The Fathers of Communism

[Abood]

My friend and I are having an argument. I say that Marx and Engels are the fathers of Communism and are who created it, through the Communist Manifesto. My friend says that that's Marxism, and Communism is Lenin's theories and basically "Leninism" is Communism. He also says that Cuba and North Korea are Communist, technically, but not "perfect" Communist.
Please comment.
Thanx

[KC]

Marx and Engels are pretty much the founders. Lenin built off of Marxism somewhat, although many disagree with calling Leninism an "extension" of Marxism.

[Abood]

My friend copy/pasted this from a website:
Some libertarian members of the laissez-faire and individualist schools of thought believe the actions and principles of modern capitalist states or big governments can be understood as "Marxist".This point of view ignores the overall vision and general intent of Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto, for qualitative change to the economic system, and focuses on a few steps that Marx and Engels believed would occur, as workers emancipated themselves from the capitalist system, such as "Free education for all children in public schools".
:blink: dont ask...

[Body Count]

Originally posted by Socialist [email protected] 25 2006, 08:04 PM
My friend and I are having an argument. I say that Marx and Engels are the fathers of Communism and are who created it, through the Communist Manifesto. My friend says that that's Marxism, and Communism is Lenin's theories and basically "Leninism" is Communism. He also says that Cuba and North Korea are Communist, technically, but not "perfect" Communist.
Please comment.
Thanx
Until state and capital are ended...communism is not a reality.

[Everyday Anarchy]

I say that Marx and Engels are the fathers of Communism and are who created it, through the Communist Manifesto.
You are correct there. However, the idea of Communism had been around much longer, Marx and Engels just put it into writing.



My friend says that that's Marxism, and Communism is Lenin's theories and basically "Leninism" is Communism.
I wouldn't say that's very valid at all. Lenin built off of Marx and Engels's ideas of Communism, thus we have "Leninism."


He also says that Cuba and North Korea are Communist, technically, but not "perfect" Communist.
Cuba and North Korea... do they have a State? Yes? Then they're not Communist, per se.
I hear Cuba can be considered Socialist.
North Korea doesn't even claim to be Communist. They've got their own system, "juche" or something like that.

[JKP]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2006, 01:37 PM

Cuba and North Korea... do they have a State? Yes? Then they're not Communist, per se.

They're not communist period.

[prettynpinkboi]

Originally posted by JKP+Jan 25 2006, 10:21 PM--> (JKP @ Jan 25 2006, 10:21 PM)
[email protected] 25 2006, 01:37 PM

Cuba and North Korea... do they have a State? Yes? Then they're not Communist, per se.

They're not communist period.[/b]
way to put it bluntly :D

[Forward Union]

Your friend is an idiot.

Anyway this is from wiki...



notion of communism has a long history in Western thought, long predating Marx and Engels. Already in ancient Greece the idea of communism was connected to a myth about the "golden age" of humanity, when society lived in full harmony, before private property developed. Some have argued that Plato's The Republic and works by other ancient political theorists advocated communism in the form of communal living, and that various early Christian sects, in particular the early Church, as recorded in Acts of the Apostles, and indigenous tribes in the pre-Columbian Americas practiced communism in the form of communal living and common ownership as part of Christian communism. Other attempts to establish communistic societies were made by the Essenes and by the Judean desert sect.


But yea, that's fairly debatable. So for all intensive purposes, Marx or Mikhail Bakunin.

[More Fire for the People]

The fathers of communism are from the likes of Robert Owen, Peter Kropotkin, The True Levellers, etc. Marx and Engels simply explored history and communism from a Hegelian-Feuerbachian standpoint.

[viva le revolution]

Peter Kropotkin was already discredited as a utopian thinker by the time of the irst inetrnatinal. So in all respects when Marxism actually became relevant the likes of Kropotkin, Proudhon, and Bakunin had actually become redubndant. Marxism took it's actual form as a socio-political system through Marx and Engel's writings and works. Before that 'communism' was largely a utopianist formula since no one carried out work to criticize the system nor show how communist society would progress in historical materialist way. so Marxism actually became relevant through Marx and Engels, Lenin built up on their works and elaborated furthur to apply it in the era of active imperialism.

[Djehuti]

Originally posted by Socialist [email protected] 25 2006, 09:12 PM
My friend and I are having an argument. I say that Marx and Engels are the fathers of Communism and are who created it, through the Communist Manifesto. My friend says that that's Marxism, and Communism is Lenin's theories and basically "Leninism" is Communism. He also says that Cuba and North Korea are Communist, technically, but not "perfect" Communist.
Please comment.
Thanx
The idea of communism (as in common ownership) is very old indeed. Possible since the very first day humanity first settled down (and thus ceased living as nomads and ceased living under communist conditions). The idea or parts of the idea is mentioned and proposed in for example Plato's "The Republic" and Thomas Mores "Utopia". Some parts of humanity have always longed back to communism, it is actually quite natural.

But it was probably the anarchists who first realized that communism actually was not far a way at all, and that there existed some sort of communist tendency in the struggles of the modern working class. But it was Marx who first studied this discovery in a scientific matter, but others soon followed.

You might view Marx as the scientific discoverer of communism as a material movment, byt but not as the discoverer of communism as an idea.

[Jadan ja]

My friend and I are having an argument. I say that Marx and Engels are the fathers of Communism and are who created it, through the Communist Manifesto. My friend says that that's Marxism, and Communism is Lenin's theories and basically "Leninism" is Communism. He also says that Cuba and North Korea are Communist, technically, but not "perfect" Communist.
Please comment.
Thanx

Marx and Engels are certainly the founders of the idea of scientific socialism, and the ideas that existed before them were utopian socialism. Utopian socialist ideas exist since ancient times, but most utopian socialist lideas were formed in the first half of XIX century.

Your friend is certainly wrong when saying that Leninism is communism, because there are many communists who completely disagree with Leninists.

I don't understand how is your second post related to your first post.

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

While ideas relating to a "communistic" or communal society had existed long before Marx and Engels, all of these were merely alternate visions of societies possibilities. It wasn't until Marx and Engels that a class-based materialist view of society was developed, which put communism as its end. Anyway, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Stalin, Gramsci etc. just built off of what Marx and Engels wrote, so I would say Marx and Engels are 'the fathers of Communism'.