Communism proposed an alternative societal project, although it could also mix with ideas of “nation” and equality based on different foundations. Rooted in the mid-nineteenth-century writing of Karl Mark, a German intellectual, communist ideas evolved through various practical experiments at societal transformation. Mark had essentially written a critique of capitalism and a theory of the evolution of world history based on an analysis of modes of production and the development of social classes. He argued that capitalism chronologically replaced the movement of peasants, gave land-owners broad right over them but also obligations to provide for their subsistence. Capitalism had the unique characteristic of developing a social class, the bourgeoisie, which became the owners of the means of production and whose principal drive was the search for profit. Workers provided labour in exchange for remuneration, in a market transaction that departed from feudal ties, rights and obligations. Over time, Marx contended, capitalist production would maintain the working class mostly close to its costs of subsistence in order to gain maximum labour at the lowest possible cost. Such tendencies would create increasing resentment among the working class, which would rise up against the bourgeoisie and overthrow capitalism by revolution. Workers would then collectively own the means of production and secure a more equitable distribution of the fruits of production in a system that has come to be called “communism”
Revolution in theory became the vehicle for the spread of communism. The first one occurred in Russia, far from the German industrial hinterland that Marx imagined would be the locus of revolutionary potential. Marx had argued that workers in dire factory conditions and impoverished by industrialization would be the primary agents of revolution, not peasants. Yet , Russia , still largely an agriculturally based society with only a tiny industrial sector became the site of communist system. Lenin, the leader of Russia’s revolution, added pragmatic considerations to Marx’s revolutionary theory. He defined a key role for the communist party, as he argued the need for leadership, education and awareness for the working class to realize its revolutionary potential. The party therefore became not only the instrument of mobilization and revolution, but also the key political structure around which communist systems were built. In theory, the party played a transitional role until communism could be fully realized. In reality, not a single communist system ever surpassed the stage at which the party occupied a dominant positive. A new elite developed around party leadership on one’s position and relationship to the party.