But an ideal citizen in a communist society was selflessly devoted to societal causes and rarely stopped to think about his or her welfare. The second reason for communism's failure was the system's inherent inefficiencies, such as centralized planning.
This form of planning requires aggregation and synthesis of enormous amounts of data at a granular level. Because all projects were planned centrally, this form of planning was also complex. In several instances, growth data was fudged or error-prone in order to make facts fit into planned statistics and create an illusion of progress. The concentration of power into the hands of select few also bred inefficiency and, paradoxically enough, provided them with incentives to game the system for their benefit and retain their hold on power.
Corruption and laziness became endemic features of this system and surveillance, such as the one that characterized East German and Soviet societies, was common. It also disincentivized industrious and hard-working people.
The end result was that the economy suffered. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia.
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What Is Communism? Understanding Communism. The Communist Manifesto. The Soviet Union. Communist China. The Cold War. Why Did Communism Fail? Key Takeaways Communism is an economic ideology that advocates for a classless society in which all property and wealth are communally-owned, instead of by individuals.
The communist ideology was developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and is the opposite of a capitalist one, which relies on democracy and production of capital to form a society. Prominent examples of communism were the Soviet Union and China. While the former collapsed in , the latter has drastically revised its economic system to include elements of capitalism. Compare Accounts. The offers that appear in this table are from partnerships from which Investopedia receives compensation.
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Communism wasn't contained inside the Soviet Union. As Marx's tenets had instructed, it had be to spread worldwide to achieve utopia. Some countries had adopted communism to help realize that goal, including:. It's interesting to note that the communist governments in all of these countries except North Vietnam collapsed right around the same time as the Soviet Union, which was a huge support to the smaller countries. If Stalin had his way, communism would have become much more widespread, especially in the West.
In the s, he enacted a plan to overtake this region with furious industrial development. His hope was that Russia would become such a military powerhouse that it would stand up to the other powerful nations, especially the United States.
His efforts fell short, and as we've learned, the Soviet Union slowly fell apart due to these economic disadvantages. However, communism does have a presence in the United States today. In fact, the group has even supported a presidential candidate as recently as The group advocates the end of the working class's exploitation and oppression.
Ultimately, the party hopes to implement a socialist society where all people will benefit from the wealth present in the United States. Home to more than 20 percent of the world's population 1. Mao Zedong , China's dictator, launched and raised the communist government in China, employing many of Stalin's tactics. In addition to the death camps Mao instituted to combat Chinese counter-revolutionaries, he also developed a plan called the Great Leap Forward , which forced collectivization of agriculture.
Peasants were ushered into communes when Mao seized their property. So it's this very utopian thing. Let me write that down. So pure Marxism is kind of a utopian society. And just in case you don't know what utopian means, it's kind of a perfect society, where you don't have classes, everyone is equal, everyone is leading these kind of rich, diverse, fulfilling lives. And it's also, utopian is also kind of viewed as unrealistic. It's kind of, if you view it in the more negative light, is like, hey, I don't know how we'll ever be able to get there.
Who knows? I don't want to be negative about it. Maybe we will one day get to a utopian society. But Leninist is kind of the more practical element of communism. Because obviously, after the Bolshevik Revolution, , in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union gets created, they have to actually run a government.
They have to actually run a state based on these ideas of communism. And in a Leninist philosophy-- and this is where it starts to become in tension with the ideas of democracy-- in a Leninist philosophy, you need this kind of a party system. So you need this-- and he calls this the Vanguard Party.
So the vanguard is kind of the thing that's leading, the one that's leading the march. So this Vanguard Party that kind of creates this constant state of revolution, and its whole job is to guide society, is to kind of almost be the parent of society, and take it from capitalism through socialism to this ideal state of communism.
And it's one of those things where the ideal state of communism was never-- it's kind of hard to know when you get there. And so what happens in a Leninist state is it's this Vanguard Party, which is usually called the Communist Party, is in a constant state of revolution, kind of saying, hey, we're shepherding the people to some future state without a real clear definition of what that future state is.
And so when you talk about Marxist-Leninist, besides talking about what's happening in the economic sphere, it's also kind of talking about this party system, this party system where you really just have one dominant party that it will hopefully act in the interest of the people.
So one dominant communist party that acts in the interest of the people. And obviously, the negative here is that how do you know that they actually are acting in the interest of people? How do you know that they actually are competent? What means are there to do anything if they are misallocating things, if it is corrupt, if you only have a one-party system?
And just to make it clear, the largest existing communist state is the People's Republic of China. And although it is controlled by the Communist Party, in economic terms it's really not that communist anymore.
And so it can be confusing. And so what I want to do is draw a little bit of a spectrum. On the vertical axis, over here, I want to put democratic. And up here, I'll put authoritarian or totalitarian. Let me put-- well, I'll put authoritarian. I'll do another video on the difference. And they're similar. And totalitarian is more an extreme form of authoritarian, where the government controls everything.
And you have a few people controlling everything and it's very non-democratic. But authoritarian is kind of along those directions. And then on this spectrum, we have the capitalism, socialism, and communism. I would put the United States over here.
It has some small elements of socialism. You do have labor unions. They don't control everything. You also have people working outside of labor unions. It does have some elements of redistribution. There are inheritance taxes. There are-- I mean it's not an extreme form of redistribution.
You can still inherit private property. You still have safety nets for people, you have Medicare, Medicaid, you have welfare. So there's some elements of socialism.
But it also has a very strong capitalist history, private property, deep market, so I'd stick the United States over there.
I would put the current state of Russia, actually someplace over here. Because they actually have fewer safety nets, and they kind of have a more-- their economy can kind of go crazier, and they actually have a bigger disparity in wealth than a place like the United States.
So this is current Russia. And probably the most interesting one here is the People's Republic of China, the current People's Republic of China, which is at least on the surface, a communist state.
But in some ways, it's more capitalist than the United States, in that they don't have strong wealth redistribution. They don't have kind of strong safety nets for people. So you could put some elements of China-- and over here, closer to the left. And they are more-- less democratic than either the US or even current Russia, although some people would call current Russia-- well, I won't go too much into it.
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