Sociology Index

COMMUNISM

Communism is a political theory that advocates collective ownership of the means of production and abolition of private property to bring about equalisation of incomes. Communism differs from socialism because it contemplates revolutionary social change and not in just electoral politics. The first modern communist society was established in Russia after the revolution of 1917 and this political system was imposed by the Soviet Union on many countries of Eastern Europe. Communism is based on needs. Communism aims to distribute resources to each person as per their needs. Communism is a great ideology. Capitalism and Communism ideologies never go together.

Socialism is based on deeds. Socialism aims to distribute resources to each person as per their deeds. A successful communist-led revolution in China in 1949 led to the growth of communist regimes and political movements in other areas like Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia. These centralized and dictatorial communist systems were far from the model societies envisaged by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels who believed that a communist revolution would create co-operative collective ownership in a true community-based democracy by the weakening of the role of the state.

The terms Communism and Marxism is used more generally to refer to work in the social sciences that employs key ideas and concepts from Marx and Engels. Marxian analysis is largely macrosociological and structural, and emphasizes social class, means and modes of production, division of labour, crises and class conflict.

Major differences between capitalism and communism occur with regard to the resources or the means of production. Communism considers the community solely owns the resources or the means of production. Capitalism believes that the resources or the means of production should be with a private owner. Who created Communism and why communism succeeded?

The creation of Communism in Russian can be attributed to the inequalities in 19th century society. Communism began to develop from the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Communism became popular amongst the workers of Russia due to the oppression experienced because of tsarist rule. Communism was an ideology that seemed to guarantee workers a chance at political and social equality. It was for this reason that workers supported communist ideology, and Russia's history was changed for ever for the good communism promised to bring.