Communist movement

Most modern forms of communism are based upon Marxism, a variant of the ideology formed by the sociologist Karl Marx in the 1840s. Some religious societies that have stressed egalitarianism and common ownership of goods have been described as communist, including early Christianity and the Shakers of 19th-century America. Marxism subsequently gained support across much of Europe, and under the control of the Bolshevik Party, a communist government seized power during the Russian revolution, leading to the creation of the Soviet Union, the world’s first Marxist state, in the early 20th century. However various left communist groups emerged who, to varying degrees, disputed the communist nature of the new state.

Over the ensuing decades, governments using the "Communist" name obtained power in many parts of the world, including most of eastern Europe, eastern Asia and parts of Africa. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, most of these "Communist" regimes fell from power, and were replaced by governments which adopted capitalistic economic policies. In some cases, nominally Communist governments themselves adopted capitalistic policies, such as in the People’s Republic of China. Today, in addition to China, nominal Communist governments rule Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos.

'Communism' derives from the French communisme which developed out of the Latin roots communis and isme, and was in use as a word designating various social situations before it came to be associated with more modern conceptions of an economic and political organization. Semantically, communis can be translated to "of or for the community" while isme is a suffix that indicates the abstraction into a state, condition, action, or doctrine, so 'communism' may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for the community". This semantic constitution has led to various usages of the word in its evolution, but ultimately came to be most closely associated with Marxism, most specifically embodied in The Communist Manifesto, which proposed a particular type of communism.

...
Wikipedia