Socialism is when the government does stuff, if it does a real lot of stuff it’s communism #shorts
Channel: PublicDomain (US)
Date: 2022-09-17

Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a far-left[3][4][5] sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement[1] whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange—allocating products to everyone in the society.[6][7][8] It also involves the absence of social classes, money,[9] and the state.[10][11][12] Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist state followed by Friedrich Engels' withering away of the state.[13]
Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarcho-communism and Marxist schools of thought, among others. Communism includes a variety of schools of thought which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism as well as the political ideologies grouped around both. All of these different ideologies share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system and mode of production, namely that in this system there are two major social classes, the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution.[14][nb 1] The two classes are the proletariat (the working class), who make up the majority of the population within society and must work to survive, and the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class), a small minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, revolution would put the working class in power and in turn, establish common ownership of property which is the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.[16]
In the 20th century, ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power in parts of the world,[17] 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.[18][nb 2] Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s.[24] During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived under communist governments.[1] These governments were characterized by one-party rule and suppression of opposition and dissent.[1] With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, several communist governments repudiated or abolished communism altogether.[25] Afterwards, only a small number of communist governments remained, namely China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam.[26][27] While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to communism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, several scholars posit that in practice, the model functioned as a form of state capitalism.[28][29][30]
Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as "a battleground" between the communist sympathetic political left and the anti-communist political right.[31] Many authors[nb 3] have written about excess deaths under Communist states and mortality rates, such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Communism derives from the French communisme, which developed out of the Latin roots communis and the suffix isme.[53] Semantically, communis can be translated to "of or for the community", while isme is a suffix that indicates the abstraction into a state, condition, action, or doctrine. Communism may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for the community"; this semantic constitution has led to numerous usages of the word in its evolution. Prior to becoming associated with its more modern conception of an economic and political organization, it was initially used in designating various social situations. Communism came to be primarily associated with Marxism, most specifically embodied in The Communist Manifesto, which proposed a particular type of communism.[1][54]
One of the first uses of the word in its modern sense is in a letter sent by Victor d'Hupay to Restif de la Bretonne around 1785, in which d'Hupay describes himself as an auteur communiste ("communist author").[55] In 1793, Restif first used communisme to describe a social order based on egalitarianism and the common ownership of property. Restif would go on to use the term frequently in his writing and was the first to describe communism as a form of government.[57] John Goodwyn Barmby is credited with the first use of communism in English, around 1840.