Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism encompasses a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those. All of these different ideologies generally share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system, and mode of production, that in this system there are two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat, who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie, a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.
Communism in its modern form grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe that argued capitalism caused the misery of urban factory workers. In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, first in the Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II. As one of the many types of socialism, communism became the dominant political tendency, along with social democracy, within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s. (Full article...)
The International's rationale was to construct new mass revolutionary parties able to lead successful workers' revolutions. It saw these arising from a revolutionary wave which would develop alongside and as a result of the coming world war. The founding conference adopted the Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution as the International's political platform.
As a politician, Lenin was a persuasive and charismaticorator. As an intellectual his extensive theoretic and philosophical developments of Marxism produced Marxism–Leninism, a pragmatic Russian application of Marxism that emphasized the critical role played by a committed and disciplined political vanguard in the revolutionary process, while defending the possibility of a socialist revolution in less advanced capitalist countries through an alliance of the proletarians with the rural peasantry.
Lenin remains a controversial and highly divisive world figure. Critics labeled him a dictator, but supporters saw him heroically as a champion of the working classes. He has had a significant influence on the Marxist-Leninist movement, which since his death had developed into a variety of schools of thought.
...that Moscow City Hall, built in the 1890s to the tastes of the Russian bourgeoisie, was converted by Communists into the Central Lenin Museum after its rich interior decoration had been plastered over.
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Together with this inquestionable increase in the number of workers occupied in industry, we are also confronted in Soviet Russia with an increase in the number of unemployed registered on the Labour Exchange. The number of unemployed has attained about a million. There have been months when the number of unemployed has even exceeded that amount.
Unemployment is one of the most distressing phenomena in Russia at the present time, and we must take every measure to abolish it. Of the entire number of unemployed about one fourth, or 25%, are industrial workers, and the remainder is made up of the intelligentzia, the professions, office workers and unskilled labourers. I must admit that I personally do not place complete confidence in the official statistics of the Labour Exchange, because of that fact that all kinds of people are registered on the exchange for the sake of receiving those priveleges for the unemployed and those conditions of hire which are guaranteed by the laws of the Soviet Republic, and which are inflexibly carried out. Here are registered not only those who are looking for work, but also those who would not accept work, and are merely looking for the priveleges and exemptions which are connected with the category of unemployment. We have constantly discovered cases where people who have been arrested and sentenced to Pechora (a place of exile-to Archangel) on the charge of speculation, have been registered on the Labour Exchange as unemployed. Therefore in my opinion the official figures probably exceed the actual number of unemployed. But in general we must take cognizance of the growth of number of unemployed, which goes parallel with the growth of the number of workers occupied in industry.
