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...)
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.
Nahuel Moreno (real name Hugo Miguel Bressano Capacete) (24 April 1924 – 25 January 1987) was a
Trotskyist leader from
Argentina. Moreno was active in the Trotskyist movement from before
World War II until his death.
Prior to the reunification of the two factions in 1963, the International Secretariat's best-known leader in
Latin America,
J. Posadas, left to form his own
Fourth International (Posadist). After Posadas' departure, Moreno became the central leader of the International's Latin American Bureau. When the
Fourth International was reunified in 1963, his current helped to found the Revolutionary Workers Party in Argentina.
...that Moscow City Hall, built in the 1890s to the tastes of the Russian
bourgeoisie, was converted by
Communists into the Central
Lenin Museum after its rich interior decoration had been plastered over.
Everyone is welcome to participate in WikiProject Socialism, where editors collaborate to improve all aspects related to
socialism on Wikipedia.
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I would like to say a few words about a question which is closely connected with the problem of
maternity – the question of
abortion, and
Soviet Russia’s attitude to it. On 20 November 1920 the labour republic issued a law abolishing the penalties that had been attached to abortion. What is the reasoning behind this new attitude? Russia, after all, suffers not from an overproduction of living labour but rather from a lack of it.
Russia is thinly, not densely populated. Every unit of
labour power is precious. Why then have we declared abortion to be no longer a
criminal offence?
Hypocrisy and
bigotry are alien to proletarian politics. Abortion is a problem connected with the problem of maternity, and likewise derives from the insecure position of women (we are not speaking here of the bourgeois class, where abortion has other reasons – the reluctance to “divide” an inheritance, to suffer the slightest discomfort, to spoil one’s figure or miss a few months of the season etc.)
Abortion exists and flourishes everywhere, and no laws or punitive measures have succeeded in rooting it out. A way round the law is always found. But “secret help” only cripples women; they become a burden on the labour government, and the size of the labour force is reduced. Abortion, when carried out under proper medical conditions, is less harmful and dangerous, and the woman can get back to work quicker. Soviet power realises that the need for abortion will only disappear on the one hand when Russia has a broad and developed network of institutions protecting motherhood and providing social education, and on the other hand when women understand that childbirth is a social obligation; Soviet power has therefore allowed abortion to be performed openly and in clinical conditions.
Besides the large-scale development of motherhood protection, the task of labour Russia is to strengthen in women the healthy instinct of motherhood, to make motherhood and labour for the collective compatible and thus do away with the need for abortion. This is the approach of the labour republic to the question of abortion, which still faces women in the bourgeois countries in all its magnitude. In these countries women are exhausted by the dual burden of hired labour for capital and motherhood. In Soviet Russia the working woman and
peasant woman are helping the Communist Party to build a new society and to undermine the old way of life that has enslaved women. As soon as woman is viewed as being essentially a labour unit, the key to the solution of the complex question of maternity can be found. In bourgeois society, where housework complements the system of capitalist economy and private property creates a stable basis for the isolated form of the family, there is no way out for the working woman. The emancipation of women can only be completed when a fundamental transformation of living is effected; and life-styles will change only with the fundamental transformation of all production and the establishment of a communist economy. The revolution in everyday life is unfolding before our very eyes, and in this process the liberation of women is being introduced in practice.
