommunism. Retrieved 23 May 2014.

2.19 Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by
Leon Trotsky. Trotsky identied as an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, and supported founding a
vanguard party of the working-class, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat based
on working-class self-emancipation and mass democracy.
Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism, as they oppose the
idea of Socialism in One Country. Trotskyists also criticise the bureaucracy that developed under the Stalin period of the USSR.
Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky were close both ideologically
and personally during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, and some call Trotsky itsco-leader.* [1] However, Lenin criticized Trotsky's ideas and intra-Party political habits. Trotsky was the paramount leader of the

The leaders of the Trotskyist Left Opposition in Moscow, 1927.

Sitting: Leonid Serebryakov, Karl Radek, Leon Trotsky, Mikhail
Boguslavsky, and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky. Standing: Christian
Rakovsky, Yakov Drobnis, Alexander Beloborodov, and Lev Sosnovsky.

James P. Cannon, an American Trotskyist, wrote in his

History of American Trotskyism (1942), Trotskyism is
not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration,
the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and
practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days
of the Communist International.
According to Trotsky, his thought could be distinguished
from other Marxist theories by ve key elements:
Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in
opposition to the Two Stage Theory of his opponents;* [5]
Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Soviet
Union, analysis of its features* [6] and after 1933,

166

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

support for political revolution in the Soviet Union
and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers'
states;

Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action;
Support for proletarian internationalism;* [7] and
Use of a 'transitional' programme of demands that
bridge between daily struggles of the working class
and the 'maximal' ideas of the socialist transformation of society* [8]
On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are
usually considered to be toward the left. In the 1920s they
called themselves the Left Opposition, although today's
left communism is distinct and usually non-Bolshevik.
The terminological disagreement can be confusing because dierent versions of a left-right political spectrum are used. Anti-revisionists consider themselves
the ultimate leftists on a spectrum from communism
on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right. But
given that Stalinism is often labeled rightist within the
communist spectrum and left communism leftist, Antirevisionists' idea of left is very dierent from that of
left communism. Trotsky and Stalin, despite being
Bolshevik-Leninist comrades during the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, became enemies in the
1920s and thereafter opposed the legitimacy of each
other's forms of Leninism. Thus Trotskyists supported
the de-Stalinization that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s
under Nikita Khrushchev, and they supported democratic rights in the USSR.* [9] This can be confusing
to Westerners and thus requires some explanation to be
clearly understood. Trotskyism supports Soviet democracy (democracy through soviet councils) and the legitimacy of one-party rule (and thus a single-party state),
as did the Khrushchev-era reformers, because, like other
forms of Leninism, it believes in the eternal equivalence
of the party and the people. Thus Trotskyism is antiStalinist and supportive of a certain kind of democracy
within socialism despite being Leninist and what many
social democrats (and all anti-communists) would consider totalitarian. Trotskyists opposed political deals with
the capitalist powers and advocated a spreading of the
revolution throughout Europe and Asia.

2.19.2

Theory

Permanent Revolution
Main article: Permanent Revolution
In 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known
as the theory of Permanent Revolution. It is one of the
dening characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxism only claimed that a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to

Trotsky (raising hand) with troops at the Polish front, during the
Polish-Soviet War, 1919.

the original theory it was impossible for such to occur in

more backward countries such as early 20th century Russia. Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have not
yet established a capitalist society, but was instead largely
feudal with a small, weak and almost powerless capitalist
class.
The theory of Permanent Revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown,
and how socialism could be established given the lack
of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that in Russia only the working class could overthrow feudalism and
win the support of the peasantry. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there.
They would win its own revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers' state in Russia, and appeal
to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries
around the world. As a result, the global working class
would come to Russia's aid, and socialism could develop
worldwide.

The capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution

Revolutions in Britain in the 17th century and in France in
1789 abolished feudalism and established the basic requisites for the development of capitalism. Trotsky argued
that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia.
In Results and Prospects, written in 1906, Trotsky outlines
his theory in detail, arguing: History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great French Revolution, the former can
never be transformed into a repetition of the latter.* [10]
In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced
what Marxists called a bourgeois-democratic revolution a regime was established wherein the bourgeoisie
overthrew the existing French feudalistic system. The
bourgeoisie then moved towards establishing a regime of
democratic parliamentary institutions. However, while
democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they
were not generally extended to a universal franchise. The
freedom for workers to organise unions or to strike was

2.19. TROTSKYISM

167

not achieved without considerable struggle.

ries, banks, etc.from expropriation by the revolutionTrotsky argues that countries like Russia had noenlight- ary working class.
ened, activerevolutionary bourgeoisie which could play Therefore, according to the theory of Permanent Revothe same role, and the working class constituted a very lution, the capitalist classes of economically backward
small minority. By the time of the European revolutions countries are weak and incapable of carrying through revof 1848, the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a olutionary change. As a result, they are linked to and rely
comparable role. It did not want and was not able to un- on the feudal landowners in many ways. Thus, Trotsky
dertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system argues, because a majority of the branches of industry
that stood in its path to power.
in Russia were originated under the direct inuence of
government measuressometimes with the help of government subsidiesthe capitalist class was again tied to
Theory of permanent revolution
the ruling elite. The capitalist class were subservient to
European capital.* [11]
The working class steps in
Instead, Trotsky argued, only the 'proletariat' or working
class were capable of achieving the tasks of that 'bourgeois' revolution. In 1905, the working class in Russia, a
generation brought together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life, saw the result of its labour
as a vast collective eort, and the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective eort
also, forming workers councils (soviets), in the course of
the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued:
The factory system brings the proletariat
to the foreground... The proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous
masses, while between these masses and the
autocracy there stood a capitalist bourgeoisie,
very small in numbers, isolated from the 'people', half-foreign, without historical traditions,
and inspired only by the greed for gain. Trotsky, Results and Prospects* [12]

Leon Trotsky in exile in Siberia 1900

The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in

many countries which are thought under Trotskyism to
have not yet completed a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class opposes the creation of any revolutionary situation. They fear stirring the working class
into ghting for its own revolutionary aspirations against
their exploitation by capitalism. In Russia, the working
class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant based society, were organised in vast factories owned
by the capitalist class, and into large working class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements such as the essentially feudal landlords and ultimately the existing Czarist Russian state forces. This
was to protect their ownership of their propertyfacto-

The Putilov Factory, for instance, numbered 12,000

workers in 1900, and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in
July 1917.* [13] The theory of Permanent Revolution
considers that the peasantry as a whole cannot take on this
task, because it is dispersed in small holdings throughout
the country, and forms a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers and aspire
to landlordism as well as the poor peasants who aspire to
own more land. Trotsky argues: All historical experience... shows that the peasantry are absolutely incapable
of taking up an independent political role.* [14]
Trotskyists dier on the extent to which this is true today,
but even the most orthodox tend to recognise in the late
twentieth century a new development in the revolts of the
rural poor, the self-organising struggles of the landless,
and many other struggles which in some ways reect the
militant united organised struggles of the working class,
and which to various degrees do not bear the marks of
class divisions typical of the heroic peasant struggles of
previous epochs. However, orthodox Trotskyists today
still argue that the town and city based working class

168
struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist revolution, linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They
argue that the working class learns of necessity to conduct
a collective struggle, for instance in trade unions, arising
from its social conditions in the factories and workplaces,
and that the collective consciousness it achieves as a result
is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of
society.* [15]

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the
association of the proletarians has progressed
suciently far not only in one country but
in all the leading countries of the world that
competition between the proletarians of these
countries ceases and at least the decisive forces
of production are concentrated in the hands of
the workers. Marx, Address of the Central
Committee to the Communist League* [17]

Although only a small minority in Russian society, the

proletariat would lead a revolution to emancipate the
peasantry and thus secure the support of the peasantryas part of that revolution, on whose support it will 2.19.3 History
rely.* [16] But the working class, in order to improve their
own conditions, will nd it necessary to create a revolu- Origins
tion of their own, which would accomplish both the bourgeois revolution and then establish a workers' state.
According to Trotsky, the term 'Trotskyism' was coined
by Pavel Milyukov, (sometimes transliterated as 'Paul
Miliuko'), the ideological leader of the Constitutional
International revolution
Democratic party (Kadets) in Russia. Milyukov waged a
*
According to classical Marxism, revolution in peasant- bitter war against 'Trotskyism'as early as 1905. [18]
based countries, such as Russia, prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism since the
liberated peasants become small owners, producers and
traders which leads to the growth of commodity markets,
from which a new capitalist class emerges. Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism.

Trotsky was elected chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet

during the 1905 Russian Revolution. He pursued a policy
of proletarian revolution at a time when other socialist
trends advocated a transition to abourgeois(capitalist)
regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state.
It was during this year that Trotsky developed the theory
of Permanent Revolution, as it later became known (see
Trotsky agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a below). In 1905, Trotsky quotes from a postscript to a
country like Russia would not be able to hold out against book by Milyukov, The elections to the second state Duma,
the pressures of a hostile capitalist world, as well as the published no later than May 1907:
internal pressures of its backward economy. The revoThose who reproach the Kadets with faillution, Trotsky argued, must quickly spread to capitalure
to protest at that time, by organising meetist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution which
ings,
against the 'revolutionary illusions' of
must spread worldwide. In this way the revolution isperTrotskyism
and the relapse into Blanquism,
manent, moving out of necessity rst, from the boursimply
do
not
understand... the mood of the
geois revolution to the workersrevolution, and from
democratic
public
at meetings during that pethere uninterruptedly to European and worldwide revoriod.
The
elections
to the second state Duma
lutions.
by Pavel Milyukov* [19]
This was the position, contrary to that of Classical
Marxismwhich by that time had been further illumi- Milyukov suggests that the mood of thedemocratic pubnated by active life, shared by Trotsky and Lenin and the licwas in support of Trotsky's policy of the overthrow
Bolsheviks until 1924 when Joseph Stalin, who along with of the Romanov regime alongside a workers' revolution
Kamenev in February 1917 had taken the Menshevik po- to overthrow the capitalist owners of industry, support
sition of rst the bourgeois revolution, only to be con- for strike action and the establishment of democratically
fronted by Lenin and his famous April Thesis on Lenin's elected workers' councils or soviets.
return to Russia, after the death of Lenin and seeking to
consolidate his growing bureaucratic control of the Bolshevik Party began to put forward the slogan ofSocial- Trotskyism and the 1917 Russian Revolution
ism in one country.
During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905,
An internationalist outlook of permanent revolution is Trotsky argued that once it became clear that the Tsar's
found in the works of Karl Marx. The term perma- army would not come out in support of the workers, it
nent revolutionis taken from a remark of Marx from was necessary to retreat before the armed might of the
his March 1850 Address: it is our task, Marx said, state in as good an order as possible.* [20] In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet,
to make the revolution permanent until all
but this time soon came to lead the Military Revolutionthe more or less propertied classes have been
ary Committee which had the allegiance of the Petrograd

2.19. TROTSKYISM

169
that without Lenin and the Bolshevik party the October
revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.

Lenin speaking at a meeting in Sverdlov Square in Moscow on

5 May 1920. Original photo with Trotsky and Kamenev standing on the steps of the platform. Later, this photo was censored,
under Stalin's orders, to remove Trotsky and Kamenev.

As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism as a political theory

is fully committed to a Leninist style of democratic centralist party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must
not be confused with the party organisation as it later developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested
that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917
orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in
the Soviet Union was caused by the failure of the revolution to successfully spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation and imperialist intervention, not the
Bolshevik style of organisation.

Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in
western Europe in order that this European socialist socigarrison, and carried through the October 1917 insurrec- ety would then come to the aid of the Russian revolution
and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin
tion. Stalin wrote:
stated:
All practical work in connection with the
organization of the uprising was done under the
immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the
President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be
stated with certainty that the Party is indebted
primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky
for the rapid going over of the garrison to the
side of the Soviet and the ecient manner in
which the work of the Military Revolutionary
Committee was organized. Stalin, Pravda,
November 6, 1918* [21]
As a result of his role in the Russian Revolution of 1917,
the theory of Permanent Revolution was embraced by the
young Soviet state until 1924.

We have stressed in a good many written

works, in all our public utterances, and in all
our statements in the press that... the socialist
revolution can triumph only on two conditions.
First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries. Lenin, Speech at Tenth Congress of the
RCP(B)* [23]
This outlook matched precisely Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Trotsky's Permanent Revolution had
foreseen that the working class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution, but proceed towards a workers' state, as happened in 1917. The Polish Trotskyist Isaac Deutscher maintains that in 1917,
Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution and after the October revolution it was
adopted by the Bolsheviks.* [24]

The Russian revolution of 1917 was marked by two revolutions: the relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution, and the 25 October 1917 seizure of power by the
Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership of the Petrograd soviet.
Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. TrotBefore the February 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had sky argues that:
formulated a slogan calling for the 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry', but after the
up to the outbreak of the February revoFebruary revolution, through his April theses, Lenin inlution and for a time after Trotskyism did not
stead called for all power to the Soviets. Lenin nevmean the idea that it was impossible to build
ertheless continued to emphasise however (as did Trota socialist society within the national boundsky also) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry
aries of Russia (whichpossibilitywas never
formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not soexpressed
by anybody up to 1924 and hardly
cialism.* [22]
came into anybodys head). Trotskyism meant
But also before February 1917, Trotsky had not accepted
the importance of a Bolshevik style organisation. Once
the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out
Trotsky admitted the importance of a Bolshevik organisation, and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Despite
the fact that many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky's role in the
October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky says

the idea that the Russian proletariat might win

the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not conne
itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the
initial socialist measures. It is not surprising,
then, that the April theses of Lenin were con-

170

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

demned as Trotskyist. Leon Trotsky, History
of the Russian Revolution* [25]

The 'legend of Trotskyism'

led the campaign against Trotskyism. In The Stalin

School of Falsication, Trotsky quotes Bukharin's 1918
pamphlet, From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the
Bourgeoisie, which was re-printed by the party publishing
house, Proletari, in 1923. In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, writing: The Russian proletariat is confronted
more sharply than ever before with the problem of the
international revolution ... The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable
conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is
passing into the European proletarian revolution." Yet it
is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years
later, in 1926, Bukharin was the chief and indeed the
sole theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the
permanent revolution.* [30]
Trotsky wrote that the Left Opposition grew in inuence
throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party. But in 1927 Stalin declaredcivil waragainst
them:

Bolshevik freedomwith nude of Leon Trotsky. Polish propaganda poster - Polish-Soviet War 1920

In The Stalin School of Falsication, Trotsky argues that

what he calls thelegend of Trotskyismwas formulated
by Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev in collaboration
with Stalin in 1924, in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.* [26] Orlando Figes argues
thatThe urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the
Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to
power.* [27]
During 192224, Lenin suered a series of strokes and
became increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in
1924, Lenin, while describing Trotsky asdistinguished
not only by his exceptional abilities personally he is, to
be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee, and also maintaining that his non-Bolshevik
past should not be held against him, criticized him for
showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work, and also requested that Stalin
be removed from his position of General Secretary, but
his notes remained suppressed until 1956.* [28] Zinoviev
and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the United Opposition.* [29]

During the rst ten years of its

struggle, the Left Opposition did
not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for
that of conquest of power against
the party. Its slogan was: reform,
not revolution. The bureaucracy,
however, even in those times, was
ready for any revolution in order to
defend itself against a democratic
reform.
In 1927, when the struggle reached
an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central
Committee, addressing himself to
the Opposition: Those cadres
can be removed only by civil war!
What was a threat in Stalins words
became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a
historic fact. The road of reform
was turned into a road of revolution. Trotsky, Leon, Revolution
Betrayed, p279, Pathnder (1972)

Defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia, and further suppression of the Opposition.
Trotsky argued that theso-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the
October Revolution [of 1917]".* [31] He responded to the
one sided civil war with his Letter to the Bureau of Party
History, (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the
falsication of history with the ocial history of just a
In 1926, Stalin allied with Nikolai Bukharin who then few years before. He further accused Stalin of derailing

2.19. TROTSKYISM

171

the Chinese revolution, and causing the massacre of the key roles in the October Revolution in 1917), in the face
Chinese workers:
of increased opposition, particularly in the army.* [37]
In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very
outset of his campaign against me,
found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:

Founding of the Fourth International

All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership
of the Chairman of the Petrograd
Soviet, comrade Trotsky...(Stalin,
Pravda, Nov. 6, 1918)
With full responsibility for my
words, I am now compelled to say
that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese
Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade
union agents of British imperialism
after the General Strike of 1926,
and, nally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet
Union, the party owes principally
and above all to Stalin. Trotsky,
Leon, The Stalin School of Falsication, p87, Pathnder (1971)

Trotsky with Lenin and soldiers in Petrograd

Main article: Fourth International

Trotsky founded the International Left Opposition in

1930. It was meant to be an opposition group within
the Comintern, but anyone who joined, or was suspected
of joining, the ILO, was immediately expelled from the
Comintern. The ILO therefore concluded that opposing Stalinism from within the Communist organizations
controlled by Stalin's supporters had become impossible,
so new organizations had to be formed. In 1933, the
Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters ILO was renamed the International Communist League
were jailed. Victor Serge, for instance, rst spent six (ICL), which formed the basis of the Fourth International,
weeks in a cellafter a visit at midnight, then 85 days in founded in Paris in 1938.
an inner GPU cell, most of it in solitary connement. He Trotsky said that only the Fourth International, basing itdetails the jailings of the Left Opposition.* [32] The Left self on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead
Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in
the Soviet Union.* [33] Trotsky was eventually exiled to opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists.
Turkey. He moved from there to France, Norway, and
Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working
nally to Mexico.* [34]
class and the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was
After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout
the world expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most
Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the
planned economy in the Soviet Union during the 1920s
and 1930s, despite themisleadershipof the soviet bureaucracy, and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.* [35] Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party
democracy, and indeed soviet democracy, which was at
the foundation of Bolshevism,* [36] had been destroyed
within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and
even a fascist.

due in part to the mistakes of the Third Period policy of

the Communist International and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the correct lessons
from those defeats showed that they were no longer capable of reform, and a new international organisation of
the working class must be organised. The Transitional
demand tactic had to be a key element.

At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in

1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam,
Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the
founding father of the Chinese Communist movement,
In 1937, Stalin again unleashed what Trotskyists say was Chen Duxiu, amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists
a political terror against their Left Opposition and many gained power, they made it a priority to hunt down Trotof the remaining 'Old Bolsheviks' (those who had played skyists and treated them as the worst of enemies.

172

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

The Fourth International suered repression and dis- skyist groupings.

ruption through the Second World War. Isolated from
each other, and faced with political developments quite
unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist 2.19.4 Trotskyist movements
organizations decided that the Soviet Union no longer
could be called a degenerated workers state and with- See also: List of Trotskyist organizations by country
drew from the Fourth International. After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and
marginalised in a number of other countries.
Latin America
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International
(ISFI) organised an international conference in 1946,
and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War,
and the tasks for revolutionaries. The Eastern European
Communist-led governments which came into being after
World War II without a social revolution were described
by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies. By 1951, the Congress had concluded
that they had become "deformed workers' states.As the
Cold War intensied, the ISFI's 1951 World Congress
adopted theses by Michel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that
the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed un- Trotskyist progapanda in Brazil.
der pressure by the real workers' movement, could escape
Stalin's manipulations and follow a revolutionary orienta- Trotskyism has had some inuence in some recent major
social upheavals, particularly in Latin America.
tion.
The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to
conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties
which were followed by the majority of the working class.
However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was
counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951
Congress argued that the Soviet Union took over these
countries because of the military and political results of
World War II, and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed
to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by
the West.

The Bolivian Trotskyist party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario, POR) became a mass party in the period of
the late 1940s and early 1950s, and together with other
groups played a central role during and immediately after
the period termed the Bolivian National Revolution.* [38]
In Brazil, as an ocially recognised platform or faction
of the PT until 1992, the Trotskyist Movimento Convergncia Socialista (CS), which founded the United Socialist Workers' Party (PSTU) in 1994, saw a number of
its members elected to national, state and local legislative
bodies during the 1980s.* [39] The Socialism and Liberty
Party (PSOL) presidential candidate in the 2006 general
elections, Helosa Helena is termed a Trotskyist who was
a member of the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), a legislative deputy in Alagoas and in 1999 was elected to the Federal Senate. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she
helped found PSOL, in which various Trotskyist groups
play a prominent role.

Pablo began expelling large numbers of people who did

not agree with his thesis and who did not want to dissolve
their organizations within the Communist Parties. For
instance, he expelled the majority of the French section
and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to
Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with an open letter
to Trotskyists of the world, by Socialist Workers Party
leader James P. Cannon.
During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party
The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public fac- founded in 1982 by Nahuel Moreno, MAS, (Movimiento
tions. The International Committee of the Fourth Inter- al Socialismo, Movement Toward Socialism), claimed
national (ICFI) was established by several sections of the to be the largest Trotskyist partyin the world, beInternational as an alternative centre to the International fore it broke into a number of dierent fragments in
Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by the late 1980s, including the present-day MST, PTS,
Michel Pablo had taken power. From 1960, a number Nuevo MAS, IS, PRS, FOS, etc. In 1989 in an elecof ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS. After the toral front with the Communist Party and Christian na1963 reunication congress, the French and British sec- tionalists groups, calledIzquierda Unida(united left),
tions maintained the ICFI. Other groups took dierent obtained 3,49% of the electorate, representing 580.944
*
paths and originated the present complex map of Trot- voters. [40] Today the Workers' Party in Argentina has
an electoral base in Salta Province in the far north, par-

2.19. TROTSKYISM

173

ticularly in the city of Salta itself, and has become the operated within the Labour Party with three memthird political force in the provinces of Tucumn, also in bers of parliament and eective control of Liverpool
the north, and Santa Cruz, in the south.
City Council. Described by journalist Michael Crick
fth most important political partyin
Venezuelan president Hugo Chvez declared himself to as Britain's
*
1986
[49]
it
played
a prominent role in the 19891991
be a Trotskyist during his swearing in of his cabinet
anti-poll
tax
movement
which was widely thought to have
two days before his own inauguration on 10 January
led
to
the
downfall
of
British
Prime Minister Margaret
*
2007. [41] Venezuelan Trotskyist organizations do not
*
*
[50]
[51]
Several
far-left
parties in Britain are
Thatcher.
regard Chvez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him
Trotskyist in orientation, including the Socialist Work*
as a bourgeois nationalist [42] and other considering him
an honest revolutionary leader who has made major mis- ers Party, the Socialist Party (not to be confused with the
SPGB), and the Scottish Socialist Party.
takes because he lacks a Marxist analysis.* [43]
The Socialist Party in Ireland was formed in 1990 by
members who had been expelled by the Irish Labour
Asia
Party's leader Dick Spring. It has had support in the
Fingal electoral district, as well as in the city of Limerick,
In Indochina during the 1930s, Vietnamese Trotskyism and has a Member of the European Parliament, Paul
led by T Thu Thu was a signicant current, particularly Murphy, representing Dublin and two Members of the
in Saigon.* [44]
Irish Parliament (Dil ireann), Clare Daly, representing
In Sri Lanka, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) Dublin North and Joe Higgins, representing Dublin West.
expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a In Portugal's September 2009 parliamentary election,
Trotskyist-led party. It was led by South Asia's pioneer the Left Bloc won 558,062 votes, which translated into
Trotskyist, Philip Gunawardena and his colleague N. M. 9.82% of the expressed votes and the election of 16
Perera. In 1942, following the escape of the leaders of the (out of 230) deputies to the national parliament.* [52] AlLSSP from a British prison, a unied BolshevikLeninist though founded by several leftist tendencies, it still exParty of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI) was established presses much of the Trotskyist thought upheld and develin India, bringing together the many Trotskyist groups in oped by its former leader, Francisco Lou.
the subcontinent. The BLPI was active in the Quit India
Movement as well as the labour movement, capturing the In Turkey, there are some organizations which are
second oldest union in India. Its high point was when it IST's section (Revolutionary Workers' Socialist Party),
led the strikes which followed the Bombay Mutiny. Af- CRFI's section (Revolutionary Workers' Party),
ter the war, the Sri Lanka section split into the Lanka Permanent Revolution Movement (SDH), Socialism
Sama Samaja Party and the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party Magazine(sympathizers of the ICFI) and several small
(BSP). The Indian section of the BLPI later fused with the groups.
Congress Socialist Party. In the general election of 1947
the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning 10
International
seats, the BSP winning a further 5. It joined the Trotskyist Fourth International after fusion with the BSP in 1950,
The Fourth International derives from the 1963 reuniand led a general strike (Hartal) in 1953.* [45]* [46]* [47]
cation of the two public factions into which Fourth InterIn 1964 a section of the LSSP split to form the LSSP national split in 1953: the International Secretariat of the
(Revolutionary) and joined the Fourth International af- Fourth International (ISFI) and the International Comter the LSSP proper was expelled. The LSSP (R) later mittee of the Fourth International (ICFI). It is often resplit into factions led by Bala Tampoe and Edmund Sama- ferred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internarakkody. The LSSP joined the coalition government of tional, the name of its leading committee before 2003. It
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three of its members, NM Per- is widely described as the largest contemporary Trotskyera, Cholmondely Goonewardena and Anil Moonesinghe, ist organisation with sections and sympathizing organizabecoming the rst Trotskyist cabinet ministers in history. tions in over 50 countries.* [53] Its best known section has
In 1974 a secret faction of the LSSP, allied to the Militant been the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France,
group in the UK emerged. In 1977 this faction was ex- but today there are also sizeable and inuential sections in
pelled and formed the Nava Sama Samaja Party, led by Portugal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Pakistan and several
other countries.
Vasudeva Nanayakkara.
The Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) was
founded in 1974 and now has sections in over 35 counEurope
tries. Before 1997, most organisations aliated to the
CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the
In France, 10% of the electorate voted in 2002 for parties large social democratic parties. Since the early 1990s it
calling themselves Trotskyist.* [48]
has argued that most social democratic, as indeed socialIn Britain during the 1980s, the entryist Militant group ist parties have moved so far to the right that there is little

174

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

point trying to work within them. Instead the CWI has

adopted a range of tactics, mostly seeking to build independent parties, but in some cases working within other
broad working-class parties.
In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrire. That
group is the French section of the Internationalist Communist Union (UCI). UCI has small sections in a handful
of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, within the industrial proletariat.
The founders of the Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) claim they were expelled from the CWI,
when the CWI abandoned entryism. The CWI claims
they left and no expulsions were carried out. Since 2006,
it has been known as the International Marxist Tendency
(IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering
mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties.
Currently, International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is
headed by Alan Woods and Lal Khan. The list of Trotskyist internationals shows that there are a large number
of other multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky. Some Trotskyist organisations are
only organized in one country.

2.19.5

Criticism

members of their organisations. Tourish, a former member of the Committee for a Workers' International asserts
that these organisations typically value doctrinal orthodoxy over critical reection, have illusions in the absolute correctness of their own party's analysis, a fear of
dissent, the demonising of dissenters and critical opinion, overworking of members, a sectarian attitude to the
rest of the left and the concentration of power among a
small group of leaders.* [56]
Some left communists, such as Paul Mattick claim that
the October Revolution was totalitarian from the start and
therefore, Trotskyism has no real dierences from Stalinism either in practice or theory.* [57]
In the United States Dwight Macdonald broke with Trotsky and left the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, by
raising the question of the Kronstadt rebellion, which
Trotsky as leader of the Soviet Red Army and the other
Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towards democratic socialism * [58] and anarchism.* [59] A
similar critique on Trotsky's role on the events around
the Kronstadt rebellion was raised by the American anarchist Emma Goldman. In her essay Trotsky Protests
Too Muchshe says I admit, the dictatorship under
Stalin's rule has become monstrous. That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors
in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one
of the bloodiest scenes.* [60]

Trotskyism has been criticised from various directions.

In 1935, a Marxist-Leninist named Moissaye J. Olgin
published a book entitled Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution 2.19.6 References
in Disguise in which he put forward the idea that Trotsky[1] Lenin and Trotsky were co-leadersof the 1917
ism was the enemy of the working classand that it
Russian Revolution: http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/
should be shunned by anybody who has sympathy for the
archives/oldsite/2004/RCP-823.htm
revolutionary movement of the exploited and oppressed
the world over.* [54] The African-American Marxist- [2] Minutes of the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik
Party,1 November 1917
Leninist Harry Haywood, who spent much time in the
Soviet Union during the 1920s and 30s, stated that al[3] The Transitional Program. Retrieved November 5, 2008.
though he had been somewhat interested in Trotskys
ideas when he was young, he came to see it asa disrup- [4] Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus (1993)
tive force on the fringes of the international revolutionary
movementwhich eventually developed intoa counter- [5] cf for instance, Trotsky, Leon, The Permanent Revolution
(1928) and Results and Prospects (1906), New Park Pubrevolutionary conspiracy against the Party and the Soviet
lications, London, (1962)
state.He continued to put forward his belief that:
[6] Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, 1936

Trotsky was not defeated by bureaucratic decisions or Stalin's control of the Party apparatus -- as his partisans and Trotskyite historians claim. He had his day in court and nally
lost because his whole position ew in the face
of Soviet and world realities. He was doomed
to defeat because his ideas were incorrect and
failed to conform to objective conditions, as
well as the needs and interests of the Soviet
people.* [55]

[7] What is Trotskyism (1973) Ernest Mandel

[8] Trotsky, Leon. The Death Agony of Capitalism and the
Tasks of The Fourth International (1938)
[9] Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 18911924, p. 803, Pimlico (1997)
[10] Trotsky, Leon, Results and Prospects, p 184, New Park
publications (1962)
[11] Trotsky, Leon, Results and Prospects, pp 1747, New Park
publications (1962)

The way Trotskyists organise to promote their beliefs,

democratic centralism, has been criticised, often by ex- [12] Trotsky, Results and Prospects, p183, New Park (1962)

2.19. TROTSKYISM

175

[13] Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, ('July Days':

Preparation and beginning) p519, Pluto Press (1977)

[30] Trotsky, Leon, The Stalin School of Falsication, pp78,

Pathnder (1971)

[14] Trotsky, Leon, Results and Prospects, p 2045, New Park

publications (1962)

[31] Trotsky, Leon, The Stalin School of Falsication, Foreword to the Russian edition, p xxxiii, Pathnder (1971)

[15] Many would put, for instance, the Committee for a WorkersInternational in this category of orthodox Trotskyists.
See for instance, Che Guevara: A revolutionary ghter accessed 2007-10-07

[32] Serge, Victor, From Lenin to Stalin, p70, Pathnder,

(1973)

[16] Trotsky, Leon, Results and Prospects, p 2045, New Park

publications (1962). Trotsky adds that the revolution must
raise the cultural and political consciousness of the peasantry.
[17] Marx, Karl, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League
[18] Trotsky, Leon, My Life, p230 and 294, Penguin, Harmondsworth, (1971)
[19] Milyukov, The elections to the second state Duma, pp91
and 92, is quoted by Leon Trotsky in 1905, Pelican books,
(1971) p295 (and p176)
[20] Trotsky, Leon, 1905, Pelican books, (1971) p217
[21] This summary of Trotsky's role in 1917, written by Stalin
for Pravda, November 6, 1918, was quoted in Stalin's
book The October Revolution issued in 1934, but it was
expunged in Stalin's Works released in 1949.
[22]Peasant farming continues to be... an extremely broad
and very sound, deep-rooted basis for capitalism, a basis on which capitalism persists or arises anew in a bitter
struggle against communism.Lenin Economics and Politics in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat, October
30, 1919, Collected works, Vol 30, p109

[33] Serge, Victor, From Lenin to Stalin, p70 , Pathnder,

(1973)
[34] Deutscher, Isaac, Stalin, p381, Pelican (1966)
[35] Trotsky, Leon, Revolution Betrayed, pp5 32 Pathnder
(1971)
[36]One of the most important tasks today, if not the most
important, is to develop this independent initiative of the
workers, and of all working and exploited people generallyLenin, 'How to organise competition', Collected
Works, Volume 26, p. 409
[37] Rogovin, Vadim, 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror Mehring
Books, 1998, p374. Also see the chapter 'Trotskyists in
the camps':A new, young generation of Trotskyists had
grown up in the Soviet Union...lots of them go to their
deaths crying 'Long live Trotsky!' " Until this research
became available after the fall of the Soviet Union, little
was known about the strength of the Trotskyists within the
Soviet Union.
[38] Alexander, Robert J., International Trotskyism, 1929
1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement, Duke
University Press (1991)
[39] History of the PSTU
[40] Atlas Electoral de Andy Tow

[23] Lenin, Report on the substitution of a tax in kind for the

surplus-grain approriation system, Tenth Congress, March
15, 1921, Collected works, Vol 32, p215. This speech,
of course, introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP),
which was intended to reinforce the basis of the second
of the two conditions Lenin mentions in the quote, the
support of the peasantry for the workers' state.

[41] BBC News, Chavez accelerates on path to socialism,

Nathalie Malinarich, accessed online 19 June 2007

[24] Deutscher, Isaac, Stalin, p285, Penguin, (1966)

[43] Sanabria, William, La Enmienda Constitucional, Orlando

Chirino y la C-CURA

[25] Trotsky, Leon, History of the Russian Revolution, p332,

Pluto Press, London (1977)
[26] See also Deutscher, Isaac, Stalin, p 293, Penguin (1966)
[27] Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 18911924, p802, Pimlico (1997). Figes, at
Birkbeck, University of London, is one of the UK's leading modern Russian historians
[28] Lenin, Collected works, Vol 36, pp59398:Stalin is too
rude and this defect...becomes intolerable in a SecretaryGeneral. That is why I suggest that the comrades think
about a way of removing Stalin from that post...it is a detail
which can assume decisive importance.
[29] Trotsky, Leon, The Stalin School of Falsication, pp89,
Pathnder (1971)

[42] Declaracin Poltica de la JIR, como Fraccin

Pblica del PRS, por una real independencia de clase
(Extractos) - Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria. Replay.web.archive.org. Retrieved on 2013-07-26.

[44] Richardson, A.(Ed.), The Revolution Defamed: A documentary history of Vietnamese Trotskyism, Socialist Platform Ltd (2003)
[45] Ervin, W E, Tomorrow is Ours: The Trotskyist Movement
in India and Ceylon, 1935-48, Colombo, Social Scientists
Association, 2006.
[46] Y. Ranjith Amarasinghe, Revolutionary Idealism & Parliamentary Politics A Study Of Trotskyism In Sri Lanka,
Colombo (1998)
[47] Leslie Goonewardena, A Short History of the Lanka Sama
Samaja Party accessed online June 19, 2007
[48] The combined Trotskyist vote was 2,973,600 (10.44%)
compared to 1,616,546 (5.3%) in 1995

176

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

[49] Crick, Michael, The March of Militant, p.2

2.20 Politics of Fidel Castro

[50] BBC 'On this day' retrospective is1990: One in ve yet

to pay poll tax
[51]
[52]
[53]
[54]

[55]

Fidel Castro has proclaimed himself to bea Socialist, a

Marxist, and a Leninist".* [1] As a Marxist and a LeninMargaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993)
ist, Castro believes strongly in converting Cuba, and the
pp.8489
wider world, from a capitalist system in which business
Resultados Nacionais. Legislativas 2009 (2009-09-26). and industry is owned by private individuals and organiRetrieved on 2013-07-26.
sations, into a socialist system in which all business and
industry are owned by the state on behalf of the populace.
http://ito.gn.apc.org/page24.html
In the former, there is a class divide between the wealthy
Olgin, Moissaye J. 1935. Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution
classes who control the means of production (i.e. the facin Disguise. New York: Workers Library Publishers.
tories, farms, media etc.) and the poorer working classes
Chapter Fourteen.
who labour on them, whilst in the latter, socialists argue,
Haywood, Harry. 1978. Black Bolshevik: Autobiogra- this class divide would be obliterated as society becomes
phy of an Afro-American Communist. Chicago: Liberator more egalitarian.
Press. Chapter Six.

Marxism is the socio-political theory developed by German sociologists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the
mid-19th century. It holds as its foundation the idea
of class struggle; that society mainly changes and proMattick, Paul.
1947.
Bolshevism and Stalinism: gresses as one socio-economic class takes power from
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1947/
another. Thus Marxists believe that capitalism replaced
bolshevism-stalinism.htm
feudalism in the Early Modern period as the wealthy inMattson, Kevin. 2002. Intellectuals in Action: The Origins dustrial class, or bourgeoisie, took political and economic
of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970. Uni- power from the traditional land-owning class, the aristocversity Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, racy and monarchy. In the same process, Marxists pre2002. p. 34
dict that socialism will replace capitalism as the industrial
Memoirs of a Revolutionist: Essays in Political Criticism working class, or proletariat, seize power from the bour(1960). This was later republished with the title Politics geoisie through revolutionary action. In this way, Marxism is believed by its supporters to provide a scientic
Past.
explanation for why socialism should, and will, replace
Emma Goldman: Trotsky Protests Too Much
capitalism in human society.

[56] Tourish: Introduction to Ideological Intransigence,

Democratic Centralism and Cultism:
http://www.
whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/back/WNext27/Intro.html
[57]

[58]

[59]

[60]

Leninism refers to the theories put forward by Russian

revolutionary, political theorist and politician Vladimir
Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party who was a lead Alex Callinicos. Trotskyism (Concepts in Social ing gure in the October Revolution that overthrew the
Thought) University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
Russian capitalist government and replaced it with a so Belden Fields. Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory cialist alternative in 1917. Taking Marxism as its basis,
and Practice in France and the United States Praeger Leninism revolves around putting forward ideas for how
to convert a capitalist state into a socialist one. Castro
Publishers, 1989.
used Leninist thought as a model upon which to convert
Alfred Rosmer. Trotsky and the Origins of Trotsky- the Cuban state and society into a socialist form.
ism. Republished by Francis Boutle Publishers, now
out of print.

2.19.7

Further reading

Cli Slaughter. Trotskyism Versus Revisionism: A 2.20.1 Inuences

Documentary History (multivolume work, now out
of print)
What talent and abilities! What thought, what resolve,
what moral strength! He formulated a doctrine, he propounded a philosophy of independence and an excep2.19.8 External links
tional humanistic philosophy.
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line
The Leon Trotsky Internet archive, containing a
large number of Trotsky's written works

Fidel Castro on Mart, 2009.* [2]

Castro has described two historical gures as being particular inuences on his political viewpoints; the Cuban
The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet, dealing with Leon Trotanti-imperialist revolutionary Jos Mart (18531895)
sky, Trotskyism and Trotskyists
and the German sociologist and theorist Karl Marx
Trotskyist archives in the United Kingdom
(18181883). Commenting on the inuence of Mart he

2.20. POLITICS OF FIDEL CASTRO

177

related that above all, he adopted his sense of ethics government would better serve the cause of peace by acbecause:
knowledging the 'unique' history of antisemitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.
*
[6]
When he spoke that phrase I'll never be able
to forget 'All the glory in the world ts into a
grain of corn' it seemed extraordinarily beau2.20.4 Public image
tiful to me, in the face of all the vanity and
ambition that one saw everywhere, and against
By wearing military-style uniforms and leading mass
which we revolutionaries must be on constant
demonstrations, Castro projected an image of a perpetual
guard. I seized upon that ethics. Ethics, as
revolutionary. He was mostly seen in military attire, but
a mode of behaviour, is essential, a fabulous
his personal tailor, Merel Van 't Wout, convinced him to
*
treasure. [3]
occasionally change to a business suit.* [7] Castro is often
referred to as Comandante, but is also nicknamed
The inuence which Castro took from Marx on the other "El Caballo", meaning The Horse, a label that was
hand was hisconcept of what human society is, with- rst attributed to Cuban entertainer Benny Mor, who on
out which, Castro argued,you can't formulate any argu- hearing Castro passing in the Havana night with his enment that leads to a reasonable interpretation of historical tourage, shouted out Here comes the horse!"* [8]
events.* [4]
During the revolutionary campaign, fellow rebels knew
Castro asThe Giant.* [9] Large throngs of people gathered to cheer at Castro's ery speeches, which typically
2.20.2 On the Soviet Union and its leaders lasted for hours. Many details of Castro's private life, particularly involving his family members, are scarce as the
Although a Leninist, Castro remained critical of Marxist
media is forbidden to mention them.* [10] Castro's imLeninist Joseph Stalin, who was the Premier of the Soviet
age appears frequently in Cuban stores, classrooms, taxiUnion from 1941 to 1953. In Castro's opinion, Stalin
cabs, and national television.* [11] Despite this, Castro
committed serious errors - everyone knows about his
has stated that he does not promote a cult of personalabuse of power, the repression, and his personal characity.* [12]
teristics, the cult of personalityand also held him accountable for the invasion of the USSRby Nazi Germany in 1941. At the same time, Castro also felt that
2.20.5 References
Stalin showed tremendous merit in industrializing the
countryandin moving the military industry to Siberia
[1] Castro and Ramonet 2009. p. 157.
, things which he felt weredecisive factorsin the defeat
of Nazism.* [5]
[2] Castro and Ramonet 2009. p. 147.
[3] Castro and Ramonet 2009. pp. 101102.

2.20.3

On Israel and anti-Semitism

[4] Castro and Ramonet 2009. p. 102.

In September 2010, The Atlantic began publishing a se[5] Castro and Ramonet 2009. p. 181.
ries of articles by Jerey Goldberg based on extensive and
wide-ranging interviews by Goldberg and Julia E. Sweig [6] Fidel to Ahmadinejad: 'Stop Slandering the Jews'". Thewith Castro, the rst of which lasted ve hours. Casatlantic.com. September 7, 2010. Retrieved March 16,
tro contacted Goldberg after he read one of Goldberg's
2011.
articles on whether Israel would launch a pre-emptive
air strike on Iran should it come close to acquiring [7] 10, 1995/01_5_m.htmlIn brief. Arizona Daily Wildcat. February 10, 1995. Retrieved August 12, 2006.
nuclear weapons. While warning against the dangers
of Western confrontation with Iran in which inadver[8] Richard Gott, Cuba : A new history. p. 175. Yale press.
tently,a gradual escalation could become a nuclear war",
Castro unequivocallydefended Israel's right to ex- [9] Jon Lee Anderson. Che Guevara : A revolutionary life.
ist and condemned antisemitism, while criticizing some
p. 317.
of the rhetoric on Israel by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the
President of Iran, under whom IranIsrael relations have [10] Admservice (October 8, 2000). Fidel Castro's Family
. Latinamericanstudies.org. Retrieved January 13, 2010.
become increasingly hostile:
Asked by Goldberg if he would tell Ahmadinejad the [11] Americas | Ailing Castro still dominates Cuba. BBC
same things, Castro responded, I am saying this so you
News. August 11, 2006. Retrieved January 13, 2010.
can communicate it. Castro criticized Ahmadinejad
for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian [12] "Fidel Castro" PBS Online Newshour February 12, 1985.

178

2.20.6

CHAPTER 2. COMMUNISM & VARIANTS

Further reading

engender general uprising, rather than consolidating political power in military strongholds before expanding to
Theodore Draper: Castroism: Theory and Practice. new ones--Che Guevara took great inspiration from the
New York: Praeger 1965
Maoist notion of "protracted people's war" and sympathized with Mao Zedong's People's Republic of China in
Iain McLean,Alistair McMillan: The concise Oxford the Sino-Soviet split. This controversy may partly explain
dictionary of politics. Oxford University Press 2009, his departure from Castro's pro-Soviet Cuba in the midISBN 978-0-19-920516-5, p. 66 (restricted online 1960s. Guevara also drew direct parallels with his concopy, p. 66, at Google Books)
temporary communist comrades in the Viet Cong, ex Frank O. Mora, Jeanne A. K. Hey: Latin Amer- horting a multi-front guerrilla strategy to create two,
ican and Caribbean Foreign Policy. Rowman & three, many Vietnams.
Littleeld 2003, ISBN 0-7425-1601-6, p. 98-102 In Guevara's nal years, after leaving Cuba, he advised
(restricted online copy, p. 98, at Google Books)
communist paramilitary movements in Africa and Latin
America, including a young Laurent Kabila, future ruler
of Zaire/DR Congo. Finally, while leading a small foco
band of guerrilla cadres in Bolivia, Che Guevara was cap2.21 Guevarism
tured and killed. His death, and the short-term failure
of his Guevarist tactics, may have interrupted the comGuevarism is a theory of communist revolution and
ponent guerrilla wars within the larger Cold War for a
a military strategy of guerrilla warfare associated with
time, and even temporarily discouraged Soviet and Cuban
Marxist revolutionary Ernesto CheGuevara, a leadsponsorship for foquismo.
ing gure of the Cuban Revolution. During the Cold War,
the United States and Soviet Union clashed in a series of The emerging communist movements and other fellow
proxy wars, especially in the developing nations of the traveler radicalism of the time, however, either switched
to urban guerrilla warfare before the end of the 1960s,
Third World, including many decolonization struggles.
and/or soon revived the rural-based strategies of both
Maoism and Guevarism, tendencies that escalated world2.21.1 Overview
wide throughout the 1970s, by and large with the support
from the communist states and the Soviet empire in genAfter the 1959 triumph of the Cuban insurrection led by eral and Cuba's Castro regime in particular.
a militant "foco" under Fidel Castro, his Argentina-born,
Another proponent of Guevarism was the French intelcosmopolitan and Marxist colleague Guevara parlayed his
lectual Rgis Debray, who could be seen as attempting
ideology and experiences into a model for emulation (and
to establish a coherent, unitary theoretical framework on
at times, direct military intervention) around the globe.
these grounds. Debray has since broken with this.
While exporting one suchfocalistrevolution to Bolivia,
leading an armed vanguard party there in October 1967,
Guevara was captured and executed, becoming a martyr
2.21.2 Criticism
to both the World Communist Movement and the New
Left.
It was criticized from a revolutionary anarchist perspecHis ideology promotes exporting revolution to any coun- tive by Abraham Guilln, one of the leading tacticians of
try whose leader is supported by the empire (United urban guerrilla warfare in Uruguay and Brazil. Guillen
States) and has fallen out of favor with its citizens. Gue- claimed that cities are a better ground for the guerrilla
vara talks about how constant guerrilla warfare taking than the countryside (Guillen was a veteran of the Spanish
place in non-urban areas can overcome leaders. He intro- Civil War). He criticized Guevarist movements of naduces three points that are representative of his ideology tional liberation (like the Uruguayan Tupamaros, one
as a whole: that the people can win with proper organiza- of the many groups that he helped as a military advition against a nation's army; that the conditions that make sor) for trying to impose a dictatorship instead of selfa revolution possible can be put in place by the popular management.
forces; and that the popular forces always have an advantage in a non urban setting.* [1]
Guevara had a particularly keen interest in guerrilla war- 2.21.3 See also
fare, with a dedication to foco techniques, also known
Revisionism (Marxism)
as focalism(or "foquismo" in Spanish): vanguardism
by small armed units, frequently in place of established
Frantz Fanon
communist parties, initially launching attacks from rural areas to mobilize unrest into a popular front against
Carlos Marighella
a sitting regime. Despite dierences in approach- Cuban Revolution
emphasizing guerrilla leadership and audacious raids that

2.21. GUEVARISM
Foco
Guerrilla warfare
Protracted people's war
Urban guerrilla warfare
Wars of national liberation

2.21.4

Notes

[1] Guevara, Ernesto (1998). Guerrilla Warfare. New York:

Monthly Review Press, 1961. p. 8. ISBN 0-8032-70755.

179

Chapter 3

Text and image sources, contributors, and

licenses
3.1 Text
Historical materialism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism?oldid=676995971 Contributors: Tobias Hoevekamp, Wesley, Ed Poor, Andre Engels, Enchanter, Edward, KoyaanisQatsi, Charles Matthews, Abhishek, Sabbut, Rbellin, Robbot,
Altenmann, Ojigiri~enwiki, Yacht, Guy Peters, Brenton, Adhib, Emuzesto~enwiki, Jdevine, Loremaster, Piotrus, Arsene, Rdsmith4, Martin Wisse, Tothebarricades.tk, Neutrality, Adashiel, Rich Farmbrough, Regebro, Bender235, El C, Lycurgus, Causa sui, Thuresson, Cmdrjameson, TheProject, Knucmo2, Ricky81682, Ynhockey, Melaen, Max rspct, Axeman89, Geographer, Richwales, Scales, Robert K S,
AshishG, Bkwillwm, Stancollins, Palica, Graham87, BD2412, Molily, Koavf, Jazzcowboy, Hanshans23, FlaBot, Ground Zero, Protokurios,
Truman Burbank, Jrtayloriv, DVdm, Amaurea, YurikBot, RussBot, Pigman, NawlinWiki, Chandler Savage, Misza13, M3taphysical, Jurriaan, FF2010, Zzuuzz, H@r@ld, Atheos~enwiki, Black inferno, Innity0, SmackBot, Jagged 85, Redprince, Alksub, Eskimbot, Bluebot,
Thatgreatwar, D-Rock, Pegua, Battlecry, Inarcadiaego, Agrofelipe, Cybercobra, Stephen Kastner, StN, Byelf2007, PeterBowing, Giovanni33, Filosofaster~enwiki, George100, Bobfrombrockley, WeggeBot, Penbat, Gregbard, R Harris, Matrix61312, Gogo Dodo, DumbBOT, Mungomba, SGGH, Itsmejudith, Bigtimepeace, Courtjester555, Phanerozoic, Nwe, Db099221, Freshacconci, Omicron18, Thewallowmaker, Inbloom2, STBotD, WJBscribe, DMCer, Idioma-bot, TXiKiBoT, Andysoh, SelketBot, Room429, Robert1947, Demigod Ron,
The Random Editor, SieBot, Meldor, Cjayakumar, LSmok3, AlgoJerViA, ClueBot, PipepBot, The Thing That Should Not Be, Der Golem,
Alexbot, HoboBen, Hans Adler, Redthoreau, Addbot, EjsBot, Older and ... well older, Tide rolls, Zorrobot, Ben Ben, Legobot, Luckasbot, Yobot, Stran123456, Againme, Bility, AnomieBOT, Jim1138, OpenFuture, Knop92, OllieFury, ArthurBot, JMCJMC, Srich32977,
GrouchoBot, Omnipaedista, Carrite, Ericfarsad, FrescoBot, Ong saluri, DoostdarWKP, Reddishwagon, . ., Joc7, Dinamik-bot,
Skakkle, Tbhotch, Smartiger, EmausBot, John of Reading, WikitanvirBot, Zloyvolsheb, Erianna, Richard Tuckwell, Solus ipse Inc., Toriabernathy, Lovok Sovok, ClueBot NG, Erasmus5000, Gast2011, Helpful Pixie Bot, Calabe1992, Lowercase sigmabot, Tommyboy1215,
Phng Huy, AvocatoBot, Lieutenant of Melkor, ChrisGualtieri, Luckyno14, Zdzislaw22, Davidwinters-ms, PinkAmpersand, CsDix, Lee
arango me, T Forde, YeOldeGentleman, Squiver, KasparBot and Anonymous: 135
Dialectical materialism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism?oldid=678800162 Contributors: Tobias Hoevekamp, Slrubenstein, Ed Poor, RTC, Fred Bauder, Mdebets, Charles Matthews, Selket, Gutsul, Jose Ramos, Rbellin, Naturyl, Robbot, Altenmann, Tim Ivorson, Babbage, Halibutt, S1rkull, Xanzzibar, Tobias Bergemann, Nagelfar, Adhib, Nikodemos, Aphaia, Dick Bos,
Grant65, Pgan002, Formeruser-81, Jdevine, Quadell, Martin Wisse, Bosmon, Robin klein, Esperant, Rich Farmbrough, Guanabot, Regebro,
Parishan, Bender235, El C, Lycurgus, Skeppy, Yonghokim, Davor~enwiki, Wdfarmer, Bigaln2, Axeman89, Ruiguerra, Mhazard9, Scales,
Isnow, Graham87, Magister Mathematicae, BD2412, Tlroche, JMCorey, Koavf, EatAlbertaBeef, Georgelazenby, JohnGH, Hanshans23,
Ground Zero, Chobot, Bgwhite, Roboto de Ajvol, YurikBot, Ismail, Tomkeene, Hede2000, Manop, Gaius Cornelius, Thane, NawlinWiki, Leutha, Grafen, Erielhonan, Jurriaan, Thor Waldsen, Zzuuzz, Arthur Rubin, H@r@ld, Innity0, Sardanaphalus, Attilios, SmackBot, YellowMonkey, InverseHypercube, Cessator, ActiveSelective, Bluebot, Kurykh, MalafayaBot, Nbarth, Egsan Bacon, Stevenmitchell,
Radagast83, Cybercobra, Richard001, Byelf2007, Lambiam, PeterBowing, Gobonobo, A. Mani, Santa Sangre, Phoenixrod, CmdrObot,
Bobfrombrockley, WeggeBot, Gregbard, DumbBOT, Janoside, Bwmcmaste, JamesAM, Letranova, Thijs!bot, Asooryampasya, Biruitorul,
JimFarm, 464684646415465, Serpent-A, Wikimaestro, Mr pand, Nick Number, PottersWood, MJuice, Danny lost, Alphachimpbot, Wahabijaz, JenLouise, Matthew Fennell, Clementvidal, VoABot II, Hasek is the best, Sync555, Riot Fred, Shijualex, Erik.w.davis, MartinBot,
KevinShea, NAHID, Brilliand, CommonsDelinker, Nono64, Z y, Kaizer1784, Jouvenel, Inbloom2, Ginwells, Nancy Nickies, STBotD,
Ruwiki, VolkovBot, Dialectics4kids, AlnoktaBOT, Andysoh, Ferengi, Demigod Ron, Andy Dingley, Fanturmandos, SieBot, YonaBot,
Lucasbfrbot, Questioning81, Oxymoron83, JohnSawyer, Monroetransfer, ClueBot, Northdot9, Neverquick, ALLurGroceries, Dr. B. R.
Lang, Naradawickramage, SchreiberBike, Lucyintheskywithdada, Sparkygravity, DumZiBoT, Jhoughton~enwiki, Staticshakedown, BodhisattvaBot, WikHead, Caveatdumptruck, Sparagmite, Felix Folio Secundus, Addbot, Fluernutter, Glane23, Michaelwuzthere, Lightbot,
Ben Ben, Legobot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, TheThomas, Charlesbrophy, Gollobinfriend, AnomieBOT, Citation bot, John Bessa, Thesoxlost,
Omnipaedista, Marco Bernardini, Ericfarsad, Willdw79, Toddiscool1998, FreeKnowledgeCreator, FrescoBot, T of Locri, Shiki2, .
., MastiBot, SkyMachine, Trappist the monk, Wotnow, Joc7, Dinamik-bot, Tbhotch, RjwilmsiBot, TjBot, EmausBot, Alryvo, GoingBatty,
SporkBot, Obotlig, Khaydock, Solus ipse Inc., Ollyoxenfree, Mjbmrbot, ClueBot NG, Piast93, Helpful Pixie Bot, Technical 13, Lowercase
sigmabot, Sebrider, Tommyboy1215, Atticusattor, AvocatoBot, Kissavainaa, CitationCleanerBot, Anbu121, Mogism, Lugia2453, CsDix,
Zozs, MCarsten, Waqarmshah, Monkbot, IP.303, Mit0126, 3298230932782302, Karmanatory, BrianOrr2020, Princek94, Squiver, KasparBot and Anonymous: 194
Marxist philosophy Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_philosophy?oldid=674412743 Contributors: Edward, Charles
Matthews, Wik, Rbellin, Fifelfoo, Snobot, Nikodemos, Pteron, Utcursch, Piotrus, Q9, Lucidish, Carlon, Lycurgus, Causa sui, JK the

180

3.1. TEXT

181

unwise, BD2412, Rjwilmsi, Helvetius, Hanshans23, Born2cycle, Losecontrol, Bgwhite, YurikBot, Bhny, Gaius Cornelius, NawlinWiki,
Cleared as led, Caiusc, Chichui, Zzuuzz, Reyk, Innity0, KnightRider~enwiki, SmackBot, Reedy, InverseHypercube, KnowledgeOfSelf, Delldot, Chris the speller, Marcushan, RolandR, Kukini, Tazmaniacs, Paulscf, Santa Sangre, RichardF, Christian Roess, Joseph Solis
in Australia, Bobfrombrockley, Jac16888, Drozdeva, Pascal.Tesson, DumbBOT, Legotech, JamesAM, JimFarm, Bobblehead, Mnemeson, Matthew Proctor, PottersWood, Goldenrowley, JenLouise, Bongwarrior, VoABot II, Jetstreamer, TARBOT, Jim Douglas, L Trezise,
J.delanoy, It Is Me Here, Inbloom2, JohnDoe0007, Meenakshi20022, Myles325a, Anonymous Dissident, Schwalker, Billinghurst, GirasoleDE, Happysailor, Flyer22, Mildredinhi, Techman224, OKBot, Smilo Don, Szalagloria, Pinkadelica, Ahuitzotl, BHenry1969, ClueBot,
EastCoast1111, Timberframe, Mindstalk, TheRedPenOfDoom, Hans Adler, Jbh2wiki, Kbdankbot, Addbot, Wsvlqc, Download, SpBot,
Rog2203, Lightbot, Yobot, Stealth031, Angel ivanov angelov, Fitter stoke, Kingpin13, Ulric1313, Materialscientist, Citation bot, LilHelpa,
Thesoxlost, Omnipaedista, Adam9389, PepeBueno, Elockid, AustralianMelodrama, Gritob, Csillery, Tbhotch, EmausBot, John of Reading, Roxasoblivion13, F, Donner60, Manytexts, Mjbmrbot, ClueBot NG, Yo lenin1, Chester Markel, Cntras, Calabe1992, Technical 13,
Lowercase sigmabot, Stephenwanjau, Tonys lapdog, MahdiBot, SomeFreakOnTheInternet, RachelleLin, Stdevin2012, Fivezeros, Squiver
and Anonymous: 98
Marx's method Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx'{}s_method?oldid=653718934 Contributors: TimMartin, Stemonitis, Bgwhite, Pigman, NawlinWiki, Battlecry, Bdiscoe, Gregbard, DumbBOT, Auntof6, Good Olfactory, Tassedethe, Yobot, Pollinosisss, John
of Reading, ClueBot NG, Lowercase sigmabot, Zozs, Squiver and Anonymous: 3
Marxian economics Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxian_economics?oldid=668899771 Contributors: Heron, Edward, Radicalsubversiv, Sethmahoney, Jni, Robbot, Fifelfoo, Sunray, J heisenberg, Dick Bos, Nakosomo, Richard Myers, The Land, Pyro~enwiki,
Liberlogos, H0riz0n, Pavel Vozenilek, Bender235, Lycurgus, Chalst, Causa sui, Cmdrjameson, JavOs, Rd232, John Quiggin, Hinotori,
Bobrayner, FrancisTyers, Camw, Ollieplatt, DrThompson, Everton, Nutrosnutros, Bkwillwm, BD2412, Sjakkalle, Jrtayloriv, Chobot,
Frappyjohn, Petiatil, Splash, Pigman, Member, NawlinWiki, Wiki alf, Joel7687, Equilibrial, Mshecket, Ad Nauseam, Jurriaan, Johndburger, Fram, Innity0, Tom Morris, Yvwv, SmackBot, Alex1011, Hmains, Chris the speller, Willardo, Battlecry, Rrburke, Kongre-sec,
Nakon, Byelf2007, ArglebargleIV, Soap, Rigadoun, Santa Sangre, Joseph Solis in Australia, A.I.K., Thomasmeeks, Davius, Flowerpotman, Spylab, DumbBOT, Daniel, Headbomb, Frank, WinBot, Luna Santin, ReverendG, Nmcmurdo, Magioladitis, Horse Badorties, Karl
Wiki, STBot, Prezen, Cirenilsson, Jeepday, Aram33~enwiki, Marioosz, Inbloom2, Kenneth M Burke, ACSE, Lia Todua, Geree, Rubentomas, TXiKiBoT, Marxclass, C.J. Grin, SelketBot, Anarchangel, Synthebot, Akliman, Watchdog07, Hudisp, Oxymoron83, Jacob.jose,
ClueBot, The Thing That Should Not Be, EoGuy, Mild Bill Hiccup, Spenny69, Jotterbot, Doprendek, Aleksd, Gogolyea, Eurodos, Trefork, DumZiBoT, Koumz, Flauius Claudius Iulianus, Dthomsen8, Avoided, SherryShamsi, Addbot, I feel like a tourist, Michaelwuzthere,
Debresser, Sindinero, Luckas-bot, Yobot, AnomieBOT, ArthurBot, Quebec99, Srich32977, Omnipaedista, Cuauti, Gonji ha, FrescoBot,
D'ohBot, Kiefer.Wolfowitz, A8UDI, LilyKitty, Miracle Pen, Tbhotch, EmausBot, John of Reading, , Financestudent, Irishbrigade1942,
ClueBot NG, Chester Markel, Adair2324, Frietjes, Helpful Pixie Bot, Rationis, K4kant, Justincheng12345-bot, Correctionasdfg, Khazar2,
Jemappelleungarcon, RotlinkBot, Tentinator, LudicrousTripe, Bronx Discount Liquor, Gravuritas, Monkbot, Prisencolinensinainciusol,
Karmanatory, YeOldeGentleman, Knife-in-the-drawer and Anonymous: 135
Surplus value Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value?oldid=670263620 Contributors: Jimbo Wales, Ed Poor, Jrincayc,
William Avery, Heron, Infrogmation, Tomi, Skysmith, EntmootsOfTrolls, Snoyes, Samuel~enwiki, Charles Matthews, AaronSw, Robbot, Pbrooks, Fifelfoo, Yacht, Lancemurdoch, Giftlite, Nikodemos, Everyking, Revth, Richard Myers, D3, Piotrus, Ot, Sam Hocevar,
Discospinster, Smyth, Bender235, El C, Lycurgus, Tjic, Obradovic Goran, Hydriotaphia, John Quiggin, Kusma, Bobrayner, Woohookitty,
Niqueco, MGTom, SCEhardt, Mbxp, BD2412, Kinu, Zanturaeon, Vuong Ngan Ha, FlaBot, Ian Pitchford, Jrtayloriv, Bgwhite, YurikBot, RussBot, Hede2000, Gaius Cornelius, NawlinWiki, Wiki alf, Jurriaan, PTSE, Supernoodles, Rickkuhn, Innity0, IslandHopper973,
SmackBot, Primetime, Alex1011, Hmains, Colonies Chris, KurtFF8, Egsan Bacon, Battlecry, Aktron, Cybercobra, Pissant, Someoneisatthedoor, Teneri, Trojan traveler, AB, RichardF, CmdrObot, Ningum, Julian Wells, DumbBOT, Legotech, Frank, Manu bcn,
JAnDbot, Mauricio Malu, Jaysweet, Macmelvino, R'n'B, Belovedfreak, Remember the dot, TreasuryTag, SelketBot, Ccyber5, Itihasi,
Sanya3, SlackerMom, DragonBot, PixelBot, Addbot, Haruth, Ginosbot, Balabiot, Yobot, WellsSouth, AnomieBOT, Ciphers, Richardlord50, W.stanovsky, Srich32977, J04n, Nasireddin, Cuauti, Marco Bernardini, Thehelpfulbot, Focus, Lars Washington, LilyKitty, Tbhotch, Fujo11, Jmmcatan, Wilcannia, ClaudioSantos, Frietjes, Lowercase sigmabot, BG19bot, Mjacob14, Aua1422, 3298230932782302,
KasparBot and Anonymous: 66
Bourgeoisie Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie?oldid=679828966 Contributors: Andre Engels, Gianfranco, Enchanter,
SimonP, Heron, GrahamN, R Lowry, Someone else, Stevertigo, Edward, Michael Hardy, Ixfd64, Egil, ThirdParty, Netsnipe, Smack,
Boson, Choster, Wik, Haukurth, Hyacinth, RayKiddy, Head, Bloodshedder, Rbellin, Bcorr, David.Monniaux, Slawojarek, Jni, Robbot,
Juro, Fifelfoo, Altenmann, Humus sapiens, Hadal, Snader, Xanzzibar, Nikodemos, Bkonrad, Snowdog, Dratman, Henryhartley, Guanaco, Mboverload, Neilc, Gadum, Jdevine, Loremaster, Robert Brockway, Piotrus, Rdsmith4, Jesster79, MRSC, Neutrality, Irpen, Mike
Rosoft, Francis Schonken, Leandros, Xgenei, Dbachmann, Trey Stone, Stbalbach, Bender235, Dewet, MattTM, Goplat, CanisRufus, El
C, Lycurgus, SpencerWilson, Lankiveil, Kwamikagami, Causa sui, Bobo192, Dreish, Ejrrjs, Blotwell, Man vyi, Sasquatch, John Fader,
Espoo, Knucmo2, Ranveig, Patsw, Alansohn, Eleland, JohnAlbertRigali, Atrivedi, Radical Mallard, Max rspct, Stephan Leeds, Grenavitar, VoluntarySlave, Pwqn, Mhazard9, Nuno Tavares, Woohookitty, Jannex, TigerShark, Tapir2001, SDC, Mimiian, Mandarax, Chris
Weimer, WBardwin, BD2412, Reisio, Johnwhunt, Jweiss11, Daejiny, SeanMack, FlaBot, Gringo300, RobertG, TheMidnighters, RexNL,
Gurubrahma, Chobot, DVdm, Korg, JosephHVilas, YurikBot, Mikeishigaki, RussBot, Lincolnite, Bhny, Wimt, Knyght27, Bvanderveen,
Aeusoes1, RattleMan, Grafen, Jaxl, Ad Nauseam, Kortoso, NWOG, Caroline Sanford, TheSeer, Mamathomas, Zzuuzz, Orbis 3, Clocke,
Fram, Anclation~enwiki, JLaTondre, Benandorsqueaks, Innity0, GrinBot~enwiki, Mardus, CIreland, Marquez~enwiki, Eykanal, Intangible, Yakudza, SmackBot, CSZero, Unyoyega, Power piglet, Thunderboltz, Midway, Eskimbot, WhiskyWhiskers, Kintetsubualo,
Edgar181, Xaosux, Anarkisto, Hmains, TimBentley, Rex Germanus, Te24409nsp, Jprg1966, Thumperward, Kemet, BrendelSignature,
Bazonka, ADobkin, Lexlex, Dr. Dan, Noeticsage, Metallurgist, Alphathon, Nixeagle, Sommers, Rrburke, Anime2000z, COMPFUNK2,
BullRangifer, Kozlovesred, Curly Turkey, Tesseran, Ohconfucius, Synthe, Kuru, Zaphraud, Ishmaelblues, Michael Bednarek, Joelo,
Mr Stephen, Rizome~enwiki, Hypnosi, Xiaphias, Hu12, Focomoso, Nonexistant User, Pratheesh prakash, Polymerbringer, Joseph Solis
in Australia, Wspencer11, J Milburn, Peter1c, Wolfdog, Neelix, Slazenger, Cydebot, Danrok, Ningum, R-41, Jayen466, Agne27, Mirrormundo, Twittenham, Kozuch, Omicronpersei8, Maziotis, Gimmetrow, Rjm656s, Epbr123, Kubanczyk, D4g0thur, N5iln, Mojo Hand,
Tellyaddict, Natalie Erin, Abdel Hameed Nawar, Mentisto, Hmrox, AntiVandalBot, The Obento Musubi, Seaphoto, Emeraldcityserendipity, Rabbi-m, Modernist, Wahabijaz, Claire andrade, JAnDbot, Deective, FruitcakeNL, MER-C, LeedsKing, Avaya1, Matthew Fennell, SeanCollins, Db099221, Hamsterlopithecus, Andonic, Yahel Guhan, Magioladitis, Bongwarrior, VoABot II, Eni, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, Billybass, Tedickey, MikeMullins, Indon, Jutm543, Minimiscience, Ciaccona, Allstarecho, CapnPrep, Pax:Vobiscum, Zeplerfer,
When1eight=2zeros, Ungered, Charles Edward, Keith D, Meowmix melvin, R'n'B, Johnpacklambert, Prezen, Edward.og, Latentale, Jerry,
Natty4bumpo, Vvitor, Katalaveno, NewEnglandYankee, Trilobitealive, Prhartcom, Chinasociology, Aho101, DH85868993, Treisijs,

182

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Scott Illini, CardinalDan, Idioma-bot, VolkovBot, CWii, Iosef, Kjod, AlnoktaBOT, Philip Trueman, Mark v1.0, Stoli23, Amartin26,
Miranda, Asdfghjkl3, Wikidemon, Jason McConnell-Leech, Mark Miller, JhsBot, Jvbishop, Sykosyko~enwiki, Demigod Ron, Falcon8765, Gmctague, Burntsauce, Qworty, Sfmammamia, SMC89, SieBot, Mycomp, WereSpielChequers, Jauerback, Sonyack, Gerakibot, ChrisB600, Snowborder4391, Aarondrake 1, Uwmad, Jimthing, Freedomwarrior, BenoniBot~enwiki, DeepQuasar, Efe, Denisarona,
WordyGirl90, Twinsday, Smashrance, ClueBot, Avenged Eightfold, Snigbrook, The Thing That Should Not Be, DionysosProteus, Saddhiyama, Pakaal, Canopus1, Gutm, Niceguyedc, Hangtrots, P. S. Burton, Muscovite99~enwiki, Hangakommy, PhGustaf, Jemmy Button,
Mash rance, Expunge rance, Resoru, End the trot, Cacadores, Sun Creator, Winnets, Ranceretarded, Secret, Aitias, Jimjmc, Damansanj93,
NJGW, Burner0718, Jbh2wiki, Editor2020, Indopug, NERIC-Security, Liberal Humanist, Cradel, Arturo57, J-vars, Addbot, Some jerk on
the Internet, Seipjere, Guoguo12, Bitemerance71, Bitemerance68, Ayapota, Mootros, Antone.konst, Michaelwuzthere, Bahamut Star, Mdnavman, TriniMuoz, Tide rolls, Lightbot, , Gail, Sieborg81, Legobot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Tay Casey, Gavin Lisburn,
Gongshow, AlternateU, AnomieBOT, Gtz, Rjanag, Piano non troppo, Hunnjazal, Citation bot, Eumolpo, Quebec99, Munin75, Xqbot,
Capricorn42, Luca Visentin, Quark1005, What Is Moe?, Delsim9, J04n, Omnipaedista, FixMacs, WhiskerSoulstain, GhalyBot, Smallman12q, Paine Ellsworth, Adimitri82, HJ Mitchell, , Nightsturm, Krish Dulal, LittleWink, BRUTE, Night Jaguar,
Csgproductions, Nora lives, Keri, Jugni, Trappist the monk, Hobgoblein, Haaninjo, Skinnytony1, Hentzde, Weedwhacker128, Brian the
Editor, Some Wiki Editor, Phlegat, Beyond My Ken, Slon02, , Artefactual, RA0808, K6ka, Pseudosection, Deanybabeh, Kitty DeClaude, Tsutwo, Traxs7, Aplex84, Major Torp, Michael Fleischhacker, Jacobisq, Aidarzver, Rangoon11, Financestudent, Kgldude, Pgarret,
Bunnybooboo, Sven Manguard, Petrb, ClueBot NG, This lousy T-shirt, -sche, Benjamin9832, Snotbot, Dreth, O.Koslowski, WikiPuppies,
HMSSolent, TCN7JM, Dan653, Zyxwv99, Dr. Whooves, Atomician, Brad7777, Glacialfox, Carliitaeliza, TheOniPhony, I.eat.yangwei,
Panimo, Gohan999222, Pratyya Ghosh, ChrisGualtieri, Khazar2, Jaspermogg, Sarg Pepper, Mogism, Ovtchi, Uli Kunkel 69, JustAMuggle, Epicgenius, CsDix, FrigidNinja, Acatao2210, Hendrick 99, Bwloeb5, Suuuuperboy78123445, Alecc98, Samprice99, Ctshepherd,
TomokoKuroki, 3298230932782302, Jakob508, YeOldeGentleman, Squiver, StBlark, Dialog.groupie, JJMC89, Sexistpanda, Emelioa and
Anonymous: 573
Proletariat Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat?oldid=678165876 Contributors: The Anome, Gianfranco, Vanderesch,
William Avery, Grimm Ripper, Den fjttrade ankan~enwiki, Lupinoid, Cyan, Rednblu, Doradus, Maximus Rex, Flockmeal, Cncs
wikipedia, Robbot, Fifelfoo, Altenmann, Texture, Humus sapiens, Alan Liefting, Nikodemos, Eran, Pretzelpaws, Kim Bruning, Philwelch,
Taak, Spe88, Neilc, Antandrus, Satori, MRSC, Soman, Jafro, A-giau, Edgarde, Bender235, Ground, Grick, Yonghokim, Func, Chicago
god, Geschichte, Jumbuck, Gary, ThePedanticPrick, Akaneko, Riana, Max rspct, Colin Kimbrell, Suruena, Bookandcoee, Kazvorpal, Rroser167, Tabletop, Marudubshinki, BD2412, MarnetteD, Sango123, Yamamoto Ichiro, Fish and karate, Magmafox, FlaBot, Flydpnkrtn, Sophrosune, RexNL, Chobot, Jersey Devil, DVdm, Korg, VolatileChemical, Crosstimer, Kummi, YurikBot, Stan2525, RussBot, Hede2000, Splash, Stephenb, Kimchi.sg, Jimphilos, NawlinWiki, Markwiki, Rhythm, Grafen, Nick C, Jurriaan, Wardog, Zzuuzz,
Marco Passarani, Huldra, Innity0, Yakudza, SmackBot, Zazaban, Eskimbot, WhiskyWhiskers, Gilliam, Master Jay, Bluebot, Yankees76,
MalafayaBot, Greatgavini, BrendelSignature, Nixeagle, Rsm99833, Gavin Moodie, John D. Croft, Richard001, Last Avenue, Nmpenguin,
Synthe, Vobrcz, Mgiganteus1, Hvn0413, Chief RZ, Xiaphias, , Waggers, Iridescent, PollockMachette, Shoreranger, Wolfdog,
Hass2006, LiamJoseph, Yourmanstan, Neelix, Besidesamiracle, Ningum, R-41, Adolphus79, Spylab, DumbBOT, Thijs!bot, Frozenport, Marek69, Qvasi, PottersWood, Escarbot, AntiVandalBot, Edokter, LibLord, Hoponpop69, Deective, Cynwolfe, Stephenchou0722,
MartinBot, Tikitactinker, MacAuslan, J.delanoy, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Elfelix, Jesauer, Bogey97, Suviljan, Thomas Larsen, AKA
MBG, Shoessss, BookSquirrel, Chinasociology, Wetdogmeat, Djr13, X!, VolkovBot, Raggz, A4bot, Mogmiester, Beyond silence, SelketBot, VanishedUserABC, Cnilep, SieBot, Flyer22, Eballnik, Mimihitam, Oxymoron83, OKBot, ClueBot, The Thing That Should Not
Be, Marx07, Mild Bill Hiccup, On Thermonuclear War, Dr. B. R. Lang, Alexbot, Jusdafax, Jotterbot, Razorame, Bilbaosr, NJGW,
Jbh2wiki, XLinkBot, Messerjokke79, Livingwords, Addbot, Edgar8~enwiki, Proxima Centauri, AndersBot, Favonian, , Luckas-bot,
Behead rrance4, Utinomen, Valois bourbon, Gowr, Hunnjazal, , Xqbot, J04n, GrouchoBot, AVBOT, RibotBOT, SassoBot, GhalyBot, Yepthatsit, Shadowjams, Haploidavey, LucienBOT, Lumoy, W8ing4godot, Jauhienij, Jugni, Trappist the monk, Jonkerz, Vrenator,
LilyKitty, Lambanog, Tbhotch, Minimac, EmausBot, Az29, Meshuman, Winner 42, HarryRackmil, GeorgeBarnick, MonoAV, Rangoon11,
Lguipontes, ClueBot NG, Gaioa, Somedierentstu, Frietjes, Hazhk, Nordikrage, Lowercase sigmabot, Meclee, JYBot, Webclient101,
JasonMacker, CsDix, Hendrick 99, Stamptrader, Valfredotorpedo13, Monkbot, 3298230932782302, Squiver and Anonymous: 204
Class conict Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict?oldid=676650738 Contributors: Ed Poor, Fredbauder, Ryguasu, Atlan, Ahoerstemeier, Cadr, Fifelfoo, Sam Spade, Nikodemos, Lefty, Utcursch, Andycjp, Jdevine, Loremaster, Johnfreez, Kate, KillerChihuahua, Stbalbach, Lycurgus, Shax, Maurreen, Neg, Theman353, Knucmo2, Mlessard, Max rspct, Bookandcoee, Woohookitty, Ylem,
Lapsed Pacist, Frankie1969, Prashanthns, BD2412, RadioActive~enwiki, Dpv, Stardust8212, Taboo Tongue, Ground Zero, Malhonen,
BradBeattie, Bgwhite, RussBot, TheDoober, Pigman, Morphh, NawlinWiki, Wiki alf, Kingpomba, SmackBot, Ohnoitsjamie, AntelopeInSearchOfTruth, Jfsamper, Simpsons contributor, Fuhghettaboutit, Cybercobra, Zdravko mk, BullRangifer, Liquidswords, Gobonobo, Luokehao, Floridan, Ryan4, Vision Thing, Spylab, Skittleys, DumbBOT, Salvor Hardin, Donnachadelong, Epbr123, Robert honomichl,
Vertium, Mr pand, Ckhartman, Dsp13, Meddlecascade, VoABot II, Sideshow Bob Roberts, Edward321, Doctors without suspenders,
R'n'B, Brian.ellis, PhilLiberty, Kezmaniac, DadaNeem, Pdcook, Raggz, DuaneCampbell1, C.J. Grin, Phirosiberia, Farcaster, Vokidas,
Freedomwarrior, ClueBot, Der Golem, Sun Creator, Kaecyy, Redthoreau, Xme, TFOWR, WPjcm, Addbot, Jarble, Apollonius 1236,
Amirobot, Ningauble, AnomieBOT, XB70Valyrie, Materialscientist, Citation bot, LilHelpa, Jmv12387, Nychelse, Jean-Jacques Georges,
RightCowLeftCoast, CaptainFugu, Tobby72, Trust Is All You Need, DrilBot, Worddeuce, Full-date unlinking bot, Elmoro, Trappist the
monk, Zonglowe, Skakkle, John of Reading, Chiton magnicus, ZroBot, Cogiati, Brothernight, Thargor Orlando, Erianna, Mojowiha,
Brandmeister, Adelson Velsky Landis, Rangoon11, ClueBot NG, Mesoderm, Lowercase sigmabot, BG19bot, North911, Meclee, Bjhguerin,
EricEnfermero, BattyBot, Miszatomic, Mediran, Webclient101, Charles Essie, Dechrwr, JasonMacker, Tony Mach, Redblackwritings, Stilgar27, Roccodrift, Monkbot, Jeanleonboucher, E.D.J. Muckenfuss, KasparBot and Anonymous: 97
Classless society Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_society?oldid=659210062 Contributors: Robbot, Adamnelson, Beland,
Esperant, Lycurgus, Art LaPella, Jigen III, Bobrayner, Woohookitty, RussBot, Pigman, NawlinWiki, ONEder Boy, M3taphysical, NorsemanII, Carabinieri, SmackBot, Elendil's Heir, Kukini, Halaqah, Joseph Solis in Australia, JForget, Neelix, ST47, Peptuck, Capedia, DumbBOT, Thijs!bot, Nick Number, Tocharianne, Alphachimpbot, Yahel Guhan, Rich257, Allstarecho, Fang 23, R'n'B, Atheuz, Malik Shabazz,
Domwoolf, Sherlockindo, Canglesea, Explicit, Plastikspork, VolushGod, Arunsingh16, Nagika, Rphb, Bilbaosr, Addbot, Yobot, Amirobot,
Eduen, AnomieBOT, Materialscientist, TechBot, GrouchoBot, Adam9389, Happydude69 yo, Trust Is All You Need, Tbhotch, Tinpac,
EmausBot, WikitanvirBot, Joaosac, Tulandro, Rangoon11, Somedierentstu, Mesoderm, Lowercase sigmabot, Brad7777, Equilibrium
Allure, CsDix, I am One of Many and Anonymous: 36
Class consciousness Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_consciousness?oldid=679361955 Contributors: Edward, Dysprosia, HarryHenryGebel, Secretlondon, Alan Liefting, Adhib, Nikodemos, Pretzelpaws, DO'Neil, Rdsmith4, Livajo, Lycurgus, Remuel, Riana,
Velella, Zzyzx11, BD2412, Koavf, Bartleby, YurikBot, RussBot, NawlinWiki, M3taphysical, BOT-Superzerocool, Zzuuzz, Innity0,

3.1. TEXT

183

SmackBot, Mangoe, Chris the speller, Cybercobra, Zdravko mk, Lapaz, Bjankuloski06en~enwiki, Santa Sangre, JForget, Gregbard, Gogo
Dodo, Flowerpotman, Synergy, DumbBOT, Ernalve, Nick Number, Mmortal03, Escarbot, Jennesy, Artegis, Nyttend, ClovisPt, Vssun,
J.delanoy, Lauristan, STBotD, Mellow2167, TreasuryTag, Raggz, Kyle the bot, FitzColinGerald, SelketBot, Classicalecon, WordyGirl90,
Mild Bill Hiccup, TheOldJacobite, Hans Adler, SchreiberBike, IamNotU, TheLamprey, Addbot, Tanhabot, Hillawiya, Luckas-bot, Fraggle81, AnomieBOT, DemocraticLuntz, JMCJMC, Moraca34, Srich32977, J04n, Omnipaedista, Cswift2, Zd12, Ong saluri, NatDemUK,
Endy Leo, FoxBot, Tamarts, LilyKitty, Tbhotch, Bluszczokrzew, WikitanvirBot, Semmler, Erianna, Kite3350, ClueBot NG, Mesoderm,
Rezabot, Helpful Pixie Bot, Electriccatsh2, Lowercase sigmabot, PhnomPencil, Meclee, Tco03displays, CsDix, Sportsguy17 and Anonymous: 43
Commune (socialism) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune_(socialism)?oldid=679867455 Contributors: Koavf, Srleer,
Adoniscik, Pigman, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, Petrichor, Lambiam, Skomorokh, Fang 23, R'n'B, M-le-mot-dit, Djr13, Demigod Ron,
Father Inire, , Double.reed, Michaelwuzthere, Felojiro, Yobot, PaulWalter, AnomieBOT, Kasaalan, Crashtools redux, VanishedUser
hjgjktyjhddgf, Dudanotak, CsDix, Saectar and Anonymous: 13
Common ownership Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ownership?oldid=655464497 Contributors: Edward, KillerChihuahua, Bender235, Dan East, Michaelm, Woohookitty, Trdel, TobyJ, DVdm, TexasAndroid, Witan, Paki.tv, Banana04131, NeilN,
SmackBot, GeMiJa, Ohnoitsjamie, GwydionM, Battlecry, EPM, RolandR, Dreadstar, Gobonobo, Iridescent, Heathd, Richhoncho, Big
Bird, Skomorokh, Sysop100, Mbc362, Fang 23, Doomsday28, Scott Illini, Philip Trueman, Clarince63, Teknolyze, Operation Spooner,
Simem007, ClueBot, Fortune cell, JonStrines, Mindstalk, Mifter, Addbot, Rolandsukks, JoshuaD1991, Eduen, Dhidalgo, Teilolondon,
Tasudrty, Alumnum, Citation bot 1, Persian knight shiraz, Hoygan!!, Anatoly-Rex, ClueBot NG, Gob Lofa, KLBot2, Oleg-ch, CsDix,
TinaCFLE, JaconaFrere, DircoDT and Anonymous: 52
Dictatorship of the proletariat Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat?oldid=679579183 Contributors:
Ed Poor, Andre Engels, Enchanter, Fubar Obfusco, Graft, Vovkav~enwiki, Bth, Soulpatch, Olivier, Fred Bauder, Liftarn, 172, Atob,
Tpbradbury, Buridan, Johnleemk, Ewk, Owen, Altenmann, GreatWhiteNortherner, Marc Venot, Nikodemos, HangingCurve, DO'Neil,
Joo Neves, Kravietz, Christofurio, Formeruser-81, Martin Wisse, Kevin Rector, Gazpacho, Rich Farmbrough, Vapour, Murtasa, Elwikipedista~enwiki, Lycurgus, Yonghokim, Herzliyya, La goutte de pluie, Alansohn, Ultramarine, Mhazard9, Jef-Infojef, Bobrayner, Jeffrey O. Gustafson, GeorgeShaw, Stefanomione, Palica, Qwertyus, JHMM13, MarnetteD, Bash, FlaBot, RobertG, Ground Zero, Margosbot~enwiki, Jrtayloriv, Chobot, Benlisquare, Volunteer Marek, Bgwhite, YurikBot, Mongol, RussBot, Pigman, Gaius Cornelius, Anomalocaris, NawlinWiki, Leutha, Renata3, Superiority, Maphisto86, Carabinieri, DaltinWentsworth, Curpsbot-unicodify, Minur~enwiki, Innity0, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, YellowMonkey, ILBobby, Incnis Mrsi, Postbagboy, InverseHypercube, Hmains, Arash red, Darth Sidious, Solidusspriggan, Cybercobra, RolandR, Zdravko mk, Dantadd, Wybot, Nmpenguin, Raph89, Tazmaniacs, Sark6354201, Ws123,
Midnightblueowl, Pratheesh prakash, Joseph Solis in Australia, Bootleg42, Vision Thing, NisseSthlm, Emilio Juanatey, Gregbard,
Themightyquill, Cydebot, DumbBOT, Biruitorul, Vodomar, Escarbot, KrakatoaKatie, AntiVandalBot, J'onn J'onzz, JAnDbot, MikeFlynn52, Coreydragon, Kerotan, Magioladitis, WeeWillieWiki, Just H, Nat, DerHexer, Rickard Vogelberg, Sire22, Doctors without suspenders, Rgoodermote, ChrisWarren, Inbloom2, DorganBot, UnicornTapestry, JoelleJ, Maxmc, TXiKiBoT, Nono le petit robot~enwiki,
A4bot, SelketBot, Demigod Ron, Bawm79, SieBot, Sherlockindo, CmrdMariategui, Onopearls, Dabomb87, Ahuitzotl, JL-Bot, ClueBot, MurdukRambo, Der Golem, Muscovite99~enwiki, Alexbot, FOARP, MelonBot, TFOWR, Addbot, Leszek Jaczuk, NjardarBot,
CarsracBot, Michaelwuzthere, Debresser, Lightbot, Urpunkt, The Bushranger, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Apollonius 1236, WellsSouth, CinchBug, AnomieBOT, Rubinbot, Abstruce, Piano non troppo, Arilang1234, Xqbot, Csycrystal, PaineDisciple, Willdw79, FrescoBot, Markeilz,
Trust Is All You Need, RedBot, , My very best wishes, DixonDBot, Dasha14, Grantbonn, Anti-Nationalist, Jmfriesen, RjwilmsiBot,
EmausBot, WikitanvirBot, Eekerz, Wilcannia, Wikipelli, ZroBot, Leminh91, Aplex84, Semmler, Zloyvolsheb, Xiaoyu of Yuxi, ClueBot
NG, Hcrunyon, Edmund West, Ejensyd, Helpful Pixie Bot, Lowercase sigmabot, BG19bot, WikiTryHardDieHard, Mark Arsten, AnieHall,
Walras74, Lieutenant of Melkor, ChrisGualtieri, Asqueladd, Mogism, Pterosaur10, Partizanski2, Fox2k11, Pincrete, CsDix, Grant657,
Zozs, TimIsTimisTimIsTim, Ewersj, 3298230932782302, Spumuq, GeneralizationsAreBad and Anonymous: 137
Collective leadership Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_leadership?oldid=639265498 Contributors: Nahum, Str1977,
NawlinWiki, SmackBot, Battlecry, ShelfSkewed, Ericoides, KylieTastic, Addbot, Tassedethe, Yobot, Materialscientist, Omnipaedista,
Trust Is All You Need, Reaper Eternal, John of Reading, GoingBatty, Zloyvolsheb, Brandmeister, ClueBot NG, Helpful Pixie Bot, Lowercase sigmabot, BG19bot, Bagoto, Nowthis and Anonymous: 11
Scientic socialism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_socialism?oldid=665355303 Contributors: Michael Hardy, BAxelrod, Jni, Altenmann, Rursus, Michael Snow, Nikodemos, Grant65, PDH, Lycurgus, Pazouzou, Alansohn, Anthony Appleyard, Bkwillwm,
Qwertyus, FlaBot, Chobot, Ismail, Pigman, Salsb, NawlinWiki, PotatoSamurai, Sardanaphalus, KnightRider~enwiki, SmackBot, InverseHypercube, Chris the speller, Battlecry, BostonMA, Cybercobra, Storchofdoom, Santa Sangre, G1076, Joseph Solis in Australia, Gregbard,
DumbBOT, Massimo Macconi, Escarbot, Maurice Carbonaro, JayAbbott, Talking man, BOTijo, Bowei Huang 2, Eeekster, Marklar2007,
Addbot, Tanhabot, Luckas-bot, Eduen, AnomieBOT, Eskandarany, St.nerol, Loveless, , Adam9389, Trust Is All You Need,
Tbhotch, Jesse V., Bluszczokrzew, Dewritech, ZroBot, Semmler, VanSisean, ChuispastonBot, ClueBot NG, Priadn, Og of Bashan, Metaknowledge, Helpful Pixie Bot, Lowercase sigmabot, The Banner Turbo, Khazar2, HelicopterLlama, Chris.Cole.DC, CsDix, BreakfastJr,
ReconditeRodent, Mundopopular, Karmanatory, Squiver and Anonymous: 28
Gift economy Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy?oldid=678771710 Contributors: Eloquence, Bryan Derksen,
DanKeshet, Aldie, Ghakko, William Avery, Roadrunner, SimonP, Anthere, Olivier, Edward, Nealmcb, Palnatoke, Llywrch, Shyamal,
Lquilter, R4f~enwiki, Shimmin, Tregoweth, Ronz, Jpatokal, Snoyes, LittleDan, Tparvu, Tim Retout, Ruhrjung, Dcoetzee, DJ Clayworth,
Jmabel, Altenmann, Nurg, LGagnon, Bkell, Wereon, Connelly, ScudLee, Nikodemos, Everyking, Bluejay Young, John Abbe, Gadum, Beland, Piotrus, Joi, Rdsmith4, Qleem, GreenReaper, Vivacissamamente, Eisnel, Chris Howard, Brianhe, Rich Farmbrough, Florian Blaschke,
Bishonen, ChristianJacken, Pavel Vozenilek, Gronky, Bender235, CanisRufus, Lycurgus, Quantumstream, Wareh, Dalf, Nigelj, Cretog8,
Viriditas, Polocrunch, Maurreen, Acntx, Ziggurat, Scott Ritchie, La goutte de pluie, Silverback, Hooperbloob, Chira, Diego Moya, Andrewpmk, Deacon of Pndapetzim, Gunter, Markaci, Bobrayner, Wdyoung, Jpers36, The Writer~enwiki, Robert K S, BoLingua, Bkwillwm,
Taghawi-Nejad, CharlesC, Waldir, Mandarax, Ictlogist, Azkar, Graham87, BD2412, Qwertyus, Rjwilmsi, Andyswarbs, Yahoolian, Freddydesouza, Themightychris, Pikiwedia~enwiki, EronMain, Sperxios, Schandi, Jackalus, Bgwhite, ColdFeet, YurikBot, Wavelength, Waitak,
RussBot, Pigman, GregLoutsenko, Gaius Cornelius, PaulGarner, Nirvana2013, Adaxl, LaszloWalrus, Todfox, Pawyilee, WAS 4.250,
Maphisto86, Arthur Rubin, Saukkomies, Bob Hu, Madashell, NeilN, SmackBot, McGeddon, Unyoyega, Lawrencekhoo, KVDP, Rthunder, Betacommand, KDRGibby, TimBentley, Fuzzform, Victorgrigas, Robth, Aridd, Hongooi, Sunnan, Rrburke, Krsont, Ne0Freedom,
Farsee50, John D. Croft, Nmpenguin, Arthur Welle~enwiki, Robotforaday, Tazmaniacs, Gobonobo, Rundquist, Makyen, TastyPoutine, Basicdesign, Eastlaw, Joostvandeputte~enwiki, Dhammapal, CmdrObot, NaBUru38, Seven of Nine, Safalra, Cydebot, Steel-Froggy, Ntsimp,
FreeTOreuse, Doug Weller, Maziotis, Donnachadelong, Thijs!bot, John254, Stybn, KrakatoaKatie, Saimhe, Credema, Gdo01, Barek,

184

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

B.S. Lawrence, Moralist, CWinDC, Richard a b, Fiasco229, Economo, Inhumandecency, Sharemind, Wiki wiki1, Richard Odin Johnson,
Krotty, Rickburnes, Tdadamemd, Julipanette, Girl2k, Danalpha, Jrg Sutter, TWCarlson, DASonnenfeld, Signalhead, Saisatha, Therealtahu, Malik Shabazz, Thewolf37, Fences and windows, Yamanam, MusicScience, Rei-bot, Joe2832, Dharmaburning, UnitedStatesian,
Brian Human, Vgrass, Twayburn, Phe-bot, Jschoneb, Nxg2007, Jojalozzo, Janwiklund, Free4kids dawn, Smaug123, Skeptical scientist,
Mhnin0, ClueBot, Meisterkoch, Orestisv, GeneCallahan, Starvinsky, Digambers, Drmies, Ye Olde Anarchist, Auntof6, Northernhenge,
Tikimoped, Arjayay, Zappa711, Editor2020, SF007, XLinkBot, Burningmax, Felix Folio Secundus, VanishedUser ewrfgdg3df3, Addbot,
USchick, MrOllie, D.c.camero, Lindasmith247, Jan eissfeldt, Jarble, Ben Ben, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Ptbotgourou, Pharmakis, Freikorp,
Gav2d, Eduen, AnomieBOT, DemocraticLuntz, Floquenbeam, Materialscientist, Media47, Omnipaedista, Crinoline, FrescoBot, Tophee1,
Wetterfree, Novaseminary, Citation bot 1, AstaBOTh15, RedBot, MastiBot, Plasticspork, Wikiwedo, Mcalison, UnderHigh, Vrenator,
Reaper Eternal, Kwalton414, Aviv007, RjwilmsiBot, Bantam1983, Moray mair, EmausBot, Danielstrong52, Montgolre, Dewritech,
Slightsmile, Wikipelli, Kwalt414, Elektralight, H3llBot, Ldelman, ClueBot NG, Gift Economy 12, AugspurgII, Snotbot, Helpful Pixie
Bot, BG19bot, Northamerica1000, Brianain, Nicholforest, God45, Jampel~enwiki, Cretog7, TradeMarkG, Safehaven86, WikiHannibal,
BattyBot, J.canales60, Khazar2, Gerbish, Dexbot, Slee500, Irychu, Wenshidi, Schrauwers, CsDix, Tpylkk, Kap 7, Garab-en, Glaisher,
Jenaye, Pablo Darko, 51coin, Turgeis, Anarcham, Monkbot, D. Cordoba-Bahle, You better look out below! and Anonymous: 232
Communist society Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society?oldid=677535066 Contributors: Ed Poor, Altenmann, Piotrus, GregorB, Pigman, NawlinWiki, SmackBot, Battlecry, DumbBOT, Vestigial Thumb, Zeleftikam, Lklundin, KathrynLybarger, JLBot, Escape Orbit, Michaelwuzthere, Serols, Hardtondaname, Lovok Sovok, ClueBot NG, Helpful Pixie Bot, Lowercase sigmabot, Iryna
Harpy, Zumoarirodoka, TURTLOS, Sweepy, Vondapace81,64 and Anonymous: 13
Socialist mode of production Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_mode_of_production?oldid=657354390 Contributors:
Robbot, Mike Rosoft, BD2412, NawlinWiki, Nickst, Battlecry, RolandR, Tktktk, RekishiEJ, DumbBOT, , AtticusX, R'n'B, Addbot,
Mooretwin, Materialscientist, Omnipaedista, RibotBOT, Zd12, Trust Is All You Need, Tbhotch, EmausBot, John of Reading, ZroBot,
Jonpatterns, Semmler, ClueBot NG, Helpful Pixie Bot, Lowercase sigmabot, BG19bot, CsDix, Jodosma, Konveyor Belt, Monkbot, LaneisRatchet, Squiver, Innite0694 and Anonymous: 18
World revolution Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_revolution?oldid=672346092 Contributors: 172, Warofdreams, Robbot,
Jmabel, Altenmann, Nikodemos, Monedula, Duncharris, Gzornenplatz, Martin Wisse, Soman, S.K., Lycurgus, Grenavitar, Ghirlandajo,
Woohookitty, A.K.A.47, Lapsed Pacist, Stefanomione, RCBot~enwiki, YurikBot, RussBot, NawlinWiki, Bronks, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, Kandarin, Kikodawgzz, Vina-iwbot~enwiki, Gnevin, Dukemeiser, Joseph Solis in Australia, Vision Thing, Was a bee, DumbBOT,
Chill doubt, JAnDbot, JamesBWatson, Nat, R'n'B, CommonsDelinker, Laurusnobilis, TXiKiBoT, SieBot, Shakko, Church, ClueBot,
Redthoreau, Riversider2008, Hell Hawk, XLinkBot, JCDenton2052, Addbot, Guoguo12, Glane23, Beltov1895, Lightbot, LuK3, ,
Luckas-bot, Yobot, QueenCake, Eskandarany, Adel.M.Radwan, Kikodawgzzz, Willdw79, Ski, TedderBot, Wadayow, Dasha14, Tbhotch,
RjwilmsiBot, EmausBot, Orphan Wiki, ZroBot, Tulandro, Aplex84, Midas02, Hydriz, L Kensington, Kuragin, FERHAT ATAMAN,
ClueBot NG, Snotbot, Lowercase sigmabot, Jim Sukwutput, Henry McClean, SD5bot, Charles Essie, Aua1422, CsDix, Nixin06, Karmanatory, KasparBot and Anonymous: 37
Anti-imperialism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-imperialism?oldid=678993243 Contributors: SimonP, Edward, WhisperToMe, Maximus Rex, Pir, Robbot, Henrygb, Nikodemos, Zoney, Jackol, Wmahan, Rdsmith4, WpZurp, Esperant, KNewman, Discospinster, Rich Farmbrough, Mat cross, Aris Katsaris, Smalljim, Alpheus, Delius, Riana, JK the unwise, Mhazard9, Bobrayner, Tabletop,
BD2412, Gaurax, Jweiss11, Matt Deres, SchuminWeb, TeaDrinker, Gwernol, YurikBot, Hairy Dude, Pigman, Hogeye, Member, Wimt,
NawlinWiki, Nirvana2013, Rjensen, M3taphysical, Drbest, Closedmouth, Vino s, Tim R, SmackBot, Prodego, Arre, Gilliam, Ohnoitsjamie,
Hmains, Kitrus, Persian Poet Gal, Jprg1966, Darth Sidious, DKalkin, Colonies Chris, Laurent666, Rajja~enwiki, Futurechromex3x, Lapaz, Scientizzle, Robosh, Levineps, Iridescent, Shoeofdeath, JStewart, Muro, Mrdthree, Linkspamremover, CmdrObot, Bobfrombrockley, Banedon, ObiterDicta, Gregbard, Spylab, DumbBOT, 23prootie, Cafeirlandais, AntiVandalBot, Carolmooredc, Michig, Schmackity, VoABot II, Twsx, Michaelcullinane, Robotman1974, Weloveicecream, Anaxial, Fconaway, J.delanoy, Crazyoverhistory, Scott Illini,
VolkovBot, Castrum~enwiki, Bencgibbins, Alexbook, Breawycker, StarLove, Political Guru, WordyGirl90, Martarius, ClueBot, Drmies,
Mild Bill Hiccup, TheOldJacobite, Lord Science, Cfsenel, Solar-Wind, DragonBot, Alexbot, Redthoreau, BarretB, XLinkBot, King
Willan Bot~enwiki, Addbot, Rillybobinson, LaaknorBot, Mbinebri, Lightbot, Yobot, AnomieBOT, Valois bourbon, Materialscientist, LilHelpa, Capricorn42, Acebulf, Stars4change, Teilers, RibotBOT, Carrite, Pereant antiburchius, NJMarxed50, azak, FrescoBot, Sroach2,
Pinethicket, Commissarusa, Gaubbi, EmausBot, John of Reading, Orphan Wiki, Mz7, ZroBot, JoeSperrazza, Wikiwind, ClueBot NG,
Runehelmet, Helpful Pixie Bot, Lowercase sigmabot, Mark Arsten, Rm1271, Ts5seeker, EricEnfermero, LenahBabee, YFdyh-bot, Claomh
Solais, Scr206, Jamesx12345, Faizan, CsDix, Explorser, Comp.arch, RickNiggs222, GPRamirez5, Maskani123, SkateTier, SantiLak,
Ephemeratta, Gouncbeatduke, Bohemian Baltimore, Czwelker, KasparBot and Anonymous: 143
Theory of the productive forces Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_productive_forces?oldid=668141224 Contributors: 172, Delirium, Pavel Vozenilek, Bobrayner, RussBot, Ksyrie, Tony1, Sardanaphalus, Intangible, SmackBot, Small Prot, Battlecry,
Davecampbell, Kikodawgzz, Cold Light, Robosh, Devourer09, Vision Thing, 100110100, Singularity, Nat, Laval, Gr8opinionater, Addbot, Lightbot, Yobot, Legobot II, Kikodawgzzz, Trust Is All You Need, Helpful Pixie Bot, BattyBot, ChrisGualtieri, DerickDiamond and
Anonymous: 28
Economic planning Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_planning?oldid=666372265 Contributors: Edward, Andycjp, Bender235, Cretog8, Mdd, RJII, Woohookitty, BD2412, KYPark, Jrtayloriv, RussBot, Grafen, Arthur Rubin, SmackBot, Lawrencekhoo,
Nickst, Edgar181, Chris the speller, Colonies Chris, Battlecry, Byelf2007, Minna Sora no Shita, Gsaup, EagleFan, Francis Tyers, Adavidb,
Colchicum, Teknolyze, MystBot, Addbot, Yobot, AnomieBOT, Courtmaster, Apjohns54, Jean-Jacques Georges, FrescoBot, Winterst,
Jonkerz, Duoduoduo, EmausBot, Goti123, John Cline, Semmler, Chekoduce, My account rocks, Mcc1789, Petrb, ClueBot NG, Helpful
Pixie Bot, Polmandc, Abezgauz, CsDix, Charles tiplitz, WPGA2345, Monkbot, Zorakton and Anonymous: 27
Commanding heights of the economy Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commanding_heights_of_the_economy?oldid=624904182
Contributors: Trust Is All You Need, Dark Liberty and Anonymous: 1
Communist state Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_state?oldid=679878723 Contributors: The Cunctator, Lee Daniel
Crocker, Bryan Derksen, Slrubenstein, Ed Poor, RK, Eclecticology, XJaM, Roadrunner, Daniel C. Boyer, Hephaestos, Olivier, Infrogmation, Michael Hardy, Fred Bauder, Jtdirl, MartinHarper, Tannin, 172, Jimfbleak, Jpatokal, G-Man, Ugen64, Pratyeka, Jll, Jiang,
Rawr, Shino Baku, GCarty, Efghij, John K, Samuel~enwiki, Johan Magnus, Charles Matthews, Mendor, Tb, ThomasStrohmann~enwiki,
Tempshill, VeryVerily, Shizhao, Joy, Mackensen, Warofdreams, Jusjih, Johnleemk, David.Monniaux, Owen, PuzzletChung, Branddobbe,
Ke4roh, Fredrik, Altenmann, Boraczek, Rholton, Yacht, Seajay, Lancemurdoch, Guy Peters, MaGioZal, Christopher Parham, Nikodemos,
Tom harrison, Marcika, Everyking, Curps, Cantus, DO'Neil, Luis rib, Kpalion, Gzornenplatz, Avala, Chameleon, Sesel, Ruy Lopez, Mike R,

3.1. TEXT

185

Formeruser-81, Antandrus, Piotrus, Kaldari, Rdsmith4, Comandante, Rlquall, Yossarian, Soman, Neutrality, Joyous!, Ukexpat, Meesham,
GreenReaper, Pinnerup, Adashiel, Yazman, Mike Rosoft, Miborovsky, Nimbulan, Juan Ponderas, Discospinster, Rich Farmbrough, Rhobite, Brutannica, Socrates999, Aris Katsaris, Trey Stone, Pmcm, Lycurgus, Juppiter, RoyBoy, Jpgordon, 96T, Bobo192, Che y Marijuana,
Sdaconsulting, Cwolfsheep, The shaggy one, La goutte de pluie, Pazouzou, Shorne, SecretAgentMan00, BillyTFried, Silverback, Vanished user azby388723i8jfjh32, Espoo, Ricky81682, JoaoRicardo, Alinor, Cmapm, Instantnood, Ultramarine, FrancisTyers, OleMaster,
TigerShark, Alakhriveion, Tobyox, Sean II, Lapsed Pacist, Kralizec!, Bubeck, JMaxwell, Dysepsion, Magister Mathematicae, Monk, DJ
Silversh, Koavf, TJive, Avia, Rillian, Valip, DirkvdM, Yamamoto Ichiro, FlaBot, Ground Zero, Doc glasgow, Gurch, Jrtayloriv, Str1977,
Le Anh-Huy, NGerda~enwiki, Chobot, AFA, VolatileChemical, YurikBot, Vuvar1, Neitherday, RussBot, 10stone5, Nobs01, Akamad, Big
Brother 1984, Kaligon~enwiki, BGManofID, Ou tis, Natsymir, CJK, Bmdavll, Robert McClenon, Solstag, Banes, Xdenizen, ThrashedParanoid, Larry laptop, Danlaycock, Formeruser-82, Nick C, Red enjolras, Ebralph, HieronymusBosch, NWOG, Ms2ger, Richardcavell,
Closedmouth, Petri Krohn, LeonardoRob0t, Nixer, Smurfy, Fastifex, Sardanaphalus, Intangible, Attilios, Chicocvenancio, MartinGugino,
Scolaire, SmackBot, NSLE, Konulu, BobFromBrockley, TimTim, Xaosux, Hmains, Squiddy, KDRGibby, Teemu Ruskeep, Hibernian,
Bayano, Seth a, Octahedron80, NicAgent, Impfac, Colonies Chris, Constanz, Darth Panda, Royboycrashfan, A Geek Tragedy, Frap, Battlecry, Argyriou, The russian leader, TheKMan, Calbaer, Khoikhoi, Cybercobra, RolandR, Nmpenguin, Ricky@36, Rimshot74, Giovanni33,
Jason Brock, Euchiasmus, CPMcE, JorisvS, Accurizer, Vanished user 56po34it12ke, Francomemoria, Tasc, Wolfdog71, Pejman47, DabMachine, WGee, The Giant Pun, Joseph Solis in Australia, Mrdthree, Ajlandin, W123, Anger22, Tawkerbot2, Hum richard, JForget,
Wolfdog, Ale jrb, Bobfrombrockley, Dycedarg, Vision Thing, JohnCD, Mateus Hidalgo, Gwilson, Shanew2, Themightyquill, Cydebot,
R-41, AlexanderLevian, Gonzo fan2007, Rbanzai, MarxistNapoleon, CieloEstrellado, Epbr123, Biruitorul, RevolverOcelotX, Railer 772,
Tocino, AntiVandalBot, Vanjagenije, Historypre, JAnDbot, JenLouise, FromFoamsToWaves, Dsp13, Andonic, Oakhouse, Dricherby,
Dragonnas, Abu ali, VoABot II, Kuyabribri, Puddhe, Hihihi100, Steven Walling, 28421u2232nfenfcenc, Nat, NoJoyInMudville, DerHexer, Textorus, MartinBot, Matt Lewis, Doctors without suspenders, Dorvaq, Mschel, Vlad51, J.delanoy, AuthenticM, Maurice Carbonaro, General Idea, Balsa10, Laurusnobilis, Zimmy 9, Novis-M, RaGnaRoK SepHr0tH, HiLo48, Joo Jernimo~enwiki, Omes, Inbloom2, Madhava 1947, Joshua Issac, Jjhcap99, Wjo00, Lilevilbrian, Vaber134, VolkovBot, That-Vela-Fella, Epson291, Starshinelovely,
C.J. Grin, StillTrill, Quindraco, Demigod Ron, Wassamatta, Master of the Orchalcos, Ptah, the El Daoud, AlleborgoBot, Ianhurley, ColdDiablo, Kwekwc, AngChenrui, Coee, Rockstone35, Caltas, Cameron12345, Keilana, Redstar1987, RucasHost, Mimihitam,
AnonGuy, Lightmouse, Tampasteve, Aravind V R, Presidentman, Bowei Huang 2, Georgegh, BHenry1969, ImageRemovalBot, Rolandinmud, ClueBot, Avenged Eightfold, Der Golem, CounterVandalismBot, Niceguyedc, Muscovite99~enwiki, Sirius85, Excirial, Dre123,
TonyBallioni, Jwkozak91, Jungykanglolipop, Mkouri, Andreik47, Vercetii777, Belchre, IJA, DumZiBoT, Local hero, Tealwisp, BodhisattvaBot, Anton Tudor, SilvonenBot, SkyLined, Addbot, Arrest traitor rance12, SpellingBot, CanadianLinuxUser, Mnmazur, Amerul,
Michaelwuzthere, Henkt, Lightbot, Al3xil, Ben Ben, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Kulak revenge, KamikazeBot, AnomieBOT, Ichwan Palongengi,
, Plumber, Bluemonkey15, Materialscientist, Eskandarany, Nut1917, Estlandia~enwiki, Firstman692002, Khajidha, BlueWorld,
Omnipaedista, Rimlanin, Jean-Jacques Georges, Asfarer, FrescoBot, Wikitiki666, Mistakender, TownDown, Trust Is All You Need,
A Werewolf, Marixist101, Elijahhee, FriedrickMILBarbarossa, Seryo93, My very best wishes, RobertHuaXia, Double sharp, TobeBot,
L Hi Hip, N.11.6, Lotje, Dasha14, Travelbybus, LienEmpire, RjwilmsiBot, MAXXX-309, EmausBot, WikitanvirBot, TuneyLoon,
Slightsmile, MeowTron78, MikeThe1st, Kkm010, Leminh91, Lechonero, Zloyvolsheb, Wiggy1223, DigitalHoodoo, Comrade Sniper93,
Shrigley, ChuispastonBot, Mcc1789, Whoop whoop pull up, Fluttershy~enwiki, LittleJerry, XXPowerMexicoXx, RJFF, Ejensyd, Scpaistechina, Helpful Pixie Bot, Wbm1058, BG19bot, Kndimov, Darkness Shines, User1961914, Johnboy2999, LoneWolf1992, Goti1233,
Aisteco, Socialistguy, Th4n3r, Funeralunicorn, ChrisGualtieri, SD5bot, AMS351996, Stumink, JCHeverly, Oh, Charles Essie, Liquidinsurgency, Jorjjdjsjiejejejjsjsjajqoak, Soredo, , RhinoMind, Logical1004, Blondeguynative, Kalix94, WikiWinters, Zozs, Apipia,
Trackteur, Mundopopular, Spumuq, AsharaDayne, Endr Hejs, TURTLOS, Sweepy, Scourge of Trumpton and Anonymous: 289
Democratic centralism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism?oldid=679371461 Contributors: Ed Poor, Graft,
Soulpatch, Rbrwr, Radicalsubversiv, BigFatBuddha, Palfrey, Maximus Rex, Warofdreams, Altenmann, DocWatson42, MaGioZal, Nikodemos, HangingCurve, Fpahl, Incka, Martin Wisse, Jock Haston, Jenlight, Mathx314, Freakofnurture, Lycurgus, Palmiro, Davenbelle, Humble Guy, Alai, Ultramarine, Libertas~enwiki, Mrio, Isnow, Koavf, Leon Trotsky, Lairor, Nguyen Thanh Quang, FlaBot, Ground Zero,
Margosbot~enwiki, VolatileChemical, Bgwhite, YurikBot, RobotE, Member, NawlinWiki, Wiki alf, Formeruser-82, Zwobot, Bronks,
Petri Krohn, TwelveStones, Sardanaphalus, DuncanBCS, Dolaro, Cheezisyum21, Bluebot, Polotet, EncephalonSeven, Moonshiner, DHNbot~enwiki, DKalkin, Cybercobra, BullRangifer, Lapaz, Tazmaniacs, Joseph Solis in Australia, Vision Thing, Cydebot, DumbBOT,
Thijs!bot, Objectivesea, Mspandana, Robotman1974, Nat, R'n'B, Prezen, Yonidebot, STBotD, VolkovBot, Metal.lunchbox, DavidMIA,
TXiKiBoT, Rei-bot, Franz.87, Demigod Ron, Mk orion, MaynardClark, ClueBot, SummerWithMorons, Alexbot, Sq178pv, Addbot,
Bertrc, NjardarBot, Mosedschurte, Tide rolls, Lightbot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, AnomieBOT, ArthurBot, Xqbot, Kjk2.1, GrouchoBot, Abce2,
Urgos, Trust Is All You Need, Jivee Blau, TobeBot, DixonDBot, Tbhotch, EmausBot, Joefunkateer, Namnguyenvn, Aplex84, H3llBot, Peter Geatings, Wbm1058, Gob Lofa, Lowercase sigmabot, Abezgauz, Charles Essie, , CsDix, Non-pupulus-impilium,
KasparBot, Joshwond and Anonymous: 54
MarxistLeninist atheism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist%E2%80%93Leninist_atheism?oldid=667578473 Contributors: Reddi, Tom harrison, Snowolf, Koavf, Thane, NawlinWiki, SmackBot, Jprg1966, CmdrObot, Gregbard, Ningum, Tec15, DumbBOT, Magioladitis, Squids and Chips, Pjoef, Newzild, Eeekster, Redthoreau, AgnosticPreachersKid, Addbot, LaaknorBot, Yobot,
AnomieBOT, SvinayaGolova, Adam9389, Trust Is All You Need, Bmclaughlin9, Reesorville, My very best wishes, Shanmugamp7,
Callanecc, Dewritech, Userofsite1, Zloyvolsheb, Wikignome0530, Lakorv, ClueBot NG, Piast93, Helpful Pixie Bot, Knox490, Lowercase
sigmabot, Greenknight dv, ChrisGualtieri, Khazar2, Oh, UrbanaChampaignHistorian, PAB1990, CsDix, AntiguanAcademic, Androgyne,
Monkbot, Judabell and Anonymous: 22
Proletarian internationalism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_internationalism?oldid=662693955 Contributors: Altenmann, Humus sapiens, Robert Weemeyer, MistToys, Quarl, Rich Farmbrough, Livajo, Pearle, Matturn, Valip, RexNL, Pigman, NawlinWiki, Paki.tv, NHSavage, Innity0, One, C mon, SmackBot, Britannicus, DuncanBCS, OrionK, Xx236, Kikodawgzz, KI, ChaChaFut,
PJB, G1076, CmdrObot, Cydebot, DumbBOT, StaticElectric, Mattisse, Thijs!bot, AntiVandalBot, J.delanoy, EdWalker58, Redagying,
VolkovBot, TreasuryTag, Nikosgreencookie, SieBot, Sherlockindo, Bowei Huang 2, Sirius85, Alexbot, XLinkBot, Addbot, Fred927, ,
Luckas-bot, Yobot, Terrasque, Ptbotgourou, Eduen, Synchronism, Apjohns54, MauritsBot, Xqbot, Srich32977, Marxwasright, Wadayow,
Haaninjo, Dasha14, Grantbonn, Gritob, WikitanvirBot, Cogiati, Aplex84, MarionFSU, Ever present past, Spartacus Marat, Lowercase
sigmabot, CsDix, Filedelinkerbot, Karmanatory, KasparBot and Anonymous: 47
Socialist patriotism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_patriotism?oldid=679413192 Contributors: Bearcat, BD2412, NawlinWiki, R-41, Katharineamy, Addbot, The Elves Of Dunsimore, Sayerslle, ZroBot, RJFF, Lowercase sigmabot, Solomon7968, ChrisGualtieri, Webclient101, Charles Essie, Stilgar27, Finnusertop and Anonymous: 8

186

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Single-party state Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-party_state?oldid=677111070 Contributors: The Anome, Taw, Roadrunner, Defrenrokorit, Michael Hardy, Jtdirl, Tannin, Ellywa, Ahoerstemeier, Jpatokal, Muriel Gottrop~enwiki, Jiang, Kaihsu, Mxn, Dwo,
The Tom, WhisperToMe, Robert0122, Donarreiskoer, Modulatum, Lowellian, Ojigiri~enwiki, Meelar, Bkell, Saforrest, Davidcannon,
MaGioZal, Nikodemos, HangingCurve, Wilfried Derksen, Peruvianllama, Everyking, Slyguy, Avala, Deus Ex, Sesel, Pgan002, Antandrus, Piotrus, Domino theory, Comandante, Huaiwei, Soman, Neutrality, MementoVivere, MiguelFC, Regebro, Naive cynic, Hayabusa
future, RoyBoy, Leif, CDN99, Herzliyya, Cwolfsheep, Acntx, VBGFscJUn3, Jumbuck, Mailer diablo, Instantnood, Nightstallion, Dennis
Bratland, Woohookitty, Lapsed Pacist, SDC, Ignus, BD2412, David Levy, Electionworld, Koavf, Valip, Emarsee, Vsion, Dtasripin, DEIDATVM, Wrightbus, Le Anh-Huy, Benjwong, Benlisquare, Dnadan, YurikBot, Ismail, Neitherday, Peter G Werner, Hede2000, NawlinWiki, Welsh, Countakeshi, Number 57, Ezeu, Rockero, Danlaycock, Lockesdonkey, Takethemud, Zello, Jack Upland, PaxEquilibrium,
GrinBot~enwiki, Samuel Blanning, Teo64x, Sardanaphalus, Josh Triplett, SmackBot, C.Lser, Timkmak, Inmngolia, Frymaster, Hmains,
Heliostellar, Hibernian, DHN-bot~enwiki, Gracenotes, Hildanknight, Cplakidas, Zleitzen, CrnaGora, Huon, FinScribe, Radagast83, Cybercobra, DMacks, DavidMann, SashatoBot, Stewie814, The alliance, Gobonobo, Francomemoria, Werdan7, Arctic-Editor, Andrwsc,
Joseph Solis in Australia, Wjejskenewr, Emote, Picaroon, Joncnunn, Kafat, Matt. P, Cahk, R-41, Treveraritz, Tototom, DumbBOT, TAIWAN, PKT, Thijs!bot, Biruitorul, Anticom, Varavour, SeNeKa, Rodrigo Cornejo, Nick Number, MinnesotanConfederacy, Paul from
Michigan, Vanjagenije, Erukto, R4ge, Gavia immer, VoABot II, Myintzan, Catgut, IkonicDeath, Joe Hoper, .V., Mannerheim2015, MartinBot, J.delanoy, Trusilver, Sideshow Bob, Maurice Carbonaro, GhostPirate, Mangwanani, A4bot, Planetary Chaos, Saber girl08, Klamber,
JhsBot, Broadbot, Yaan, Maxim, Koine2002, Danrolo~enwiki, Albert45, Coldmachine, Master of the Orchalcos, Fanatix, WereSpielChequers, Dawn Bard, Francish7, Radon210, Greatrobo76, PalaceGuard008, Quisquillian, Gr8opinionater, ClueBot, The Thing That Should
Not Be, Place Clichy, DragonBot, Pumpmeup, Alexbot, Leontios, NuclearWarfare, JethroOlympiad, Searcher 1990, Piyavkin, Berean
Hunter, BodhisattvaBot, Maglev Power, SilvonenBot, JCDenton2052, Addbot, Roentgenium111, Ironholds, Kman543210, WikiEditor50,
Michael-Billa, Michaelwuzthere, Audirs8, Lightbot, Zorrobot, DrFO.Tn.Bot, Dr3rdeye, Craigweek, MauriManya, AnomieBOT, SwiftlyTilt, AdjustShift, Unara, Cristiano Ton, EryZ, Materialscientist, Xqbot, Texmon, Eeeeeewtw, FrescoBot, Mestiri tn, HCPUNXKID,
Trust Is All You Need, AndresHerutJaim, Pinethicket, Elockid, Canistabbats, My very best wishes, RobertHuaXia, Uttrillom17, Camelmrox, Celyndel, Yugteiuq, Amir.Hossein.7055, Pbrower2a, Juybari, Tbhotch, IANVS, MAXXX-309, Yakamoz51, SteliosGR, Kpuersh,
Sundostund, KazekageTR, Shrigley, Sabaku The Berserk, 48Lugur, 28bot, E. Fokker, Petrb, ClueBot NG, Mhyrrrr, HeadlessMaster,
Satellizer, Akhil.bharathan, Hazhk, O.Koslowski, MerlIwBot, Yoshiharu10, Lowercase sigmabot, Trantsbugle, Sematz, Kndimov, EddyVadim, Tachn, Solomon7968, Mark Arsten, LoneWolf1992, AlexTheGrand, Khazar2, KS79, Abezgauz, Mojss12, Charles Essie, MMalczyk, Ranze, Jemappelleungarcon, , Cendes, Marxistfounder, BreakfastJr, Zmavius, Unkownaha, Random Unsung, Kyle calloway,
Finnusertop, Ginsuloft, Ben Tuckett, Ancholm, Filedelinkerbot, Sciophobiaranger, ElCommandanteVzl, KasparBot, RedVinesSule and
Anonymous: 279
Socialist state Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state?oldid=677850412 Contributors: Ed Poor, Paul Benjamin Austin, Andres, Johan Magnus, Warofdreams, Altenmann, Nikodemos, Sesel, Ruy Lopez, Kathar, Discospinster, Lycurgus, Alansohn, Cmapm,
Woohookitty, Jacob Haller, Jhskg7843hjskdyg7843ythiul43h, Angusmclellan, TJive, Avia, CR85747, Tijuana Brass, Russavia, Hairy
Dude, Conscious, NawlinWiki, Retired username, Stevens757, Maphisto86, C mon, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, AndreasJS, Srnec, Teemu
Ruskeep, Chris the speller, Thumperward, Raymond arritt, Xx236, Bayano, DHN-bot~enwiki, Battlecry, Cybercobra, Deepred6502,
Rigadoun, Joseph Solis in Australia, Rnb, Namiba, Kcm367~enwiki, Vision Thing, Future Perfect at Sunrise, R-41, DumbBOT, RevolverOcelotX, AntiVandalBot, Manuel de Sousa, Caledones, Fyunck(click), Vanjagenije, LibLord, North Shoreman, JAnDbot, Skomorokh, SlamDiego, Fang 23, Ahmad87, Pravda1987, J.delanoy, Tdadamemd, Olegwiki, Madhava 1947, Kaze no Kae, Johnfos, Varokhar,
Andysoh, Demigod Ron, Master of the Orchalcos, Bluedenim, Redstar1987, Neverquick, Sirius85, Holothurion, Versus22, IngerAlHaosului, Addbot, C6541, Landon1980, Ronhjones, Amerul, CarsracBot, Michaelwuzthere, Jarble, Yobot, Azial Xarel Druda, Adikhebat, AnomieBOT, Rejedef, Ulric1313, LilHelpa, TheBTMANIAC5, Omnipaedista, RibotBOT, FrescoBot, Hydrarkt, Zd12, Asbfasgh,
Trust Is All You Need, Kitty555, Garrythesh, Radu Gherasim, I dream of horses, Seryo93, Mitnuie, RobertHuaXia, Commissarusa,
WildBot, Dewritech, Lubutu, Hiimfuzzy502, ChuispastonBot, Lovok Sovok, TYelliot, ClueBot NG, O.Koslowski, Usageunit, Helvitica
Bold, Wbm1058, Gob Lofa, Lowercase sigmabot, ElphiBot, Tomasz Raburski, Fylbecatulous, Justincheng12345-bot, Khazar2, KS79,
Abstractematics, Marxistfounder, Jorjjdjsjiejejejjsjsjajqoak, JamesMoose, Zozs, P.Smolick, Sciophobiaranger, Verydinky, KasparBot,
Sweepy and Anonymous: 88
Vanguardism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism?oldid=674398276 Contributors: Altenmann, Loremaster, Martin
Wisse, Waxwing slain, Qwertyus, DJ Silversh, Tlroche, Rjwilmsi, Nightscream, Ground Zero, Saketh, Nobs01, Shanel, NawlinWiki,
Faulty, SmackBot, Derek Andrews, InverseHypercube, Squiddy, Jdhunt, Darth Sidious, Agrofelipe, Cybercobra, Amosjo, Iridescent, Twas
Now, Bobfrombrockley, DumbBOT, Nishidani, Kubanczyk, R'n'B, Nono64, Tim Ayeles, Demigod Ron, Flyer22, Bjorn Martiz, Addbot,
Yobot, Omnipaedista, Trust Is All You Need, PigFlu Oink, Saintonge235, Sigorp12, Wiki.Tango.Foxtrot, Dewritech, Anatoly-Rex, ClueBot
NG, Robthepiper, Widr, Helpful Pixie Bot, Lowercase sigmabot, 23haveblue, Abezgauz, Vanamonde93, Kahtar, Veovis523, ShadowoftheFlag, Trot terrorizer, F cTh15f cTh15f cTh15f cTh15 and Anonymous: 25
Leninism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism?oldid=677606792 Contributors: Slrubenstein, Ed Poor, Fubar Obfusco, William
Avery, Roadrunner, Frank Warmerdam, Soulpatch, Edward, Smelialichu, Palnatoke, Kwertii, Fred Bauder, Gabbe, Menchi, Tannin, 172,
Ahoerstemeier, Jiang, GCarty, Caelice~enwiki, Dysprosia, Wik, Morwen, VeryVerily, , Fvw, Warofdreams, Robbot, Fredrik, Altenmann, Wikibot, Mushroom, Stirling Newberry, Nikodemos, HangingCurve, Monedula, Southpark~enwiki, Peruvianllama, Everyking,
DO'Neil, Jonesy~enwiki, Jackol, Ruy Lopez, Dvavasour, Knutux, Formeruser-81, Lockeownzj00, Loremaster, Rdsmith4, Martin Wisse,
Kuralyov, Icairns, Sam Hocevar, Soman, Mschlindwein, Esperant, Jayjg, John Ball, Mindspillage, A-giau, Discospinster, David Schaich,
Trey Stone, PlasmaDragon, Lycurgus, Lankiveil, Thedavid, Causa sui, Bobo192, Che y Marijuana, Robotje, La goutte de pluie, Perceval, Jumbuck, Alansohn, Stevegiacomelli, Gary123, SlimVirgin, Gblaz, Mysdaao, Bart133, JK the unwise, Redvers, Ultramarine, Mhazard9, Hojimachong, Novacatz, Sars~enwiki, Woohookitty, Camw, Grace Note, Plrk, Toussaint, BD2412, Koavf, Lairor, Valip, Madcat87,
RobertG, Ground Zero, Nihiltres, Wikipedia is Marxism, Str1977, TeaDrinker, Pikiwedia~enwiki, Wikipedia Administration, Imnotminkus, Chobot, VolatileChemical, RussBot, Pigman, Theelf29, Alex Bakharev, Think Fast, NawlinWiki, Grafen, Rjensen, Number 57,
Semperf, Zwobot, Bronks, Wknight94, Avraham, Tetracube, Zzuuzz, Closedmouth, Dspradau, Petri Krohn, CIockvvorkSouI, Jack Upland,
Bibliomaniac15, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, MattieTK, DuncanBCS, Transgress, PeterSymonds, Teemu Ruskeep, Chris the speller, EncephalonSeven, Darth Sidious, EncMstr, Greatgavini, Solidusspriggan, NicAgent, Darth Panda, Battlecry, Addshore, BostonMA, Nakon,
Horses In The Sky, RolandR, Dreadstar, Springnuts, Nishkid64, John, Bagel7, Gobonobo, Bydand, Chrisch, Stwalkerster, Mr Stephen, AlbertW, Hu12, Iridescent, Joseph Solis in Australia, Tmangray, Shoeofdeath, Silent reverie86, Courcelles, LessHeard vanU, Porterjoh, Ale
jrb, Bobfrombrockley, Makeemlighter, Vision Thing, Abibliophobic, MFlet1, Harej bot, Slazenger, Cydebot, Kanags, Slp1, Gogo Dodo,
Flowerpotman, R-41, Daniel J. Leivick, MarxistNapoleon, Thijs!bot, Epbr123, Colin4C, Thecrisis5, Mojo Hand, Oliver202, Headbomb,
Atillidie13, Comzero, Mentisto, Luna Santin, NSH001, Modernist, JAnDbot, Athkalani~enwiki, Bongwarrior, Sven Godin, Ciaccona,

3.1. TEXT

187

Nat, MartinBot, Xumm1du, R'n'B, Redshoe2, , J.delanoy, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Rgoodermote, UBeR, Colincbn, Ian.thomson,
Laurusnobilis, Skullketon, McSly, NewEnglandYankee, Touch Of Light, Inbloom2, Inomyabcs, Bonadea, CardinalDan, Spellcast, Lights,
Malik Shabazz, VolkovBot, ABF, Ysverdlov, Mr. Bouncy, Philip Trueman, Cosmic Latte, MusicScience, Crohnie, JayC, Qxz, Anna
Lincoln, Jackfork, LeaveSleaves, Room429, Madhero88, Demigod Ron, Enviroboy, Logan, H92, Srijon, SieBot, Mikemoral, Tresiden,
Tiddly Tom, WereSpielChequers, SheepNotGoats, Nathan, Yintan, Tiptoety, Sherlockindo, Aruton, Oxymoron83, Deterwellinger, CmrdMariategui, Maelgwnbot, Spartan-James, Mygerardromance, DeepQuasar, WikiLaurent, Pinkadelica, Denisarona, ClueBot, The Thing
That Should Not Be, UDSS, Timberframe, Moorbes, Passargea, Hangakommy, Sirius85, Excirial, Vanisheduser12345, Patricius Augustus, Nableezy, Rancewringer, Redthoreau, Dekisugi, Ottawa4ever, Taranet, Aitias, Egmontaz, Indopug, VandervestTod, Vanished User
1004, DumZiBoT, BendersGame, Spitre, Huggle, Diarrhea rance, Rror, Sir Dude., Skarebo, Mr.Thales, TravisAF, HexaChord, Jason.houston, Hang traitors3, Addbot, Arrest traitor rance, Arrest traitor rance12, Rolandsukks, Yoenit, Shoot therance, Trotskys tooches,
Binary TSO, Bitemerance68, Bitemerance44, Benn, SunDragon34, Trotshit, Cheeserance, Bitemerance45, Ignor rance, Bitemerance51,
Lickprik rrance, Fieldday-sunday, Laurinavicius, Goatstein, OliverTwisted, MrOllie, Michaelwuzthere, Jgrosay~enwiki, Favonian, 5 albert
square, Lineface, Caseyrd1, Abiyoyo, Tide rolls, Krano, Mjquinn id, Gail, Matt.T, Frehley, Legobot, Yobot, 2D, Vs64vs, Fraggle81, THEN
WHO WAS PHONE?, Eduen, Synchronism, AnomieBOT, 1exec1, Jim1138, IRP, Abstruce, JackieBot, Behead derancie, Fipps revenge,
Drinkpis rancie, Chewshit rancie, Fipps revenge3, Fipps revenge4, Flewis, Fipps revenge5, Materialscientist, Chewshit2 rance, Azvas2,
Azvas4, Azvas7, Rolandrance shythead, Rolandrance fullofshyt, Winkytink, Jim39929, Uncircumcize rrance, DirlBot, Rantsie rolie, Kusaburance, Rantsie raus, Tonys prison butch, Ranceon endofrope, Suppresstreason, Capricorn42, Rancebehindbars, Jack gecko, Decapitate
rancele, The unchomsky, Molotron, Chewpryck rancele, Stomponrance, Torture Trots, Jail rance2, Robotcom33, Desmearer, Renegade887,
Scizozorro, Trotskyrein2, Icepick 51, Icepick 52, Irgun strikeforce3, Irgun strikeforce5, Rancedrek, Rancedrek2, Rancedrek3, Rancedrek5, Rancedrek9, Drekonrance, Gulaggogo, Shytonrancele, Buckin barkin, Intolerrance, Bugsy bonovich, Intolerrance4, Egg beater77,
Ranceatshyt, Invest in knowledge, Loo Plunger, Greenstalintony, Crashtest99, Jewjyfruit, Suppresstwits, Passdarie, Roliesukks, Stalinlust, Demolish rolie, Gallowaysbooger, Bitemoirunce, Anhilizer, Rodentrance, Doulos Christos, Roliejurkingo, Roliecoaster, Jurk4stalyn,
Stallynsshlong, Stalynsboy, Rolieloves polpot, Fratra, Polpotskommy, Shadowjams, Rantsongallows, Abolishrants, SchnitzelMannGreek,
Thehelpfulbot, FrescoBot, Sausagehiders, Stringmup, LucienBOT, Wikipe-tan, Stalynutsy, Adam9389, Well behavior, PepeBueno, Buggaboochu, Divebomber91, Bycuspidd, Glimmer pikkins, Trust Is All You Need, Firing squad34, Quatschkopf, Trotskut, HamburgerRadio,
Frykommies, Trothunter, Stevenjp, Smashdakrap, Bang it hard8, Javert, Megaforeskin, Amplitude101, Intelligentsium, Celebrate with
us, Frykommies9, Biker Biker, Error xer7, Snotragsneaker, Shootkommies12, Nuke the trots, Silverado miner, More balalaikas, Detergent hands, Big bad noose, Exactly exacter, RedBot, Jungle billie, Rooky mountain, Fun n games, Simon horowitz, SpaceFlight89, Dein
Kampf, Hand creamer2, Pillow talk9, Mullah akbar3, Pilesooot, Roland Rancehole, Milletet, Jilletet, December21st2012Freak, Smilkyone, All runced out, White Shadows, Bingbingbung, Sumatrik, Nenchmark, Orenburg1, Retired user 0001, Dasha14, Vrenator, Gritob,
Kenny Gill, Woverbie, Suusion of Yellow, Tbhotch, Power pugnace, One fox hunt, Sheep shopper, Cohnor, Commissarusa, Mean as
custard, Mcpretty, Updatehelper, Tni soprano, Nemmisis422, Sky hook hanger, EmausBot, John of Reading, Dolescum, Orphan Wiki,
Acather96, Smilingsamie, Ghostofnemo, Katherine, PoeticVerse, Dental fred, Peter pieman, Tommy2010, InSequential samet2, InSequential samet21, Wikipelli, Hellcatwwii, Baked beanies, AvicBot, ZroBot, Gimme shelter sam, Gimme gimme 7, Rocket ann, Yoghurt
goy, Stagecraftist, Tulandro, Gildered cager, Phineas fo, Summary diss, Choam Chumsky, Zoam zumsky, Ever present past, Dang trots,
Whiperppli, Mahrooq, Ericdekker, First twater, Phineas urikar3, Joe cunsusser, Trifocal stage, Labnoor, Akiva orr, Goalsedgestube, Shemen zayiit, Bless thee runtshit, ChantCaitanyaMangala, Atzmon gillie, Smekking about, Atzmon sillie, Red is like dead, Red is so dead, Red
is oh so dead, Fetid commy die, Sugerall111, Sugerall2 chippy, Jcaraballo, ClueBot NG, MelbourneStar, KokoPhantom, Helpful Pixie Bot,
Lowercase sigmabot, BG19bot, Arnavchaudhary, Defenstrate4, AvocatoBot, Sugar shock9, CitationCleanerBot, Fry the morons, Klilidiplomus, Milf hide, Pino lee, Beenipa, Chip123456, Destroy daroli, Sugar mcgee, My jokitch, Thong lead, BattyBot, Leos icepick, Hdll00,
Afrasclient, Chail veerer, Gotta laugh66, Jiminycrock, Shuggary, CsDix, Che Guevara Fidel Castro, Filedelinkerbot, 3298230932782302,
Je.est.un.autre, Karmanatory, Bohemian Baltimore and Anonymous: 262
Stalinism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism?oldid=676285074 Contributors: Kpjas, Mav, Wesley, Taw, DanKeshet, Andre Engels, Eclecticology, Fubar Obfusco, Deb, SimonP, Heron, R Lowry, Stevertigo, Fred Bauder, Tannin, 172, Delirium, Ahoerstemeier, Darkwind, Vzbs34, Marknew, Charles Matthews, Adam Bishop, RickK, Magnus.de, Doradus, Mount Paektu, Kaare, David Shay,
Topbanana, Warofdreams, Donarreiskoer, Chris 73, Altenmann, Rursus, Hadal, Dina, Decumanus, MaGioZal, Nikodemos, Tom harrison, HangingCurve, Spencer195, TDC, Everyking, DO'Neil, Ezhiki, Kravietz, Masuti, Gyrofrog, Neilc, OldakQuill, Utcursch, Ruy
Lopez, Alexf, Formeruser-81, Antandrus, Piotrus, SethTisue, Martin Wisse, Kuralyov, Schroeder~enwiki, SchroedingersCat, Schadenfreude~enwiki, Soman, Grunt, Esperant, Freakofnurture, Guanabot, Xjy, Leandros, Trey Stone, Stereotek, Bender235, *drew, Kwamikagami, Vecrumba, Kross, ThierryVignaud, Shanes, Sietse Snel, Jpgordon, Che y Marijuana, Shenme, Cwolfsheep, Reuben, La goutte de
pluie, Rje, SecretAgentMan00, Nsaa, Ranveig, Zulitz, Retran, Theaterfreak64, Philip Cross, CR7, Robin Johnson, Cjthellama, Calton,
Mattley, Redfarmer, Mysdaao, Snowolf, GeorgeStepanek, Max rspct, Georgius~enwiki, VoluntarySlave, Kusma, Redvers, Richard Arthur
Norton (1958- ), Jacob Haller, The Wordsmith, Lapsed Pacist, Neanderthalprimadonna, Prashanthns, Marudubshinki, Xcuref1endx,
Nexion, Bunchofgrapes, DJ Silversh, Nlsanand, Rjwilmsi, Jake Wartenberg, Leon Trotsky, Emb422~enwiki, Valip, Bhadani, Vlad Patryshev, RobertG, Ground Zero, Alphachimp, Introvert, SGreen~enwiki, Chobot, Sharkface217, Volunteer Marek, YurikBot, Dustoidinator, Crotalus horridus, RussBot, Muchness, Bhny, Stephenb, XX55XX, Theelf29, NawlinWiki, Rjensen, Dureo, Irishguy, Nucleusboy,
Banes, Rwerp~enwiki, Raven4x4x, Moe Epsilon, Bucketsofg, Asarelah, Bronks, Daniel C, Donbert, Zzuuzz, Closedmouth, Petri Krohn,
Nixer, Benandorsqueaks, Vesteinn, Philip Stevens, CIreland, C mon, Isoxyl, JohnGalt1812, Otheus, SmackBot, MattieTK, Incnis Mrsi,
InverseHypercube, HalfShadow, Aksi great, Hmains, The Gnome, Skizzik, Andy M. Wang, Teemu Ruskeep, Dahn, Jprg1966, Emmetfahy, Oli Filth, MalafayaBot, Adamjamesbromley, Constanz, Wisden17, Camillus McElhinney, Sneltrekker, Can't sleep, clown will
eat me, Onorem, Addshore, Cybercobra, RolandR, Dreadstar, Gujuguy, Roger.lee, Riurik, DDima, Vanished user 9i39j3, Kuru, Gobonobo, CPMcE, WhiteShark, Tamanou, Kransky, Francomemoria, Illythr, Slakr, Filanca, MTN~enwiki, Beetstra, Santa Sangre, Twalls,
TastyPoutine, Reinaldo Contreras~enwiki, Ryulong, Historyk~enwiki, BranStark, JoeBot, W123, Pudeo, TORR, CmdrObot, Porterjoh,
Bobfrombrockley, Vision Thing, JohnCD, NickW557, Neelix, Hemlock Martinis, Gregbard, Themightyquill, Cydebot, Samuell, Khatru2, R-41, DumbBOT, Vanished User jdksfajlasd, Spookpadda, Thijs!bot, Epbr123, Dogaroon, Sagaciousuk, Staberinde, Atillidie13,
Marek69, Bobblehead, X201, Dfrg.msc, Tocino, MinnesotanConfederacy, Natalie Erin, Mentisto, AntiVandalBot, Luna Santin, DarkAudit, The Sartorialist, Jj137, Scepia, Vanjagenije, NSH001, Ithinkhelikesit, Myanw, Lklundin, Canadian-Bacon, Sluzzelin, Zabby1982,
Turgidson, AlexandertheP, Roleplayer, PhilKnight, Acroterion, Bencherlite, Abu ali, Magioladitis, Bongwarrior, VoABot II, AuburnPilot,
JamesBWatson, Catgut, Indon, AHAPXICT, Nat, FisherQueen, Jacob Peters, Jay Litman, MeteorMaker, R'n'B, CommonsDelinker, AlexiusHoratius, Goatboy95, J.delanoy, Aleksandr Grigoryev, Extransit, General Idea, Hodja Nasreddin, DarwinPeacock, Redagying, Bushcarrot, Ko Soi IX, Inbloom2, JHeinonen, Olegwiki, Hu!tz!l0p0chtl!, Commander Cod, Ejrcito Rojo 1950, Listerz, Bonadea, Jarry1250,
Idioma-bot, King Lopez, Eric C. Stockey, CWii, ABF, DSRH, TallNapoleon, Nug, AlnoktaBOT, CART fan, Philip Trueman, JayEsJay,
TXiKiBoT, Xenophrenic, Lebatsnok, Miranda, Ridernyc, Anonymous Dissident, Rancieputz, Someguy1221, C.J. Grin, Commander

188

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Sergei Bjarkhov, Dorightnik, Abuzubik, Destalinize, Mummify, Arsalan.ibnalnasir, Hazelnut31, Desemar, Jessupsup, Buxombabe, Sylent,
Spinningspark, Sir rantserot, Armyvet6823, Sir Rancehanged, Armyvet6810, Why Not A Duck, Life, Liberty, Property, Laval, Pjoef,
FColah, Gillbateser, Black rectangular, F4i, HangTrot, SieBot, Tiddly Tom, Rancebug, Dawn Bard, Ransesucks, Trotalot, Bagelish, Thessaysno, Hicharmer, Pitipat, Nukerance, Digwuren, Flyer22, Zionrevenge, Tramplerance, Alqaedar, Seismonic, Staminer, Oxymoron83,
Fenomenalless, Rancedung, Pukeonrance, Moletrouser, Termer, Bombastus, Capitalismojo, Ascidian, Ecthelion83, Tonyspal, Verdadero,
Avengetrot, Balderdasher, Xratedguy, Quadratics, Shituponrance, Gr8opinionater, Hangrer, Rolandinmud, Rolandinmuck, Whipawill, Badabing7, Expelrance, Plugrance, Smashrance, ClueBot, Shitonrance, Skewerrance, Nukeroland, Rolandturd, Imprisonrance, The Thing That
Should Not Be, Smackrance, Eraserance, TinyMark, Trotshegetz, Bangrance, Flaturance6, Arakunem, Gutm, Conscious7, Geeseberry, Simonister, Untrotsky, Moulticite, Demolish Rance, Shuhelali, Sirius85, Excirial, Estirabot, Lartoven, Kmaster, Lususromulus, 2pac 2007,
Cityofwind, Waterboard Rance2, Razorame, Redthoreau, Dekisugi, Waterboarder17, La Pianista, Joe N, Onionsoove, Sukdyk rance,
Sukdyk rrance, Darth Wombat, Johnuniq, Phookyou rrance, Flush rrance, Imprison RRance, Vanished User 1004, Demolish RRance,
Mbakkel2, Caldwell malt, BarretB, XLinkBot, Eatpoop Rrance, Obliterate RRance, Spitre, BodhisattvaBot, AMRDeuce, Tom-c-ronan,
Stalins icepick, TFOWR, UNSC Trooper, Atzmons revenge, Atzmons revenge 2, JCDenton2052, The Rationalist, Roland rance sukks, Hang
traitors, Hang traitors2, Hang traitors6, Addbot, Arrest traitor rance, Ibarrutidarruti, Trotskys tooches, Bitemerance71, Binary TSO, DougsTech, Bitemerance45, Ronhjones, Phookqu rance, Fieldday-sunday, Laurinavicius, Startstop123, Skyezx, MrOllie, Bedwetting rrance,
Detox runcie, Treason raus, Traitors2jail, Traitorsinjail, Michaelwuzthere, Ranceindumpster, Mosedschurte, Rance intrance, AnnaFrance,
Shythead rrance, JoeCool456, Tassedethe, Species8473, Smite rrants, Tide rolls, Lightbot, Gitmo 4rancie, , Greyhood, Ranceinnoose2, Legobot, JoshuaD1991, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Lynch derance2, Slimerance, Stealth031, Toiletfacerance, Kulak revenge, Behead
rrance3, Behead rrance5, Greensteintony, Sparticussy, Stalinists rdoomed, Swallowsperm roland, Jail stalinazis, Trash stalinazis, Roland rancidity, Eduen, Rancid runcie, Sectsisfuns, AnomieBOT, Jim1138, Kingpin13, Fipps revenge, Materialscientist, Chewshit2 rance, Azvas2,
Xrere, Rvd4life, ArthurBot, Kerrypip, Tatarian, Xqbot, JimVC3, Capricorn42, Stomponrance, Jail rance2, Robotcom33, Trotskyrein2,
Omnipaedista, Eglarge, Gallowaysbooger, BlackMath77, Rutlege, Gnomsovet, Joaquin008, Tktru, FrescoBot, CaptainFugu, LucienBOT,
Adam9389, Trust Is All You Need, PasswordUsername, Drew R. Smith, Redrose64, Elockid, Arctic Night, Jonesey95, SpaceFlight89,
Pillow talk6, Wejer, Jhbuk, Jonkerz, Sarjow, Anti-Nationalist, Hardingski, Routlee, Loyalprecision, Medizinball, Tbhotch, DARTH
SIDIOUS 2, Commissarusa, Bento00, MShabazz, Greenmint, DASHBot, Dolescum, Dewritech, Immortal Glory, GoingBatty, RA0808,
Tommy2010, Mattqat, Thecheesykid, Savh, Ponydepression, Tulandro, Mama juburi, Jjspinoreld1, Maxim11maxim, Openstrings, Labnoor, Goalsedgestube, Alvez3, DumitruRaduPopa, ThomasVeliki, AndyTheGrump, ClueBot NG, Cwmhiraeth, Chetrasho, Dracolikesre,
Supono123, Netsurfer123, SomeDudeWithAUserName, Capodistria, Dkephart, Helpful Pixie Bot, EasterRowan, 2001:db8, Lowercase
sigmabot, BG19bot, Rebringeroftheussr, 9instel, MusikAnimal, User1961914, Compfreak7, Sciencescholar, Velgarsmith, StringerSocialistParty, Ryanjhague, Bundleofjoy, Boeing720, ChrisGualtieri, YFdyh-bot, SD5bot, Dudanotak, Cengen, Jc86035, PAB1990, Urnze,
CsDix, Sosthenes12, Pavel morozov3, Dustin V. S., Monochrome Monitor, Tubealexf, Zhanghao1987, Jiataozhang, Dazhanghao, NVRENGUANNANREN, Zozs, 3298230932782302, Inthefastlane, ShadowoftheFlag, ThaYeezy, KasparBot and Anonymous: 467
Maoism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maoism?oldid=678249497 Contributors: Mav, Wesley, Ffaker, DanKeshet, Kowloonese,
William Avery, Roadrunner, Shii, R Lowry, Hephaestos, Atlan, Olivier, Drseudo, Edward, Dante Alighieri, Menchi, 172, Frank Shearar,
Delirium, Georey~enwiki, G-Man, Angela, Whkoh, Vzbs34, Jiang, Charles Matthews, Viajero, Colipon, WhisperToMe, Wik, Wenteng,
Shizhao, Jfruh, Bcorr, SonofRage, Adam Carr, Bearcat, Robbot, Fredrik, Altenmann, Lowellian, Rursus, Hemanshu, Moink, Hoot, Saulisagenius, Beowabbit, DocWatson42, Nikodemos, Inter, Spencer195, Everyking, JRR Trollkien, Gadum, Lst27, Mista-X, Martin Wisse,
Tothebarricades.tk, Al234, Bk0, JereyN, Soman, Neutrality, Lacrimosus, Clarkp, Esperant, N-k, AAAAA, Miborovsky, Discospinster,
Narsil, David Schaich, Guanabot2, Mani1, Paul August, Bender235, Jensbn, Zenohockey, Xed, Causa sui, Che y Marijuana, Keron Cyst,
Cwolfsheep, Alberuni, La goutte de pluie, Gunnernett, Shorne, SecretAgentMan00, Alansohn, PaulHanson, Alfanje~enwiki, Geo Swan,
Gaurav1146, Dirac1933, Njk, Ron Ritzman, Woohookitty, CWH, Quadduc, Admrboltz, Sholtar, Magnusbe~enwiki, Zzyzx11, Toussaint,
Palica, LeoO3, Xcuref1endx, Tslocum, Descendall, Rjwilmsi, Koavf, Leon Trotsky, Lockley, TJive, FlaBot, Ground Zero, Pathawi, Hottentot, Banazir, Jrtayloriv, TeaDrinker, BMF81, Benjwong, DTOx, Benlisquare, Vmenkov, YurikBot, Ismail, 10stone5, Hede2000, Pigman, BillMasen, Theelf29, Rsrikanth05, Daveswagon, NawlinWiki, Wiki alf, Spike Wilbury, Yoninah, Mshecket, Cerejota, IslandGyrl,
Gadget850, PanchoS, Superiority, NWOG, Zzuuzz, Humbabba, Vesteinn, Luk, C mon, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, FocalPoint, MattieTK,
YellowMonkey, Zazaban, Stephensuleeman, Lds, Jab843, Hardyplants, Jcbarr, JoeGermuska, G-funkstar, Commander Keane bot, Bluebot,
Dahn, Darth Sidious, MalafayaBot, Greatgavini, Apeloverage, Jxm, Gracenotes, Camillus McElhinney, Cripipper, OrphanBot, Kveerlarka,
Mitrius, Cybercobra, Kikodawgzz, Downwards, Gbinal, Curly Turkey, Ohconfucius, Byelf2007, Raph89, Lambiam, Giovanni33, Khazar,
AmiDaniel, CPMcE, BelindaGong, Paulscf, Agathoclea, Thunk00, Samwingkit, Redeagle688, TastyPoutine, Midnightblueowl, Yw16,
Majin Takeru, Joseph Solis in Australia, J riordan, HongQiGong, Lahiru k, Mattbr, RotundityTheory, History Genius, WeggeBot, Cydebot, Kanags, GANDALF1992, Travelbird, R-41, DumbBOT, MarcelLionheart, Mathpianist93, Atillidie13, RevolverOcelotX, Catsmoke,
Comzero, AntiVandalBot, WinBot, Majorly, Why My Fleece?, Lothar76, 24630, MER-C, Asnac, Matthew Fennell, Roleplayer, .anacondabot, Yahel Guhan, In the Stacks, Maidex, Re-evaluation, Riot Fred, Nat, Cpl Syx, Ronankeane, Lijnema, FlieGerFaUstMe262, R'n'B,
AlexiusHoratius, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Vanished user 342562, Sinohits, Balthazarduju, RaGnaRoK SepHr0tH, Alexb102072, SJP,
Bobianite, Madhava 1947, Stevenak~enwiki, Jamesontai, Ghostbear616, MrAirick999, Idioma-bot, TallNapoleon, Napoleonvii, JoelleJ,
Ruralmaoism, TXiKiBoT, Lwinling, Dojarca, Eve Hall, K157, Mdswbkq, Wikiisawesome, Robert1947, ARUNKUMAR P.R, Redagmagazine, Universewik, Alcmaeonid, Pjoef, RedChinaForever, Czmtzc, SieBot, Tiddly Tom, Dawn Bard, Apemanjy, URAAAA, Barliner,
Questioning81, Avnjay, Kevincof, Lightmouse, Kroeger579, N96, DeepQuasar, Fakhredinblog, Gr8opinionater, ClueBot, SummerWithMorons, Fyyer, Rodhullandemu, Goldenhawk 0, EoGuy, Opal dragon77, DragonBot, Jrgen88, Staygyro, Apparition11, DumZiBoT, Finalnight, XLinkBot, Interferometrist, Alexius08, Tomgagaga, Indra10, Brikian, Addbot, Tcncv, Shanghainese, Laurinavicius, CanadianLinuxUser, Peopleriseup, BabelStone, BepBot, Michaelwuzthere, Favonian, Tassedethe, Tide rolls, Luckas Blade, Weaseloid, Legobot, Luckasbot, Yobot, Medmrt2008, Againme, , AnomieBOT, ESHARI, Abstruce, Flewis, Materialscientist, UnexpectedBanana, Teeninvestor,
DynamoDegsy, Stanislao Avogadro, LilHelpa, Renamed user 39932kk3, Doorvery far, GrouchoBot, Mythlace, RibotBOT, Leong0083,
Moxy, Willdw79, FrescoBot, LucienBOT, Tobby72, Jonathanmallard, Aghniyya, Trust Is All You Need, Tommibg, LinDrug, P.4.P. No.
1, Pratt 2009, Motorizer, HenryAyoola, Keri, Cauchy3, MSHTheorist, Zanhe, Jonkerz, Dasha14, Gritob, Defender of torch, ZhBot,
Diannaa, Raykyogrou0, Sideways713, Games Yes!, Noraft, RjwilmsiBot, Tangong, Bhawani Gautam, Kamran the Great, WikitanvirBot,
Ghostofnemo, Super48paul, Howan, Wikipelli, Bssasidhar, Homunculus, Thecheesykid, Josve05a, VillageOfTheDamned, Mama juburi,
Out90, Maxjing, Tallandslow, Luivillacas, Scythia, IGeMiNix, VanSisean, ESpenser, Slfuture, AndyTheGrump, RRC86, RedMilkyWay,
ClueBot NG, Joy roy49, Loolstar, MelbourneStar, PCPMaoista, Cntras, Widr, Rajahsulayman, Helpful Pixie Bot, Titodutta, Lowercase sigmabot, BG19bot, , Mrmax, Trantsbugle, ShadyBlueBear, Claquerat, , AvocatoBot, Ganshenme, Mark Arsten,
Sametype23, 0x2020, Heavenly Dragon, BattyBot, Stephen.C.Angle, Hghyux, Harrys place revenge, Cyberbot II, ChrisGualtieri, Drobinson01, SD5bot, JYBot, No parking here, Jockzain, Ausnitoj, Charles Essie, JiahuaYue, Yetanotherwriter, Lugia2453, Idlskk, GrenadeF1,
Maoboy31, MCaecilius, PoetryBajinga, CsDix, Jakec, Evano1van, Zhanghao1987, Dazhanghao, MoldovskiComunijiliov, PashtunMaoist-

3.1. TEXT

189

Communist, Wukonsun, ,3298230932782302, Sam Chalipa, Anonimeco, MLMist, KasparBot and Anonymous: 470
Anti-revisionism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-revisionism?oldid=675309500 Contributors: Roadrunner, SimonP, Michael
Hardy, 172, Jiang, Wik, Dogface, Joy, Altenmann, Canyonrat, Nikodemos, Junkyardprince, Ruy Lopez, Formeruser-81, Comandante,
Soman, Jayjg, El C, Causa sui, Anthony Appleyard, Apokrif, Descendall, DJ Silversh, Koavf, Ground Zero, Chrismaltby, Ismail, Finbarr
Saunders, NawlinWiki, Cerejota, BOT-Superzerocool, PanchoS, Sandstein, Zzuuzz, Eum Nang, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, KnowledgeOfSelf, Chairman S., Commander Keane bot, The Gnome, Dahn, Jprg1966, Greatgavini, Apeloverage, Constanz, Rrburke, Kveerlarka,
BostonMA, Kikodawgzz, Mostlyharmless, Byelf2007, Joseph Solis in Australia, JoeBot, GiantSnowman, Bobfrombrockley, Vision Thing,
AndrewHowse, R-41, DumbBOT, Biruitorul, Comzero, Mackan79, Credema, Riot Fred, Nat, Cmrdm, Hans Dunkelberg, General Idea, Inbloom2, Ejrcito Rojo 1950, Thismightbezach, JhsBot, AllGloryToTheHypnotoad, Bleaney, AlleborgoBot, JabbaTheBot, Bigdaddy1981,
Gr8opinionater, ClueBot, SummerWithMorons, PipepBot, Kmaster, Redthoreau, MilesAgain, Dthomsen8, Jbhf1, Jbeans, Addbot, NjardarBot, Lightbot, AnomieBOT, Miantonimah, Xqbot, TheAMmollusc, Guto2003, Kikodawgzzz, Jackriter, FrescoBot, I dream of horses,
Adam62394, Jonkerz, Commissarusa, ZjarriRrethues, Polisher of Cobwebs, Widr, Lowercase sigmabot, Ejrd1993, Saaad Mahmooud,
LoneWolf1992, Mogism, CsDix, WBritten, Jodosma, Jorjjdjsjiejejejjsjsjajqoak, Finnusertop, Karmanatory, Viktorengstrm, Volkstod
and Anonymous: 117
MarxismLeninismMaoism Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism%E2%80%93Maoism?oldid=
677694681 Contributors: Anthony Appleyard, Xcuref1endx, Koavf, NawlinWiki, PanchoS, Cic, Paradoctor, XLinkBot, Yobot, Anonymous from the 21st century, Tbhotch, Lowercase sigmabot, Supersaiyen312, Zumoarirodoka, 3298230932782302, MLM777, MLMist,
Volkstod, Ibungo Ngangom and Anonymous: 6
Hoxhaism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoxhaism?oldid=676328578 Contributors: Formeruser-81, Jayjg, 96T, Pedro Aguiar,
Lairor, Frappyjohn, Benlisquare, Ismail, Hede2000, NawlinWiki, Sandstein, SmackBot, Eastlaw, Matthew Proctor, Faizhaider, S. M.
Sullivan, Solar-Wind, Alexbot, Indopug, XLinkBot, Good Olfactory, Addbot, Zorrobot, Shikuesi3, AnomieBOT, Xqbot, Guto2003, Omnipaedista, Teukros, HoundsOfSpring, Erik9bot, Soggy Wombat, Jackriter, Lothar von Richthofen, Vinie007, Derim Hunt, EmausBot,
Tulandro, Gob Lofa, KLBot2, Lowercase sigmabot, Vjr300, , Peacock28, ChrisGualtieri, Charles Essie, Zcbeaton, Stamboliyski,
, AsharaDayne and Anonymous: 22
Trotskyism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism?oldid=679734838 Contributors: Vicki Rosenzweig, Koyaanis Qatsi,
William Avery, Axon, AdamRetchless, Heron, Tzartzam, Soulpatch, Edward, Kwertii, Fred Bauder, Norm, Sam Francis, GTBacchus,
ArnoLagrange, Evercat, Ideyal, Hashar, Reddi, Morwen, Populus, Warofdreams, Italo Svevo, Secretlondon, Drernie, David.Monniaux,
Robbot, Altenmann, Calmypal, Babbage, Kod65red, Kagredon, Hadal, Saulisagenius, Dina, Adhib, Nikodemos, Tom harrison, Peruvianllama, Everyking, Mboverload, Bobblewik, Utcursch, Ruy Lopez, Formeruser-81, Antandrus, Piotrus, Savant1984, Incka, Vina, Martin Wisse, Heirpixel, Necrothesp, JereyN, Soman, Ukexpat, Picapica, Lacrimosus, Clarkp, Esperant, Powerpleb, Jayjg, Discospinster,
Rich Farmbrough, Avocade, David Schaich, S.K., Lycurgus, ThierryVignaud, Jpgordon, Che y Marijuana, Cje~enwiki, Shenme, Jojit
fb, Shorne, Silverback, Hagerman, Dmanning, Lvlarx, Alansohn, Korin, Zenosparadox, Slof, Philip Cross, Gary123, Trotboy, Riana,
Water Bottle, Mattley, Rhobile, Bart133, Evil Monkey, RainbowOfLight, Ndteegarden, Computerjoe, Reaverdrop, Redvers, Jakes18,
Lkinkade, Bobrayner, OleMaster, Joriki, Woohookitty, Rocastelo, Renamed user 3bax0gh23bs, Bo, Trevorparsons, MONGO, Gerbrant,
BD2412, Jshadias, Rjwilmsi, Koavf, Zbxgscqf, Leon Trotsky, Funnyhat, The wub, BrentDanzig, Ttwaring, Dar-Ape, Yamamoto Ichiro,
FlaBot, Skyler, Ian Pitchford, RobertG, Ground Zero, Nihiltres, Gparker, Fisenko, TeaDrinker, Imnotminkus, Chobot, Bgwhite, Therefore, YurikBot, A.S. Brown, Stan2525, Hairy Dude, Huw Powell, Kafziel, Theelf29, Alex Bakharev, Sjb90, NawlinWiki, Leutha, Grafen,
Michalis Famelis, Joelr31, Arima, Dureo, Isolani, Raven4x4x, Number 57, PanchoS, Maunus, Bronks, Wknight94, Avraham, Zzuuzz,
Closedmouth, Dspradau, Black-Velvet, JoanneB, LeonardoRob0t, ArielGold, Kungfuadam, Derelk, Vesteinn, Huldra, Zvika, Tom Morris,
So Hungry, Palapa, Sardanaphalus, Anschee, Otheus, SmackBot, FocalPoint, Mister X, DuncanBCS, Metzerly, Dolaro, Edgar181, Srnec,
Valley2city, Chris the speller, Thatpacokid, Dahn, Miquonranger03, MalafayaBot, Je5102, NicAgent, Colonies Chris, Constanz, Camillus McElhinney, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, TheGerm, Onorem, Rrburke, Kveerlarka, Bill Du, RolandR, Shadow1, Xagent86, Will
Beback, Petr Kopa, BrownHairedGirl, Soap, IronGargoyle, RandomCritic, Beetstra, SQGibbon, Midnightblueowl, Armon, Darry2385,
KJS77, Simon12, Iridescent, K, Joseph Solis in Australia, JoeBot, HongQiGong, ChrisCork, Jamaissur, Pudmaker, Wolfdog, Bobfrombrockley, Makeemlighter, Vision Thing, MFlet1, FlyingToaster, Kronecker, Cydebot, Slp1, Gogo Dodo, Travelbird, DumbBOT, Optimist on the run, Vanished User jdksfajlasd, Thijs!bot, Qwyrxian, Bjrn-Olav Kvidal, Serpent-A, Oliver202, Atillidie13, Sircatnipman,
John254, Bobblehead, Natalie Erin, LachlanA, Mentisto, Luna Santin, Joan-of-arc, OscarHippe~enwiki, Modernist, Credema, CanadianBacon, BeefRendang, Trunk68, Sluzzelin, JAnDbot, Barek, Dsp13, Andreanrc, Mnxextra, Acroterion, RainyDayCrow, Abu ali, Magioladitis, Freedomlinux, Billis, Bongwarrior, AuburnPilot, JNW, JamesBWatson, Timotheos, Bill j, WODUP, Mr.englishman, Indon,
MauroVan, Ciaccona, Nat, DarrenMacdub, FisherQueen, Jerem43, Patrio-fascist, Xumm1du, Jonathan Hall, Impish3000, CommonsDelinker, AgarwalSumeet, J.delanoy, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Bogey97, Overreaction, AntiSpamBot, NewEnglandYankee, Olegwiki, Bofoc Tagar, Hu!tz!l0p0chtl!, Inomyabcs, Bonadea, TheNewPhobia, Intangible2.0, Idioma-bot, Funandtrvl, Spellcast, Malik Shabazz, King
Lopez, DrDentz, TreasuryTag, ABF, Nug, Philip Trueman, Abberley2, TXiKiBoT, Vipinhari, Inkani, Miranda, Wikidemon, Andysoh,
JayC, Ranceputz, Haggismn, SteveStrummer, Runceputz, Someguy1221, Oxfordwang, Anna Lincoln, Clarince63, LeaveSleaves, Rancebugger, Wassermann~enwiki, Wikiisawesome, Arbuthnot7, Bellbottom3, Byliner, Phoreplay, Madhero88, Boxcarts, Rolandinshit, Dorightnik, Bonkerers, Demigod Ron, Abuzubik, Milestools, Destalinize, Mummify, Farkas Jnos, Wassamatta, Hazelnut31, Desemar, Jessupsup, Enviroboy, Buxombabe, BuggerizeRance, Sir rantserot, Armyvet6823, Armyvet6810, Life, Liberty, Property, Anarchovegan, Sir
Ranceadunce, Ranceshits, Armyvet6816, Gillbateser, Austriacus, Bangorgang, Ranciestench, Ranciecrap, Arsewiperoland, Srijon, Djmack, SieBot, Trotsrevenge, Fryrance, Ranceshitted, SheepNotGoats, Hertz1888, Rancebug, Trickortrot, Ransesucks, Nathan, Rocknroland, Trotalot, Bagelish, Hicharmer, Questioning81, Pitipat, Nukerance, Hangrancehi, Justsuppose, Tiptoety, Wolfowit, Zionrevenge,
Oda Mari, Tramplerance, Hughiechafebell, EugeneOleinik, Alqaedar, Seismonic, Prestonmag, Staminer, Hownowrancecow, Oxymoron83,
Fenomenalless, Edwardwittenstein, Rancedung, KPH2293, Kickranceass, CmrdMariategui, Lightmouse, Tombomp, Trotskyian, Mimick,
StaticGull, Capitalismojo, Rancepuke, Rancenema, Ranceanal, Dabomb87, Pinkadelica, Avengetrot, Denisarona, Ahuitzotl, Balderdasher,
Xratedguy, Henry Merrivale, Gr8opinionater, Hangrer, Rolandinmud, Alfons berg, Faithlessthewonderboy, Rolandinmuck, Whipawill, Badabing7, Histojack, Expelrance, Plugrance, Smashrance, ClueBot, Shitonrance, SummerWithMorons, Skewerrance, Nukeroland,
Rolandturd, Snigbrook, Imprisonrance, The Thing That Should Not Be, Smackrance, Eraserance, Trotshegetz, Bangrance, Jagun, RashersTierney, Flaturance6, Gutm, Conscious7, Geeseberry, Simonister, Boing! said Zebedee, Untrotsky, Thirtyoosh, Moulticite, Parkwells,
Auntof6, Pernambuko, Excirial, Jusdafax, Sun Creator, Nableezy, 7&6=thirteen, Redthoreau, Dekisugi, Thingg, DerBorg, Riversider2008,
Indopug, TheLamprey, Spitre, Gonzonoir, Stickee, Noctibus, TravisAF, HexaChord, Zolstijers, Addbot, Cxz111, Yousou, Ibarrutidarruti, Freakmighty, Yoenit, Faulah, MrOllie, BepBot, Glane23, Favonian, SamatBot, Tide rolls, Lightbot, , Mjquinn id, Frmatt,
Legobot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, 2D, Legobot II, THEN WHO WAS PHONE?, Eduen, Againme, Synchronism, AnomieBOT, KDS4444,
Dribblingscribe, Jim1138, Phartface rants, Behead derancie, Dyckinear rance, Kingpin13, Fipps revenge, Darolew, Drinkpis rancie, Fipps

190

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

revenge2, Chewshit rancie, Fipps revenge3, Crecy99, Fipps revenge4, Flewis, Fipps revenge5, Materialscientist, Chewshit2 rance, Limideen, Azvas2, Azvas4, Azvas7, Rolandrance shythead, Winkytink, Disinfect treason, Rantsie rolie, Rance deranged, Rants removed,
Rantsie raus, Xqbot, Ranceon endofrope, Suppresstreason, Capricorn42, Rancebehindbars, Jack gecko, Decapitate rancele, AaronF2, The
unchomsky, Molotron, Stomponrance, Torture Trots, Jail rance3, Sickle and Hammer, Robotcom33, Desmearer, Wikicrat, Renegade887,
Scizozorro, Trotskyrein, Trotskyrein2, Trotskyrein3, Icepick 49, Icepick 52, Irgun strikeforce5, Rancedrek3, Rancedrek5, Rancedrek7,
Sirrontail, ProtectionTaggingBot, Carrite, Kikodawgzzz, Richard temple, Stallynsshlong, Stalynsboy, AustralianRupert, Rolieloves polpot,
Lebezki, Shadowjams, Rantsongallows, Stallinsdyldo, Abolishrants, Imprisonnow, Haldraper, Drownrollie, FrescoBot, Sausagehiders, Leosomerville, Stringmup, Stalynutsy, Snurants, Fecalrants, Ele67, Deep6rants, Khmerrogue, Stranglerunce, Torpedo trots, Divebomber91,
Bycuspidd, Glimmer pikkins, Frank Doric, Jackojackojacko, PasswordUsername, Firing squad34, Smokem hard, Pol potty, BenzolBot,
Trotskut, HamburgerRadio, Frykommies, Trothunter, Stevenjp, Smashdakrap, Bang it hard8, Javert, Megaforeskin, Amplitude101, Redrose64, Frykommies9, Shootkommies9, Biker Biker, Giant guppy, Error xer7, Snotragsneaker, Kiefer.Wolfowitz, Teamshoottraitors,
Abductive, Nuke the trots, Detergent hands, Battle stations2, Armed robbers, Exactly exacter, Angry bagel, Slimey rollie, Spidey oh man,
Rooky mountain, Fun n games, Simon horowitz, SpaceFlight89, Dein Kampf, , Cullen328, Pillow talk9, Mullah akbar3, Sluckett7, Tea
with toast, Roland Rancehole, Hackensacksack, Milletet, FreedomReins, Smilkyone, All runced out, Bingbingbung, Sumatrik, Zionist
lobby, Ned anders9, Douglasbell, Reaper Eternal, Crush commies, Woverbie, Suusion of Yellow, Power pugnace, Minimac, One fox
hunt, Sheep shopper, Mcpretty, Bento00, Regancy42, Tni soprano, Jack Jersawitz, Ndttdddd, Smilingsami, Sky hook hanger, EmausBot,
Smilingsamie, Katherine, Beeshoney, Dental fred, Bounded rat, Peter pieman, InSequential samet2, InSequential samet21, Snip foreskins,
Hellcatwwii, Baked beanies, Piled high so, Manifest dustiny, Gimme shelter sam, Gimme gimme 7, Rocket ann, Yoghurt goy, Rhance
rholand, Midas02, Fizz tz, Phineas fo, Summary diss, Choam Chumsky, Zoam zumsky, Zloyvolsheb, Dang trots, Whiperppli, First
twater, Wayne Slam, Crying out loudest, Crybaby kommy, Akiva orr, Shemen zayiit, Hail Runts raid, Betsies to heaven, Bless thee runtshit,
Beaver builder, Atzmon gillie, Smekking about, Red is so dead, Red is oh so dead, Red is oh my dead, Seismicio, Fetid commy die,
Shigagagag, Sugerall111, Cementars, Sugerall2 chippy, 2 chippytt, Sweeter revenge, Carmichael, JohnBolesthe15th, Special eects 67,
Special eects 78, Fast eddie 7, Gerndio, Bloajjj, Judo hold 99, Judo hold 999, ClueBot NG, Jorge Morejn, EdgarFabiano, MelbourneStar, Fraytel, Wipedbeing 9, Leons Kickster, Titodutta, Omkar1234, Idtejjkj, Trotskyist, Lowercase sigmabot, 19Nice70Guy2013, Truck
trooth1, Compfreak7, Hairspey balm, Hairspey balm3, Atomician, CimanyD, Milf hide, Eattmee, Prison wargg, Peppernox, Finnegas,
Slotskyist, Charles Essie, Defsant, Uglirunse, Monticores, Miguelpinheirokrip, CsDix, RyanBerry98, Zozs, Sietecolores, Filedelinkerbot,
Tigercompanion25, Lepriconnor, 3298230932782302, Karmanatory, AsharaDayne, Aliensyntax, Bathtoy2 and Anonymous: 346
Politics of Fidel Castro Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Fidel_Castro?oldid=676356340 Contributors: Edward,
Bearcat, Midnightblueowl, Namiba, Neelix, Florentyna, Kalidasa 777, Sun Creator, CanadianLinuxUser, Yobot, AnomieBOT, Dewritech,
Bamyers99, GeorgeBarnick, FSII, Meclee, Marceline Jackson and Anonymous: 4
Guevarism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guevarism?oldid=661629658 Contributors: Polaris999, Alan Liefting, Kuralyov, Esperant, Chewie, RJHall, RyanGerbil10, Xcuref1endx, BD2412, Hanshans23, FlaBot, Ground Zero, The One True Fred, NawlinWiki, Bronks,
Maphisto86, Intangible, SmackBot, Zazaban, Jacek Kendysz, Zleitzen, Santa Sangre, G1076, Scohoust, Iokseng, DumbBOT, CommonsDelinker, TXiKiBoT, Jenigmat429, Sstein7, SieBot, Redthoreau, Addbot, LaaknorBot, Chzz, Lightbot, Agre22, Citation bot, Guto2003,
P.4.P. No. 1, Dasha14, Stegop, Tbhotch, Slightsmile, ZroBot, Nemogue, Lowercase sigmabot, AhMedRMaaty, Heuh0, Lux ex Tenebris
and Anonymous: 25

3.2 Images
File:"YOUR_BLOOD_CAN_SAVE_HIM"_-_NARA_-_516245.tif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/
%22YOUR_BLOOD_CAN_SAVE_HIM%22_-_NARA_-_516245.tif License: Public domain Contributors: U.S. National Archives and
Records Administration Original artist: Unknown or not provided
File:A_coloured_voting_box.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/01/A_coloured_voting_box.svg License: Cc-bysa-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Ambox_important.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Ambox_important.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work, based o of Image:Ambox scales.svg Original artist: Dsmurat (talk contribs)
File:Ambox_question.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Ambox_question.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Based on Image:Ambox important.svg Original artist: Mysid, Dsmurat, penubag
File:Ambox_scales.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Ambox_scales.svg License: Public domain Contributors: self-made using inkscape and based o of Image:Emblem-scales.svg Original artist: penubag and Tkgd2007 (scales image)
File:Anarchist-Communist_Symbol.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Anarchist-Communist_
Symbol.jpg License: GFDL Contributors: Own work Original artist: Mattsvendsen
File:Anarchy-symbol.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Anarchy-symbol.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Own work Original artist: Linuxerist, Froztbyte, Arcy
File:Antirevisionist_cartoon.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Antirevisionist_cartoon.jpg License:
Public domain Contributors: Torn Down Masks Original artist: Zef Bumi
File:Atheism_template.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Atheism_template.svg License: CC BY-SA
3.0 Contributors:
Atom_of_Atheism-Zanaq.svg Original artist: Atom_of_Atheism-Zanaq.svg: User:Zanaq
File:Battle_strike_1934.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Battle_strike_1934.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the ARC
Identier (National Archives Identier) 541925. Original artist: Photographer not credited
File:Benjamin_Disraeli_by_Cornelius_Jabez_Hughes,_1878.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/
Benjamin_Disraeli_by_Cornelius_Jabez_Hughes%2C_1878.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, Historical Photographs and Special Visual Collections Department, Fine Arts Library Original artist: Cornelius Jabez Hughes, British
(1819 - 1884, London, England London, England)

3.2. IMAGES

191

File:BlackFlagSymbol.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/BlackFlagSymbol.svg License: CC BY 3.0

Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: The original uploader was Jsymmetry at English Wikipedia
File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R15068,_Leo_Dawidowitsch_Trotzki.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
d/d0/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R15068%2C_Leo_Dawidowitsch_Trotzki.jpg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 de Contributors: This image was
provided to Wikimedia Commons by the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) as part of a cooperation project. The German
Federal Archive guarantees an authentic representation only using the originals (negative and/or positive), resp. the digitalization of the
originals as provided by the Digital Image Archive. Original artist: Unknown
File:Burning_Man_aerial.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Burning_Man_aerial.jpg License: CC
BY 2.0 Contributors: Burning Man Original artist: Kyle Harmon from Oakland, CA, USA
File:Causaoperaria.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Causaoperaria.JPG License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Contributors: Own work Original artist: EdgarFabiano
File:Che_Guevara_June_2,_1959.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Che_Guevara_June_2%2C_
1959.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Museo Che Guevara (Centro de Estudios Che Guevara en La Habana, Cuba) Original
artist: Unknown
File:Che_por_Jim_Fitzpatrick.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Che_por_Jim_Fitzpatrick.svg License: Public domain Contributors: self-made, based on Jim Fitzpatrick's painting. Jim Fitzpatrick made it free of copyright Original
artist: Jgaray
File:Christ_saviour_explosion.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Christ_saviour_explosion.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Co-op_activism5.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Co-op_activism5.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Contributors:
Co-op_activism4.svg Original artist: Co-op_activism4.svg: *Co-op_activism3.svg: *Syndicalism.svg: Vladsinger
File:Coat_of_Arms_of_Cuba.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Coat_of_arms_of_Cuba.svg License:
Public domain Contributors: This vector image was created by converting the Encapsulated PostScript le available at Brands of the World
(view download).
Remember not all content there is in general free, see Commons:Fair use for more.
Original artist: Miguel Terbe Toln
File:Commons-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original
artist: ?
File:Communist_States.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Communist_States.svg License: CC BYSA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Ichwan Palongengi
File:Communist_countries_1979-1983.png Source:
1979-1983.png License: Public domain Contributors:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Communist_countries_

Communist_countries.svg Original artist: Communist_countries.svg: Smurfy

File:Communist_star.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Communist_star.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: File:Red star.svg, File:Hammer and sickle.svg Original artist: Zscout370, F l a n k e r,Penubag
File:Edit-clear.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Edit-clear.svg License: Public domain Contributors: The
Tango! Desktop Project. Original artist:
The people from the Tango! project. And according to the meta-data in the le, specically:Andreas Nilsson, and Jakub Steiner (although
minimally).
File:Emblem-money.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Emblem-money.svg License: GPL Contributors: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/GNOME-colors?content=82562 Original artist: perfectska04
File:Engels.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Engels.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Execute_346_Berias_letter_to_Politburo.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Execute_346_
Berias_letter_to_Politburo.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Execute_346_Politburo_passes.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Execute_346_Politburo_
passes.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: [1] Original artist: Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party
(Bolsheviks)
File:Execute_346_Stalins_resolution.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Execute_346_Stalins_
resolution.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Afghanistan_(19741978).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Flag_of_Afghanistan_
%281974%E2%80%931978%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work, background based on File:Flag of Afghanistan
(1978).svg;
Original artist: Orange Tuesday (talk) at en.wikipedia.
File:Flag_of_Afghanistan_(19871992).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Flag_of_Afghanistan_
%281987%E2%80%931992%29.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work. Original artist: Orange Tuesday.
File:Flag_of_Albania_(1946-1992).svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Flag_of_Albania_
%281946-1992%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/a/al-1946.gif Original artist:
Jaume Oll
File:Flag_of_Algeria.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag_of_Algeria.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: SVG implementation of the 63-145 Algerian law "on Characteristics of the Algerian national emblem" ("Caractristiques du
Drapeau Algrien", in English). Original artist: This graphic was originaly drawn by User:SKopp.

192

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

File:Flag_of_Angola.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Flag_of_Angola.svg License: Public domain

Contributors: Drawn by User:SKopp Original artist: User:SKopp
File:Flag_of_Austria.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Flag_of_Austria.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Own work, http://www.bmlv.gv.at/abzeichen/dekorationen.shtml Original artist: User:SKopp
File:Flag_of_Bangladesh.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Flag_of_Bangladesh.svg License: Public
domain Contributors: http://www.dcaa.com.bd/Modules/CountryProfile/BangladeshFlag.aspx Original artist: User:SKopp
File:Flag_of_Benin_(1975-1990).svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Flag_of_Benin_
%281975-1990%29.svg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Bulgaria_(1971-1990).svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Flag_of_Bulgaria_
%281971-1990%29.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: User:Scroch
File:Flag_of_Burundi.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Flag_of_Burundi.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Cameroon.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Flag_of_Cameroon.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Drawn by User:SKopp Original artist: (of code) cs:User:-xfi File:Flag_of_Cape_Verde_(1975-1992).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Flag_of_Cape_Verde_
%281975-1992%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: own work, based on a png image of the ag Original artist: Editor at Large,
Waldir
File:Flag_of_Chad.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Flag_of_Chad.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Quelle Fonto: http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/td.html Original artist: SKopp & others (see upload log)
File:Flag_of_Cuba.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Flag_of_Cuba.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Drawn by User:Madden Original artist: see below
File:Flag_of_Czechoslovakia.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Flag_of_Czechoslovakia.svg License:
Public domain Contributors:
-x-'s le
-x-'s code
Zirland's codes of colors
Original artist:
(of code): SVG version by cs:-x-.
File:Flag_of_Cte_d'Ivoire.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Flag_of_C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivoire.
svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Jon Harald Sby
File:Flag_of_Djibouti.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Flag_of_Djibouti.svg License: CC0 Contributors: From the Open Clip Art website. Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_East_Germany.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Flag_of_East_Germany.svg License:
Public domain Contributors: Own work
Gesetz zur nderung des Gesetzes ber das Staatswappen und die Staatsagge der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Vom 1.
Oktober 1959
Verordnung ber Flaggen, Fahnen und Dienstwimpel der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Flaggenverordnung Vom 3.
Januar 1973
Verordnung ber Flaggen, Fahnen und Dienstwimpel der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Flaggenverordnung Vom 12. Juli
1979
Original artist:
diese Datei: Jwnabd
File:Flag_of_Egypt_(1972-1984).svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Flag_of_Egypt_
%281972-1984%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: was originally derived from Image:Syria-flag-changes.svg by AnonMoos Original artist: Current vector version by Editor at Large
File:Flag_of_Equatorial_Guinea.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Flag_of_Equatorial_Guinea.svg
License: CC0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Eritrea.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Flag_of_Eritrea.svg License: CC0 Contributors: From the Open Clip Art website. Original artist: user:
File:Flag_of_Ethiopia_(19751987).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Flag_of_Ethiopia_%281975%
E2%80%931987%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Johannes Rssel (<a href='//commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Joey-das-WBF' title='User talk:Joey-das-WBF'>talk</a>)
File:Flag_of_First_Slovak_Republic_1939-1945.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Flag_of_First_
Slovak_Republic_1939-1945.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Based on DarkEvil's Image:Flag of First Slovak Republic 19391945 bordered.svg, modied by PhiLiP. Original artist: DarkEvil, PhiLiP
File:Flag_of_Gabon.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Flag_of_Gabon.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_German_Reich_(19351945).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Flag_of_German_
Reich_%281935%E2%80%931945%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Fornax
File:Flag_of_Grenada.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Flag_of_Grenada.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: Drawn by User:SKopp

3.2. IMAGES

193

File:Flag_of_Guinea-Bissau.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Flag_of_Guinea-Bissau.svg License:

Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Guinea.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Flag_of_Guinea.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Haiti_(1964-1986).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Flag_of_Haiti_%281964-1986%
29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: based on Flag of Haiti.svg, Coat of arms of Haiti (1964-1986).svg, and Flags of the World Haiti - Historical Flags Original artist: B1mbo
File:Flag_of_Hungary_(1957-1989).svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Flag_of_Hungary_
%281957-1989%3B_unofficial%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: File:Hungary Communist seal 2nd 1957.png Original artist: COA author dm Kovcs at http://reviz.freeweb.hu/
File:Flag_of_Hungary_with_arms_(state).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Flag_of_Hungary_
with_arms_%28state%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: User:Thommy9's works Original artist: User:Orion 8
File:Flag_of_Independent_State_of_Croatia.svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Flag_of_
Independent_State_of_Croatia.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Zakonska odredba o dravnom grbu, dravnoj zastavi,
Poglavnikovoj zastavi, dravnom peatu, peatima dravnih i samoupravnih ureda, 28. travnja 1941, Nr.XXXVII-53-Z.p.1941 30.
travnja 1941. Original artist: public domain by User:Zscout370
File:Flag_of_Indonesia.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Flag_of_Indonesia.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Law: s:id:Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 24 Tahun 2009 (http://badanbahasa.kemdiknas.go.id/
lamanbahasa/sites/default/files/UU_2009_24.pdf) Original artist: Drawn by User:SKopp, rewritten by User:Gabbe
File:Flag_of_Iran.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg License: Public domain Contributors: URL http://www.isiri.org/portal/files/std/1.htm and an English translation / interpretation at URL http://flagspot.net/flags/ir'.html
Original artist: Various
File:Flag_of_Iraq_(1991-2004).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Flag_of_Iraq_%281991-2004%
29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Italy.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/Flag_of_Italy.svg License: PD Contributors: ? Original
artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Italy_(1861-1946).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Flag_of_Italy_%281861-1946%
29.svg License: CC BY-SA 2.5 Contributors: http://www.regiamarina.net/ref/flags/flags_it.htm Original artist: F l a n k e r
File:Flag_of_Japan.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Flag_of_Japan.svg License: PD Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Kenya.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Flag_of_Kenya.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: http://www.kenyarchives.go.ke/flag_specifications.htm Original artist: User:Pumbaa80
File:Flag_of_Laos.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Flag_of_Laos.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Drawn by User:SKopp Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Liberia.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Flag_of_Liberia.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Version 1: SKopp
Original artist: Government of Liberia
File:Flag_of_Libya_(19691972).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Flag_of_Libya_%281969%E2%
80%931972%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: F l a n k e r
File:Flag_of_Madagascar.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Flag_of_Madagascar.svg License: Public
domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Malawi.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Flag_of_Malawi.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Mali.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Flag_of_Mali.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Manchukuo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Flag_of_Manchukuo.svg License: Public
domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Mauritania.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Flag_of_Mauritania.svg License: Public
domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Mozambique_(1975-1983).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag_of_Mozambique_
%281975-1983%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Vectorized by Mysid, based on FOTW and Image:Flag of Mozambique.svg.
Original artist: Mysid
File:Flag_of_Myanmar_(1974-2010).svg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Flag_of_Myanmar_
%281974-2010%29.svg License: CC0 Contributors: Open Clip Art Original artist: Unknown
File:Flag_of_Niger.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Flag_of_Niger.svg License: Public domain Contributors:
The burnt orangecolor in the top band and circle is Pantone(166), i.e. RGB(224,82,6) = #E05206 on sRGB CRT screen, or
CMYK(0,65%,100%,0) for process coated print, BUT NOT light orange #FF7000 which is somewhere between Pantone(130C) and Pantone(151), and is even lighter than X11 orange! See http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/colors/conversion/100/ The central white band is
plain D65 reference white = RGB(255,255,255) = #FFFFFF.
Original artist: Made by: Philippe Verdy User:verdy_p, see also fr:Utilisateur:verdy_p.
File:Flag_of_North_Korea.svg Source:
Public domain Contributors: Template:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Flag_of_North_Korea.svg License:
Original artist: Zscout370

194

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

File:Flag_of_North_Vietnam.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Flag_of_North_Vietnam.svg License:

Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_North_Yemen.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Flag_of_North_Yemen.svg License:
Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Norway.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Flag_of_Norway.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Own work Original artist: Dbenbenn
File:Flag_of_Paraguay.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Flag_of_Paraguay.svg License: CC0 Contributors: This le is from the Open Clip Art Library, which released it explicitly into the public domain (see here). Original artist: Republica
del Paraguay
File:Flag_of_Poland.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/12/Flag_of_Poland.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Portugal.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Flag_of_Portugal.svg License: Public domain Contributors: http://jorgesampaio.arquivo.presidencia.pt/pt/republica/simbolos/bandeiras/index.html#imgs Original artist: Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (1910; generic design); Vtor Lus Rodrigues; Antnio Martins-Tuvlkin (2004; this specic vector set: see sources)
File:Flag_of_Romania.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Flag_of_Romania.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: AdiJapan
File:Flag_of_Romania_(1965-1989).svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Flag_of_Romania_
%281965-1989%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: commons, Image:Flag of Romania (1965-1989).png Original artist:
Alex:D (<a href='//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alex:D' title='User talk:Alex:D'>talk</a>)
File:Flag_of_Rwanda_(1962-2001).svg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Flag_of_Rwanda_
%281962-2001%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: , Original artist: Drawn by Zscout370.
File:Flag_of_SFR_Yugoslavia.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Flag_of_SFR_Yugoslavia.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Flag designed by ore Andrejevi-Kun[3]
File:Flag_of_San_Marino.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Flag_of_San_Marino.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work: www.consigliograndeegenerale.sm Original artist: Zscout370
File:Flag_of_Sao_Tome_and_Principe.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Flag_of_Sao_Tome_and_
Principe.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Senegal.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Flag_of_Senegal.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Original upload from Openclipart : Senegal. However, the current source code for this SVG le has almost nothing in
common with the original upload. Original artist: Original upload by Nightstallion
File:Flag_of_Sierra_Leone.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Flag_of_Sierra_Leone.svg License:
Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: Zscout370
File:Flag_of_Somalia.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Flag_of_Somalia.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: see below Original artist: see upload history
File:Flag_of_South_Yemen.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Flag_of_South_Yemen.svg License:
Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Spain_(1785-1873_and_1875-1931).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Flag_of_Spain_
%281785-1873_and_1875-1931%29.svg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: self-made, based in Image:Bandera naval desde 1785.png
; [1] Original artist: previous version User:Ignaciogavira ; current version HansenBCN, designs from SanchoPanzaXXI
File:Flag_of_Sudan.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Flag_of_Sudan.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: www.vexilla-mundi.com Original artist: Vzb83
File:Flag_of_Syria.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Flag_of_Syria.svg License: Public domain Contributors: see below Original artist: see below
File:Flag_of_Tanganyika.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Flag_of_Tanganyika.svg License: CCBY-SA-3.0 Contributors: Self-drawn in CorelDraw, measures based on Flag Bulletin 01 as cited by FOTW and colors on File:Flag of
Tanzania.svg. Original artist: Mysid
File:Flag_of_Tanzania.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Flag_of_Tanzania.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Togo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Flag_of_Togo.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Tunisia.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Flag_of_Tunisia.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: http://www.w3.org/ Original artist: entraneur: BEN KHALIFA WISSAM
File:Flag_of_Turkey.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Flag_of_Turkey.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Turkish Flag Law (Trk Bayra Kanunu), Law nr. 2893 of 22 September 1983. Text (in Turkish) at the website of the
Turkish Historical Society (Trk Tarih Kurumu) Original artist: David Benbennick (original author)
File:Flag_of_Turkmenistan.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Flag_of_Turkmenistan.svg License:
Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Uganda.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Flag_of_Uganda.svg License: CC0 Contributors: From the Open ClipArt Library website. Original artist: tobias
File:Flag_of_United_Arab_Republic.svg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Flag_of_United_Arab_
Republic.svg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_Upper_Volta.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Flag_of_Upper_Volta.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Image originally derived from the public domain Original artist: odder

3.2. IMAGES

195

File:Flag_of_Vietnam.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Flag_of_Vietnam.svg License: Public domain Contributors: http://vbqppl.moj.gov.vn/law/vi/1951_to_1960/1955/195511/195511300001 http://vbqppl.moj.gov.vn/vbpq/Lists/

Vn%20bn%20php%20lut/View_Detail.aspx?ItemID=820 Original artist: Lu Ly v li theo ngun trn
File:Flag_of_Zaire.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Flag_of_Zaire.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work based on ocial ags Original artist: User:Moyogo
File:Flag_of_Zambia.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Flag_of_Zambia.svg License: CC0 Contributors: http://www.parliament.gov.zm/downloads/ Original artist:
Author: Tobias Jakobs (in the public domain) and User:Zscout370 * (Return re)
File:Flag_of_Zanzibar.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Flag_of_Zanzibar.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Created in CorelDraw, based on FOTW and Image:Flag of Tanzania.svg. Original artist: Mysid
File:Flag_of_the_Central_African_Republic.svg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Flag_of_the_
Central_African_Republic.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: User:Nightstallion
File:Flag_of_the_Comoros_(1978-1992).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Flag_of_the_Comoros_
%281978-1992%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Self-drawn in CorelDraw, based on FOTW. Original artist: Mysid
File:Flag_of_the_Dominican_Republic.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Flag_of_the_Dominican_
Republic.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: User:Nightstallion
File:Flag_of_the_People'{}s_Republic_of_China.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Flag_of_the_
People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work, http://www.protocol.gov.hk/flags/eng/n_flag/
design.html Original artist: Drawn by User:SKopp, redrawn by User:Denelson83 and User:Zscout370
File:Flag_of_the_People'{}s_Republic_of_Congo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Flag_of_the_
People%27s_Republic_of_Congo.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work, based on Flags of the World - People's Republic of Congo, 1970 - 1992
Original artist: Thommy
File:Flag_of_the_People'{}s_Republic_of_Kampuchea.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Flag_of_
the_People%27s_Republic_of_Kampuchea.svg License: CC BY-SA 2.5 Contributors: Based from Cambodian Flag History Original artist:
Zach Harden
File:Flag_of_the_People'{}s_Republic_of_Mongolia_(1949-1992).svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/
b4/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_Mongolia_%281940-1992%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Drawn by User:
latebird Original artist: Adapted from :Image: [1]
File:Flag_of_the_Philippines_(1943-1945).svg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Flag_of_the_
Philippines_%281943-1945%29.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: User 50
File:Flag_of_the_Republic_of_China.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Flag_of_the_Republic_of_
China.svg License: Public domain Contributors: [1] Original artist: User:SKopp
File:Flag_of_the_Sahrawi_Arab_Democratic_Republic.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Flag_
of_the_Sahrawi_Arab_Democratic_Republic.svg License: Public domain Contributors: undened Original artist: El Uali Mustapha Sayed
File:Flag_of_the_Seychelles_1977.svg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Flag_of_the_Seychelles_
%281977-1996%29.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg License: Public domain Contributors: http://pravo.levonevsky.org/ Original artist:
File:Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg License: Cc-bysa-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:ForbiddenCity_MaoZedongPortrait_(pixinn.net).jpg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/
ForbiddenCity_MaoZedongPortrait_%28pixinn.net%29.jpg License: CC BY 3.0 Contributors: More of my photos on my photoblog:
http://www.pixinn.net Original artist: Christophe Meneboeuf. Mao Zedong portrait attributed to Zhang Zhenshi and a committee of artists
(see [1]), falls under {{FoP-China}}.
File:Forms_of_government.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Forms_of_government.svg License:
GFDL Contributors: List of countries by system of government for the colors and File:BlankMap-World-Microstates.svg for the base
map, File:Form of government.png, for the description page and colors
Original artist: Jackaranga
File:Fuggerkontor.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Fuggerkontor.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: biography of M. Schwarz; Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig Original artist: Unknown
File:GeorgheDoja.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/GeorgheDoja.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Ghana_flag_1964.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Flag_of_Ghana_%281964-1966%29.svg
License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Give_away_shop_utrecht_inside.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Give_away_shop_utrecht_
inside.jpg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: http://wiki.gifteconomy.org/File:Ga_utrecht_inside.jpg Original artist: admin
File:GolodomorKharkiv.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/GolodomorKharkiv.jpg License: Public
domain Contributors: [1] [2] Original artist: Alexander Wienerberger
File:Hammer_and_Sickle_Red_Star_with_Glow.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Hammer_and_
Sickle_Red_Star_with_Glow.png License: Public domain Contributors: File:Hammer and sickle.svg Original artist: Michaelwuzthere
File:Hegel.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Hegel.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://
www.hegel.net/en/gwh3.htm Original artist: Julius Ludwig Sebbers

196

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

File:Ho_Chi_Minh_Mausoleum_2006.jpg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Ho_Chi_Minh_
Mausoleum_2006.jpg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Rungbachduong
File:IWW_demonstration_NY_1914.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/IWW_demonstration_NY_
1914.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:JStalin_Secretary_general_CCCP_1942.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/JStalin_Secretary_
general_CCCP_1942.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Library of Congress [1] Original artist: Reproduction Number: LCUSW33-019081-C United States. Oce of War Information. Overseas Picture Division. Washington Division. Farm Security Administration - Oce of War Information Photograph Collection.
File:JStalin_Secretary_general_CCCP_1942_flipped.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/JStalin_
Secretary_general_CCCP_1942_flipped.jpg License: Public domain Contributors:
JStalin_Secretary_general_CCCP_1942.jpg Original artist: JStalin_Secretary_general_CCCP_1942.jpg:
File:Karl_Marx_001.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Karl_Marx_001.jpg License: Public domain
Contributors: International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, Netherlands Original artist: John Jabez Edwin Mayall
File:Klallam_people_at_Port_Townsend.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Klallam_people_at_
Port_Townsend.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Duke of York House, Jenny Lind at beinecke.library.yale.edu Original artist:
James Gilchrist Swan (1818-1900)
File:Kula_bracelet.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Kula_bracelet.jpg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Brocken Inaglory
File:Kustodiev_The_Bolshevik.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Kustodiev_The_Bolshevik.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Russian Avant-garde Gallery Original artist: Boris Kustodiev
File:La_conqute_du_pain.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/La_conqu%C3%AAte_du_pain.jpg
License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Koroesu
File:Latvia_deportation_1941.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Latvia_deportation_1941.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Le-bourgeois-gentilhomme.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Le-bourgeois-gentilhomme.jpg
License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:LeTrotskyDB.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/LeTrotskyDB.jpg License: PD-US Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Lenin,_Trotsky_and_Voroshilov_with_Delegates_of_the_10th_Congress_of_the_Russian_Communist_Party_
(Bolsheviks).jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Lenin%2C_Trotsky_and_Voroshilov_with_Delegates_
of_the_10th_Congress_of_the_Russian_Communist_Party_%28Bolsheviks%29.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: originally
uploaded to en.wikipedia by User:Dynamax, http://www.marxists.org/admin/legal/fdl.htm Original artist: Unknown
File:Lenin-Trotsky_1920-05-20_Sverdlov_Square_(original).jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/
Lenin-Trotsky_1920-05-20_Sverdlov_Square_%28original%29.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: This source can be found in
various publications on the subject of early Soviet history, including Robert Service, 2000, Lenin: A Biography (London: Macmillan).
Original artist: Goldshtein G.
File:Lenin.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Lenin.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://
s123.photobucket.com/albums/o298/RedElephantMSU/?action=view&current=Lenin.jpg Original artist: L. Lonidov
File:Lenin_1920.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Lenin_1920.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: The original uploader was Stevegiacomelli at English Wikipedia
File:Lenin_and_stalin_crop.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Lenin_and_stalin_crop.jpg License:
Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Leo_Trotzki_1900_in_Sibirien.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Leo_Trotzki_1900_in_
Sibirien.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/photo/t1900c.htm Original artist: Unknown
File:Leon_Trotsky.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Leon_Trotsky.JPG License: Public domain
Contributors: self-made Scan from an original public poster printed in Poland and dated 1920 Original artist: unknown,governmental
edition ( Ministry of Military Afairs of Poland)
File:Logo_of_the_Fourth_International.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Logo_of_the_Fourth_
International.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Original artist:
File:Luis_Buuel.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Luis_Bu%C3%B1uel.JPG License: Public domain Contributors: Revista Gente y la actualidad, Ao 3, nmero 130, Enero de 1968, Buenos Aires Original artist: Unknown
File:Lukcs_Gyrgy.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Luk%C3%A1cs_Gy%C3%B6rgy.jpg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 de Contributors: File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-15304-0097, Berlin, Tagung Weltfriedensrat, Georg Lukacz, Anna
Seghers.jpg Original artist: Sturm, Horst
File:Mao.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Mao.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work
Original artist: photograph User:WliiamShakespeare. Mao Zedong portrait attributed to Zhang Zhenshi and a committee of artists (see
[1],* [#cite_note-1 [1]]), this version hung at Tiananmen Gate prior to about 1967.
File:Mao_Zedong_portrait.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Mao_Zedong_portrait.jpg License: CC
BY 2.0 Contributors: Intermediate source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardfisher/3451116326/ Original artist: Zhang Zhenshi (1914
1992). Mao Zedong portrait attributed to Zhang Zhenshi and a committee of artists (see [1]).
File:Marcha_PC(AP).jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Marcha_PC%28AP%29.jpg License: CC
BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: www.accionproletaria.com Original artist: Prensa PC(AP)
File:Marx_Engels_Lenin.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Marx_Engels_Lenin.svg License: CC
BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Jgaray

3.2. IMAGES

197

File:Marx_and_Engels.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Marx_and_Engels.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: The original uploader was at English Wikipedia
File:Molire_-_Nicolas_Mignard_(1658).jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Moli%C3%A8re_-_
Nicolas_Mignard_%281658%29.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://www.lessing-photo.com/dispimg.asp?i=26030249+
&cr=3&cl=1 Original artist: Nicolas Mignard
File:NORTH_PHILADELPHIA_JOBLESS_BLACKS._MAN_STANDING_AT_RIGHT_IS_GERALD_\__xunadd_text_
character:nN{\textquotedbl}{"}{}HEAT_WAVE\__xunadd_text_character:nN{\textquotedbl}{"}{}_JONES,_WHO_
WORKS_FOR_\__xunadd_text_character:nN{\textquotedbl}{"}{}THE_NETWORK,_A..._-_NARA_-_552754.tif
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/NORTH_PHILADELPHIA_JOBLESS_BLACKS._MAN_STANDING_
AT_RIGHT_IS_GERALD_%22HEAT_WAVE%22_JONES%2C_WHO_WORKS_FOR_%22THE_NETWORK%22%2C_A..._-_
NARA_-_552754.tif License: Public domain Contributors: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Original artist: Swanson,
Dick, Photographer (NARA record: 8464477)
File:North_korea_mass_games.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/North_korea_mass_games.jpg License:
CC-BY-SA-2.5 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Papua_New_Guinea_map.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Papua_New_Guinea_map.png License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Peace_sign.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Peace_sign.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: The original uploader was Schuminweb at English Wikipedia
File:Portal-puzzle.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Portal-puzzle.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ?
Original artist: ?
File:Prachanda.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Prachanda.jpg License: CC BY 2.5 Contributors: en
Wikipedia Original artist: en:User:Nhorning
File:Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_
System.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Uni Hamburg Original artist: Artist not credited. Published by International Pub. Co.,
Cleveland, Ohio.
File:Question_book-new.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Question_book-new.svg License: Cc-by-sa-3.0
Contributors:
Created from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. Based on Image:Question book.png created by User:Equazcion Original artist:
Tkgd2007
File:Red_flag_II.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Red_flag_II.svg License: CC BY 2.5 Contributors:
? Original artist: ?
File:Red_flag_waving.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Red_flag_waving.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: Original PNG by Nikodemos. Original artist: Wereon
File:Rosa_Luxemburg.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Rosa_Luxemburg.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://www.marxists.org/francais/img/rosa.jpg Original artist: Unknown
File:SharonTemple.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/SharonTemple.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Original publication: unknown
Immediate source: Sharon Temple Museum Original artist: unknown
(Life time: unknown)
File:Society.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Society.svg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: own
work based on Image:Society.png by MisterMatt originally from English Wikipedia (en:Image:Society.png) Original artist: MesserWoland
File:Socrates.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Socrates.png License: Public domain Contributors:
Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original artist: The original uploader was Magnus Manske at English Wikipedia Later versions
were uploaded by Optimager at en.wikipedia.
File:Soyuz_Voinstvuyushchikh_Bezbozhnikov_Membership_Card.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
4/42/Soyuz_Voinstvuyushchikh_Bezbozhnikov_Membership_Card.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: The cover of the membership card of the Union of Militant Atheists (Soyuz Voinstvuyushchikh Bezbozhnikov), scanned at http://a-theism.com/index.php?option=com_
content&task=view&id=2082&Itemid=45 Original artist: Anonymous (a sta artist of the Union, one would presume)
File:Stalin_Image.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Stalin_Image.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: File:Molotov, Stalin and Voroshilov, 1937.jpg Original artist: Self
File:Stalin_birthday2.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Stalin_birthday2.jpg License: Public domain
Contributors: http://club2.cat898.com/newbbs/dispbbs.asp?boardid=1&star=6&replyid=716217&id=2754110&skin=0&page=1 Original
artist: Unknown
File:Stalin_in_London.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Stalin_in_London.jpg License: CC BY-SA
2.0 Contributors: Flickr: . Original artist: Adam Smith
File:Surplus-value.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Surplus-value.jpg License: ? Contributors:
From: http://www.graphicwitness.org/contemp/marx31.htm Original artist:
By Hugo Gellert, 1934.
File:Symbol-hammer-and-sickle.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Symbol-hammer-and-sickle.svg
License: Public domain Contributors: self-made; based on Image:Hammer and sickle.svg by Zscout370 Original artist: Rocket000
File:Symbol_book_class2.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Symbol_book_class2.svg License: CC
BY-SA 2.5 Contributors: Mad by Lokal_Prol by combining: Original artist: Lokal_Prol

198

CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

File:Symbol_template_class.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Symbol_template_class.svg License: Public

domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Symbolics_onthe_banknotes_of_socialist_state.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Symbolics_
onthe_banknotes_of_socialist_state.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Zajac Vanka
File:Tana_Toraja,_Salu_funeral_(6823105668).jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Tana_Toraja%
2C_Salu_funeral_%286823105668%29.jpg License: CC BY 2.0 Contributors: Tana Toraja, Salu funeral Original artist: Arian Zwegers
File:Text_document_with_red_question_mark.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Text_document_
with_red_question_mark.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Created by bdesham with Inkscape; based upon Text-x-generic.svg
from the Tango project. Original artist: Benjamin D. Esham (bdesham)
File:The_Commissar_Vanishes_2.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/The_Commissar_Vanishes_2.
jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/erasurerevelation.htm Original artist: Unknown.
File:Thomas_Mann_in_1926.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Thomas_Mann_in_1926.jpg License:
Public domain Contributors: http://www.memo.fr/Dossier.asp?ID=1160 Original artist: anonymous (the author never disclosed his/her
identity)
File:Tiananmen_Square_-_National_Day_2004.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Tiananmen_
Square_-_National_Day_2004.JPG License: CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 Contributors: Image taken by me using Casio QV-R41 Original artist:
me (w:User:pfctdayelise)
File:Toraja_house.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Toraja_house.jpg License: CC BY-SA 2.5 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Tov_lenin_ochishchaet.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Tov_lenin_ochishchaet.jpg License: ? Contributors:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tov_lenin_ochishchaet.jpg Original artist:
Viktor Deni (1893-1946)
File:Translation_to_english_arrow.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Translation_to_english_arrow.
svg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User:Faigl.ladislav using
CommonsHelper.
Original artist: tkgd2007. Original uploader was Tkgd2007 at en.wikipedia
File:TrotskyAtThePolishFront-1919.jpg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/
TrotskyAtThePolishFront-1919.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons
by User:Sdrtirs using CommonsHelper. Original artist: Original uploader was Kwertii at en.wikipedia
File:Trotskyist_Left_Opposition-1927.jpg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Trotskyist_Left_
Opposition-1927.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://web.mit.edu/fjk/Public/Glossary/jpgs/opposition-1927-old.jpg Original
artist: Unknown
File:Unbalanced_scales.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Unbalanced_scales.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Voroshilov,_Molotov,_Stalin,_with_Nikolai_Yezhov.jpg
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
9/91/Voroshilov%2C_Molotov%2C_Stalin%2C_with_Nikolai_Yezhov.jpg License:
Public domain Contributors:
http:
//www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/erasurerevelation.htm Original artist: Unknown
File:Warren_Buffett_KU_Visit.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Warren_Buffett_KU_Visit.jpg
License: CC BY-SA 2.0 Contributors: Work of Mark Hirschey Original artist: Mark Hirschey
File:Wedding_rings.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Wedding_rings.jpg License: CC BY 2.0 Contributors: Flickr Original artist: Je Belmonte from Cuiab, Brazil
File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg License:
CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors:
Wiki_letter_w.svg Original artist: Wiki_letter_w.svg: Jarkko Piiroinen
File:Wikibooks-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Wikibooks-logo.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Contributors: Own work Original artist: User:Bastique, User:Ramac et al.
File:Wikiquote-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Wikisource-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Contributors: Rei-artur Original artist: Nicholas Moreau
File:Wiktionary-logo-en.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Wiktionary-logo-en.svg License: Public
domain Contributors: Vector version of Image:Wiktionary-logo-en.png. Original artist: Vectorized by Fvasconcellos (talk contribs),
based on original logo tossed together by Brion Vibber
File:Working_man-obrero_2.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Working_man-obrero_2.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: Rolf Obermaier
File:Yalta_summit_1945_with_Churchill,_Roosevelt,_Stalin.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/
Yalta_summit_1945_with_Churchill%2C_Roosevelt%2C_Stalin.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: [1] The source web page include the following caption: Photo #: USA C-543 (Color) Original artist: ?
File:Young_monk.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Young_monk.jpg License: CC BY 2.5 Contributors: Uploaded by Serinde Original artist: Uploaded by Serinde

3.3 Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0