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A political theory that
advocates collective ownership of the means of production (resources, land and capital),
abolition of private property and equalisation of incomes. Communism differs from
socialism because it contemplates revolutionary social change rather than 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, after the
second world war, on many countries of Eastern Europe. In Asia, a successful communist-led
revolution in China in 1949 led to the growth of communist regimes and political movements
in other areas, including 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 a true community-based democracy and a weakening of the role of the state . Marxian
analysis is largely macrosociological and structural, and emphasizes social class, means
and modes of production, division of labour, class conflict, and crises.
MARXISM
The body of philosophical, political,
economic and sociological ideas associated with Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his life-long
collaborator Frederick Engels (1820-1895). The term is also used more generally to refer
to work in the social sciences and humanities that employs key ideas and concepts from
Marx and Engels' original writings. The core of Marxist ideas is the claim that each
historical period has a distinct mode of production that rests upon particular forces - or
technological organization - of production and distinct ways of organizing social
relationships between people in the economy. This mode of production then exerts the
primary influence in shaping social relations within the society in general as well as its
politics, law and intellectual ideas. |
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