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207-451: The history of communism encompasses a wide variety of ideologies and political movements sharing the core principles of common ownership of wealth , economic enterprise , and property . Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least nominally in Marxism , a theory and method conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the 19th century. Marxism subsequently gained

414-603: A fischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär (a "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire"). The term has since dropped some of its pejorative sting ( euphemism treadmill ), and has become a neutral term in the analysis of differing political opinions and views of social groups . While Marx situated the term within class struggle and domination, others believed it was a necessary part of institutional functioning and social integration . There are many different kinds of ideologies, including political , social , epistemological , and ethical . Recent analysis tends to posit that ideology

621-514: A communiste , the French form of the word "communist", in a 1782 letter, the first recorded instance of that term. Restif himself wrote many novels centered around the idea of eliminating private property, first using the term "community of goods" in 1783 and then the term "communism" in 1793, rendered in French as communisme . These currents of thought in French philosophy proved influential during

828-428: A nomadic lifestyle. In addition, even a large area of land could not support many people without being actively farmed - food was difficult to come by and so groups were prevented from growing too large by the amount of food they could gather. Like contemporary hunter-gatherers, Paleolithic humans enjoyed an abundance of leisure time unparalleled in both Neolithic farming societies and modern industrial societies. At

1035-686: A reactionary stance, influenced the Italian, Spanish and Russian thinkers who had begun to describe themselves as liberals and who attempted to reignite revolutionary activity in the early 1820s, including the Carbonari societies in France and Italy and the Decembrists in Russia . Karl Marx adopted Napoleon's negative sense of the term, using it in his writings, in which he once described Tracy as

1242-824: A social movement , institution , class , or large group that explains how society should work, offering some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order . Political ideologies are concerned with many different aspects of a society, including but not limited to: the economy , the government , the environment , education , health care , labor law , criminal law , the justice system , social security and welfare , public policy and administration , foreign policy , rights , freedoms and duties , citizenship , immigration , culture and national identity , military administration, and religion . Political ideologies have two dimensions: A political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocate power and to what ends power should be used. Some parties follow

1449-400: A "critical reflection of the ideology concept". In his work, he strove to bring the concept of ideology into the foreground, as well as the closely connected concerns of epistemology and history, defining ideology in terms of a system of presentations that explicitly or implicitly lay claim to absolute truth. Marx's analysis sees ideology as a system of false consciousness that arises from

1656-627: A Bolshevik-style council republic, but the government put the rebellion down violently with the use of right-wing paramilitary groups, the Freikorps . The noted German communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were killed extrajudicially three days later. Within a few months, a group of communists seized power amongst public unrest in the German region of Bavaria , forming the Bavarian Soviet Republic , although once more this

1863-513: A Marxist government, instead he believed that the state would gain in power and become authoritarian . Criticism also came from other sociologists such as the German Max Weber , who whilst admiring Marx disagreed with many of his assumptions on the nature of society. Some Marxists tried to adapt to these criticisms and the changing nature of capitalism and Eduard Bernstein emphasised the idea of Marxists bringing legal challenges against

2070-405: A certain ideology very closely, while others may take broad inspiration from a group of related ideologies without specifically embracing any one of them. Each political ideology contains certain ideas on what it considers the best form of government (e.g., democracy , demagogy , theocracy , caliphate etc.), scope of government (e.g. authoritarianism , libertarianism , federalism , etc.) and

2277-546: A communist society, creating a variant of communism known as Marxism–Leninism . As a part of this, he abandoned some of the capitalist, market policies that had been allowed to continue under Lenin such as the New Economic Policy . Stalinist policies radically altered much of the Soviet Union's agricultural production , modernising it by introducing tractors and other machinery, forced collectivisation of

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2484-650: A dictatorship, believing instead that the chief focus should be on cultivating proletarian unity through propaganda and education. The works and teachings of these French writers, many now self identifying as communists, went on to inspire new communist groups such as the League of the Just , an organization founded in Paris in 1836 by the Christian communist German émigrés Wilhelm Weitling and Karl Schapper . A second group,

2691-694: A group of early humans, frequently called Homo heidelbergensis , came to Europe from Africa and eventually evolved into Homo neanderthalensis ( Neanderthals ). In the Middle Paleolithic, Neanderthals were present in the region now occupied by Poland. Both Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis became extinct by the start of the Upper Paleolithic. Descended from Homo sapiens , the anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens emerged in eastern Africa c.  300,000  BP, left Africa around 50,000 BP, and expanded throughout

2898-793: A herd of animals at a waterhole so as to stun one of them. There are no indications of hafting , and some artifacts are far too large for that. Thus, a thrown hand axe would not usually have penetrated deeply enough to cause very serious injuries. Nevertheless, it could have been an effective weapon for defense against predators. Choppers and scrapers were likely used for skinning and butchering scavenged animals and sharp-ended sticks were often obtained for digging up edible roots. Presumably, early humans used wooden spears as early as 5 million years ago to hunt small animals, much as their relatives, chimpanzees , have been observed to do in Senegal , Africa. Lower Paleolithic humans constructed shelters, such as

3105-505: A need to distribute resources such as food and meat equally to avoid famine and ensure a stable food supply. Raymond C. Kelly speculates that the relative peacefulness of Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies resulted from a low population density, cooperative relationships between groups such as reciprocal exchange of commodities and collaboration on hunting expeditions, and because the invention of projectile weapons such as throwing spears provided less incentive for war, because they increased

3312-516: A now lost egalitarian social order. Around the late 5th century BC in Ancient Greece , ideas similar to communism were becoming widespread to the extent that they were parodied by the dramatist Aristophanes in his comedy The Assemblywomen in which the women of Athens seize control of the Ecclesia or city government and abolish all private property while making the sharing of women and

3519-504: A number of clandestine activities". There were numerous communist front organizations in Asia, many oriented to students and youth. According to one historian, in the labor union movement of the 1920s in Japan , the " Hyogikai never called itself a communist front but in effect, this was what it was". He points out it was repressed by the government "along with other communist front groups". In

3726-424: A number of other propositions, which are. In this way, the essence of the lacunar discourse is what is not told but is suggested. For example, the statement "All are equal before the law ", which is a theoretical groundwork of current legal systems, suggests that all people may be of equal worth or have equal opportunities. This is not true, according to Althusser, for the concept of private property and power over

3933-540: A number of ways by modern archaeologists. The earliest explanation, by the prehistorian Abbe Breuil , interpreted the paintings as a form of magic designed to ensure a successful hunt. However, this hypothesis fails to explain the existence of animals such as saber-toothed cats and lions , which were not hunted for food, and the existence of half-human, half-animal beings in cave paintings. The anthropologist David Lewis-Williams has suggested that Paleolithic cave paintings were indications of shamanistic practices, because

4140-803: A prison camp in Siberia by the Tsarist government for his beliefs. A Marxist group known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in the country, although it soon divided into two main factions, namely the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov . In 1905, there was a revolution against the Tsar's rule in which workers' councils known as soviets were formed in many parts of

4347-531: A pronounced hierarchy and a somewhat formal division of labor ) and may have engaged in endemic warfare . Some argue that there was no formal leadership during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Like contemporary egalitarian hunter-gatherers such as the Mbuti pygmies, societies may have made decisions by communal consensus decision making rather than by appointing permanent rulers such as chiefs and monarchs . Nor

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4554-430: A revival of Babeuf's thought in France and the dissemination of political theories referred to as Neo-Babouvism . According to Bournatti's Neo-Babouvism a revolutionary elite of "wise and courageous" citizens who cared only for "ensuring the triumph of equality" would be needed to uplift the masses and establish a new society based on egalitarian principles. By the 1830s and 1840s, the egalitarian concepts of communism and

4761-511: A society and politically confuses the alienated groups of society via false consciousness . Some explanations have been presented. Antonio Gramsci uses cultural hegemony to explain why the working-class have a false ideological conception of what their best interests are. Marx argued: "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production." The Marxist formulation of "ideology as an instrument of social reproduction"

4968-416: A society based on collective ownership." He did however temper his views by surmising that any attempts at enacting true equality and communal ownership would prove to be too costly and destructive to be worth implementing. Another French thinker, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly also contended that private property was the source of all vice in society and developed the basic principles for a communist society namely,

5175-484: A sole explanation of ideology is that it does not explain the differences between ideologies. Terror management theory posits that ideology is used as a defence mechanism against threats to their worldview which in turn protect and individuals sense of self-esteem and reduce their awareness of mortality. Evidence shows that priming individuals with an awareness of mortality does not cause individuals to respond in ways underpinned by any particular ideology, but rather

5382-462: A term for their belief system. A landmark event that established the popularity of the communist movement in France occurred in 1840 when Dézamy along with Pillot and Albert Laponneraye organized a pro-communist banquet in Belleville , France, the "first public manifestation of the communist party" in France which proved so successful that further planned communist banquets had to be outlawed by

5589-489: A widespread following across much of Europe, and throughout the late 1800s its militant supporters were instrumental in a number of unsuccessful revolutions on that continent. During the same era, there was also a proliferation of communist parties which rejected armed revolution, but embraced the Marxist ideal of collective property and a classless society . Although Marxist theory suggested that industrial societies were

5796-693: A world to win. — Karl Marx , 1848 At the time, Marxism took off not only in Germany, but it also gained popularity in Hungary , the Habsburg monarchy and the Netherlands , although it did not achieve such success in other European nations like the United Kingdom , where Marx and Engels had been based. Nonetheless, the new political ideology had gained sufficient support that an organisation

6003-473: Is a 'coherent system of ideas' that rely on a few basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis. Through this system, ideas become coherent, repeated patterns through the subjective ongoing choices that people make. These ideas serve as the seed around which further thought grows. The belief in an ideology can range from passive acceptance up to fervent advocacy. Definitions, such as by Manfred Steger and Paul James , emphasize both

6210-453: Is a general glacial excursion, termed a "glacial". Glacials are separated by "interglacials". During a glacial, the glacier experiences minor advances and retreats. The minor excursion is a "stadial"; times between stadials are "interstadials". Each glacial advance tied up huge volumes of water in continental ice sheets 1,500–3,000  m (4,900–9,800  ft ) deep, resulting in temporary sea level drops of 100 m (330 ft) or more over

6417-412: Is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers ; however, due to rapid decomposition, these have not survived to any great degree. About 50,000 years ago, a marked increase in the diversity of artifacts occurred. In Africa, bone artifacts and

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6624-441: Is conceptually important to the sociology of knowledge , viz. Karl Mannheim , Daniel Bell , and Jürgen Habermas et al. Moreover, Mannheim has developed and progressed from the "total" but "special" Marxist conception of ideology to a "general" and "total" ideological conception acknowledging that all ideology (including Marxism ) resulted from social life, an idea developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu . Slavoj Žižek and

6831-554: Is concerned with the causes, consequences and content of ideology, with humans being dubbed the "ideological animal" by Althusser. Many theories have tried to explain the existence of ideology in human societies. Jost, Ledgerwood, and Hardin (2008) propose that ideologies may function as prepackaged units of interpretation that spread because of basic human motives to understand the world, avoid existential threat , and maintain valued interpersonal relationships . The authors conclude that such motives may lead disproportionately to

7038-535: Is difficult, however, due to cultural relativity in definitions. For example, "what Americans now call conservatism much of the world calls liberalism or neoliberalism "; a conservatism in Finland would be labeled socialism in the United States . Philosopher Michael Oakeshott defines single-issue ideologies as "the formalized abridgment of the supposed sub-stratum of the rational truth contained in

7245-430: Is ecology, which studies the relationships among living things on Earth. Perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson believed that human perception of ecological relationships was the basis of self-awareness and cognition itself. Linguist George Lakoff has proposed a cognitive science of mathematics wherein even the most fundamental ideas of arithmetic would be seen as consequences or products of human perception—which

7452-543: Is itself necessarily evolved within an ecology. Deep ecology and the modern ecology movement (and, to a lesser degree, Green parties ) appear to have adopted ecological sciences as a positive ideology. Some notable economically based ideologies include neoliberalism , monetarism , mercantilism , mixed economy , social Darwinism , communism , laissez-faire economics, and free trade . There are also current theories of safe trade and fair trade that can be seen as ideologies. A large amount of research in psychology

7659-583: Is more pronounced in Lower Paleolithic humans such as Homo erectus than in modern humans, who are less polygynous than other primates, which suggests that Lower Paleolithic humans had a largely polygynous lifestyle, because species that have the most pronounced sexual dimorphism tend more likely to be polygynous. Human societies from the Paleolithic to the early Neolithic farming tribes lived without states and organized governments. For most of

7866-543: Is no evidence of hominins in America, Australia, or almost anywhere in Oceania during this time period. Fates of these early colonists, and their relationships to modern humans, are still subject to debate. According to current archaeological and genetic models, there were at least two notable expansion events subsequent to peopling of Eurasia c.  2,000,000  – c.  1,500,000  BP. Around 500,000 BP

8073-580: Is no mine or thine but all is held in common", but once initiated the scheme was quickly abandoned. They have been considered precursors of totalitarian governance while under leadership of the dictatorial Jan Želivský . After Taborite power was broken at Lipany their successors fled to Moravia forming the Moravian Church under the pacifist spiritual leader Petr Chelčický who harbored both Christian communist and Christian anarchist beliefs. The extent to which Chelčický's followers, also known as

8280-733: Is often associated with Francis Fukuyama 's writings on the end of history . Contrastly, Nienhueser (2011) sees research (in the field of human resource management ) as ongoingly "generating ideology". There are many proposed methods for the classification of political ideologies. Ideologies can identify themselves by their position on the political spectrum (e.g. left , center , or right ). They may also be distinguished by single issues around which they may be built (e.g. civil libertarianism , support or opposition to European integration , legalization of marijuana ). They may also be distinguished by political strategies (e.g. populism , personalism ). The classification of political ideology

8487-562: Is reiterated by J. William Fulbright , while a similar form occurs in Eric Hoffer 's The True Believer . The revolution thus becomes established as an ideocracy , though its rise is likely to be checked by a 'political midlife crisis.' Even when the challenging of existing beliefs is encouraged, as in scientific theories, the dominant paradigm or mindset can prevent certain challenges, theories, or experiments from being advanced. A special case of science that has inspired ideology

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8694-471: Is to deliver the lower classes to brutal exploitation. The proletariat is no more than a revival of antique slavery." He also asserted that private ownership of the means of production allowed for the exploitation of the lower classes and that private property was a concept divorced from human dignity. Dézamy would assert in his 1842 book Code la Communaté that what was needed was a," complete and unrestricted society of communal property" in which all activity

8901-553: Is too confined to verbal systems. ' Worldview ' is too metaphysical , ' propaganda ' too loaded. Despite or because of its contradictions, 'ideology' still plays a key role in semiotics oriented to social, political life. Authors such as Michael Freeden have also recently incorporated a semantic analysis to the study of ideologies. Sociologists define ideology as "cultural beliefs that justify particular social arrangements, including patterns of inequality". Dominant groups use these sets of cultural beliefs and practices to justify

9108-518: Is ultimately ideological for Althusser are not the subjective beliefs held in the conscious "minds" of human individuals, but rather discourses that produce these beliefs, the material institutions and rituals that individuals take part in without submitting it to conscious examination and so much more critical thinking . The French Marxist theorist Guy Debord , founding member of the Situationist International , argued that when

9315-506: The !Kung San who live similarly to their Paleolithic predecessors. The economy of a typical Paleolithic society was a hunter-gatherer economy. Humans hunted wild animals for meat and gathered food, firewood, and materials for their tools, clothes, or shelters. The population density was very low, around only 0.4 inhabitants per square kilometre (1/sq mi). This was most likely due to low body fat, infanticide , high levels of physical activity among women, late weaning of infants, and

9522-489: The Altai Mountains and Indonesia, were radiocarbon dated to c.  30,000  – c.  40,000  BP and c.  17,000  BP respectively. For the duration of the Paleolithic, human populations remained low, especially outside the equatorial region. The entire population of Europe between 16,000 and 11,000 BP likely averaged some 30,000 individuals, and between 40,000 and 16,000 BP, it

9729-722: The Arctic Circle . By the end of the Upper Paleolithic Age humans had crossed Beringia and expanded throughout the Americas continents. The term " Palaeolithic " was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek: παλαιός , palaios , "old"; and λίθος , lithos , "stone", meaning "old age of the stone" or "Old Stone Age ". The Paleolithic overlaps with the Pleistocene epoch of geologic time. Both ended 12,000 years ago although

9936-730: The Bohemian Brethren , adhered to his ideals, namely the abstinence from property, trade, and government, is disputed, and by the 16th century the Brethren definitely no longer embraced them. During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century the radical Anabaptists , who originated in Switzerland , endorsed the communalization of goods as practiced in the Book of Acts. The most notable Anabaptist groups were

10143-690: The Book of Acts the passages Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–37 state all believers held their possessions communally and would distribute goods based on need. Additionally, the related Jewish sect known as the Essenes was committed to, "social and material egalitarianism." Despite these practices falling into decline even before the Christianization of the Roman Empire , the principles of sharing property and holding goods in common continued within

10350-710: The Chinese who then controlled the country , instituting a pro-Soviet government which declared the nation to be the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924. The Comintern and other such Soviet-backed communist groups soon spread across much of the world, though particularly in Europe, where the influence of the recent Russian Revolution was still strong. In Germany , the Spartacist uprising took place in 1919 when armed Spartacus League communists attempted to set up

10557-518: The Communist Correspondence Committee in 1846 through which the various communists, socialists and other leftists across Europe could keep in contact with one another in the face of political repression. He then published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, which would prove to be one of the most influential communist texts ever written. He subsequently began work on a multi-volume epic that would examine and criticise

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10764-595: The Communist Correspondence Committee , was formed in Brussels in 1846 by another pair of German émigrés Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . The two groups were merged in 1847 to form the Communist League which was headed by Schapper who then proceeded to task the co-founding members Marx and Engels with writing a manifesto laying out the principles of the new political party. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. In

10971-650: The French Revolution of 1789 in which various anti-monarchists , particularly the Jacobins , supported the idea of redistributing wealth equally among the people, including Jean-Paul Marat and Gracchus Babeuf . The latter was involved in the Conspiracy of the Equals of 1796 intending to establish a revolutionary regime based on communal ownership, egalitarianism and the redistribution of property. Babeuf

11178-491: The German Social-Democratic Party which had been created in 1875, but which was outlawed in 1879 by the German government, then led by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , who deemed it to be a political threat due to its revolutionary nature and increasing number of supporters. In 1890, the party was re-legalised and by this time it had fully adopted Marxist principles. It subsequently achieved a fifth of

11385-582: The Hadza people and the Aboriginal Australians suggest that the sexual division of labor in the Paleolithic was relatively flexible. Men may have participated in gathering plants, firewood and insects, and women may have procured small game animals for consumption and assisted men in driving herds of large game animals (such as woolly mammoths and deer) off cliffs. Additionally, recent research by anthropologist and archaeologist Steven Kuhn from

11592-730: The Hutterites , founded by Jacob Hutter , who settled in Moravia in the 1520s and the Münster Anabaptists who were eradicated in battle during their attempt in 1535 to forcibly convert the city of Münster into a theocratic New Jerusalem . Various groups on the side of the Roundheads during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century propagated the redistribution of wealth on an egalitarian basis, namely

11799-701: The International Workingmen's Association which would later become known as the First International to unite various communists and socialists, with Marx being elected to the Association's General Council. Marx summarized his system with the slogan, " From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs ." This phrasing used to formulate the principles of communism is borrowed from earlier socialist political activists such as August Becker and Louis Blanc . During

12006-510: The Isthmus of Panama , bringing a nearly complete end to South America's distinctive marsupial fauna. The formation of the isthmus had major consequences on global temperatures, because warm equatorial ocean currents were cut off, and the cold Arctic and Antarctic waters lowered temperatures in the now-isolated Atlantic Ocean. Most of Central America formed during the Pliocene to connect

12213-620: 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 the Soviets, built the hydrogen bomb and strengthened the NATO alliance that covered Western Europe . According to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk (2004), Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after 1945 was to consolidate

12420-628: The Levellers and the Diggers although only the latter group under Gerrard Winstanley promoted a propertyless, communist society. European writers began depicting idealized communist societies in utopian fiction from the 16th century onward. Inspired by largely fictional accounts of native communities in the New World , the English humanist and future Lord Chancellor Thomas More , wrote

12627-646: The Mousterian and the Aterian industries. Lower Paleolithic humans used a variety of stone tools, including hand axes and choppers. Although they appear to have used hand axes often, there is disagreement about their use. Interpretations range from cutting and chopping tools, to digging implements, to flaking cores, to the use in traps, and as a purely ritual significance, perhaps in courting behavior . William H. Calvin has suggested that some hand axes could have served as "killer frisbees " meant to be thrown at

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12834-510: The Old Stone Age (from Ancient Greek παλαιός ( palaiós )  'old' and λίθος ( líthos )  'stone'), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools , and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology . It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins , c.  3.3 million years ago, to

13041-533: The Oldowan , began around 2.6 million years ago. It produced tools such as choppers , burins , and stitching awls . It was completely replaced around 250,000 years ago by the more complex Acheulean industry, which was first conceived by Homo ergaster around 1.8–1.65 million years ago. The Acheulean implements completely vanish from the archaeological record around 100,000 years ago and were replaced by more complex Middle Paleolithic tool kits such as

13248-648: The Paleolithic through to horticultural societies as found in the Chalcolithic were essentially egalitarian and he, therefore, termed their ideology to be primitive communism . One of the first writers to espouse a belief in the primitive communism of the past was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who stated," How happy was the primitive age when the bounties of nature lay in common...They held all nature in common which gave them secure possession of

13455-513: The Pleistocene epoch, our ancestors relied on simple food processing techniques such as roasting . The Upper Palaeolithic saw the emergence of boiling, an advance in food processing technology which rendered plant foods more digestible, decreased their toxicity, and maximised their nutritional value. Thermally altered rock (heated stones) are easily identifiable in the archaeological record. Stone-boiling and pit-baking were common techniques which involved heating large pebbles then transferring

13662-445: The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was officially redesignated to lead the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , simply known as the Soviet Union . In 1924, Lenin resigned as leader of the Soviet Union due to poor health and soon died, with Joseph Stalin subsequently taking over control. In 1919, the Bolshevik government in Russia instigated the creation of an international communist organisation that would act as

13869-418: The Ruwenzori Range in east and central Africa were larger. Glaciers existed in the mountains of Ethiopia and to the west in the Atlas Mountains . In the northern hemisphere, many glaciers fused into one. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered the North American northwest; the Laurentide covered the east. The Fenno-Scandian ice sheet covered northern Europe, including Great Britain; the Alpine ice sheet covered

14076-515: The Socratic method , though without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require. Taine identifies it not just with Tracy but also with his milieu , and includes Condillac as one of its precursors. Napoleon Bonaparte came to view ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy's Institut national . According to Karl Mannheim 's historical reconstruction of

14283-565: The White Guard as well as Western powers. This led to the events of the Russian Civil War which the Bolsheviks won and subsequently consolidated their power over the entire country, centralising power from the Kremlin in the capital city of Moscow . In the early 1920s, Lenin began recruiting black workers, accusing American political parties of not doing more to campaign for black civil rights . A handful of African American activists were fascinated by communism, and Cyril Briggs led an organization called African Blood Brotherhood . In 1922,

14490-410: The World Peace Council . Malcolm Kennedy says the "Communist 'front' system included such international organizations as the WFTU, WFDY, IUS, WIDF and WPC, besides a host of lesser bodies bringing journalists, lawyers, scientists, doctors and others into the widespread net". The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was established in 1945, to unite trade union confederations across the world and it

14697-404: The Young Communist International (youth), Profintern (trade unions), Krestintern (peasants), International Red Aid (humanitarian aid), and Red Sport International (organized sports), among others. In Europe, front organizations were especially influential in Italy and France which became the base for Communist front organizer Willi Münzenberg in 1933. These organizations were dissolved by

14904-682: The Zoroastrian priest and reformist Mazdak purportedly founded a movement preaching religious communism while under the patronage of the Sassanian King Kavad I who initially supported the priest and his reforms, but later had the Mazdakians repressed and Mazdak executed. Early Christianity supported a form of common ownership based on the teachings in the New Testament which emphasised sharing. For example, in

15111-430: The means of production results in some people being able to own more than others. This power disparity contradicts the claim that all share both practical worth and future opportunity equally; for example, the rich can afford better legal representation, which practically privileges them before the law. Althusser proffered the concept of the ideological state apparatus to explain his theory of ideology. His first thesis

15318-422: The proletariat (the working class masses) who toiled to produce everything, but who had no political control. He advanced the idea that human society moved through a series of progressive stages from primitive communism through to slavery , feudalism and then capitalism; and that this, in turn, would be replaced by communism. For Marx, communism was seen as inevitable yet uncertain and desirable. Marx founded

15525-516: The 1840s, German philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx , who was living in England after fleeing the authorities in Prussia , where he was considered a political threat, began publishing books in which he outlined his theories for a variety of communism now known as Marxism . Marx was financially aided and supported by another German émigré, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), who like Marx had fled from

15732-527: The 1950s, Scalapino argues: "The primary Communist-front organization was the Japan Peace Committee". It was founded in 1949. In 1924, Joseph Stalin , a key Bolshevik follower of Lenin, took power in the Soviet Union. Stalin was supported in his leadership by Nikolai Bukharin , but he had various important opponents in the government, most notably Lev Kamenev , Leon Trotsky , and Grigory Zinoviev . Stalin initiated his own process of building

15939-458: The 21st century, only a small number of Marxist–Leninist states remain, namely China , Cuba , Laos , North Korea and Vietnam . With the exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule. Many historical groups have been considered as following forms of communism . Karl Marx and other early communist theorists believed that hunter-gatherer societies as were found in

16146-726: The Alps. Scattered domes stretched across Siberia and the Arctic shelf. The northern seas were frozen. During the late Upper Paleolithic (Latest Pleistocene) c.  18,000  BP, the Beringia land bridge between Asia and North America was blocked by ice, which may have prevented early Paleo-Indians such as the Clovis culture from directly crossing Beringia to reach the Americas. According to Mark Lynas (through collected data),

16353-689: The Americas, Asia and Africa. Pivotal to this policy was the Communist International , also known as the Comintern, formed with the perspective of aiding and assisting communist parties around the world and fostering revolution. This was one major cause of tensions during the Cold War as the United States and its military allies equated the global spread of communism with Soviet expansionism by proxy. By 1985, one-third of

16560-732: The Book of Acts, but were persecuted by the Catholic Church and retreated to the Piedmont . Some Waldensians led a schism after they felt the group's leader was becoming authoritarian . With the rise of the Mendicant Orders in the 13th century groups such as the Franciscans began challenging the concept of private property to the extent it had to be defended by Pope John XXII in his 1328 papal bull Quia vir reprobus , in which he ruled that because God had gifted Adam with

16767-589: The Christian traditions of monasticism . From the High Middle Ages to the early modern period in Europe, various groups supporting Christian communist and communalist ideas were occasionally adopted by reformist Christian sects. An early 12th century proto-Protestant group originating in Lyon , Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles known as the Waldensians held their property in common in accordance with

16974-626: The Earth as his domain, the ownership of property was divinely sanctioned. Also beginning in the 13th century a lay order known as the Beghards , originating in the Low Countries , started to spread among the underprivileged groups of society, taking in members who renounced private property and dedicated themselves to communal living and pious, frugal lifestyles as artisans. Although the practices were successful enough to spread to other areas on

17181-625: The Equals (1796), "we aim at something more sublime and more just, the COMMON GOOD or the COMMUNITY OF GOODS" and "The French Revolution is just a precursor of another revolution, far greater, far more solemn, which will be the last." Restif also continued to write and publish books on the topic of communism throughout the Revolution. Accordingly, through their egalitarian programs and agitation Restif, Maréchal, and Babeuf became

17388-406: The French government. Also in 1840 a society of "Egalitarian Workers" following a communist program was founded in Paris and a general strike was called whose leaders were reportedly inspired by communist ideals. During the 1840s Étienne Cabet had a following of between 100,000 and 200,000 French workers and was considered by Friedrich Engels to be the representative of the French proletariat. One of

17595-676: The German authorities in 1849. Marx and Engels took on many influences from earlier socialists such as the Utopian socialist Saint-Simonist school. Politically, they were influenced by Maximilien Robespierre and several other radical figures of the French Revolution whilst economically they were influenced by David Ricardo . Philosophically, they were influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . Engels regularly met Marx at Chetham's Library in Manchester , England from 1845 and

17802-571: The Lower Paleolithic ( c.  1.9  million years ago) or at the latest in the early Middle Paleolithic ( c.  250,000 years ago). Some scientists have hypothesized that hominins began cooking food to defrost frozen meat, which would help ensure their survival in cold regions. Archaeologists cite morphological shifts in cranial anatomy as evidence for emergence of cooking and food processing technologies. These morphological changes include decreases in molar and jaw size, thinner tooth enamel , and decrease in gut volume. During much of

18009-837: The Lower Paleolithic, human societies were possibly more hierarchical than their Middle and Upper Paleolithic descendants, and probably were not grouped into bands , though during the end of the Lower Paleolithic, the latest populations of the hominin Homo erectus may have begun living in small-scale (possibly egalitarian) bands similar to both Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies and modern hunter-gatherers. Middle Paleolithic societies, unlike Lower Paleolithic and early Neolithic ones, consisted of bands that ranged from 20–30 or 25–100 members and were usually nomadic. These bands were formed by several families. Bands sometimes joined together into larger "macrobands" for activities such as acquiring mates and celebrations or where resources were abundant. By

18216-563: The Mediterranean Sea, such as Coa de sa Multa ( c.  300,000  BP), has also indicated that both Middle and Upper Paleolithic humans used rafts to travel over large bodies of water (i.e. the Mediterranean Sea) for the purpose of colonizing other bodies of land. By around 200,000 BP, Middle Paleolithic stone tool manufacturing spawned a tool-making technique known as the prepared-core technique , which

18423-519: The Middle East, people prefer traditional beliefs and are less tolerant of liberal values. Protestant Europe , at the other extreme, adheres more to secular beliefs and liberal values. Alone among high-income countries, the United States is exceptional in its adherence to traditional beliefs, in this case Christianity. In political science , a political ideology is a certain ethical set of ideals , principles , doctrines , myths , or symbols of

18630-406: The Middle Paleolithic because trade between bands would have helped ensure their survival by allowing them to exchange resources and commodities such as raw materials during times of relative scarcity (i.e. famine, drought). Like in modern hunter-gatherer societies, individuals in Paleolithic societies may have been subordinate to the band as a whole. Both Neanderthals and modern humans took care of

18837-601: The Neanderthals hunted large game animals mostly by ambushing them and attacking them with handheld weapons such as thrusting spears rather than attacking them from a distance with projectiles. During the Upper Paleolithic , further inventions were made, such as the net ( c.  22,000 or c.  29,000  BP) bolas , the spear thrower ( c.  30,000  BP), the bow and arrow ( c.  25,000 or c.  30,000  BP) and

19044-474: The Neolithic. Upper Paleolithic cultures were probably able to time the migration of game animals such as wild horses and deer. This ability allowed humans to become efficient hunters and to exploit a wide variety of game animals. Recent research indicates that the Neanderthals timed their hunts and the migrations of game animals long before the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. The social organization of

19251-639: The Paleolithic Age went through a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures. By c.  50,000  – c.  40,000  BP, the first humans set foot in Australia . By c.  45,000  BP, humans lived at 61°N latitude in Europe . By c.  30,000  BP, Japan was reached, and by c.  27,000  BP humans were present in Siberia , above

19458-531: The Pleistocene started 2.6 million years ago, 700,000 years after the Paleolithic's start. This epoch experienced important geographic and climatic changes that affected human societies. During the preceding Pliocene , continents had continued to drift from possibly as far as 250  km (160  mi ) from their present locations to positions only 70 km (43 mi) from their current location. South America became linked to North America through

19665-533: The Pleistocene's overall climate could be characterized as a continuous El Niño with trade winds in the south Pacific weakening or heading east, warm air rising near Peru , warm water spreading from the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific, and other El Niño markers. The Paleolithic is often held to finish at the end of the ice age (the end of the Pleistocene epoch), and Earth's climate became warmer. This may have caused or contributed to

19872-651: The Spectacle . The American philosopher Eric Hoffer identified several elements that unify followers of a particular ideology: Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan is author of the World Values Survey , which, since 1980, has mapped social attitudes in 100 countries representing 90% of global population. Results indicate that where people live is likely to closely correlate with their ideological beliefs. In much of Africa, South Asia and

20079-511: The Sun propagated the concept of a society where the products of society should be shared equally. In Campanella's utopia all people are well educated, there is only a four-hour work day, there is no private property, the population practices eugenics to improve mental and physical fitness, most time is devoted to either leisure or self improvement, and society is managed by a ruling scientist who bases his administration on scientific principles all in

20286-599: The Third International after the collapse of the Second International in 1916. This was known as the Communist International , although it was commonly abbreviated as the Comintern. Throughout its existence, the Comintern would be dominated by the Kremlin despite its internationalist stance. Meanwhile, in 1921, the Soviet Union invaded its neighboring Mongolia to aid a popular uprising against

20493-492: The University of Arizona is argued to support that this division of labor did not exist prior to the Upper Paleolithic and was invented relatively recently in human pre-history. Sexual division of labor may have been developed to allow humans to acquire food and other resources more efficiently. Possibly there was approximate parity between men and women during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, and that period may have been

20700-449: The abolition of property, the right to live and work for all, and the duty of all citizens to work for the common good. The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in his hugely influential The Social Contract (1762) outlined the basis for a political order based on popular sovereignty rather than the rule of monarchs, and in his Discourse on Inequality (1755) inveighed against the corrupting effects of private property claiming that

20907-410: The adoption of agriculture because women in farming societies typically have more pregnancies and are expected to do more demanding work than women in hunter-gatherer societies. Like most modern hunter-gatherer societies, Paleolithic and Mesolithic groups probably followed a largely ambilineal approach. At the same time, depending on the society, the residence could be virilocal, uxorilocal, and sometimes

21114-467: The adoption of system-justifying worldviews . Psychologists generally agree that personality traits , individual difference variables, needs, and ideological beliefs seem to have something in common. Just-world theory posits that people want to believe in a fair world for a sense of control and security and generate ideologies in order to maintain this belief, for example by justifiying inequality or unfortunate events. A critique of just world theory as

21321-620: The alcove where they met remains identical to this day. It was here that Engels relayed his experiences of industrial Manchester, chronicled in the Condition of the Working Class in England , highlighting the struggles of the working class. Marx stated that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles ", something that he believed was happening between the bourgeoisie (the select few upper class and upper middle class ) who then controlled society and

21528-576: The assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties . From the outset, the new government faced resistance from a myriad of forces with differing perspectives, including anarchists , social democrats , who took power in the Democratic Republic of Georgia , Socialist-Revolutionaries , who formed the Komuch in Samara, Russia , scattered tsarist resistance forces known as

21735-479: The beginning of the period. Climates during the Pliocene became cooler and drier, and seasonal, similar to modern climates. Ice sheets grew on Antarctica . The formation of an Arctic ice cap around 3 million years ago is signaled by an abrupt shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Ocean beds. Mid-latitude glaciation probably began before

21942-434: The best economic system (e.g. capitalism , socialism , etc.). Sometimes the same word is used to identify both an ideology and one of its main ideas. For instance, socialism may refer to an economic system, or it may refer to an ideology that supports that economic system. Post 1991, many commentators claim that we are living in a post-ideological age, in which redemptive, all-encompassing ideologies have failed. This view

22149-475: The bourgeoisie-controlled government and instead establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat . The historical existence of the Communist International (Comintern) and the broader communist movement is divided among periods, regarding changes in the general policy it followed. At the start of the 20th century, the Russian Empire was an autocracy controlled by Tsar Nicholas II , with millions of

22356-451: The capitalist economy and the effect that it had upon politics, society and philosophy – the first volume of the work which was known as Capital: Critique of Political Economy was published in 1869. However, Marx and Engels were not only interested in writing about communism, as they were also active in supporting revolutionary activity that would lead to the creation of communist governments across Europe. They helped to found

22563-511: The collective rearing of children mandatory. Over a decade later in Plato's Republic Socrates declares that an ideal state would eliminate all forms of private property among the elite of society to the extent that even children and wives are shared. He asserts that such practices would prevent internal conflict within a society and promote a sense of unity and common identity. Around AD 500 in Iran ,

22770-587: The commitment to an existing one. Zizek calls this "a post-modernist trap". Peter Sloterdijk advanced the same idea already in 1988. Studies have shown that political ideology is somewhat genetically heritable . When a political ideology becomes a dominantly pervasive component within a government, one can speak of an ideocracy . Different forms of government use ideology in various ways, not always restricted to politics and society. Certain ideas and schools of thought become favored, or rejected, over others, depending on their compatibility with or use for

22977-427: The commodity becomes the "essential category" of society, i.e. when the process of commodification has been consummated to its fullest extent, the image of society propagated by the commodity (as it describes all of life as constituted by notions and objects deriving their value only as commodities tradeable in terms of exchange value ), colonizes all of life and reduces society to a mere representation, The Society of

23184-460: The concept of proletarian internationalism and world revolution , seeing their struggle as an international rather than a purely regional cause. This was to have a phenomenal impact on the spread of communism during the 20th century as the Soviet Union installed new Marxist–Leninist governments in Central and Eastern Europe following World War II and indirectly backed the ascension of others in

23391-785: The continent such as France and Germany, the Beghards were later repeatedly condemned by the Catholic Church. Around 1300 the Apostolic Brethren in northern Italy were taken over by Fra Dolcino who formed a sect known as the Dulcinians which advocated ending feudalism, dissolving hierarchies in the church, and holding all property in common. The 14th century English scholastic and founder of Lollardy , John Wycliffe , preached of an idealized Christian state with collective ownership and disapproved of those rejecting the, "common charity and common property of Christian men." Around

23598-564: The continents of North and South America, allowing fauna from these continents to leave their native habitats and colonize new areas. Africa's collision with Asia created the Mediterranean, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean . During the Pleistocene , the continents were essentially at their modern positions; the tectonic plates on which they sit have probably moved at most 100 km (62 mi) from each other since

23805-708: The country and the Tsar was forced to implement democratic reform, introducing an elected government, the Duma . In 1917, with further social unrest against the Duma and its part in involving Russia in World War I , the Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution . They began remodelling the country by nationalizing various industries and confiscating land from wealthy aristocrats and redistributing it amongst

24012-404: The country's largely agrarian population living in abject poverty . The anti-communist historian Robert Service noted that "poverty and oppression constituted the best soil for Marxism to grow in". The man most responsible for introducing the ideology into the country was Georgi Plekhanov , although the movement itself was largely organised by Vladimir Lenin , who had for a time been exiled to

24219-519: The country, but the country itself was subsequently invaded by its neighbouring Romania within a matter of months who overthrew the government, with its leaders either escaping abroad or being executed. In 1921, a communist revolt against the Kingdom of Italy occurred whilst supportive factory workers were on strike in Turin and Milan in northern Italy , but the government acted swiftly and put down

24426-505: The crackdown on the Conspiracy of the Equals he was able, later in his life, to write the influential book Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality first published in 1828 which chronicled and popularized Babeouf's beliefs. In it Buonarroti asserted that in society, "burdens, productions, and advantages ought to be equally divided," and believed that this division would lead to, "the greatest possible happiness of all." Bournatti's writings led to

24633-413: The current administrations over the treatment of the working classes rather than simply emphasising violent revolution as more orthodox Marxists did. Other Marxists opposed Bernstein and other revisionists, with many including Karl Kautsky , Otto Bauer , Rudolf Hilferding , Rosa Luxemburg , Vladimir Lenin and Georgi Plekhanov sticking steadfast to the concept of violently overthrowing what they saw as

24840-692: The damage done to the attacker and decreased the relative amount of territory attackers could gain. However, other sources claim that most Paleolithic groups may have been larger, more complex, sedentary and warlike than most contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, due to occupying more resource-abundant areas than most modern hunter-gatherers who have been pushed into more marginal habitats by agricultural societies. Anthropologists have typically assumed that in Paleolithic societies, women were responsible for gathering wild plants and firewood, and men were responsible for hunting and scavenging dead animals. However, analogies to existent hunter-gatherer societies such as

25047-437: The earlier Frankfurt School added to the "general theory" of ideology a psychoanalytic insight that ideologies do not include only conscious but also unconscious ideas. French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser proposed that ideology is "the imagined existence (or idea) of things as it relates to the real conditions of existence" and makes use of a lacunar discourse. A number of propositions, which are never untrue, suggest

25254-555: The earliest Paleolithic ( Lower Paleolithic ) societies remains largely unknown to scientists, though Lower Paleolithic hominins such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus are likely to have had more complex social structures than chimpanzee societies. Late Oldowan/Early Acheulean humans such as Homo ergaster / Homo erectus may have been the first people to invent central campsites or home bases and incorporate them into their foraging and hunting strategies like contemporary hunter-gatherers, possibly as early as 1.7 million years ago; however,

25461-543: The earliest solid evidence for the existence of home bases or central campsites (hearths and shelters) among humans only dates back to 500,000 years ago. Similarly, scientists disagree whether Lower Paleolithic humans were largely monogamous or polygynous . In particular, the Provisional model suggests that bipedalism arose in pre-Paleolithic australopithecine societies as an adaptation to monogamous lifestyles; however, other researchers note that sexual dimorphism

25668-444: The economic relationships, reflecting and perpetuating the interests of the dominant class. In the Marxist base and superstructure model of society, base denotes the relations of production and modes of production , and superstructure denotes the dominant ideology (i.e. religious, legal, political systems). The economic base of production determines the political superstructure of a society. Ruling class-interests determine

25875-587: 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 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

26082-537: The elderly members of their societies during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Some sources claim that most Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies were possibly fundamentally egalitarian and may have rarely or never engaged in organized violence between groups (i.e. war). Some Upper Paleolithic societies in resource-rich environments (such as societies in Sungir , in what is now Russia) may have had more complex and hierarchical organization (such as tribes with

26289-466: The end of the Pleistocene , c.  11,650 cal BP . The Paleolithic Age in Europe preceded the Mesolithic Age , although the date of the transition varies geographically by several thousand years. During the Paleolithic Age, hominins grouped together in small societies such as bands and subsisted by gathering plants, fishing, and hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic Age

26496-480: The end of the Paleolithic era ( c.  10,000  BP), people began to settle down into permanent locations, and began to rely on agriculture for sustenance in many locations. Much evidence exists that humans took part in long-distance trade between bands for rare commodities (such as ochre , which was often used for religious purposes such as ritual ) and raw materials, as early as 120,000 years ago in Middle Paleolithic. Inter-band trade may have appeared during

26703-794: The end of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle or Upper Paleolithic, people began to produce works of art such as cave paintings , rock art and jewellery and began to engage in religious behavior such as burials and rituals. At the beginning of the Paleolithic, hominins were found primarily in eastern Africa, east of the Great Rift Valley . Most known hominin fossils dating earlier than one million years before present are found in this area, particularly in Kenya , Tanzania , and Ethiopia . By c.  2,000,000  – c.  1,500,000  BP, groups of hominins began leaving Africa, settling southern Europe and Asia. The South Caucasus

26910-680: The end of the Pleistocene caused the mammoths' habitat to shrink, resulting in a drop in population. The small populations were then hunted out by Paleolithic humans. The global warming that occurred during the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene may have made it easier for humans to reach mammoth habitats that were previously frozen and inaccessible. Small populations of woolly mammoths survived on isolated Arctic islands, Saint Paul Island and Wrangel Island , until c.  3700  BP and c.  1700  BP respectively. The Wrangel Island population became extinct around

27117-430: The end of the epoch. The global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred on the disappearance of forests and the spread of grasslands and savannas . The Pleistocene climate was characterized by repeated glacial cycles during which continental glaciers pushed to the 40th parallel in some places. Four major glacial events have been identified, as well as many minor intervening events. A major event

27324-580: The entire surface of the Earth. During interglacial times, drowned coastlines were common, mitigated by isostatic or other emergent motion of some regions. The effects of glaciation were global. Antarctica was ice-bound throughout the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene. The Andes were covered in the south by the Patagonian ice cap. There were glaciers in New Zealand and Tasmania . The decaying glaciers of Mount Kenya , Mount Kilimanjaro , and

27531-543: The extent they demanded its abolition. One of the first secular visions for a communist society is contained within the French Catholic abbé Jean Meslier 's posthumously published Testament (1729). Similarly the Abbé de Mably , also a French philosopher wrote that the individual ownership of land was the source of all mischief and that wealthy inequality brought about social ruin that could only be reversed by adopting

27738-403: The extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna , although it is also possible that the late Pleistocene extinctions were (at least in part) caused by other factors such as disease and overhunting by humans. New research suggests that the extinction of the woolly mammoth may have been caused by the combined effect of climatic change and human hunting. Scientists suggest that climate change during

27945-551: The family, education, and religion. As societies changed throughout history, so did the ideologies that justified systems of inequality. Sociological examples of ideologies include racism , sexism , heterosexism , ableism , and ethnocentrism . Paleolithic Fertile Crescent : Europe : Africa : Siberia : The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( c.  3.3 million  – c.  11,700 BC ) ( / ˌ p eɪ l i oʊ ˈ l ɪ θ ɪ k , ˌ p æ l i -/ PAY -lee-oh- LITH -ik, PAL -ee- ), also called

28152-685: The farms and forced collection of grains from the peasants in accordance with predecided targets. There was food available for industrial workers, but those peasants who refused to move starved, especially in Kazakhstan and Ukraine . The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) targeted kulaks , who owned a little land. Stalin took control of the Comintern and introduced a policy in the international organisation of opposing all leftists who were not Marxist–Leninists , labelling them to be social fascists , although many communists such as Jules Humbert-Droz disagreed with him on this policy, believing that

28359-479: The features of arrest and summary trial followed by execution were well entrenched in the Soviet system since the days of Lenin as Stalin systematically destroyed the older generation of pre-1918 leaders. Stalin did so usually under the justification that the accused were enemy spies or deemed " enemies of the people "; in the Red Army, a majority of generals were executed and hundreds of thousands of other "enemies of

28566-400: The figurines as representations of goddesses , pornographic imagery, apotropaic amulets used for sympathetic magic, and even as self-portraits of women themselves. R. Dale Guthrie has studied not only the most artistic and publicized paintings, but also a variety of lower-quality art and figurines, and he identifies a wide range of skill and ages among the artists. He also points out that

28773-474: The first art appear in the archaeological record. The first evidence of human fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa . Archaeologists classify artifacts of the last 50,000 years into many different categories, such as projectile points , engraving tools, sharp knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools. Humankind gradually evolved from early members of

28980-513: The first users of stone tools. Excavations in Gona, Ethiopia , have produced thousands of artifacts, and through radioisotopic dating and magnetostratigraphy the sites can be firmly dated to 2.6 million years ago. Evidence shows these early hominins intentionally selected raw stone with good flaking qualities and chose appropriately sized stones for their needs to produce sharp-edged tools for cutting. The earliest Paleolithic stone tool industry,

29187-421: The genus Homo —such as Homo habilis , who used simple stone tools—into anatomically modern humans as well as behaviourally modern humans by the Upper Paleolithic . During the end of the Paleolithic Age, specifically the Middle or Upper Paleolithic Age, humans began to produce the earliest works of art and to engage in religious or spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual . Conditions during

29394-546: The hot stones into a perishable container to heat the water. This technology is typified in the Middle Palaeolithic example of the Abri Pataud hearths. The Lower Paleolithic Homo erectus possibly invented rafts ( c.  840,000  – c.  800,000  BP) to travel over large bodies of water, which may have allowed a group of Homo erectus to reach the island of Flores and evolve into

29601-494: The ideas that form in their minds due to those sensations. Tracy conceived ideology as a liberal philosophy that would defend individual liberty , property , free markets , and constitutional limits on state power. He argues that, among these aspects, ideology is the most generic term because the 'science of ideas' also contains the study of their expression and deduction. The coup d'état that overthrew Maximilien Robespierre allowed Tracy to pursue his work. Tracy reacted to

29808-643: The ideology that they are currently aware of. System justification theory posits that people tend to defend existing society, even at times against their interest, which in turn causes people to create ideological explanations to justify the status quo. Jost, Fitzimmons and Kay argue that the motivation to protect a preexisting system is due to a desire for cognitive consistency (being able to think in similar ways over time), reducing uncertainty and reducing effort, illusion of control and fear of equality. According to system justification theory, ideologies reflect ( unconscious ) motivational processes , as opposed to

30015-460: The interest of benefiting society as a whole. Utopian communist societies were also described by the French writers François Fénelon and Denis Vairasse while English writer Francis Bacon wrote of a utopia that merely had a "communism in knowledge." During the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century France, some liberal writers increasingly began to criticize the institution of private property even to

30222-486: The invention of private property had led to the, "crimes, wars, murders, and suffering" that plagued civilization. I believe that no one will contest the justness of this proposition: that where no property exists, none of its pernicious consequences could exist...if you were to take away property, the blind and pitiless self-interest that accompanies it, you would cause all the prejudices in errors that they sustain to collapse. — Étienne-Gabriel Morelly , 1755 In 1785

30429-634: The invention of these devices brought fish into the human diets, which provided a hedge against starvation and a more abundant food supply. Thanks to their technology and their advanced social structures, Paleolithic groups such as the Neanderthals—who had a Middle Paleolithic level of technology—appear to have hunted large game just as well as Upper Paleolithic modern humans, and the Neanderthals in particular may have likewise hunted with projectile weapons. Nonetheless, Neanderthal use of projectile weapons in hunting occurred very rarely (or perhaps never) and

30636-431: The issue of patterning and contingent claims to truth. They wrote: "Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth." Studies of the concept of ideology itself (rather than specific ideologies) have been carried out under

30843-434: The lack of control of fire: studies of cave settlements in Europe indicate no regular use of fire prior to c.  400,000  – c.  300,000  BP. East Asian fossils from this period are typically placed in the genus Homo erectus . Very little fossil evidence is available at known Lower Paleolithic sites in Europe, but it is believed that hominins who inhabited these sites were likewise Homo erectus . There

31050-672: The late 1930s or early 1940s. The Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) was set up in 1927 by the Profintern (the Comintern's trade union arm) with the mission of promoting communist trade unions in China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and other nations in the western Pacific. Trapeznik (2009) says the PPTUS was a "Communist-front organization" and "engaged in overt and covert political agitation in addition to

31257-541: The late 1980s and early 1990s, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and several other Marxist–Leninist states repudiating or abolishing the ideology altogether. Later historians have proposed different explanations for this decline, including arguments that Marxist-Leninist governments failed to live up to the ideal of a communist society , that there was a general trend towards increasing authoritarianism , that they suffered from excessive bureaucracy, and that they had inefficiencies in their economies. As of

31464-411: The late Middle Paleolithic around 100,000 BP or perhaps even earlier. Archaeological evidence from the Dordogne region of France demonstrates that members of the European early Upper Paleolithic culture known as the Aurignacian used calendars ( c.  30,000  BP). This was a lunar calendar that was used to document the phases of the moon. Genuine solar calendars did not appear until

31671-433: The latter half of the 19th century, various left-wing organisations across Europe continued to campaign against the many autocratic right-wing regimes that were then in power. In France, socialists set up a government known as the Paris Commune after the fall of Napoleon III in 1871, but they were soon overthrown and many of their members executed by counter-revolutionaries. Meanwhile, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined

31878-441: The left should unite against the rise of right-wing movements like fascism across Europe. In the early 1930s, Stalin reversed course and promoted popular front movements whereby communist parties would collaborate with socialists and other political forces. A high priority was mobilizing wide support for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War . The Great Purge mainly operated from December 1936 to November 1938, although

32085-418: The members. To reach sympathisers unwilling to join the party, front organizations were created that advocated party-approved positions. Under the leadership of Grigory Zinoviev in the Kremlin, the Comintern established fronts in many countries in the 1920s and after. To coordinate their activities, the Comintern set up various international umbrella organizations (linking groups across national borders) such as

32292-421: The mob. In political science , the term is used in a descriptive sense to refer to political belief systems . The term ideology originates from French idéologie , itself deriving from combining Greek : idéā ( ἰδέα , 'notion, pattern'; close to the Lockean sense of idea ) and -logíā ( -λογῐ́ᾱ , 'the study of'). The term ideology and the system of ideas associated with it

32499-415: The most gender-equal time in human history. Archaeological evidence from art and funerary rituals indicates that a number of individual women enjoyed seemingly high status in their communities, and it is likely that both sexes participated in decision making. The earliest known Paleolithic shaman ( c.  30,000  BP) was female. Jared Diamond suggests that the status of women declined with

32706-427: The most prominent and influential French communists of the 1840s was Auguste Blanqui who was notable for his belief that violent revolutionary action should be used to overthrow the bourgeosie dominated state. In Blanqui's estimation a revolution would be most successful if it was executed by a small, secretive group which could then install a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Dézamy disagreed with any program endorsing

32913-424: The most suitable places for social revolution (either through peaceful transition or by force of arms), communism was mostly successful in underdeveloped countries with endemic poverty such as the Republic of China . In 1917, the Bolshevik Party seized power during the Russian Revolution and in 1922 created the Soviet Union , the world's first self-declared socialist state . The Bolsheviks thoroughly embraced

33120-587: The name of systematic ideology in the works of George Walford and Harold Walsby, who attempt to explore the relationships between ideology and social systems . David W. Minar describes six different ways the word ideology has been used: For Willard A. Mullins, an ideology should be contrasted with the related (but different) issues of utopia and historical myth . An ideology is composed of four basic characteristics: Terry Eagleton outlines (more or less in no particular order) some definitions of ideology: German philosopher Christian Duncker called for

33327-443: 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 was also quite modern. At the top, personal loyalty to Stalin counted for everything. However, Stalin also created powerful committees, elevated younger specialists and began major institutional innovations. In

33534-569: The oldest example of ceramic art, the Venus of Dolní Věstonice ( c.  29,000  – c.  25,000  BP). Kilu Cave at Buku island , Solomon Islands , demonstrates navigation of some 60 km of open ocean at 30,000 BCcal. Early dogs were domesticated sometime between 30,000 and 14,000 BP, presumably to aid in hunting. However, the earliest instances of successful domestication of dogs may be much more ancient than this. Evidence from canine DNA collected by Robert K. Wayne suggests that dogs may have been first domesticated in

33741-410: The only ones. In Germany, the split in the SPD had initially led to a variety of Communist unions and parties forming which included the councilist tendencies of the AAU-D, AAU-E and KAPD . Councilism had a limited impact outside of Germany, but a number of international organisations formed. In Spain, a fusion of left and right dissidents led to the formation of the POUM . Additionally, the Spanish CNT

33948-471: The paintings of half-human, half-animal figures and the remoteness of the caves are reminiscent of modern hunter-gatherer shamanistic practices. Symbol-like images are more common in Paleolithic cave paintings than are depictions of animals or humans, and unique symbolic patterns might have been trademarks that represent different Upper Paleolithic ethnic groups. Venus figurines have evoked similar controversy. Archaeologists and anthropologists have described

34155-405: The peasants. They subsequently pulled out of the war against Germany by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which was unpopular amongst many in Russia, for it gave away large areas of land to Germany. Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education , healthcare and equal rights for women . The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved

34362-577: The people" were sent to the gulag , where inhumane conditions in Siberia led a quick death. The opening of the Soviet archives has vindicated the lower estimates put forth by the "revisionist school" scholars, despite the popular press continuing to use higher estimates and containing serious errors. By 2009, historian Archie Brown reported that estimates were now lower; about 1.7 million were arrested in 1937–1938 and half were shot. The International Right Opposition and Trotskyism are examples of dissidents who still claim communism today, but they are not

34569-695: The pigment ochre from late Lower Paleolithic Acheulean archaeological sites suggests that Acheulean societies, like later Upper Paleolithic societies, collected and used ochre to create rock art. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the ochre traces found at Lower Paleolithic sites is naturally occurring. Upper Paleolithic humans produced works of art such as cave paintings, Venus figurines, animal carvings, and rock paintings. Upper Paleolithic art can be divided into two broad categories: figurative art such as cave paintings that clearly depicts animals (or more rarely humans); and nonfigurative, which consists of shapes and symbols. Cave paintings have been interpreted in

34776-486: The planet. Multiple hominid groups coexisted for some time in certain locations. Homo neanderthalensis were still found in parts of Eurasia c.  40,000  BP years, and engaged in an unknown degree of interbreeding with Homo sapiens sapiens . DNA studies also suggest an unknown degree of interbreeding between Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens denisova . Hominin fossils not belonging either to Homo neanderthalensis or to Homo sapiens species, found in

34983-418: The popular French novelist Restif de la Bretonne wrote a book review on Victor d'Hupay's 1779 book Project for a Philosophical Community which described a plan for a communal experiment in Marseille where all private property was banned and which could be considered, "the first full blueprint for a secular communist society in the world." In the review Restif noted that d'Hupay had referred to himself as

35190-598: The possible wood hut at Terra Amata . Fire was used by the Lower Paleolithic hominins Homo erectus and Homo ergaster as early as 300,000 to 1.5 million years ago and possibly even earlier by the early Lower Paleolithic (Oldowan) hominin Homo habilis or by robust Australopithecines such as Paranthropus . However, the use of fire only became common in the societies of the following Middle Stone Age and Middle Paleolithic . Use of fire reduced mortality rates and provided protection against predators. Early hominins may have begun to cook their food as early as

35397-409: The progenitors of modern communism. Babeuf's plot was detected, however, and he and several others involved were arrested and executed. Because of his views and methods, Babeuf is sometimes referred to as the first revolutionary communist, although at the time Babeuf himself used the term "communitist". Despite this setback, the example of the French Revolutionary regime and Babeuf's doomed insurrection

35604-401: The public wealth." Because of this he believed that such primitive societies were the richest as there was no poverty. Other Greco-Roman writers that believed in a prehistoric humanity that practiced communism include Diodorus Siculus , Virgil , and Ovid . Similarly the early Church Fathers , like their pagan predecessors, maintained that humans society had declined to its current state from

35811-425: The rebellion. That same year, a further communist rebellion took place in the Weimar Republic only to be crushed, but another occurred in 1923 which once again was also defeated by the government. The Bulgarian Communist Party had also attempted an uprising in 1923, but like most of their counterparts across Europe they were defeated. Communist parties were tight knit organizations that exerted tight control over

36018-568: The reigning social order. In The Anatomy of Revolution , Crane Brinton said that new ideology spreads when there is discontent with an old regime. The may be repeated during revolutions itself; extremists such as Vladimir Lenin and Robespierre may thus overcome more moderate revolutionaries. This stage is soon followed by Thermidor , a reining back of revolutionary enthusiasm under pragmatists like Napoleon and Joseph Stalin , who bring " normalcy and equilibrium". Brinton's sequence ("men of ideas> fanatics >practical men of action")

36225-465: The related ideas of socialism had become widely popular in French revolutionary circles thanks to the writings of social critics and philosophers such as Pierre Leroux and Théodore Dézamy , whose critiques of bourgeoisie liberalism and individualism led to a widespread intellectual rejection of laissez-faire capitalism on economic, philosophical and moral grounds. According to Leroux writing in 1832, "To recognise no other aim than individualism

36432-408: The same time the island was settled by prehistoric humans. There is no evidence of prehistoric human presence on Saint Paul island (though early human settlements dating as far back as 6500 BP were found on the nearby Aleutian Islands ). Nearly all of our knowledge of Paleolithic people and way of life comes from archaeology and ethnographic comparisons to modern hunter-gatherer cultures such as

36639-410: The same time the revolutionary priest John Ball , who was later executed for his prominent role in the doomed Wat Tyler Rebellion allegedly declared, "things cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all goods are held in common." In Tábor , Bohemia during the 15th century Hussite Wars , the radical Taborites attempted to institute a system they called a "community of goods" where, "there

36846-442: The shifts in the meaning of ideology , the modern meaning of the word was born when Napoleon used it to describe his opponents as "the ideologues". Tracy's major book, The Elements of Ideology , was soon translated into the major languages of Europe. In the century following Tracy, the term ideology moved back and forth between positive and negative connotations. During this next generation, when post-Napoleonic governments adopted

37053-423: The small hominin Homo floresiensis . However, this hypothesis is disputed within the anthropological community. The possible use of rafts during the Lower Paleolithic may indicate that Lower Paleolithic hominins such as Homo erectus were more advanced than previously believed, and may have even spoken an early form of modern language. Supplementary evidence from Neanderthal and modern human sites located around

37260-416: The sponsorship and they became less important. The devastation of the war resulted in a massive recovery program involving the rebuilding of industrial plants, housing and transportation as well as 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

37467-425: The spouses could live with neither the husband's relatives nor the wife's relatives at all. Taken together, most likely, the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers can be characterized as multilocal. Early examples of artistic expression, such as the Venus of Tan-Tan and the patterns found on elephant bones from Bilzingsleben in Thuringia , may have been produced by Acheulean tool users such as Homo erectus prior to

37674-686: The start of the Middle Paleolithic period. However, the earliest undisputed evidence of art during the Paleolithic comes from Middle Paleolithic / Middle Stone Age sites such as Blombos Cave –South Africa–in the form of bracelets , beads , rock art , and ochre used as body paint and perhaps in ritual. Undisputed evidence of art only becomes common in the Upper Paleolithic. Lower Paleolithic Acheulean tool users, according to Robert G. Bednarik, began to engage in symbolic behavior such as art around 850,000 BP. They decorated themselves with beads and collected exotic stones for aesthetic, rather than utilitarian qualities. According to him, traces of

37881-405: The superstructure and the nature of the justifying ideology—actions feasible because the ruling class control the means of production . For example, in a feudal mode of production , religious ideology is the most prominent aspect of the superstructure, while in capitalist formations, ideologies such as liberalism and social democracy dominate. Hence the great importance of ideology justifies

38088-401: The systems of inequality that maintain their group's social power over non-dominant groups. Ideologies use a society's symbol system to organize social relations in a hierarchy , with some social identities being superior to other social identities, which are considered inferior. The dominant ideology in a society is passed along through the society's major social institutions, such as the media,

38295-416: The teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. Ideology The term was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy , a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher , who conceived it in 1796 as the "science of ideas" to develop a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of

38502-448: The terroristic phase of the revolution (during the Napoleonic regime as part of the Napoleonic Wars ) by trying to work out a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational mob impulses that had nearly destroyed him. A subsequent early source for the near-original meaning of ideology is Hippolyte Taine 's work on the Ancien Régime , Origins of Contemporary France I. He describes ideology as rather like teaching philosophy via

38709-422: The tools themselves that allowed access to a wider variety and amount of food sources. For example, microliths or small stone tools or points were invented around 70,000–65,000 BP and were essential to the invention of bows and atlatls (spear throwers) in the following Upper Paleolithic. Harpoons were invented and used for the first time during the late Middle Paleolithic ( c.  90,000  BP);

38916-499: The tradition". Moreover, Charles Blattberg offers an account that distinguishes political ideologies from political philosophies . Slavoj Žižek argues how the very notion of post-ideology can enable the deepest, blindest form of ideology. A sort of false consciousness or false cynicism, engaged in for the purpose of lending one's point of view the respect of being objective, pretending neutral cynicism, without truly being so. Rather than help avoiding ideology, this lapse only deepens

39123-438: The utopian novel Utopia (1516) in which the main character decries private property after traveling to an idyllic island without money or private property and where, "everything is under state control." More coined the term utopia as a name for his idealized community, which means "nowhere" in Latin, evincing the fact that More did not consider such a society attainable in reality. Tommaso Campanella 's 1601 work The City of

39330-488: The view that political convictions always reflect independent and unbiased thinking. According to semiotician Bob Hodge : [Ideology] identifies a unitary object that incorporates complex sets of meanings with the social agents and processes that produced them. No other term captures this object as well as 'ideology'. Foucault 's ' episteme ' is too narrow and abstract, not social enough. His 'discourse', popular because it covers some of ideology's terrain with less baggage,

39537-440: The vote in the German elections and some of its leaders, such as August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht , became well-known public figures. The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have

39744-406: The world's population lived under a Marxist–Leninist system of government in one form or another. However, there was significant debate among communist and Marxist ideologues as to whether most of these countries could be meaningfully considered Marxist at all since many of the basic components of the Marxist system were altered and revised by such countries. There was a rapid decline of communism in

39951-438: Was " ideology has no history ": while individual ideolog ies have histories, interleaved with the general class struggle of society, the general form of ideology is external to history. For Althusser, beliefs and ideas are the products of social practices, not the reverse. His thesis that " ideas are material " is illustrated by the "scandalous advice" of Pascal toward unbelievers: "Kneel and pray, and then you will believe." What

40158-425: Was an inspiration for French socialist thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon , Louis Blanc , Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon . Proudhon, the founder of modern anarchism and libertarian socialism would later famously declare " property is theft! " a phrase first invented by the French revolutionary Brissot de Warville . Importantly because one of Babeuf's co-conspirators, Philippe Buonarroti , survived

40365-415: Was associated with the development of the FAI political party, a non-Marxist party which stood for revolutionary communism. As the Cold War took effect around 1947, the Kremlin set up new international coordination bodies including the World Federation of Democratic Youth , the International Union of Students , the World Federation of Trade Unions , the Women's International Democratic Federation and

40572-433: Was based in Prague. While it had non-communist unions it was largely dominated by the Soviets. In 1949 the British, American and other non-Communist unions broke away from the WFTU to form the rival International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The labor movement in Europe became so polarized between the communist unions and social democratic and Christian labor unions, whereas front operations could no longer hide

40779-408: Was centralized. The systematic, historical and materialist analysis of the nature of communism in Dézamy's work led Marx to consider him among the first scientific socialists along with Jules Gay . It was only in the year 1840 that proponents of common ownership in France, including the socialists Théodore Dézamy, Étienne Cabet , and Jean-Jacques Pillot began to widely adopt the word "communism" as

40986-426: Was coined in 1796 by Antoine Destutt de Tracy while in prison pending trial during the Reign of Terror , where he read the works of Locke and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac . Hoping to form a secure foundation for the moral and political sciences , Tracy devised the term for a "science of ideas", basing such upon two things: (1) the sensations that people experience as they interact with the material world; and (2)

41193-481: Was directly influenced by Morelly's anti-property utopian novel The Code of Nature and quoted it extensively, although he was under the erroneous impression it was written by Diderot .Also during the revolution the publisher Nicholas Bonneville , the founder of the Parisian revolutionary Social Club used his printing press to spread the communist treatises of Restif and Sylvain Maréchal . Maréchal, who later joined Babeuf's conspiracy, would state in his Manifesto of

41400-418: Was even lower at 4,000–6,000 individuals. However, remains of thousands of butchered animals and tools made by Palaeolithic humans were found in Lapa do Picareiro , a cave in Portugal , dating back between 41,000 and 38,000 years ago. Some researchers have noted that science, limited in that age to some early ideas about astronomy (or cosmology ), had limited impact on Paleolithic technology. Making fire

41607-420: Was founded known as the Second International to unite the various Marxist groups around the world. As Marxism took off, it also began to come under criticism from other European intellectuals, including fellow socialists and leftists. For instance, the Russian collectivist anarchist Mikhail Bakunin criticised what he believed were the flaws in the Marxian theory that the state would eventually dissolve under

41814-429: Was more elaborate than previous Acheulean techniques. This technique increased efficiency by allowing the creation of more controlled and consistent flakes . It allowed Middle Paleolithic humans to create stone-tipped spears , which were the earliest composite tools, by hafting sharp pointy stone flakes onto wooden shafts. In addition to improving tool-making methods, the Middle Paleolithic also saw an improvement of

42021-521: Was no serious opposition to Stalin as the NKVD 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 blockade of Berlin . By 1947, 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. However, he greatly underestimated

42228-402: Was occupied by c.  1,700,000  BP, and northern China was reached by c.  1,660,000  BP. By the end of the Lower Paleolithic, members of the hominin family were living in what is now China, western Indonesia, and, in Europe, around the Mediterranean and as far north as England, France, southern Germany, and Bulgaria. Their further northward expansion may have been limited by

42435-425: Was put down violently by the Freikorps, who historians believe killed around 1,200 communists and their sympathisers. That same year, political turmoil in Hungary following their defeat in World War I led to a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party taking control. The Hungarian Communist Party led by Béla Kun soon became dominant and instituted various communist reforms in

42642-405: Was there a formal division of labor during the Paleolithic. Each member of the group was skilled at all tasks essential to survival, regardless of individual abilities. Theories to explain the apparent egalitarianism have arisen, notably the Marxist concept of primitive communism . Christopher Boehm (1999) has hypothesized that egalitarianism may have evolved in Paleolithic societies because of

42849-433: Was widespread knowledge, and it was possible without an understanding of chemical processes, These types of practical skills are sometimes called crafts. Religion, superstitution or appeals to the supernatural may have played a part in the cultural explanations of phenomena like combustion . Paleolithic humans made tools of stone, bone (primarily of deer), and wood. The early paleolithic hominins, Australopithecus , were

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