Portal:Communism

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THE COMMUNISM PORTAL

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Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal') is a 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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Emblem of the Fourth International.
The Fourth International (FI) (founded in 1938) is the communist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky (Trotskyists), with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism. Historically, the Fourth International was established in France in 1938: Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Comintern or Third International to have become "lost to" Stalinism and incapable of leading the international working class to political power.

Trotsky's followers had been organised since 1930 as the International Left Opposition, which later became the International Communist League. By declaring themselves the Fourth International, World Party of Socialist Revolution, the Trotskyists, were publically asserting their continuity not only with the Comintern but also with the earlier Socialist International and the International Workingmens Association, the first international, which had been led by Karl Marx.

The International's rationale was to construct new mass revolutionary parties able to lead successful workers' revolutions. It saw these arising from a revolutionary wave which would develop alongside and as a result of the coming world war. The founding conference adopted the Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution as the International's political platform.

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Rashed Khan Menon
Rashed Khan Menon (b. 18 May 1943, Faridpur) is a Bangladeshi politician. He is the chairman of Workers Party of Bangladesh and a member of Jatiyo Sangsad, the parliament of Bangladesh. As of 2009, Menon served as the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Ministry of Education.

Menon studied at Dhaka Collegiate School, finish in 1958. In 1960 he passed intermediate in arts group from Dhaka College. He graduated from Dhaka University in 1963 with a degree in Economics. In 1964 he achieved his master's degree.

In the late 1960s, Menon the president of the East Pakistan Students Union faction linked to the National Awami Party of Maulana Bhasani. However, Menon differed with Maulana Bhasani when the latter accepted participation in elections in January 1970. Menon's East Pakistan Student Union launched a campaign against elections, stating that they would be merely a facade of democracy, that fair elections could not be held under martial law and that the situation was ripe for revolution. Menon built a revolutionary Maoist organisation along with Kazi Zafar Ahmed. The Menon-Zafar group built a base in Khulna (in Begerhat), amongst workers near Dacca and had a student group named Revolutionary Students Union.

Menon contested the 1973 Bangladeshi parliamentary election as a NAP(Bhasani) candidate. He did not win any seat, and afterward he complained that the Awami League government had used unfair methods to win the election.

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Photo credit: Lilian Wagdy

19 July 2024 –
Communist Party general secretary and paramount leader of Vietnam Nguyễn Phú Trọng dies at the age of 80, and is succeeded on an acting basis by President Tô Lâm. (BBC News)
18 July 2024 – Naxalite–Maoist insurgency
Two Indian soldiers are killed and four others are injured in an IED attack by Maoists in Chhattisgarh, India. (The Hindustan Times) (India Blooms)
14 July 2024 –
KP Sharma Oli is named as the new Prime Minister of Nepal in his fourth term in office, with his communist party forming a coalition with the Nepali Congress party. (Al Jazeera)
28 June 2024 – New People's Army rebellion
Philippine troops claim to have killed at least ten suspected communist guerrillas, including three commanders, near a village in Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija, Philippines. (ABC News)
27 June 2024 –
The Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party expels former defense ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe from the party following charges of corruption against them. (CNA)
19 June 2024 –
Human Rights Watch reports that China has changed the names of hundreds of villages inhabited by Uyghurs in order to reflect the ruling Communist Party's ideology. (DW)
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Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance: ... it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word. The traditional criterion of clear and present danger seems no longer adequate to a stage where the whole society is in the situation of the theater audience when somebody cries: 'fire'. It is a situation in which the total catastrophe could be triggered off any moment, not only by a technical error, but also by a rational miscalculation of risks, or by a rash speech of one of the leaders. In past and different circumstances, the speeches of the Fascist and Nazi leaders were the immediate prologue to the massacre. The distance between the propaganda and the action, between the organization and its release on the people had become too short. But the spreading of the word could have been stopped before it was too late: if democratic tolerance had been withdrawn when the future leaders started their campaign, mankind would have had a chance of avoiding Auschwitz and a World War.
— Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
Repressive Tolerance , 1965

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This page was last updated at 2024-07-26 04:56 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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