Communism: 5 Things You Should Know

Question: In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto. What conditions in Europe drove them to write it?

Answer: Marx and Engels watched workers toil long hours for low pay while factory owners grew rich. Communism began as a response to the inequality of the Industrial Revolution.

Question: Marx said history was a struggle between rich owners and poor workers. How did he believe the struggle would end?

Answer: Marx predicted a workers’ revolution that would end private ownership of factories, farms, and other means of production. In the classless society he imagined, property would be shared and the state would eventually fade away.

Question: Marx expected revolution in industrial nations like Britain. Yet the first communist state arose in Russia in 1917. Why there?

Answer: World War I losses and hunger turned Russians against Czar Nicholas II, and Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. The Soviet Union, formed in 1922, became the model for communist states around the world.

Question: In the Soviet Union, people often waited in long lines for bread and shoes. Why were basic goods so often in short supply?

Answer: In a command economy, central planners set production targets and prices instead of supply and demand. Poor planning often left shelves empty of what people needed while unwanted goods piled up.

Question: The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union broke apart two years later. Why did Soviet communism collapse?

Answer: Economic stagnation, costly Cold War spending, and Gorbachev’s reforms opened the door to protests across Eastern Europe. Today only a handful of countries, including China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea, remain under communist party rule.