Former parties
33-517: A General Office (also known as "administrative office") is an important administrative political organ in communist party organizations and communist countries (such as China , Laos , and Vietnam ). Generally speaking, the General Office serves administrative functions for its parent organization, such as filing documents, recording meeting minutes , internal and external communications, scheduling , and agenda preparation. In China
66-565: A Hong Kong and Macau Affairs (General) Office . Almost all organizations directly under the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party have a corresponding General Office. This People's Republic of China -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Communist party Former parties Former parties A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize
99-690: A few cases where the original sections of the Communist International have retained those names. But throughout the twentieth century, many parties changed their names. For example, following their ascension to power, the Bolshevik Party changed their name to the All-Russian Communist Party. Causes for these shifts in naming were either moves to avoid state repression or as measures to generate greater acceptance by local populations. An important example of
132-434: A top-down hierarchical structure, ideological rigidity , and strict party discipline . In contrast, other studies have emphasized the differences among communist parties. Multi-party studies, such as those by Robert C. Tucker and A. James McAdams, have emphasized the differences in both these parties' organizational structure and their use of Marxist and Leninist ideas to justify their policies. Another important question
165-569: Is why communist parties were able to rule for as long as they did. Some scholars have depicted these parties as fatally flawed from their inception and argue they only remained in power because their leaders were willing to use their monopoly of power and the state monopoly to crush all forms of opposition . In contrast, other studies have emphasized these parties' ability to adapt their policies to changing times and circumstances. Foundations of Leninism Foundations of Leninism ( Russian : Об основах ленинизма , Ob osnovakh leninizma )
198-467: The socio-economic goals of communism . The term " communist party" was popularized by the title of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As a vanguard party , the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As a ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of
231-543: The 107 parties with significant memberships, there were approximately 82 million communist party members worldwide. Given its worldwide representation, the communist party may be counted as the principal challenger to the influence of liberal-democratic , catch-all parties in the twentieth century. Following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc between 1989–1992, most of these parties either disappeared or were renamed and adopted different goals than their predecessors. In
264-680: The 21st century, only five ruling parties on the national level still described themselves as Marxist–Leninist parties: the Chinese Communist Party , the Communist Party of Cuba , the Communist Party of Vietnam , the Workers' Party of Korea and the Lao People's Revolutionary Party . As of 2023, the Chinese Communist Party was the world's second largest political party , having over 99 million members. Although
297-500: The General Office can, occasionally, serve coordination and project management duties, but acts only within the bounds as dictated by their superiors and cannot make executive decisions on its own. The General Office typically reports directly to the head of an organization. General Offices may be created for very specific initiatives. For example, the State Council (government) of China has a Legal Affairs (General) Office , and
330-676: The aegis of a new organization, the Cominform . Historically, in countries where communist parties were struggling to attain state power, the formation of wartime alliances with non-communist parties and wartime groups was enacted (such as the National Liberation Front of Albania ). Upon attaining state power these Fronts were often transformed into nominal (and usually electoral) "National" or "Fatherland" Fronts in which non-communist parties and organizations were given token representation (a practice known as Blockpartei ),
363-556: The appearance of charismatic revolutionary leaders and their ultimate demise during the decline and fall of communist parties worldwide have all been the subject of investigation. A uniform naming scheme for communist parties was adopted by the Communist International. All parties were required to use the name 'Communist Party of ( name of the country )', resulting in separate communist parties in some countries operating using (largely) homonymous party names (e.g. in India ). Today, there are
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#1732769058221396-469: The centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries . Once a policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy. In contrast, the Menshevik faction, which initially included Leon Trotsky , emphasized that the party should not neglect the importance of mass populations in realizing a communist revolution . In
429-779: The course of the revolution, the Bolshevik party which became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) assumed government power in Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. With the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919, the concept of communist party leadership was adopted by many revolutionary parties, worldwide. In an effort to standardize the international communist movement ideologically and maintain central control of
462-739: The dissolution of the Communist International. After the Second World War new international coordination bodies were created, such as the World Federation of Democratic Youth , International Union of Students , World Federation of Trade Unions , Women's International Democratic Federation and the World Peace Council . The Soviet Union unified many of the Comintern's original goals in the Eastern Bloc under
495-575: The form of social patriotism . In contrast to the Trotskyist movement, African American civil rights activist and Soviet politburo member Harry Haywood received the text extremely positively, particularly praising Stalin's theories on the nature of imperialism in relation to Jim Crow and slavery. Historian Stephen Kotkin accuses Stalin of plagiarizing Foundations of Leninism from Soviet journalist Filipp Ksenofontov. This view has been shared by several other historians although opinions vary on
528-437: The historical importance of communist parties is widely accepted, their activities and functions have been interpreted in different ways. One approach, sometimes known as the totalitarian school of communist studies, has implicitly treated all communist parties as the same types of organizations. Scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Francois Furet have relied upon conceptions of the party emphasizing centralized control,
561-683: The international communist movement was fragmented due to the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. Those who sided with China and Albania in their criticism of the Soviet leadership, often added words like 'Revolutionary' or ' Marxist–Leninist ' to distinguish themselves from the pro-Soviet parties. In 1985, approximately 38 percent of the world's population lived under "communist" governments (1.67 billion out of 4.4 billion). The CPSU's International Department officially recognized 95 ruling and nonruling communist parties. Overall, if one includes
594-462: The issue of the historical roots of Leninism as a form of Marxism . According to Stalin, Leninism is a product of imperialism and a guiding ideology of the Bolsheviks . He lists three contradictions which imperialism brings to capitalism: These factors, associated with imperialism, increase the contradictions already present in capitalist countries. The lecture builds on Lenin's writings about
627-499: The latter was the renaming of many East European communist parties after the Second World War, sometimes as a result of mergers with the local social democratic and democratic socialist parties. New names in the post-war era included " Socialist Party ", " Socialist Unity Party ", " People's (or Popular) Party ", " Workers' Party " and " Party of Labour ". The naming conventions of communist parties became more diverse as
660-665: The leftist opposition to Stalin) referred to the lectures in The Permanent Revolution as "ideological garbage", "an official manual of narrow-mindedness" and "an anthology of enumerated banalities", characterizing them as part of a propaganda campaign by Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Kamenev. Zinoviev replied to such criticism in Leninism: Introduction to the Study of Leninism . According to Trotskyist historian Isaac Deutscher , Foundations of Leninism
693-511: The member parties, the Comintern required that its members use the term "communist party" in their names. Under the leadership of the CPSU, the interpretations of orthodox Marxism were applied to Russia and led to the emergence of Leninist and Marxist–Leninist political parties throughout the world. After the death of Lenin, the Comintern's official interpretation of Leninism was the book Foundations of Leninism (1924) by Joseph Stalin . As
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#1732769058221726-477: The membership of a communist party was to be limited to active cadres in Lenin's theory, there was a need for networks of separate organizations to mobilize mass support for the party. Typically, communist parties built up various front organizations whose membership was often open to non-communists. In many countries, the single most important front organization of the communist parties was its youth wing . During
759-407: The methods of Leninism as: The concept of self-criticism was developed and expanded as an essential component of party politics, with Stalin justifying the doctrine by citing Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder . Self-criticism, according to Stalin, should be considered an essential component of Leninist ( Marxist–Leninist ) political ideology. Bolshevik Leon Trotsky (who led
792-620: The most popular examples of these being the National Front of East Germany (as a historical example) and the North Korean Reunification Front (as a modern-day example). Other times the formation of such Fronts was undertaken without the participation of other parties, such as the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia and the National Front of Afghanistan , though the purpose was
825-543: The nature of imperialism, particularly 1917's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism . Stalin opens his second lecture, on methods, with a reference to the period of the Second International in which Karl Kautsky and other orthodox Marxists adopted "opportunistic" ( revisionist ) principles to preserve unity in the social-democratic parties . It was due to this opportunism that Kautsky and
858-668: The parties did not endorse revolutionary socialist tactics and programs, instead favoring Eduard Bernstein 's reformism. According to Stalin, the Second International became "antiquated", "chauvinistic", and "narrow-minded" at the onset of World War I by supporting the war and opposing violent proletarian revolution; Leninism, with its success in the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War , became Marxism's main legitimate tendency. He defines
891-580: The political leadership of the party. After the fall of communist party regimes in the 1990s, mass organizations sometimes outlived their communist party founders. At the international level, the Communist International organized various international front organizations (linking national mass organizations with each other), such as the Young Communist International , Profintern , Krestintern , International Red Aid , Sportintern , etc. Many of these organizations were disbanded after
924-594: The proletariat . Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when the socialist movement in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction ("of the majority") and the Menshevik faction ("of the minority"). To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed
957-472: The same: to promote the communist party line to generally non-communist audiences and to mobilize them to carry out tasks within the country under the aegis of the Front. Recent scholarship has developed the comparative political study of global communist parties by examining similarities and differences across historical geographies. In particular, the rise of revolutionary parties, their spread internationally,
990-466: The time of the Communist International , the youth leagues were explicit communist organizations, using the name ' Young Communist League '. Later the youth league concept was broadened in many countries, and names like 'Democratic Youth League' were adopted. Some trade unions and students', women's, peasants', and cultural organizations have been connected to communist parties. Traditionally, these mass organizations were often politically subordinated to
1023-451: The written text of nine lectures Stalin delivered to trainee party activists at Sverdlov Communist University , and was the first work produced by Stalin since the 1917 October Revolution . Stalin's nine lectures covered the historical roots of Leninism , methods, theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat , the peasant question, the national question, strategy and tactics (two lectures), and style of work. He focused his first lecture on
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1056-496: Was a 1924 collection made by Joseph Stalin that consisted of nine lectures he delivered at Sverdlov University that year. It was published by the Soviet newspaper, Pravda . After the January 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin , a power struggle began among factions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Stalin was quick to ally himself with fellow Soviet politicians Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev . The book contains
1089-629: Was withdrawn from circulation due to conflicts between the text and Stalin's recently developed concept of socialism in one country . Stalin produced a follow-up text, The Problems of Leninism , which presents a corrected conception of Marxism–Leninism in which socialism can be produced by focusing on the industrial economy of a single state. Erik van Ree, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam 's Institute of Eastern European Studies, notes that Foundations of Leninism contributed to Stalin's developing synthesis of Marxism with Russian nationalism in
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