the term communism has been used in three different if related ways: as a political principle and as an ideological movement whose central purpose is to establish such a society or regime as a political principle communism stands for the communal organisation of social existence and in particular the common or collective ownership of wealth in the communist manifesto (1848) 1967) Karl Marx (1818-83) thus summed up the theory of communism as the 'abolition' of private property there are two versions of communism as a social model of regime-type the first of these is a model of a future society described in the writings of Marx and Engels (1820-95). Marx predicted that after the overthrow of *capitalism there would be a transitionalary socialist stage of development characterised by the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat of the proletariat which would as class antagonisms abated eventually lead to full communsim