Communist Parties

Ideology

The term communist was used for the first time by the utopian socialist Goodwyn Barmby, who introduced the word into the English language as a translation of the French word communiste and founded the London Communist Propaganda Society in 1841. An essential distinctive characteristic of communist parties was the importance accorded to ideology. In communist parties, ideology occupies a much more fundamental place than in other parties as a primary concern of the party is to indoctrinate the rank and file with communism or Marxism.

The doctrine of communism refers to the theory of society developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1840s. In the mid-1840s, Marx and Engels became engaged in politics by joining the League of the Just, a secret society consisting mainly of émigré German artisans. In February 1846, Marx and Engels set up the Communist Correspondence Committee with the aim of reclaiming control of the League of the Just. In June 1847, the League was transformed from a secret society into an open revolutionary organization—the Communist League. The second congress of the Communist League, in December 1847, asked Marx and Engels to draw up a manifesto stating its principles. In February 1848, Marx and Engels published the Manifesto of the Communist Party, [Page 315]where they formulated the basic principles of communism. The major author of Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei was Karl Marx; it was originally published in German in London.

A cornerstone of Marxist theory was the economic (often called the materialistic) interpretation of history and theory of the social revolution. According to this doctrine, human society is developing through a series of historical stages based on changing modes of production, which are the fundamental determinants of social structures and social relations. As seen by Marx and Engels, the history of human society is the history of class struggles. According to Marxist doctrine, human society has passed through the successive phases of a primitive society, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism and must advance to communism. The class struggle under capitalism is between those who own the means of production—the bourgeoisie—and those who labor for a wage—the working class. Communism means an abolition of private property and the creation of a classless society in which productive wealth is owned collectively.

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