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139-607: In March 1969 the Constituent Assembly of the party was celebrated. In this assembly the organization officially adopted a communist and independentist ideology. Joaquim Maurín , Jaume Vicens i Vives and the classical international marxist authors were the most important theoretical inspirations the party. The influence of the Third World revolutionary movements, specially the Cuban Revolution ,

278-643: A semi-colony to a leading world power, with greatly advanced literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education, and life expectancy. Its leading role in World War II saw the emergence of the industrialized Soviet Union as a superpower . Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria , Czechoslovakia , East Germany , Poland , Hungary, and Romania . A Marxist–Leninist government

417-459: 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,

556-620: A Catalan socialist society in an international socialist society. The strategic line of the party was defined as: The PSAN also established some minimum points to negotiate with other parties: freedom of association , right to strike , the statute of Núria 1932 , at least similar statutes to the Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands . The PSAN criticized the National Front of Catalonia (FNC) for being in

695-500: A communist party, the rejection of private property and capitalism, state control of economic activity and mass media , restrictions on freedom of religion , and suppression of opposition and dissent. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, several previously Communist governments repudiated or abolished Communist rule altogether. Afterwards, only a small number of nominally Communist governments remained, such as China , Cuba , Laos , North Korea , and Vietnam . With

834-473: A distinct stage between capitalism and communism. This intermediate stage was a concept introduced by Vladimir Lenin as a means to defend the Bolshevik seizure of power against traditional Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for socialist revolution . A distinction between communist and socialist as descriptors of political ideologies arose in 1918 after

973-526: A form of communism. In their words, the Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective. As an economic system, communism was attractive to many of the peasants who supported social revolution in sixteenth century central Europe." This link was highlighted in one of Karl Marx 's early writings; Marx stated that "[a]s Christ

1112-455: A greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Many schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts, which has then led to contradictory conclusions. There is a movement toward the recognition that historical materialism and dialectical materialism remain the fundamental aspects of all Marxist schools of thought . Marxism–Leninism and its offshoots are

1251-556: A hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline . The Great Purge of 1936–1938 was Joseph Stalin 's attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . In the Moscow trials , many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during

1390-540: A matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists' adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx." In the United States, communism is widely used as a pejorative term as part of a Red Scare , much like socialism , and mainly in reference to authoritarian socialism and Communist states . The emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to

1529-504: A new youth organization, Maulets was created. In 1989 the PSAN joined Catalunya Lliure , an electoral coalition formed by the National Front of Catalonia , the MDT-FP and Maulets . The adoption of independentism by Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) at the end of that year left Catalunya Lliure in a difficult position, since a lot of its members joined ERC . The PSAN and Maulets were

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1668-425: A particular type of communism. One of the first uses of the word in its modern sense is in a letter sent by Victor d'Hupay to Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne around 1785, in which d'Hupay describes himself as an auteur communiste ("communist author"). In 1793, Restif first used communisme to describe a social order based on egalitarianism and the common ownership of property. Restif would go on to use

1807-529: A possible communist or socialist theorist, or as the first author to give communism a serious consideration. The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia (modern-day Iran) has been described as communistic for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy , criticizing the institution of private property , and striving to create an egalitarian society. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under

1946-531: A post-capitalist society – positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death." According to the Encyclopædia Britannica , "Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been

2085-617: A prerequisite to socialism , were critical of the Bolsheviks from the beginning due to Russia being seen as too backward for a socialist revolution . Council communism and left communism , inspired by the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the wide proletarian revolutionary wave, arose in response to developments in Russia and are critical of self-declared constitutionally socialist states . Some left-wing parties, such as

2224-458: A socialist principle of " to each according to his contribution ". Socialism has been described as a philosophy seeking distributive justice, and communism as a subset of socialism that prefers economic equality as its form of distributive justice. In 19th century Europe, the use of the terms communism and socialism eventually accorded with the cultural attitude of adherents and opponents towards religion . In European Christendom , communism

2363-546: A socialist state that is in the process of constructing communism. Terms used by Communist states include national-democratic , people's democratic , socialist-oriented , and workers and peasants' states. According to Richard Pipes , the idea of a classless , egalitarian society first emerged in ancient Greece . Since the 20th century, ancient Rome has been examined in this context, as well as thinkers such as Aristotle , Cicero , Demosthenes , Plato , and Tacitus . Plato, in particular, has been considered as

2502-416: 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

2641-710: A work about More, whose ideas could be regarded as "the foregleam of Modern Socialism" according to Kautsky. During the October Revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin suggested that a monument be dedicated to More, alongside other important Western thinkers. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the Diggers advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. In his 1895 Cromwell and Communism , Eduard Bernstein stated that several groups during

2780-466: Is a non- idealist attempt at the understanding of material history and society, whereby communism is the expression of a real movement, with parameters that are derived from actual life. According to Marxist theory, class conflict arises in capitalist societies due to contradictions between the material interests of the oppressed and exploited proletariat  – a class of wage laborers employed to produce goods and services – and

2919-480: Is that of educating voters in what are deemed their true interests rather than in response to the expression of interest by voters themselves. When they have gained control of the state, Leninist communists' main task was preventing other political parties from deceiving the proletariat, such as by running their own independent candidates. This vanguardist approach comes from their commitments to democratic centralism in which communists can only be cadres, i.e. members of

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3058-542: Is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty." Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the German Peasants' War , which Friedrich Engels analyzed in his 1850 work The Peasant War in Germany . The Marxist communist ethos that aims for unity reflects

3197-680: Is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a mass murderer ; for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder. After the Chinese Civil War , Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 as the Nationalist government headed by the Kuomintang fled to the island of Taiwan. In 1950–1953, China engaged in a large-scale, undeclared war with

3336-614: The 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election , socialist parties totaled well over 70% of the vote. The Bolsheviks were clear winners in the urban centres, and took around two-thirds of the votes of soldiers on the Western Front, obtaining 23.3% of the vote; the Socialist Revolutionaries finished first on the strength of support from the country's rural peasantry, who were for the most part single issue voters , that issue being land reform, obtaining 37.6%, while

3475-490: The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union . War communism was the first system adopted by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War as a result of the many challenges. Despite communism in the name, it had nothing to do with communism, with strict discipline for workers, strike actions forbidden, obligatory labor duty, and military-style control, and has been described as simple authoritarian control by

3614-584: The Catalan Workers Bloc and independents, the Bloc d'Esquerra d'Alliberament Nacional (BEAN). BEAN gained 46,962 votes (1.59% of the total vote in Catalonia ). In the local elections of the same year the party got 8,878 votes and 5 town councillors. In 1980 the party abandoned the coalition and suffered the split of Nacionalistes d'Esquerra (NE), the eurocommunist section of the party. After

3753-717: The Catalan nationalist resistance is usually considered as the events at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona in May 1960 , during which the public attending an event held at the Palau de la Música Catalana presided over by several Franco ministers sang the Cant de la Senyera , which functioned as an alternative anthem to the banned Els Segadors . Jordi Pujol , who was also accused of being

3892-665: The Cheget , to Russian president Boris Yeltsin . That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag . Previously, from August to December 1991, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol , formally establishing

4031-735: The Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people. Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More . In his 1516 treatise titled Utopia , More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason and virtue . Marxist communist theoretician Karl Kautsky , who popularized Marxist communism in Western Europe more than any other thinker apart from Engels, published Thomas More and His Utopia ,

4170-558: The Cold War had begun. Stalin himself believed that capitalism was a hollow shell and would crumble under increased non-military pressure exerted through proxies in countries like Italy. He greatly underestimated the economic strength of the West and instead of triumph saw the West build up alliances that were designed to permanently stop or contain Soviet expansion. In early 1950, Stalin gave

4309-702: The Comité Rossellonès d'Estudis i d'Acció (CREA). On January 16, 1971, the party called for a demonstration in Barcelona in solidarity with the people being tried in the Process of Burgos , with 200 participants. The PSAN also showed support to the Assembly of Catalonia , to avoid isolation and lose influence. Joan Josep Armet became the spokesman and intended to strengthen its popular and paraticipativo character and deepen its national character. In 1972

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4448-841: The Commonwealth of Independent States , and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. As of 2023, states controlled by Communist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba , the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , the Lao People's Democratic Republic , and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam . Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. With

4587-669: The English Civil War (especially the Diggers) espoused clear communistic, agrarianist ideals and that Oliver Cromwell 's attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile. Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , Jean Meslier , Étienne-Gabriel Morelly , and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. During

4726-706: The National Front of Catalonia , the Socialist Movement of Catalonia , the Democratic Union of Catalonia and the PSUC. In its founding manifesto, the Coordination demanded amnesty and political and union freedoms, as well as the reestablishment of the Statute of Autonomy of 1932 and the convocation of a constituent Cortes, as a prior step to the recognition of the right of self-determination that

4865-566: The Process of Burgos and the Basque armed group ETA , the party created a direct action section, to show solidarity with the Basque movement. The same year Socialist Independentist Action of Catalonia (ASIC), led by Fèlix Cucurull , a small group but with experienced militants. They also maintained contacts with Esquerra Catalana dels Treballadors (ECT), the Valencian Socialist Party (PSV), Germania Socialista and

5004-524: The Russian Revolution or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including Lev Kamenev , Grigory Zinoviev , Alexei Rykov , and Nikolai Bukharin , were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed. The devastation of World War II resulted in a massive recovery program involving the rebuilding of industrial plants, housing, and transportation as well as

5143-611: The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , which resulted in the adjective Communist being used to refer to socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism , and later in the 1920s those of Marxism–Leninism . In spite of this common usage, Communist parties also continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx , "Marx used many terms to refer to

5282-731: The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in the October Revolution; after a few weeks of deliberation, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks from November 1917 to July 1918, while the right-wing faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party boycotted the soviets and denounced the October Revolution as an illegal coup . In

5421-595: The Socialist Party of Great Britain , boasted of having called the Bolsheviks, and by extension those Communist states which either followed or were inspired by the Soviet Bolshevik model of development, establishing state capitalism in late 1917, as would be described during the 20th century by several academics, economists, and other scholars, or a command economy . Before the Soviet path of development became known as socialism , in reference to

5560-511: 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. During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived under Communist governments. These governments were characterized by one-party rule by

5699-556: The Soviet economic model , several scholars posit that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism . Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between anti anti-communism and anti-communism . Many authors have written about mass killings under communist regimes and mortality rates , such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin , which remain controversial, polarized, and debated topics in academia, historiography, and politics when discussing communism and

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5838-656: The Vietcong and the Algerian FLN was also very important. The Basque organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) and the Galician People's Union (UPG) were also references, both in theory and practice. The main objectives of the party were: the expulsion of the occupation forces , the territorial unity of the Catalan Countries , the creation of a Catalan socialist state and the constitution of

5977-427: The bourgeoisie  – the ruling class that owns the means of production and extracts its wealth through appropriation of the surplus product produced by the proletariat in the form of profit . This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production , results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage

6116-400: The common ownership of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into communism as a new mode of production . In between capitalism and communism, there is the dictatorship of the proletariat ; it is the defeat of the bourgeois state but not yet of the capitalist mode of production, and at the same time

6255-652: The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Fall of Communism , there was a split between those hardline Communists, sometimes referred to in the media as neo-Stalinists , who remained committed to orthodox Marxism–Leninism , and those, such as The Left in Germany, who work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism; other ruling Communist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social-democratic parties. Outside Communist states, reformed Communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning government or regional coalitions, including in

6394-548: The materialist conception of history which holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the mode of production and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the Industrial Revolution ushered the world into the new capitalist mode of production . Before capitalism, certain working classes had ownership of instruments used in production; however, because machinery

6533-445: The means of production , earning profit via the surplus value generated by the proletariat, who have no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie. According to the materialist conception of history, it is through the furtherance of its own material interests that the rising bourgeoisie within feudalism captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only

6672-401: The productive forces ) is the primary agent of change in the structure of society and of human social relations and that social systems and their relations (e.g. feudalism , capitalism , and so on) become contradictory and inefficient as the productive forces develop, which results in some form of social revolution arising in response to the mounting contradictions. This revolutionary change is

6811-443: 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

6950-435: The two-stage theory , communists made no major distinction between the socialist mode of production and communism; it is consistent with, and helped to inform, early concepts of socialism in which the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Monetary relations in the form of exchange-value , profit , interest , and wage labor would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism. While Joseph Stalin stated that

7089-615: The 20th century. In Western Europe, communist parties were part of several post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process. There were also many developments in libertarian Marxism, especially during the 1960s with the New Left . By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western communist parties had criticized many of

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7228-696: The Bolsheviks to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology . The Soviet Union was established in 1922. Before the broad ban in 1921, there were several factions in the Communist party, more prominently among them the Left Opposition , the Right Opposition , and the Workers' Opposition , which debated on the path of development to follow. The Left and Workers' oppositions were more critical of

7367-422: The Communist ideal. Mao charged that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of a "revisionist clique" which had turned against Marxism and Leninism and was now setting the stage for the restoration of capitalism. The two nations were at sword's point by 1960. Both began forging alliances with communist supporters around the globe, thereby splitting the worldwide movement into two hostile camps. Rejecting

7506-681: The Constituent Assembly in January 1918. The Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union , a committee dominated by Lenin, who had previously supported a multi-party system of free elections. After the Bolshevik defeat, Lenin started referring to the assembly as a "deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarianism." Some argued this

7645-528: The Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists . This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. While liberal democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution , which in

7784-399: The Francoist police arrested 113 people in the Parish of Santa Maria Mitjancera in Barcelona. The arrested were representatives of political parties and clandestine unions but also of professional and neighborhood associations. A large citizen mobilization in support of the detainees immediately began in Catalonia and a solidarity campaign was launched that had international resonance. After

7923-416: The Great Leap was a very expensive disaster." Put in charge of rescuing the economy, Deng adopted pragmatic policies that the idealistic Mao disliked. For a while, Mao was in the shadows but returned to center stage and purged Deng and his allies in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The Cultural Revolution was an upheaval that targeted intellectuals and party leaders from 1966 through 1976. Mao's goal

8062-439: The October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties . By November 1917, the Russian Provisional Government had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform, or convene the Russian Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution, leaving the soviets in de facto control of the country. The Bolsheviks moved to hand power to

8201-434: The PSAN suffered a split of a more radical group, including the majority of the Catalan Revolutionary Youth . This group considered that the PSAN had an excessively conciliatory stance towards the PSUC . The splitters formed the Socialist Party of National Liberation-Provisional in 1974. In August 1973, the PSAN establishes a cell in Prada de Conflent , in the French department of Pyrénées-Orientales and gained presence in

8340-536: The Russian Federation has some supporters, but is reformist rather than revolutionary, aiming to lessen the inequalities of Russia's market economy. Chinese economic reforms were started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping , and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 8% in 2001. After losing Soviet subsidies and support, Vietnam and Cuba have attracted more foreign investment to their countries, with their economies becoming more market-oriented. North Korea,

8479-431: The Soviet Union . The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States , although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev (the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union ) resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers, including control of

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8618-423: The Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev , who enacted a period of de-Stalinization and re-approached diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia in 1976. The Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China , which would follow its own ideological path of development following the Sino-Soviet split . Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to Western capitalism for most of

8757-456: The Soviet model of rapid urbanization, Mao Zedong and his top aide Deng Xiaoping launched the Great Leap Forward in 1957–1961 with the goal of industrializing China overnight, using the peasant villages as the base rather than large cities. Private ownership of land ended and the peasants worked in large collective farms that were now ordered to start up heavy industry operations, such as steel mills. Plants were built in remote locations, due to

8896-450: The Soviets, built the hydrogen bomb , and strengthened the NATO alliance that covered Western Europe . According to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after 1945 was to consolidate the nation's superpower status and in the face of his growing physical decrepitude, to maintain his own hold on total power. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression yet

9035-419: The Ukrainian Socialist Bloc finished a distant third at 12.7%, and the Mensheviks obtained a disappointing fourth place at 3.0%. Most of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's seats went to the right-wing faction. Citing outdated voter-rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik–Left Socialist-Revolutionaries government moved to dissolve

9174-518: The United States, South Korea, and United Nations forces in the Korean War . While the war ended in a military stalemate, it gave Mao the opportunity to identify and purge elements in China that seemed supportive of capitalism. At first, there was close cooperation with Stalin, who sent in technical experts to aid the industrialization process along the line of the Soviet model of the 1930s. After Stalin's death in 1953, relations with Moscow soured – Mao thought Stalin's successors had betrayed

9313-479: The abolition of capitalism. For Leninist communism, such goals, including short-term proletarian interests to improve their political and material conditions, can only be achieved through vanguardism , an elitist form of socialism from above that relies on theoretical analysis to identify proletarian interests rather than consulting the proletarians themselves, as is advocated by libertarian communists. When they engage in elections, Leninist communists' main task

9452-447: The actions of communist states, distanced from them, and developed a democratic road to socialism , which became known as Eurocommunism . This development was criticized by more orthodox supporters of the Soviet Union as amounting to social democracy . Since 1957, communists have been frequently voted into power in the Indian state of Kerala . In 1959, Cuban communist revolutionaries overthrew Cuba's previous government under

9591-462: The army and Mao's wife Jiang Qing . China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a " capitalist road ", most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping . During

9730-403: The author of the pamphlet Us presentem al general Franco ( We present ourselves to general Franco ), was arrested, tried and sentenced by a military court to seven years in prison. In those years the most established opposition party was the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC) and the first important political event was La Caputxinada in 1966, named after the Sarrià Caputxins that

9869-439: The city of València in 1974, the party being joined by people that would become very important members in the future: Josep Guia , Gonçal Castelló or Manuel Tarín among them. In April 1975 the PSAN joined the Democratic Council of Valencia. In 1976 the party gained presence in the Balearic Islands . In January 1976, the PSAN elected a new Central Committee , that adopted a new Political Declaration of Principles, which declared

10008-485: The community"; this semantic constitution has led to numerous usages of the word in its evolution. Prior to becoming associated with its more modern conception of an economic and political organization, it was initially used to designate various social situations. After 1848, communism came to be primarily associated with Marxism , most specifically embodied in The Communist Manifesto , which proposed

10147-630: The death of Franco in November 1975, the Assembly of Catalonia increased its campaign in favor of " Freedom, Amnesty and Statute of Autonomy ", which resulted in the two demonstrations held in Barcelona on February 1 and 8, 1976, that were harshly repressed by the police. Taking advantage of the greater margin of freedom granted by the new government of Adolfo Suárez formed in July, the Marxa de la Libertat

10286-557: The demobilization and migration of millions of soldiers and civilians. In the midst of this turmoil during the winter of 1946–1947, the Soviet Union experienced the worst natural famine in the 20th century. There was no serious opposition to Stalin as the secret police continued to send possible suspects to the gulag . Relations with the United States and Britain went from friendly to hostile, as they denounced Stalin's political controls over eastern Europe and his Berlin Blockade . By 1947,

10425-654: The dictator Fulgencio Batista . The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro , ruled Cuba from 1959 until 2008. With the fall of the Warsaw Pact after the Revolutions of 1989 , which led to the fall of most of the former Eastern Bloc , the Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of

10564-490: The exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule. The decline of communism in the late 20th century has been attributed to the inherent inefficiencies of communist economies and the general trend of communist governments towards authoritarianism and bureaucracy . While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to communism's widespread association with

10703-452: The feudal privilege, thereby taking the feudal ruling class out of existence. This was another key element behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, the final expression of class and property relations that has led to a massive expansion of production. It is only in capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished. Similarly, the proletariat would capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through

10842-599: The fight for freedoms passed to the political parties that in December 1975 had formed the Council of Political Forces of Catalonia , successor to the Coordination. It was this organization that negotiated with the Suárez government the free commemoration of the first September 11th ( National Day of Catalonia ) since the end of the civil war . The permission was granted at the last moment and more than 100,000 people gathered in

10981-543: The formation in November of the following year of the Assembly of Catalonia. In addition to the Coordination's parties, the Socialist Party of National Liberation - a split from the National Front of Catalonia -, the PSOE , the Workers' Commissions and UGT trade unions, as well as various professional and social groups, as well as legal entities and independent people, were integrated into it. The Assembly's program

11120-477: The former Eastern Bloc. In Nepal, Communists ( CPN UML and Nepal Communist Party ) were part of the 1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly , which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with other communists, Marxist–Leninists, and Maoists ( CPN Maoist ), social democrats ( Nepali Congress ), and others as part of their People's Multiparty Democracy . The Communist Party of

11259-611: The freedom of those detained in La Caputxinada , the Taula Rodona was founded, an organization that brought together the entire anti-Francoist opposition and of which the PSUC was also a part, for the first time since the end of the Civil War . This organization was a precedent to the Coordination of Political Forces of Catalonia (Catalan: Coordinadora de Forces Polítiques de Catalunya ), founded in 1969 and constituted by

11398-593: The go-ahead for North Korea 's invasion of South Korea , expecting a short war. He was stunned when the Americans entered and defeated the North Koreans, putting them almost on the Soviet border. Stalin supported China 's entry into the Korean War , which drove the Americans back to the prewar boundaries, but which escalated tensions. The United States decided to mobilize its economy for a long contest with

11537-507: The historic circumstances in which it finds itself", and stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule through the Obshchina . The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (majority) plan for socialist revolution before the capitalist mode of production was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, Bread, and Land", which tapped into

11676-418: The idea to group together different countries, such as Afghanistan and Hungary , has no adequate explanation. While the term Communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, and news media to refer to countries ruled by Communist parties, these socialist states themselves did not describe themselves as communist or claim to have achieved communism; they referred to themselves as being

11815-546: The inspiration of religious text . In the medieval Christian Church , some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Sects deemed heretical such as the Waldensians preached an early form of Christian communism . As summarized by historians Janzen Rod and Max Stanton, the Hutterites believed in strict adherence to biblical principles, church discipline, and practised

11954-442: The intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness . In periods of deep crisis, the resistance of the oppressed can culminate in a proletarian revolution which, if victorious, leads to the establishment of the socialist mode of production based on social ownership of the means of production, " To each according to his contribution ", and production for use . As

12093-622: The lack of serious political content in that organization. After the Second Plenary Session of the Assembly of Catalonia in 1973, the PSAN politically confronted the PSUC and OCE-Bandera Roja , accusing them of being Spanish nationalists . The Catalan Revolutionary Youth and the PSAN had also at the time the first confrontations, since the youth group wanted a more frentist approach to organization. The insurrectionsm of some sectors also caused internal problems. In March 1973

12232-630: The lack of technical experts, managers, transportation, or needed facilities. Industrialization failed, and the main result was a sharp unexpected decline in agricultural output, which led to mass famine and millions of deaths. The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues: "Enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short,

12371-660: The last Communist country that still practices Soviet-style Communism, is both repressive and isolationist. Communist political thought and theory are diverse but share several core elements. The dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism or Leninism but non-Marxist versions of communism also exist, such as anarcho-communism and Christian communism , which remain partly influenced by Marxist theories, such as libertarian Marxism and humanist Marxism in particular. Common elements include being theoretical rather than ideological, identifying political parties not by ideology but by class and economic interest, and identifying with

12510-430: The law of value would still apply to socialism and that the Soviet Union was socialist under this new definition, which was followed by other Communist leaders, many other communists maintain the original definition and state that Communist states never established socialism in this sense. Lenin described his policies as state capitalism but saw them as necessary for the development of socialism, which left-wing critics say

12649-607: The legacy of Communist states. Communism derives from the French word communisme , a combination of the Latin -rooted word communis (which literally means common ) and the suffix isme ( an act, practice, or process of doing something ) . Semantically, communis can be translated to "of or for the community", while isme is a suffix that indicates the abstraction into a state, condition, action, or doctrine . Communism may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for

12788-446: The long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity , Marxists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat . By 1888, Marxists employed the term socialism in place of communism , which had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for the former. It was not until 1917, with the October Revolution , that socialism came to be used to refer to

12927-632: The main demonstration in Sant Boi de Llobregat , while the demonstrations called in other towns were brutally repressed by the police. The Assembly of Catalonia was dissolved after the general elections of June 1977, which in Catalonia produced a large majority for the left-wing parties, whereas in the rest of Spain the Union of the Democratic Center obtained the most votes. Ten days after

13066-442: The main ideologies on the political spectrum , 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

13205-489: The massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in World War I , the peasants' demand for land reform , and popular support for the soviets . 50,000 workers had passed a resolution in favour of Bolshevik demand for transfer of power to the soviets Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education , healthcare and equal rights for women . The initial stage of

13344-408: The misery of the proletariat  – a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto . In 1917, the October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for

13483-533: The most advanced capitalist development; however, the Russian Empire was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry, and a minority of industrial workers. Marx warned against attempts "to transform my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophy theory of the arche générale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever

13622-482: The most well-known of these and have been a driving force in international relations during most of the 20th century. Classical Marxism is the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Marx and Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially Leninism and Marxism–Leninism. Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought that emerged after the death of Marx and which became

13761-473: The official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until World War I in 1914. Orthodox Marxism aims to simplify, codify, and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying the perceived ambiguities and contradictions of classical Marxism. The philosophy of orthodox Marxism includes the understanding that material development (advances in technology in

13900-498: The only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production. This dictatorship , based on the Paris Commune 's model, is to be the most democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of universal suffrage . Assembly of Catalonia The Assembly of Catalonia ( Catalan : Assemblea de Catalunya , Spanish : Asamblea de Cataluña )

14039-612: The only organizations left in Catalunya Lliure in 1993. The coalition was dissolved in 1996. Since then, the PSAN has been very isolated from the rest of the Catalan Independentist Left. Since 2010 the party supports Catalan Solidarity for Independence and joined the coalition in 2012. Communism Communism (from Latin communis , 'common, universal') is a sociopolitical , philosophical , and economic ideology within

14178-612: The other hand "it condemned to immediate failure, lack of any kind of social support, the attempts to establish armed struggle groups in the image of ETA such as the Catalan Liberation Front (FAC), the Organization of Armed Struggle (OLLA) or the Catalan People's Army (EPOCA)". An important moment in the history of the Assembly was the " Caiguda dels 113 " (" Fall of the 113 "). On October 28, 1973,

14317-469: The party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline . Trotskyism overtook the left communists as the main dissident communist current, while more libertarian communisms , dating back to the libertarian Marxist current of council communism, remained important dissident communisms outside the Soviet Union. Following Lenin's democratic centralism , the Leninist parties were organized on

14456-675: The party created the Popular Unity Candidature for Socialism (CUPS), in coalition with the Marxist Unification Movement and the PSAN-P, that gained 12.040 votes (the 0.4% of the total in Catalonia ). The party was legalised in 1978. The PSAN also supported the successful candidacy of Lluís Maria Xirinacs to the Spanish Senate . In elections of 1977 the PSAN created a new coalition with

14595-629: The party to be strictly Leninist . In the labor field in 1977, the party sponsored the Col·lectius de Treballadors , while the PSAN-Provisional did the same with the Col·lectius d'Obrers en Lluita , to enter the labor field. In 1977 the party suffered a split from the moderate marxist current, that created the Catalan Liberation Collective. In the elections of 1977 , the first democratic ones since 1936 ,

14734-436: The party was in crisis because of its slow growth, especially in the unions, and some activists believed that changes were needed to energize the party. This critical members published, between 1972 and 1973, several magazines. In 1972 the youth section, Catalan Revolutionary Youth (JRC) was created. The PSAN also supported the militants of the Catalan Liberation Front (FAC), that were jailed or were being tried, but criticized

14873-401: The party who are full-time professional revolutionaries, as was conceived by Vladimir Lenin . Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism , to understand social class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation . It originates from

15012-709: The past and established a new organizational model: Its members at the time, between 50 and 100, were concentrated in Barcelona , Vallès Oriental , Vallès Occidental , Maresme , Lleida , the Tarragonès , the Terra Alta and the Gironès . The party had also contacts they had in Mallorca and València . Since September 11, 1969 the PSAN participated in the placement of estelades , political graffiti and posters. Some members were arrested due to those actions. At

15151-478: The police surrounded to proceed to arrest the promoters of the illegal Democratic Union of Students of the University of Barcelona who were gathered there together with a group of intellectuals, who among other things claimed the duty of universities to "welcome national languages and cultures and take responsibility for their development and consolidation". As a consequence of the actions undertaken to achieve

15290-402: 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

15429-558: 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 18th-century France , in the aftermath of the French Revolution . Criticism of the idea of private property in the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , Jean Meslier , Étienne-Gabriel Morelly , Henri de Saint-Simon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. During

15568-468: The productive forces continued to advance, the communist society , i.e. a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership , follows the maxim " From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs ." While it originates from the works of Marx and Engels, Marxism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Different Marxian schools place

15707-440: The proletariat. According to communists, the proletariat can avoid mass unemployment only if capitalism is overthrown; in the short run, state-oriented communists favor state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy as a means to defend the proletariat from capitalist pressure. Some communists are distinguished by other Marxists in seeing peasants and smallholders of property as possible allies in their goal of shortening

15846-440: The religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis. Notable among them were Robert Owen , who founded New Harmony, Indiana , in 1825, and Charles Fourier , whose followers organized other settlements in the United States, such as Brook Farm in 1841. In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for

15985-561: The rise to state power of Vladimir Lenin 's Bolsheviks , which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets in which the Bolsheviks had a majority. The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement, as Marx stated that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by

16124-404: The same period, Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. After Mao's death in 1976, the survivors were rehabilitated and many returned to power. Mao's government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour , and mass executions. Mao has also been praised for transforming China from

16263-533: The same time, in December 1969 they were invited to join the Council of Political Forces of Catalonia , but they refused because of the Burgeois and moderate character of this body. In September 1970 the PSAN encouraged its members to join CCOO . They participated in the demonstrations on May 1 , and attempteded to form a teachers union and maintained contacts with the Socialist Movement of Catalonia . Influenced by

16402-641: The split of NE , the PSAN radicalized, and in 1983 became the axis of the Moviment de Defensa de la Terra (MDT), created in 1984 thanks to the union with Independentists of the Catalan Countries (CPI), the successor organization PSAN-Provisional . However, in 1987 the MDT was divided and fragmented. The faction of the MDT close to the PSAN was the MDT-Patriotic Front (MDT-FP). In 1988

16541-663: The state-capitalist development and the Workers' in particular was critical of bureaucratization and development from above, while the Right Opposition was more supporting of state-capitalist development and advocated the New Economic Policy . Following Lenin's democratic centralism , the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of

16680-516: The term communism fell out of use during this period. An early distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialize production , whereas the former aimed to socialize both production and consumption (in the form of common access to final goods ). This distinction can be observed in Marx's communism, where the distribution of products is based on the principle of " to each according to his needs ", in contrast to

16819-600: The term frequently in his writing and was the first to describe communism as a form of government . John Goodwyn Barmby is credited with the first use of communism in English, around 1840. Since the 1840s, the term communism has usually been distinguished from socialism . The modern definition and usage of the term socialism was settled by the 1860s, becoming predominant over alternative terms such as associationism ( Fourierism ), mutualism , or co-operative , which had previously been used as synonyms. Meanwhile,

16958-623: The term's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the Soviet-type economic planning model. In his essay "Judging Nazism and Communism", Martin Malia defines a "generic Communism" category as any Communist political party movement led by intellectuals ; this umbrella term allows grouping together such different regimes as radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge 's anti-urbanism. According to Alexander Dallin ,

17097-475: The university movement, neighborhood movements, Christian groups, regional assemblies, etc. The objectives of the Assembly were achieved during the democratic transition , especially when the Cortes approved the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia in 1979 . Having managed to survive the harsh repression of the first two decades of the dictatorship, the anti-Francoist opposition resurfaced in 1960. The founding act of

17236-504: The upheaval of the French Revolution , communism emerged as a political doctrine under the auspices of François-Noël Babeuf , Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne , and Sylvain Maréchal , all of whom can be considered the progenitors of modern communism, according to James H. Billington . In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. Unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced

17375-428: The upheaval of the French Revolution , communism emerged as a political doctrine under the auspices of François-Noël Babeuf , Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne , and Sylvain Maréchal , all of whom can be considered the progenitors of modern communism, according to James H. Billington . In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, first in

17514-416: The vehicle for fundamental society-wide changes and ultimately leads to the emergence of new economic systems . As a term, orthodox Marxism represents the methods of historical materialism and of dialectical materialism, and not the normative aspects inherent to classical Marxism, without implying dogmatic adherence to the results of Marx's investigations. At the root of Marxism is historical materialism,

17653-472: The works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought , no single, definitive Marxist theory exists. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism but does not model an ideal society based on the design of intellectuals , whereby communism is seen as a state of affairs to be established based on any intelligent design; rather, it

17792-506: Was a unitary body of the anti-Francoist opposition of Catalonia created in November 1971. Its fundamental demands were the demand for democratic freedoms, the general amnesty for political prisoners and the achievement of the statute of autonomy, which were synthesized in the motto of Freedom, Amnesty, Statute of Autonomy . In addition to the political parties—all of them clandestine—forces of various kinds were part of it, such as trade union organizations, professional groups, representatives of

17931-629: Was also created under Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia ; Tito's independent policies led to the Tito–Stalin split and expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform in 1948, and Titoism was branded deviationist . Albania also became an independent Marxist–Leninist state following the Albanian–Soviet split in 1960, resulting from an ideological fallout between Enver Hoxha , a Stalinist, and

18070-427: Was also quite modern. At the top, personal loyalty to Stalin counted for everything. Stalin also created powerful committees, elevated younger specialists, and began major institutional innovations. In the teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. For most Westerners and anti-communist Russians, Stalin

18209-535: Was believed to be the atheist way of life. In Protestant England , communism was too phonetically similar to the Roman Catholic communion rite , hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists. Friedrich Engels stated that in 1848, at the time when The Communist Manifesto was first published, socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not; the Owenites in England and

18348-415: Was much more efficient, this property became worthless and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor to make use of someone else's machinery, and making someone else profit. Accordingly, capitalism divided the world between two major classes, namely that of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie . These classes are directly antagonistic as the latter possesses private ownership of

18487-472: Was never established, while some Marxist–Leninists state that it was established only during the Stalin era and Mao era , and then became capitalist states ruled by revisionists ; others state that Maoist China was always state capitalist, and uphold People's Socialist Republic of Albania as the only socialist state after the Soviet Union under Stalin, who first stated to have achieved socialism with

18626-540: Was organized throughout the summer of that year promoted by the Lluís Maria Xirinacs — who would be elected senator in the first democratic elections June 1977 — who toured not only Catalonia but also Valencia and the Balearic Islands with the motto " Poble català, posa't a caminar " ( "Catalan people, start walking" ) and which was sometimes repressed by the police. However, the leading role in

18765-472: Was summarized in the slogan " Freedom, Amnesty, Statute of Autonomy " that achieved great popularity - its first campaign " Per què l'Estatut of 1932?", initiated in May 1972, achieved notable success - extending its influence throughout the Catalan territory, despite the fact that its permanent commission was arrested by the police in 1973 (113 people) and on September 8, 1974 (67 people). "Its greatest success

18904-459: Was taking the democratic and nationalist demand from the ghetto of the parties to the streets, confirming its social implementation. The Assembly reversed the situation: until then the clandestine groups had to evade repression, with it the problem was with the Government, which had to combat an illegal and provocative platform on the streets, which attracted a growing number of citizens". And on

19043-407: Was the beginning of the development of vanguardism as an hierarchical party–elite that controls society, which resulted in a split between anarchism and Marxism , and Leninist communism assuming the dominant position for most of the 20th century, excluding rival socialist currents. Other communists and Marxists, especially social democrats who favored the development of liberal democracy as

19182-585: Was to be extended to all the peoples of the Spanish state. With the founding of this unitary body of the entire opposition and the presentation of a joint program "Catalan anti-Francoism [was] at the head of the Spanish opposition". As a means of protest against the Burgos military tribunals, the Coordination organized in December 1970 an Assembly of Intellectuals held in the Monastery of Montserrat , that led to

19321-611: Was to purify communism by removing pro-capitalists and traditionalists by imposing Maoist orthodoxy within the Chinese Communist Party . The movement paralyzed China politically and weakened the country economically, culturally, and intellectually for years. Millions of people were accused, humiliated, stripped of power, and either imprisoned, killed, or most often, sent to work as farm laborers. Mao insisted that those he labelled revisionists be removed through violent class struggle . The two most prominent militants were Marshall Lin Biao of

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