Communism: the story on HearLore

Communism

The word communism derives from the Latin root communis, meaning common, combined with the suffix -ism to denote a state or practice of being for the community. Before the 19th century, this term described various social situations and religious communities rather than a political ideology. In 1785, a letter from Victor d'Hupay to Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne marked one of the first modern uses of the word, where d'Hupay identified himself as a communist author. By 1793, Restif used the term to describe a social order based on egalitarianism and the common ownership of property, becoming the first to describe communism as a form of government. John Goodwyn Barmby is credited with introducing the word into English around 1840, though it was Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who would redefine it in The Communist Manifesto of 1848. Prior to this, communism was often associated with religious sects like the Waldensians and Hutterites, who practiced strict adherence to biblical principles and shared land and property. The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia also challenged noble privileges and private property, striving to create an egalitarian society. Thomas More's 1516 treatise Utopia portrayed a society based on common ownership, which later thinkers like Karl Kautsky called the foregleam of modern socialism. During the English Civil War, the Diggers advocated the abolition of private land ownership, a clear communist ideal that Oliver Cromwell viewed with hostility. The Enlightenment brought further criticism of private property through thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, setting the stage for communism to emerge as a political doctrine under figures like François-Noël Babeuf and Sylvain Maréchal during the French Revolution.

The Manifesto And The Revolution

In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, offering a new definition of communism that would dominate the next century. The text argued that history is driven by class struggle between the proletariat, the working class who sell their labor, and the bourgeoisie, the owning class that derives profit from private ownership of the means of production. Marx and Engels believed that capitalism caused the misery of urban factory workers and could only be resolved through social revolution. By 1888, Marxists had dropped the term communism, considering it old-fashioned, and instead used socialism. It was not until 1917, with the October Revolution in Russia, that Vladimir Lenin reintroduced the distinction, defining socialism as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism to defend his party against traditional Marxist criticism that Russia was too backward for a socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, winning support with slogans like Peace, Bread, and Land. The revolution transferred power to the soviets, which were councils of workers and soldiers. In the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, socialist parties won over 70% of the vote, with the Socialist Revolutionaries finishing first due to rural support for land reform. However, the Bolsheviks dissolved the assembly in January 1918, citing outdated voter rolls and conflicts with the Congress of Soviets. This move marked the beginning of vanguardism, a hierarchical party-elite that controls society, resulting in a split between anarchism and Marxism. The moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenin's plan for socialist revolution before the capitalist mode of production was fully developed, while the Bolsheviks moved to hand power to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. The initial stage of the October Revolution occurred largely without human casualties, but the subsequent Russian Civil War introduced War Communism, a system with strict discipline, forbidden strikes, and obligatory labor duty, described as simple authoritarian control rather than any coherent political ideology.

Common questions

What is the origin of the word communism?

When did Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto?

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. The text argued that history is driven by class struggle between the proletariat, the working class who sell their labor, and the bourgeoisie, the owning class that derives profit from private ownership of the means of production. By 1888, Marxists had dropped the term communism, considering it old-fashioned, and instead used socialism.

Who was the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union and what was his governance style?

Joseph Stalin was the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union and implemented a style of governance known as Stalinism. Before his death in 1953, the Soviet Communist party referred to its own ideology as Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression, where personal loyalty counted for everything.

When was the Soviet Union officially dissolved?

The Soviet Union was dissolved on the 26th of December 1991 following the fall of the Warsaw Pact after the Revolutions of 1989. Declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union formally established the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a state and subject of international law. On the previous day, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and handed over its powers to Russian president Boris Yeltsin.

What are the core principles of Marxism, Leninism?

Marxism, Leninism is a political ideology developed by Joseph Stalin that describes the specific political ideology which Stalin implemented in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Its three principles were dialectical materialism, the leading role of the Communist party through democratic centralism, and a planned economy with industrialization and agricultural collectivization. Marxism, Leninism was the official ideology of 20th-century Communist parties and was developed after the death of Lenin.

Which countries currently maintain single-party Communist rule as of 2023?

As of 2023, states controlled by Communist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. North Korea, the last Communist country that still practices Soviet-style Communism, is both repressive and isolationist.

Stalin And The Soviet Model

Joseph Stalin, the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union, implemented a style of governance known as Stalinism, which became the model for 20th-century communist states. Before his death in 1953, the Soviet Communist party referred to its own ideology as Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression, where personal loyalty counted for everything. The Great Purge of 1936, 1938 was Stalin's attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party, resulting in the execution of old Bolsheviks like Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Alexei Rykov, and Nikolai Bukharin. In the winter of 1946, 1947, the Soviet Union experienced the worst natural famine in the 20th century, with no serious opposition to Stalin as the secret police sent possible suspects to the gulag. Stalin believed that capitalism was a hollow shell that would crumble under non-military pressure, but he greatly underestimated the economic strength of the West. By 1947, the Cold War had begun, with the United States mobilizing its economy to build the hydrogen bomb and strengthen the NATO alliance. Stalin's consistent goal after 1945 was to consolidate the nation's superpower status and maintain his own hold on total power. In the last letters before his death, Lenin warned against the danger of Stalin's personality and urged the Soviet government to replace him. The Soviet Union was established in 1922, and before the broad ban in 1921, there were several factions in the Communist party, including the Left Opposition, the Right Opposition, and the Workers' Opposition. The Left and Workers' oppositions were more critical of the state-capitalist development and the Workers' in particular was critical of bureaucratization and development from above, while the Right Opposition was more supportive of state-capitalist development and advocated the New Economic Policy. Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base, made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.

Mao And The Chinese Experiment

After the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 as the Nationalist government headed by the Kuomintang fled to the island of Taiwan. In 1950, 1953, China engaged in a large-scale, undeclared war with the United States, South Korea, and United Nations forces in the Korean War. While the war ended in a military stalemate, it gave Mao the opportunity to identify and purge elements in China that seemed supportive of capitalism. At first, there was close cooperation with Stalin, who sent in technical experts to aid the industrialization process along the line of the Soviet model of the 1930s. After Stalin's death in 1953, relations with Moscow soured, and Mao charged that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of a revisionist clique which had turned against Marxism and Leninism. The two nations were at sword's point by 1960. Rejecting the Soviet model of rapid urbanization, Mao Zedong and his top aide Deng Xiaoping launched the Great Leap Forward in 1957, 1961 with the goal of industrializing China overnight, using the peasant villages as the base rather than large cities. Private ownership of land ended, and peasants worked in large collective farms ordered to start up heavy industry operations, such as steel mills. Plants were built in remote locations due to the lack of technical experts, managers, transportation, or needed facilities. Industrialization failed, and the main result was a sharp unexpected decline in agricultural output, which led to mass famine and millions of deaths. The years of the Great Leap Forward saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues that enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all, calling the Great Leap a very expensive disaster. Put in charge of rescuing the economy, Deng adopted pragmatic policies that the idealistic Mao disliked. For a while, Mao was in the shadows but returned to center stage and purged Deng and his allies in the Cultural Revolution (1966, 1976). The Cultural Revolution was an upheaval that targeted intellectuals and party leaders, paralyzing China politically and weakening the country economically, culturally, and intellectually for years. Millions of people were accused, humiliated, stripped of power, and either imprisoned, killed, or sent to work as farm laborers. Mao insisted that those he labeled revisionists be removed through violent class struggle. The two most prominent militants were Marshall Lin Biao of the army and Mao's wife Jiang Qing. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist party leadership itself, resulting in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. During the same period, Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. After Mao's death in 1976, the survivors were rehabilitated and many returned to power. Mao's government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labor, and mass executions. Mao has also been praised for transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power, with greatly advanced literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education, and life expectancy.

The Cold War And Global Expansion

The emergence of the Soviet Union as the first nominally Marxist-Leninist state led to socialism's association with the Soviet economic model. Marxist, Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. A Marxist, Leninist government was also created under Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the Tito, Stalin split and expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform in 1948, and Titoism was branded deviationist. Albania also became an independent Marxist, Leninist state following the Albanian, Soviet split in 1960, resulting from an ideological fallout between Enver Hoxha, a Stalinist, and the Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev. The Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China, which would follow its own ideological path of development following the Sino-Soviet split. Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to Western capitalism for most of the 20th century. In Western Europe, communist parties were part of several post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process. By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western communist parties had criticized many of the actions of communist states, distanced from them, and developed a democratic road to socialism, which became known as Eurocommunism. This development was criticized by more orthodox supporters of the Soviet Union as amounting to social democracy. Since 1957, communists have been frequently voted into power in the Indian state of Kerala. In 1959, Cuban revolutionaries overthrew Cuba's previous government under the dictator Fulgencio Batista. While the revolutionaries were originally not uniformly communist, after their military victory, the new rebel officials underwent a sort of radicalization alongside their political consolidation, that pushed the new government to eventually become Marxist-Leninist. By the 1920s, communism had become one of the two dominant types of socialism in the world, the other being social democracy. For much of the 20th century, more than one third of the world's population lived under Communist governments. These were characterized by one-party rule, rejection of private property and capitalism, state control of economic activity and mass media, restrictions on freedom of religion, and suppression of opposition.

The Fall And The Remnants

With the fall of the Warsaw Pact after the Revolutions of 1989, which led to the fall of most of the former Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union was dissolved on the 26th of December 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration № 142-Н formally established the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a state and subject of international law. The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States, although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers, including control of the Cheget, to Russian president Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December 1991, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, formally establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States, and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. As of 2023, states controlled by Communist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Fall of Communism, there was a split between those hardline Communists, sometimes referred to in the media as neo-Stalinists, who remained committed to orthodox Marxism, Leninism, and those, such as The Left in Germany, who work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism. Other ruling Communist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social-democratic parties. Outside Communist states, reformed Communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning government or regional coalitions, including in the former Eastern Bloc. In Nepal, Communists (CPN UML and Nepal Communist Party) were part of the 1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly, which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with other communists, Marxist, Leninists, and Maoists (CPN Maoist), social democrats (Nepali Congress), and others as part of their People's Multiparty Democracy. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation has some supporters, but is reformist rather than revolutionary, aiming to lessen the inequalities of Russia's market economy. In China, the reform and opening up was started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 8% in 2001. After losing Soviet subsidies and support, Vietnam and Cuba have attracted more foreign investment to their countries, with their economies becoming more market-oriented. North Korea, the last Communist country that still practices Soviet-style Communism, is both repressive and isolationist.

Theories And The Internal Splits

Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand social class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist theory exists. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism but does not model an ideal society based on the design of intellectuals, whereby communism is seen as a state of affairs to be established based on any intelligent design; rather, it is a non-idealist attempt at the understanding of material history and society, whereby communism is the expression of a real movement, with parameters that are derived from actual life. According to Marxist theory, class conflict arises in capitalist societies due to contradictions between the material interests of the oppressed and exploited proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the ruling class that owns the means of production and extracts its wealth through appropriation of the surplus product produced by the proletariat in the form of profit. This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production, results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage the intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness. In periods of deep crisis, the resistance of the oppressed can culminate in a proletarian revolution which, if victorious, leads to the establishment of the socialist mode of production based on social ownership of the means of production, To each according to his contribution, and production for use. As the productive forces continued to advance, the communist society, i.e. a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership, follows the maxim From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. While it originates from the works of Marx and Engels, Marxism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Different Marxian schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Many schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts, which has then led to contradictory conclusions. There is a movement toward the recognition that historical materialism and dialectical materialism remain the fundamental aspects of all Marxist schools of thought. Marxism, Leninism and its offshoots are the most well-known of these and have been a driving force in international relations during most of the 20th century. Classical Marxism is the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Marx and Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially Leninism and Marxism, Leninism. Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought that emerged after the death of Marx and which became the official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until World War I in 1914. Orthodox Marxism aims to simplify, codify, and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying the perceived ambiguities and contradictions of classical Marxism. The philosophy of orthodox Marxism includes the understanding that material development (advances in technology in the productive forces) is the primary agent of change in the structure of society and of human social relations and that social systems and their relations (e.g. feudalism, capitalism, and so on) become contradictory and inefficient as the productive forces develop, which results in some form of social revolution arising in response to the mounting contradictions. This revolutionary change is the vehicle for fundamental society-wide changes and ultimately leads to the emergence of new economic systems. As a term, orthodox Marxism represents the methods of historical materialism and of dialectical materialism, and not the normative aspects inherent to classical Marxism, without implying dogmatic adherence to the results of Marx's investigations.

The Splits Within The Movement

Marxism, Leninism is a political ideology developed by Joseph Stalin. According to its proponents, it is based on Marxism and Leninism. It describes the specific political ideology which Stalin implemented in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in a global scale in the Comintern. There is no definite agreement between historians about whether Stalin actually followed the principles of Marx and Lenin. It also contains aspects which according to some are deviations from Marxism such as socialism in one country. Marxism, Leninism was the official ideology of 20th-century Communist parties (including Trotskyist), and was developed after the death of Lenin; its three principles were dialectical materialism, the leading role of the Communist party through democratic centralism, and a planned economy with industrialization and agricultural collectivization. Marxism, Leninism is misleading because Marx and Lenin never sanctioned or supported the creation of an -ism after them, and is revealing because, being popularized after Lenin's death by Stalin, it contained those three doctrinal and institutionalized principles that became a model for later Soviet-type regimes; its global influence, having at its height covered at least one-third of the world's population, has made Marxist, Leninist a convenient label for the Communist bloc as a dynamic ideological order. During the Cold War, Marxism, Leninism was the ideology of the most clearly visible communist movement and is the most prominent ideology associated with communism. Social fascism was a theory supported by the Comintern and affiliated Communist parties during the early 1930s, which held that social democracy was a variant of fascism because it stood in the way of a dictatorship of the proletariat, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model. At the time, leaders of the Comintern, such as Stalin and Rajani Palme Dutt, stated that capitalist society had entered the Third Period in which a proletariat revolution was imminent but could be prevented by social democrats and other fascist forces. The term social fascism was used pejoratively to describe social-democratic parties, anti-Comintern and progressive socialist parties and dissenters within Comintern affiliates throughout the interwar period. The social fascism theory was advocated vociferously by the Communist Party of Germany, which was largely controlled and funded by the Soviet leadership from 1928. Within Marxism, Leninism, anti-revisionism is a position which emerged in the 1950s in opposition to the reforms and Khrushchev Thaw of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Where Khrushchev pursued an interpretation that differed from Stalin, the anti-revisionists within the international communist movement remained dedicated to Stalin's ideological legacy and criticized the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and his successors as state capitalist and social imperialist due to its hopes of achieving peace with the United States. The term Stalinism is also used to describe these positions but is often not used by its supporters who opine that Stalin practiced orthodox Marxism and Leninism. Because different political trends trace the historical roots of revisionism to different eras and leaders, there is significant disagreement today as to what constitutes anti-revisionism. Modern groups which describe themselves as anti-revisionist fall into several categories. Some uphold the works of Stalin and Mao Zedong and some the works of Stalin while rejecting Mao and universally tend to oppose Trotskyism. Others reject both Stalin and Mao, tracing their ideological roots back to Marx and Lenin. In addition, other groups uphold various less-well-known historical leaders such as Enver Hoxha, who also broke with Mao during the Sino-Albanian split. Social imperialism was a term used by Mao to criticize the Soviet Union post-Stalin. Mao stated that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade. Hoxha agreed with Mao in this analysis, before later using the expression to also condemn Mao's Three Worlds Theory. Trotskyism, developed by Leon Trotsky in opposition to Stalinism, is a Marxist and Leninist tendency that supports the theory of permanent revolution and world revolution rather than the two-stage theory and Stalin's socialism in one country. It supported another communist revolution in the Soviet Union and proletarian internationalism. Rather than representing the dictatorship of the proletariat, Trotsky claimed that the Soviet Union had become a degenerated workers' state under the leadership of Stalin in which class relations had re-emerged in a new form. Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution rather than socialism in one country and support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles. Struggling against Stalin for power in the Soviet Union, Trotsky and his supporters organized into the Left Opposition, the platform of which became known as Trotskyism. In particular, Trotsky advocated for a decentralised form of economic planning, mass soviet democratization, elected representation of Soviet socialist parties, the tactic of a united front against far-right parties, cultural autonomy for artistic movements, voluntary collectivisation, a transitional program and socialist internationalism. Trotsky had the support of many party intellectuals but this was overshadowed by the huge apparatus which included the GPU and the party cadres who were at the disposal of Stalin. Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. While in exile, Trotsky continued his campaign against Stalin, founding in 1938 the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern. In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City on Stalin's orders. Trotskyist currents include orthodox Trotskyism, third camp, Posadism, and Pabloism. The economic platform of a planned economy combined with an authentic worker's democracy as originally advocated by Trotsky has constituted the programme of the Fourth International and the modern Trotskyist movement. Maoism is the theory derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong. Developed from the 1950s until the Deng Xiaoping Chinese economic reform in the 1970s, it was widely applied as the guiding political and military ideology of the Communist Party of China and as the theory guiding revolutionary movements around the world. A key difference between Maoism and other forms of Marxism, Leninism is that peasants should be the bulwark of the revolutionary energy which is led by the working class. Three common Maoist values are revolutionary populism, being practical, and dialectics. The synthesis of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, which builds upon the two individual theories as the Chinese adaption of Marxism, Leninism, did not occur during the life of Mao. After de-Stalinization, Marxism, Leninism was kept in the Soviet Union, while certain anti-revisionist tendencies like Hoxhaism and Maoism stated that such had deviated from its original concept. Different policies were applied in Albania and China, which became more distanced from the Soviet Union. From the 1960s, groups who called themselves Maoists, or those who upheld Maoism, were not unified around a common understanding of Maoism, instead having their own particular interpretations of the political, philosophical, economical, and military works of Mao. Its adherents claim that as a unified, coherent higher stage of Marxism, it was not consolidated until the 1980s, first being formalized by the Shining Path in 1982. Through the experience of the people's war waged by the party, the Shining Path were able to posit Maoism as the newest development of Marxism. Eurocommunism was a revisionist trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties, claiming to develop a theory and practice of social transformation more relevant to their region. Especially prominent within the French Communist Party, Italian Communist Party, and Communist Party of Spain, Communists of this nature sought to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union and its All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) during the Cold War. Eurocommunists tended to have a larger attachment to liberty and democracy than their Marxist, Leninist counterparts. Enrico Berlinguer, general secretary of Italy's major Communist party, was widely considered the father of Eurocommunism. Libertarian Marxism is a broad range of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism, emerged in opposition to Marxism, Leninism and its derivatives such as Stalinism and Maoism, as well as Trotskyism. Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France, emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main derivatives of libertarian socialism. Aside from left communism, libertarian Marxism includes such currents as autonomism, communization, council communism, De Leonism, the Johnson, Forest Tendency, Lettrism, Luxemburgism, Situationism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity, the World Socialist Movement, and workerism, as well as parts of Freudo-Marxism, and the New Left. Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Daniel Guérin, and Yanis Varoufakis, the latter of whom claims that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist. Council communism is a movement that originated from Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s, whose primary organization was the Communist Workers' Party of Germany. It continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both libertarian Marxism.