Communism why it works

Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads.

Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Communism is a political and economic ideology that positions itself in opposition to liberal democracy and capitalism, advocating instead for a classless system in which the means of production are owned communally and private property is nonexistent or severely curtailed.

The term's modern usage originated with Victor d'Hupay, an 18th-century French aristocrat who advocated living in "communes" in which all property would be shared, and "all may benefit from everybody's work. Modern communist ideology began to develop during the French Revolution, and its seminal tract, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' "Communist Manifesto," was published in That pamphlet rejected the Christian tenor of previous communist philosophies, laying out a materialist and—its proponents claim—scientific analysis of the history and future trajectory of human society.

The Communist Manifesto presented the French Revolution as a major historical turning point, when the "bourgeoisie" —the merchant class that was in the process of consolidating control over the "means of production" —overturned the feudal power structure and ushered in the modern, capitalist era. That revolution replaced the medieval class struggle, which pitted the nobility against the serfs, with the modern one pitting the bourgeois owners of capital against the "proletariat," the working class who sell their labor for wages.

In the Communist Manifesto and later works, Marx, Engels, and their followers advocated and predicted as historically inevitable a global proletarian revolution, which would usher in first an era of socialism , then of communism. This final stage of human development would mark the end of class struggle and therefore of history: all people would live in social equilibrium, without class distinctions, family structures, religion, or property.

The state, too, would "wither away. Marx and Engels' theories would not be tested in the real world until after their deaths.

In , during World War I, an uprising in Russia toppled the czar and sparked a civil war that eventually saw a group of radical Marxists led by Vladimir Lenin gain power in The Bolsheviks, as this group was called, founded the Soviet Union on former Imperial Russian territory and attempted to put communist theory into practice.

Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin had developed the Marxist theory of vanguardism, which argued that a close-knit group of politically enlightened elites was necessary to usher in the higher stages of economic and political evolution: socialism and finally communism. Lenin died shortly after the civil war ended, but the "dictatorship of the proletariat," led by his successor Joseph Stalin, would pursue brutal ethnic and ideological purges as well as forced agricultural collectivization.

Tens of millions died during Stalin's rule, from to , on top of the tens of millions who died as a result of the war with Nazi Germany. Rather than withering away, the Soviet state became a powerful one-party institution that prohibited dissent and occupied the "commanding heights" of the economy.

Agriculture, the banking system, and industrial production were subject to quotas and price controls laid out in a series of Five Year Plans. This system of central planning enabled rapid industrialization, and from to growth in Soviet gross domestic product GDP outpaced that of the U. In general, however, the Soviet economy grew at a much slower pace than its capitalist, democratic counterparts.

Weak consumer spending was a particular drag on growth. Central planners' emphasis on heavy industry led to chronic underproduction of consumer goods, and long lines at understocked grocery stores were a fixture of Soviet life even during periods of relative prosperity. Thriving underground markets — termed the "second economy" by some academics — catered to demand for cigarettes, shampoo, liquor, sugar, milk, and especially prestige goods such as jeans smuggled in from the West.

While these networks were illegal, they were essential to the party's functioning: they alleviated shortages that, left unchecked, threatened to spark another Bolshevik Revolution; they provided party propagandists with a scapegoat for shortages; and they lined the pockets of party officials, who would either take payoffs to look the other way or grow rich running illegal market operations themselves.

The Soviet Union collapsed in , following a push to reform the economic and political system and provide greater room for private enterprise and free expression. These reform pushes, known as perestroika and glasnost , respectively, did not halt the economic decline the Soviet Union suffered in the s and likely hastened the Communist state's end by loosening its grip on sources of dissent.

By: Alia Hoyt. In a perfect world , everyone would have food and shelter, and a true utopian society would be devoid of sexism, racism and other forms of oppression. But for most of the world's population, this perfect society just isn't possible. Communism is one proposed solution to these problems.

Most people know what communism is at its most basic level. Simply put, communism is the idea that everyone in a given society receives equal shares of the benefits derived from labor. Communism is designed to allow the poor to rise up and attain financial and social status equal to that of the middle-class landowners.

In order for everyone to achieve equality, wealth is redistributed so that the members of the upper class are brought down to the same financial and social level as the middle class. Communism also requires that all means of production be controlled by the state. See civilization. The process by which goods get to final consumers over a geographical market, including storing, selling, shipping, and advertising. A probability distribution; the set of relative likelihoods that a variable will have a value in a given interval.

An economic system is the combination of the various agencies, entities or even sectors as described by some authors that provide the economic structure that defines the social community.

Collective focus of the study of money, currency and trade, and the efficient use of resources. The system of production and distribution and consumption. The overall measure of a currency system; as the national economy. The extent to which a resource, such as electricity, is used for the intended purpose; the ratio of useful work to energy expended.

The extent to which time is well used for the intended task. Improved efficiency was a principle goal of progressives, one they thought attainable by the application of scientific and rational thought to social problems. Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages. It is used to motivate individuals often, employees for better performance by providing financial or other types of rewards.

An anticipated reward or aversive event available in the environment. Something that motivates an individual to perform an action. Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production and is defined as total output per one unit of a total input. The rate at which goods or services are produced by a standard population of workers. A ratio of production output to what is required to produce it inputs. The state of being productive, fertile, or efficient.

The rate at which products and services are produced relative to a particular workforce. Something that one uses to achieve an objective; for example, a resource could be a raw material or an employee. That which is produced, then traded, bought or sold, then finally consumed and consists of an action or work. A whole composed of relationships among the members. The part of the universe being studied, arbitrarily defined to any size desired. Skip to main content. Module 3: Different Strokes ….

Political and Economic Systems Around the Globe. Search for:.