communism

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communism

a political and economic doctrine that advocates that the state should own all property and organize all the functions of PRODUCTION and EXCHANGE, including LABOUR. Karl MARX succinctly stated his idea of communism as ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. Communism involves a CENTRALLY PLANNED ECONOMY where strategic decisions concerning production and distribution are taken by government as opposed to being determined by the PRICE SYSTEM, as in a market-based PRIVATE ENTERPRISE ECONOMY. China still organizes its economy along communist lines, but in recent years Russia and other former Soviet Union countries and various East European countries have moved away from communism to more market-based economies.
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From the 'centre' of world communism, the next two contributions move westwards--to extend our travelling analogy--to the so-called 'peripheries' of local communisms, with case studies of communist networks in rural France and then an exploration of changing attitudes to sexual and family norms in the Allende generation of communist youth in Chile.
(7.) For a further discussion about the theme of local communisms, see Norman LaPorte, 'Introduction: local communisms within a global movement', Twentieth Century Communism: a journal of international history, 5, 2013, pp.5-18.
This issue of Twentieth Century Communism marks a change from earlier ones: it is the first not to be based around specific themes.
Editorial
The first thing to stress is that there is not one variety but many Christian anti-communisms (as indeed there is of Christian communisms), and that these developed over time, becoming of particular political importance in the early Cold War owing to the way in which the United States appropriated religion for its cold war agenda.
In the French collection Le siecle des communismes, communism is characterised in terms of diversity held together by a common project.
(1) Freeden doubts how far even the varieties of official communism were held together by shared core concepts.
A century of anti-communisms: a roundtable discussion
If communism, as our opening editorial had it, was one of the defining political movements of the twentieth century, it was not just that communism itself helped define Hobsbawm's 'age of extremes'.
What is nevertheless striking is how, as our focus shifts to communism's antagonists, there should for the first time come to the fore several cases in which communism on its own account was a marginal force.
The instrumentalisation of anti-communism for conservative or openly reactionary political projects should not be used, as communists themselves tended to use it, to conflate and delegitimise any such form of opposition to communism. This point is strongly signalled in Eric Arnesen's defence of the African-American activists Walter White and A.
Editorial
Communism was one of the defining political movements of the twentieth century.
Working in the UK, though not exclusively on British communism, its editors have been increasingly struck by the insular, sometimes introverted character of discussions of communism both in Britain and in the anglo-phone world more generally.
Albeit with some notable exceptions, the international comparative literature on communism even now is surprisingly undeveloped.
Twentieth Century Communism: an editorial foreword

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