Portal:Communism

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THE COMMUNISM PORTAL

Introduction

Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal') is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more authoritarian vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a socialist state, followed by the withering away of the state. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, communism is placed on the left-wing alongside socialism, and communist parties and movements have been described as radical left or far-left.

Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism encompasses a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those. All of these different ideologies generally share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system, and mode of production, that in this system there are two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat, who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie, a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.

Communism in its modern form grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe that argued capitalism caused the misery of urban factory workers. In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, first in the Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II. As one of the many types of socialism, communism became the dominant political tendency, along with social democracy, within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s. (Full article...)

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Iraqi Partisans
Al-Ansar (Arabic: الأنصار, 'the Partisans') was a guerrilla force attached to the Iraqi Communist Party, active between 1979 and 1988. When the alliance between the Communist Party and the Baath Party ended, a wave of harsh repression against the Communist Party followed. In 1977 the regime launched a crackdown against the communists. A number of communist cadres fled to the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq to escape arrest. By January 1979, the exiled communists had established ansar (partisan) fighting units. By April 1979 the ansar movement was operational. Headquarters of the partisan units were established in Kirkuk and as-Sulemaniyah, and bases were established in Irbil. Later, bases were also set up in Dohuk and Nineveh. The build-up of the ansar movement did however occur without the full consent of the politburo of the party.

In South Yemen, a number of Iraqi Communist Party cadres began military training before joining the guerrillas in northern Iraq. The training was administered by the South Yemeni government.

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Yusuf Salman Yusuf, alias Fahd
Yusuf Salman Yusuf (Syriac: ܝܘܣܦ ܣܠܡܢ ܝܘܣܦ, Arabic: يوسف سلمان يوسف) better known by his nom de guerre Fahd (Arabic: فهد), (Baghdad 1901 – 14 February 1949), was an ethnic Assyrian and Christian was one of the first Iraqi communist activists and was first secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party from 1941 until his death on the gallows in 1949. He is generally credited with a vital role in the party’s rapid organizational growth in the 1940s. For the last two years of his life he directed the party from prison.

In building up the party, Fahd was guided by his own class feelings and political distrust of the intelligentsia and students, as much as by Leninist principles. He concentrated on the workers in the foreign-owned industries, and was assisted primarily by his trusted supporters Ali Sakar, Zaki Bassim and Ahmad 'Abbas. While a large proportion of the industrial workforce was employed in small locally-owned workshops, the party paid less attention to this sector; in many cases they were working for members of their extended family, and in addition they did not have the strategic importance of the Kirkuk oilfield workers, the railwaymen, or the workers at Basra port, all of whom were in large measure won over to the party during Fahd's leadership.

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Communist memorial in Peermade.

Photo credit: Soman

News related to communism

21 March 2024 –
President of Vietnam Võ Văn Thưởng resigns after just over a year in office amid the Communist Party's anti-corruption campaign, making him the shortest-serving president in Vietnamese history. (Reuters) (Al Jazeera) (Bloomberg)

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There is no small enemy nor insignificant force, because no longer are there isolated peoples. As the Second Declaration of Havana states:

No nation in Latin America is weak — because each forms part of a family of 200 million brothers, who suffer the same miseries, who harbor the same sentiments, who have the same enemy, who dream about the same better future, and who count upon the solidarity of all honest men and women throughout the world...

This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering Latin American lands. Struggles of masses and ideas. An epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and scorned by imperialism; our people, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers...

But now from one end of the continent to the other they are signaling with clarity that the hour has come — the hour of their vindication. Now this anonymous mass, this America of color, somber, taciturn America, which all over the continent sings with the same sadness and disillusionment, now this mass is beginning to enter definitively into its own history, is beginning to write it with its own blood, is beginning to suffer and die for it.

— Che Guevara (1928-1967)
Address to the United Nations , 1964

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