Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism encompasses a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those. All of these different ideologies generally share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system, and mode of production, that in this system there are two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat, who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie, a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.
The Workers' Party (Arabic: حزب العمال), formerly the Tunisian Workers' Communist Party (Arabic: حزب العمال الشيوعي التونسي,
‹The template below is included via a redirect (Template:Transl) that is under discussion. See redirects for discussion to help reach a consensus.›
Ḥizb al-‘Ummāl ash-Shuyū‘ī at-Tūnisī; French: Parti communiste des ouvriers de Tunisie, PCOT), is a Marxist-Leninistpolitical party in Tunisia. Its general secretary is Hamma Hammami. After their involvement in the uprising against Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, PCOT held their first conference as a legal party on July 22–24, with up to 2000 persons attending.
In the 2011 Constituent Assembly election, the candidates of PCOT's electoral formation ran by the name "Revolutionary Alternative" (Arabic: البديل الثوري
‹The template below is included via a redirect (Template:Transl) that is under discussion. See redirects for discussion to help reach a consensus.›
al-badīl ath-thawrī; French: Alternative révolutionaire) and won 3 of the 217 seats, in Sfax, Kairouan and Siliana. In July 2012, the PCOT decided to remove the word "communist" from its name to avoid the stereotype associated with this term.
Leon Trotsky (7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.
Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Party, second only to Vladimir Lenin. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army, and People's Commissar of War. He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–20). He was also among the first members of the Politburo.
After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was successively removed from power, expelled from the Communist Party, deported from the Soviet Union and assassinated on Stalin's orders. An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism, Trotsky also opposed Stalin's non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. Trotsky's ideas form the basis of Trotskyism, a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism.
...that Moscow City Hall, built in the 1890s to the tastes of the Russian bourgeoisie, was converted by Communists into the Central Lenin Museum after its rich interior decoration had been plastered over.
They must not be confused with the (repressive) State apparatus. Remember that in Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc., which constitute what I shall in future call the Repressive State Apparatus. Repressive suggests that the State Apparatus in question ‘functions by violence’ – at least ultimately (since repression, e.g. administrative repression, may take non-physical forms).
I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions. I propose an empirical list of these which will obviously have to be examined in detail, tested, corrected and re-organized. With all the reservations implied by this requirement, we can for the moment regard the following institutions as Ideological State Apparatuses (the order in which I have listed them has no particular significance):
the religious ISA (the system of the different churches),
the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’),
the family ISA,
the legal ISA,
the political ISA (the political system, including the different parties),
the trade-union ISA,
the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.),
the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).
I have said that the ISAs must not be confused with the (Repressive) State Apparatus. What constitutes the difference?
As a first moment, it is clear that while there is one (Repressive) State Apparatus, there is a plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses. Even presupposing that it exists, the unity that constitutes this plurality of ISAs as a body is not immediately visible.
As a second moment, it is clear that whereas the unified – (Repressive) State Apparatus belongs entirely to the public domain, much the larger part of the Ideological State Apparatuses (in their apparent dispersion) are part, on the contrary, of the private domain. Churches, Parties, Trade Unions, families, some schools, most newspapers, cultural ventures, etc., etc., are private.
