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World communism, also known asglobal communism orinternational communism, is a form ofcommunism placing emphasis on an international scope rather than being individual communist states. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwidecommunist society that isclassless, moneyless,stateless, andnonviolent, which may be achieved through an intermediate-term goal of either avoluntary association ofsovereign states as a globalalliance, or aworld government as a single worldwide state.
A series of internationals have proposed world communism as a primary goal, including theFirst International, theSecond International, theThird International (the Communist International or Comintern), theFourth International, theRevolutionary Internationalist Movement,Maoist Internationalist Movement, theWorld Socialist Movement, and variant offshoots. The methods and political theories of each International remain distinct in their pursuit of the global communist society.
During the early years of theStalin era (1927–1953), the theory ofsocialism in one country flew in the face of the generally accepted practice of Marxism at the time, and became part of theideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. According toJoseph Stalin and his supporters it was naïve to think theworld revolution was imminent in the 1920s–1930s after theUSSR's failure to conquer Poland in 1919 and the defeat of thePeople's State of Bavaria. With the rise in socialist statespost-WWII various splits occurred, namely theTito-Stalin split, theMao-Khrushchev split, and theSino-Albanian split, further exacerbating the prospect of a soon-to-be worldwide revolution, alongsidenationalistic tendencies in countries such asRomania andNorth Korea fomenting anon-aligned front.
The end of theCold War, with theRevolutions of 1989 and thedissolution of the Soviet Union, is often regarded as the fall of communism. Nevertheless, the international communist tendencies remain amongMaoists,Trotskyists,left communists, and somepresent-day Russian communists among others seeking to further refine and revise the theory ofdialectical materialism.
Marxist philosophers had observed in the turn of the century that because capitalism had begun to exhaust the low hanging fruit of domestic exploitation whether on a national or a continental scale, it had becomeImperialist and sought out the global exploitation of markets bycolonization and subsequent wealth extraction, and workers by the rampantexploitation of labour. This drive for profit as the sole motivating force of the capitalist class compels class solidarity among the now international capitalist class of the world against any attempt to unify in solidarity by the now also international workers of the world, with the capitalist class' goal being to maintain profitability and thus their class' dominance as the engine and reason for theclass conflict. Recognition by people of the pain of this exploitation by capitalists inexorably unites theproletariat of the world and necessitates international cooperation to halt the suffering of humankind. Thisproletarian internationalism has as its aim the end of continuous subjugation viadivide and rule by the comparatively few capitalists who seek to stop the development ofclass consciousness in their workers lest they too formtrade unions to counter the capitalistsmonopolies; (thus the rallying cry of communists, "Workers of the world, unite!"). In this view, after a transitional period of international socialism, the terminal stage of development of the (future)history of communism would likewise be replaced by world communism, defined byworld peace.
Theorists have differed on whether world communism may be achieved peacefully despite evidently ongoing class conflict. Those who believe the capitalist class would not put down their property rights to become workers again believe the transition to world communism must be more contentious. World communism as the utopian final goal of the class conflict can only be achieved byworld revolution as "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" in the words of noted one time socialist,Martin Luther King Jr. As such, World communism is ultimately incompatible with the permanent existence of thenation state formation as a means of organizing people and property. To be a socialist is to believe that people are people everywhere, even withinnations and they must unite to end their own exploitation by the would be elitists of capitalism. Whether the people unite in asupranational unions of sovereign states or a world government to progress through the socialist phase of human development is guided by the desire to end this capitalist exploitation of humankind.
This transitional period ofSocialism is considered to then continue to develop theproductive forces and alleviate drudgery until either the state becomes irrelevant to organizing human activity and the people agree to the abolition of the state, or the now useless state undergoes what Marx and Engels call thewithering away of the state. Whengovernance no longer requires stateinstitutions orstate power no one would desire it nor wield it. In other words, the people of a utopian communist society would beself-governing viadirect democracy so direct that the state would not even exist.
Abolition of the state is not in itself a distinctivelyMarxist doctrine. It was sometime it was happened by any of the country held by varioussocialist andanarchist thinkers of the nineteenth century as well as some present-day anarchists (libertarians areanti-statist typically in a subtly different sense, in that they supportsmall government although not absence ofgovernment orstate). The crux here is a text of theFriedrich Engels, from hisAnti-Dühring. It is often cited as "The state is not 'abolished,' it withers away".[2]
This is from the pioneer work ofhistorical materialism, a formulation of Marx's idea of amaterialist conception of history. The withering away of the state is a graphic formulation, that has passed into cliché. The translation (Engels was writing in German) is also given as: "The state is not 'abolished'. It dies out".[2]
Reference to the whole passage shows that this happens only after the proletariat has seized themeans of production. The schematic is therefore revolution, transitional period, ultimate period. Although the ultimate period sounds like autopia, Marx and Engels did not consider themselvesutopian socialists, but ratherscientific socialists. They considered violence necessary for resistance ofwage slavery.
Whereas for Engels the transitional period was reduced to a single act, for Lenin thirty to forty years later it had become extended and "obviously lengthy".[3] In the same place, he argues strongly that Marx's conception of communist society is not utopian, but takes into account the heritage of what came before.
This gives at least roughly the position on world communism as the Comintern was set up in 1919: world revolution is necessary for the setting up of world communism, but not as an immediate or clearly sufficient event.
As the theory of socialism in one country challenged Trotsky'spermanent revolution, theSoviet Union dissolved the Third International during World War II. However, Stalin did not intend to implementisolationism despite this one-country approach.
In a 1936 interview with journalistRoy W. Howard, Stalin articulated his rejection ofworld revolution and stated that "We never had such plans and intentions" and that "The export of revolution is nonsense".[4][5][6]
Nevertheless, Stalin also supportedrevolutionary socialism around the world to continue to work toward world communism, however distant it might be. Thus it backed the26th of July Movement in theCuban Revolution, theNorth Vietnamese in theVietnam War and theMPLA in theAngolan Civil War. Thedomino theory of the Cold War was driven by this intent asanti-communists feared that isolationism by capitalist countries would lead to the collapse of theirself-defense.
Communism survived in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam, after severe internal crises. In 1989–1992 the party control collapsed in other Communist states, which then entered intoPost-communism. Yugoslavia plunged into along complex series of wars between ethnic groups. Soviet-oriented Communist movements collapsed in countries where it was not in control.[7]
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