Communism

Communism is a political and economic ideology holding the abolition of private property in the means of production, replaced by collective ownership, as its central aim. It originates with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose Communist Manifesto was published in London in February 1848 for the Communist League, arguing that history is driven by class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Communism holds that political power should ultimately serve the working class, exercised in its name during a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat led by a vanguard party, before the state itself withers away into a stateless, classless society. Its legitimacy rests on representing the interests of the working class against capital, rather than on individual consent or national or hereditary authority. Communism grew out of the broader nineteenth century socialist movement and represents its revolutionary current, distinguished from the reformist, parliamentary current that became social democracy. It rejects the private ownership of the means of production under capitalism as the source of class exploitation.