These are the top people mainly associated with Communism.

At the center is Karl Marx. Without this man,we probably would not have seen leaders like Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Fidel Castro, at least not in the way we know them.

Karl Marx was a German philosopher and economist. What we saw in Communist Russia and China was influenced, directly or indirectly, by Karl Marx's teachings. He did not work alone, though. He worked closely with a man named Friedrich Engels.

Marx and Engels wanted the complete removal of CAPITALISM.

💵Capitalism means people or companies own businesses and property, and they use them to make money. Prices are mainly determined by supply and demand, and the government usually plays a limited role. Competition decides who succeeds. In practice, this system often benefits those who already have more money and resources.

That is where communism comes in. Because you see, communism is the idea that wealth should be shared so no one is left behind. It removes private ownership of resources and replaces it with collective ownership. Marx argued that this could create a classless and stateless society, meaning no rich people, no poor people, and eventually no need for a government.

Yes, Karl Marx argued that if social classes were removed, there would be no need for a STATE. According to Karl Marx, the state is basically a tool (like police, army, courts, and prisons) that the rich ruling class uses to keep control over the working class and stop big fights from tearing society apart, because the two groups have opposite interests that can't be fixed peacefully.

Marx envisioned an equal society where people live together without a ruling elite controlling everything.

In order for this to happen, Marx said the ruling class would first be removed by the working class through a revolution.

After that, there would be what he called the dictatorship of the working class. This does not mean one person ruling. It means workers controlling the state. During this period, the working class would take control of land, banks, and factories. The goal was to end capitalism.

Only after this long transition, Marx believed, would the state slowly disappear. Classes would fade away, and society would run itself without force. So the stateless and classless society was not meant to happen at the beginning. It was supposed to come at the end, after a long and difficult process.

The first country that "tried" to implement communism was the Soviet Union.

Remember, once upon a time there was a very big country called the USSR or simply, Soviet Union. It was a union of 15 republics, namely:

🔹Russia

🔹Ukraine

🔹Belarus

🔹Uzbekistan

🔹Kazakhstan

🔹Kyrgyzstan

🔹Tajikistan

🔹Turkmenistan

🔹Azerbaijan

🔹Georgia

🔹Lithuania

🔹Moldova

🔹Latvia

🔹Armenia

🔹Estonia

All these republics were part of one big country. It was called the USSR, which stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Let me explain what USSR actually means:

▪️ Union ➖ It was a federation of different nations joined together.

▪️ Soviet ➖ This word means councils which in theory were meant to govern the Soviet Union on behalf of workers.

▪️ Socialist ➖ Lenin believed socialism was the first stage before full communism. Under socialism, the state still exists but tries to reduce inequality.

▪️ Republics ➖ These were the individual nations that formed the union.

If you are a curious person like me, you might ask: why was the Soviet Union called a socialist republic and not a communist republic?

Why USSR instead of USCR?

The answer lies in Karl Marx’s theory.

According to Marx, communism aims to creat a classless and stateless society. That means no rich or poor, and no government in charge. That is the final stage of communism, the endgame.

By that definition, you can already see that there has never been a true communist state on earth, never at any time. At least not in recorded history.

This is why the Soviet Union called itself socialist.

The first leader of the Soviet Union was Vladimir Lenin. His version of Marxism is called Leninism.

Lenin believed socialism was the first step toward communism.

It is not full communism when classes still exist. It is not full communism when a government is still in place. True communism, according to Karl Marx, would be both classless and stateless.

The Soviet Union therefore described itself as being in the first stage of communism, which Lenin called socialism. I must clarify that Lenin is not the one who invented socialism.

Anyway, it must be noted that, instead of moving toward a classless and stateless society, virtually all countries that seriously tried to implement communism ended up with one-party authoritarian states. Essentially, they simply replaced the old ruling class with a new one centralized on the leader.

It is difficult to imagine that a government that introduces communism by force would later voluntarily give up power to achieve a stateless society. True communism, therefore, remains theoretical. A classless and stateless society appears highly idealistic.

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