Communism/Socialism 101 - The Basics

Misconceptions and blatant lies about Communism are, unfortunately, nothing new in our society. In the 20th century there were two Red Scares—periods where widespread fear and propaganda against far-left ideologies, groups, and people led to mass expulsion from Federal jobs, imprisonment, and unrelinquished hate against any perceived “traitor” to the United States. The above quote by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, known for McCarthyism & spearheading witch hunts against leftists all around the country, is a great example of how someone who is in a position to influence can twist and distort details in order to further their own cause on a widespread scale—McCarthy’s cause just so happened to be that of a manipulator trying to further his own career in politics. I’ll save the details of the Red Scares for another article, as I have that in the works, so stay tuned for that.

In our day and age it is easier than ever before to spew lies and falsities. Anybody, and I mean anyone, with internet access can spread misinformation around—the thing with misinformation is it’s as volatile as a forest fire, the thing with misinformation is that it spreads faster than the truth, once it’s out there it can be liked, shared, reposted, commented on—spread around in a coalescence of ways that all, whether purposefully or not, stoke the flame around a lie and expand its outreach & potential influence. With so many falsehoods being shot at us constantly, especially around politics, it is a crucial twenty-first century skill to be able to recognize misinformation, diagnose it, and dispute it—if that is deemed necessary. Critical thinking can be defined as a deeper level of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and make a judgement about what you read, view, hear, say, or write. Essentially, it’s about making sound decisions based on information that you have judged as reliable through a process of identification, questioning, and clarification. It’s a “skill” that can, and must, be refined through viewing and interacting with media on the internet because, let’s face it, media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and neither is the internet. The ability to think critically is not taught, or not taught well enough, in our education system, but, again, that is a topic for another time. The important thing is that we see more lies and distortions on a daily basis than ever before. It begs the question, how do you know what to agree or disagree with when you aren’t sure if it’s the truth or misinformation being spewed?

Misinformation is particularly dangerous when it comes to politics, policy, and ideology. In the United States there has been a noticeable downward shift in public trust and opinion of news and media. Is this unwarranted? Absolutely not—90% of “mainstream” news is owned by EIGHT media conglomerates, and of those eight media conglomerates, TWO Wall Street corporations, Vanguard & BlackRock, own a combined majority of shares in at least six of them. That is a complete travesty to any sense of “free press” within the United States and it’s not okay. The United States corporate media machine obviously cannot be trusted, so what alternatives have there been?

The alternatives to mainstream media haven’t turned out to be the solution to this undemocratic style of press—there is Donald Trump’s “Truth Social,” which is a MAGA rally in the form of a social media app, for you will not find a statement disagreeing with Trump in any way, shape, or form, Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into “X,” the ultimate place to meet white nationalists, get Musk’s tweets thrown at you (even though you don’t want to see them), and become immersed in a cesspool of racism, misogyny, nationalism, xenophobia, and a complete lack of fact-checking, then of course there is the Twitter alternative, Bluesky, which is, in my one month of being on there, not all that much better—there is plenty of misinformation spread, particularly about Communism and Socialism, and it’s more of a gladiatorial arena where Leftists combat against Liberal disinformation with a generally malicious intent. On Bluesky you’ll meet nice, well-meaning people, but you’ll also encounter people, typically Liberals, who aren’t afraid to go mask-off and show their racism and hatred for anyone they perceive as not having voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 Presidential election. This is not to say that you should avoid social media completely, but that you should be wary of what you see and hear through these mediums—it’s never a bad idea to dig deeper into a post that doesn’t seem correct before you like, comment on, or share it. Do your due-diligence for your own, and everyone else’s, sake!

With all that being said about misinformation, it needs to be understood that political concepts are particularly susceptible in a day and age when things are more divisive than ever before. Marxism, Communism, and Socialism are no stranger to misinformation—distortions on them have been around for as long as the concepts themselves have existed. Throughout modern history (19th-21st centuries), these distortions have ranged from mild to downright vile, from making these concepts seem idealistically impossible, when, in fact, they are based in materialism, to inherently evil, from twisting or leaving out certain details to completely ignoring foundational teachings. With so much turbulence in the world and so much unknown there has never been a better time to learn about Communism, Socialism, and Marxism. Even if you don’t agree with these concepts it’s important to understand them so you can at least know what exactly it is that you disagree with. So I present you with a foundational, 101 if you will, lesson in these incredibly influential topics.

What is Marxism?

Marxism is the most difficult of the three to give a definite meaning to. It’s taken on different meanings throughout it’s history—it’s transformed and taken on a life of it’s own, and the exact meaning of who and what a Marxist is, is still contested to this day. That being said, we must give the history of Marxism, and, thus, we can gain a more complete understanding of it.

Marxism has it’s namesake in the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—their work, beginning in the 1840s and spanning until 1888 with the last published work of Engels (in his lifetime), are the original works of Marxist Theory & the foundational basis for Communism. The term wasn’t coined until 1872 after the Hague Conference of the First International—the International was undergoing a split and the supporters of Marx begun calling themselves Marxists to distinguish themselves from the supporters of Mikhail Bakunin, one of the founders of Anarchism and an opponent of Marx. Marx, himself, didn’t support factionalism within the International, thus he didn’t support people identifying as Marxists. In a letter from Engels to Eduard Bernstein in 1882, Engels referred to a statement that Marx had told Paul Lafargue:

Engels would later say, in an 1890 letter:

From this it can be gathered that Marx and Engels themselves were not quite fond of the use of “Marxism” and “Marxist”. It is not known if Marx ever came around to the term, but considering that Engels’ letter to Eduard Bernstein was written only a few months before Marx passed away—one can infer that he never did appreciate its use, nor did he get the chance to see just what would become of it. Engels eventually accepted the term as he saw that there was no way of avoiding the label which had become so popular, but, like Marx, he never labeled himself as a Marxist. By this time, the early 1890s, and as a result of the work of Karl Kautsky plus the formation of the Second International, Marxism was understood to be referring to a body of doctrine, particularly that of The Communist Manifesto. Engels had come to see the term as referring to a body of political philosophy—that body being Communism. At the turn of the twentieth century, Marxism was being used to refer to Revolutionary Socialists as a way to distinguish between them and the Anarchists or Reformists. After the Russian Revolution, Marxism was typically understood to mean a long body of political theory all having to do with Communism.

Vladimir Lenin had a great understanding of Marxism that has changed the way we think about Marxism and was highly influential to the Revolutionaries that came after his death. Lenin saw Marxism as being made up of three components which came together to form the whole of Marxism—these three “component parts,” as he called them, are as follows1:

1) The Philosophy of Marxism is Dialectical Materialism

“The philosophy of Marxism is materialism”, for it is the only philosophy throughout time that has been consistent, true to natural science, and hostile to superstition. The enemies of democracy have always tried to undermine materialism, and have advocated for idealism — “which always amounts to the defence or support of religion.”

Marx and Engels always defended philosophical materialism and had repeatedly shown the erroneous nature of every deviation from this philosophical basis.

Marx developed the philosophy to a higher degree, through the works of German classical philosophy—that of Hegel and “the materialism of Feuerbach”—resulting in dialectics, “i.e., the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of the human knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally developing matter.”

2) Capitalism creates the great power of the proletariat

“With the recognition that the economic system is the foundation on which the political superstructure is elected,” Marx spent the majority of his time and effort on studying this economic system.

Before Marx, economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo had “laid the foundations of the labour theory of value.” Marx continued and expanded upon their work providing a proof of theory and continually developing upon that proof. Marx showed that the value of every commodity is determined by the “quantity of socially necessary labour time spent on its production.”

Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between goods, i.e., the exchange of one commodity for another, Marx saw a relation between people. Exchanges of commodities in the market express a connection between individual producers. “Money signifies that the connection is becoming closer and closer, inseparably uniting the entire economic life of the individual producers into one whole.” Capital shows us a further development of this connection wherein the labour-power of a worker becomes a commodity in and of itself. The wage-worker sells their labour-power to the owner of capital. The worker spends a part of the day “covering the cost of maintaining himself and his family (wages), while the other part of the day he works without remuneration,” which creates for the capitalist surplus-value, “the source of profit, the source of wealth for the capitalist class.”

It is surplus-value which is “the corner-stone of Marx’s economic theory.”

Capitalism destroys small-scale production which leads to “an increase in the productivity of labour” and to the creation of monopolies for big-capitalists to lead. Production becomes more social on a mass scale—millions of workers become bound into one “regular economic organism”—while the product of this collective labour is taken by a “handful of capitalists.” This leads to inevitable “anarchy of production,” economic crises, and the increased insecurity of existence for the majority of the population.

It is through the very act of increasing the dependence of workers on capital in which the capitalist system creates the “great power of united labour.”

3) Class struggle is the driving force of all development

When feudalism was defeated and “free” capitalist societies emerged, it became immediately apparent that this freedom meant “a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people.” Numerous socialist doctrines emerged as a reflection and protest against this exploitation. “Early socialism, however, was utopian socialism.” It critiqued capitalism, it condemned it, it dreamed of the defeat of capitalism and of a better order of society, it tried to convince the rich that exploitation was immoral.

Alas, utopian socialism couldn’t indicate the real solution to this exploitation. It couldn’t “explain the real nature of wage-slavery under capitalism,” it couldn’t reveal the pillars of development in capitalist society, “or show what social force is capable of becoming the creator of a new society.”

It was the revolutions which accompanied the fall of feudalism that “more and more clearly revealed the struggle of classes as the basis and the driving force of all development.”

There was no victory of political freedom over the feudal class except those in which there was desperate resistance. There was no capitalist country which evolved on a “free” and “democratic” basis except by undergoing “a life-and-death struggle between the various classes of capitalist society.”

Until a person realizes that every institution, no matter how oppressing, no matter how vile it may be, is upheld by the forces of the ruling class, they will always be fooled by deception in politics, they will always fall victim to “reform” and “improvement” in a society which relies upon the oppression of one class by another as the very basis of its existence. The only way to crush the resistance of the ruling class is to find the forces within society that can and must “constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organise those forces for the struggle.”

Here we have, in all it’s profoundness, Lenin’s analysis of what the entirety of Marxism is. This is the best encapsulation of Marxism and what it means. It is with this incredible précis that we gain an excellent foundational understanding of Marxism—it is with this newfound understanding that we can move on and learn about Communism and Socialism.

Communism refers to the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and everyone else who built onto their work, the different kinds of Communists follow the different people that built off their work. Marxism has its origins in revolution and so does Communism. It is stated time and time again through Marxist Theory that violent revolution is an inevitability in order for the proletariat (working class) to overthrow and destroy the bourgeois (ruling class) state. There is reform involved, but it is simply not enough to liberate the oppressed masses from their oppressors. You’ve likely heard that “Communism is bad because it isn’t free.” This couldn’t be farther from the truth—Communism is all about freeing the exploited from the shackles of their exploiters. Within Communism there are many types: Anarcho-Communism, Classical Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and many more—there are too many to cover within this article, but I’ll go over all of them and their similarities & distinctions soon. But, for now, let’s get to the basics of Communism.

What is Communism?

Communism is a political system and socio-economic movement that seeks to free the working class (the proletariat) from the oppression of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie). It seeks to do that through:

1. The formation of the proletariat into one party—where class consciousness, agitation, and political training can be developed.

2. The overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy through violent revolution which destroys the bourgeois state, as the proletariat seizes control over the means of production.

3. Conquest of political power by the proletariat through “the dictatorship of the proletariat” over the bourgeoisie during a period of Socialism.

4. The withering away of private property—property that can be used to exploit and expropriate—not to be confused with personal property.

5. The eventual withering away of all classes and their antagonisms, at which point the state will no longer be needed, and, thus, it too will also wither away.

That is the basic foundation of Communism. Of course, there are nuances and differences between “factions” inside of Communism, but each and every Communist has the same goal in mind—freeing the working class proletariat from oppression by overthrowing the oppressing bourgeoisie and giving as much power and freedom to the proletariat as possible. This includes things such as free healthcare, primary and secondary education, childcare, housing, providing jobs to everyone that can work, giving workers an equal say in the work they do and an equal share of the outcomes of their work, etc. Essentially it is about taking care of the basic needs of everyone ensuring that they don’t have to worry about them, so they can focus on living a happy, productive, and fulfilling life.

No state has ever achieved full Communism in which there are no classes, no class antagonisms, and therefore no need for a government. Marx, Engels and Lenin, said that full Communism could only be achieved after a long period of Socialism on a worldwide scale, and the nonexistence of classes which leads to the disappearance of government because it is no longer necessary. Unfortunately this means that we have a long way to go and much work to do before we can reach full Communism, but the very first step is understanding what Communism is.

The “Communist” states of the past—specifically the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics & the People’s Republic of China—never reached full Communism. They were considered states of totalitarian “Communism” because they represented workers interests (healthcare, education, housing, food, employment, etc. — were some of the best in the world for the broadest majority of people), but the workers themselves did not have control or power over the state. The power was concentrated in the vanguard party of the workers. Since all the power was held by the party, workers did not experience the full freedom that they should have under Communism. These states, after their revolutions, saw economic and social development progress more rapidly than it ever had under capitalism at the cost of immensely concentrated power in the state.

My point is not to hate on these states, but it’s to express their mistake in concentrating too much power within the party and not enough with the workers. A true workers movement must give the power to the workers. We must learn from history, learn from their missteps so we won’t be doomed to repeat them. It is our job to take what history has given us and find out how we can achieve full Communism—we mustn’t get caught in totalitarian Communism, for our people, our class, deserves the power and freedoms which have been stripped from them for far too long. With that being said, we now have a basic understanding of Communism and it’s aims and we can move on to Socialism.

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All Communists are Socialists, but not all Socialists are Communists. This can be confusing at first because why would all Communists be Socialists, but not the other way around—well it actually isn’t all that confusing and I will do my best to explain why this is as well as the differences between Communists and Socialists.

What is Socialism?

Socialism is both a political system and a sociopolitical movement. As a political system, Socialism can be defined by democratic and social control over the means of production by workers for the collective good of the community rather than for capitalist profit. Socialism believes fundamentally in the abolition of private property. Socialism as a movement is dedicated to the critique of exploitative, i.e., capitalist structures, but also those of gender, sexual, and ethnic oppression. Socialists understand that Socialism cannot be achieved while oppressive structures are in place and workers are divided and thus they seek to bring down those structures through different means.

Socialism promotes the idea of workers taking over the control of their workplaces. Socialists are opposed to wage-slavery and view it as dehumanizing. Socialists have a wide range of beliefs on how to go about achieving a Socialist society. Some Socialists believe that the system can be reformed, while others believe that revolution is absolutely necessary in order to create change (Communists); some believe that the state is necessary in dismantling the capitalist class structure (Communists) while others want to abolish the state and capitalism all at once. Every Socialist can agree that people should come before profits and that the current capitalist society is a devastation to the working class.

It should be understood that Socialists all want the same thing: more control and power for workers while simultaneously dismantling the capitalist class structure that has oppressed workers rights and suppressed workers voices. We differ in how we aim to go about this, but we are all comrades and, at the end of the day, we all have the same goal.

For Communists, we recognize that Socialism is an absolutely necessary stage in order to realize the end goal of full Communism. Communists call themselves Socialists and use Socialism almost interchangeably with Communism unless there is a particular reason to be semantic.

We can understand now that all Marxists are Communists, all Communists are Socialists, but not all Socialists are Marxists (though all Socialists recognize that the basis of Socialism is rooted in Marxist Thought) & Communists. It can absolutely be confusing when you’re first learning about these concepts and their differences, but it’s an entire world of learning that you’ve opened up which you should be very excited about! We’re living in a critical time where we need to think less of our differences and congregate on our core beliefs, as we are much stronger and more impactful when we come together as a whole rather than let divisiveness keep us fragmented—it’s never been more clear that we need to unite and fight!

Sources used:

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#communism

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/o.htm#socialism

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#dialectical-materialism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htm

https://www.monash.edu/student-academic-success/enhance-your-thinking/critical-thinking/what-is-critical-thinking#:~:text=Critical%20thinking%20is%20a%20kind,hear%2C%20say%2C%20or%20write.

https://blackrockvanguardwatch.com