communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace privateproperty and a profit-based economy withpublic ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and thenatural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form ofsocialism—a higher and more advanced form, according to its advocates. Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists’adherence to the revolutionary socialism ofKarl Marx.

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

Like most writers of the 19th century, Marx tended to use the termscommunism andsocialism interchangeably. In hisCritique of the Gotha Programme (1875), however, Marx identified two phases of communism that would follow the predicted overthrow ofcapitalism: the first would be a transitional system in which the working class would control the government and economy yet still find it necessary to pay people according to how long, hard, or well they worked, and the second would be fully realized communism—a society withoutclass divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Marx’s followers, especially the Russian revolutionaryVladimir Ilich Lenin, took up this distinction.

InState and Revolution (1917), Leninasserted that socialism corresponds to Marx’s first phase of communist society and communism proper to the second. Lenin and theBolshevik wing of theRussian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party reinforced this distinction in 1918, the year after they seized power in Russia, by taking the name All-Russian Communist Party. Since then, communism has been largely, if not exclusively, identified with the form of political and economic organization developed in theSoviet Union and adopted subsequently in thePeople’s Republic of China and other countries ruled by communist parties.

For much of the 20th century, in fact, about one-third of the world’s population lived under communist regimes. These regimes were characterized by the rule of a single party that tolerated no opposition and littledissent. In place of a capitalist economy, in which individuals compete for profits, moreover, party leaders established acommand economy in which thestate controlled property and itsbureaucrats determined wages, prices, and production goals. The inefficiency of these economies played a large part in thecollapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the remaining communist countries (excepting North Korea) are now allowing greater economic competition while holding fast to one-party rule. Whether they will succeed in this endeavour remains to be seen. Succeed or fail, however, communism is clearly not the world-shaking force it was in the 20th century.

Historical background

Although the termcommunism did not come into use until the 1840s—it is derived from the Latincommunis, meaning “shared” or “common”—visions of a society that may be considered communist appeared as long ago as the 4th centurybce. In the ideal state described inPlato’sRepublic, the governing class of guardians devotes itself to serving the interests of the wholecommunity. Because private ownership of goods would corrupt their owners by encouraging selfishness, Plato argued, the guardians must live as a large family that shares common ownership not only of material goods but also of spouses and children.

Other early visions of communism drew their inspiration fromreligion. The firstChristians practiced a simple kind of communism—as described inActs 4:32–37, for example—both as a form of solidarity and as a way of renouncing worldly possessions. Similar motives later inspired the formation ofmonastic orders in which monks took vows of poverty and promised to share their few worldly goods with each other and with the poor. The Englishhumanist SirThomas More extended this monastic communism inUtopia (1516), which describes an imaginary society in whichmoney is abolished and people share meals, houses, and other goods in common.

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Other fictional communisticutopias followed, notablyCity of the Sun (1623), by the Italian philosopherTommaso Campanella, as did attempts to put communist ideas into practice. Perhaps the most noteworthy (if not notorious) of the latter was thetheocracy of theAnabaptists in the Westphalian city of Münster (1534–35), which ended with the military capture of the city and the execution of its leaders. TheEnglish Civil Wars (1642–51) prompted theDiggers to advocate a kind of agrarian communism in which the Earth would be “a common treasury,” asGerrard Winstanleyenvisioned inThe Law of Freedom (1652) and other works. The vision was not shared by theProtectorate led byOliver Cromwell, which harshly suppressed the Diggers in 1650.

It was neither a religious upheaval nor a civilwar but a technological and economicrevolution—theIndustrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries—that provided theimpetus and inspiration for modern communism. This revolution, which achieved great gains in economic productivity at the expense of an increasingly miserable working class, encouraged Marx to think that theclass struggles that dominated history were leading inevitably to a society in which prosperity would be shared by all through common ownership of the means of production.