Marxism–Leninism

[19] With the death of Stalin and the ensuing de-Stalinisation, Marxism–Leninism underwent several revisions and adaptations such as Guevarism, Ho Chi Minh Thought, Hoxhaism, Maoism, socialism with Chinese characteristics, and Titoism.

[45] In the late 1970s, the Peruvian communist party Shining Path developed and synthesised Mao Zedong Thought into Marxism–Leninism–Maoism, a contemporary variety of Marxism–Leninism that is a supposed higher level of Marxism–Leninism that can be applied universally.

[45] Following the Sino-Albanian split of the 1970s, a small portion of Marxist–Leninists began to downplay or repudiate the role of Mao in the Marxist–Leninist international movement in favour of the Albanian Labour Party and stricter adherence to Stalin.

In response to Mao's apparently unorthodox deviations, Enver Hoxha, head of the Albanian Labour Party, theorised anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism, referred to as Hoxhaism, which retained orthodox Marxism–Leninism when compared to the ideology of the post-Stalin Soviet Union.

[51] Daniel Schwekendiek wrote that what made North Korean Marxism–Leninism distinct from that of China and the Soviet Union was that it incorporated national feelings and macro-historical elements in the socialist ideology, opting for its "own style of socialism".

[52] The major Korean elements are the emphasis on traditional Confucianism and the memory of the traumatic experience of Korea under Japanese rule as well as a focus on autobiographical features of Kim Il Sung as a guerrilla hero.

[52] In the other four existing Marxist–Leninist socialist states, namely China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, the ruling parties hold Marxism–Leninism as their official ideology, although they give it different interpretations in terms of practical policy.

[8][55] Endorsing the final objective, namely the creation of a community-owning means of production and providing each of its participants with consumption "according to their needs", Marxism–Leninism puts forward the recognition of the class struggle as a dominating principle of a social change and development.

[55] Conducting a socialist revolution led by what its proponents termed the "vanguard of the proletariat", defined as the communist party organised hierarchically through democratic centralism, was hailed to be a historical necessity by Marxist–Leninists.

[64] "Traditionalists", who characterise themselves as objective reporters of an alleged totalitarian nature of communism and Marxist–Leninist states, are criticised by their opponents as being anti-communist, even fascist, in their eagerness on continuing to focus on the issues of the Cold War.

[82] Ghodsee, Nathan J. Robinson,[83] and Scott Sehon wrote about the merits of taking an anti anti-communist position that does not deny the atrocities but make a distinction between anti-authoritarian communist and other socialist currents, both of which have been victims of repression.

[85] Lenin's leadership transformed the Bolsheviks into the party's political vanguard which was composed of professional revolutionaries who practised democratic centralism to elect leaders and officers as well as to determine policy through free discussion, then decisively realised through united action.

[86] The vanguardism of proactive, pragmatic commitment to achieving revolution was the Bolsheviks' advantage in out-manoeuvring the liberal and conservative political parties who advocated social democracy without a practical plan of action for the Russian society they wished to govern.

[87] To generate revolutionary momentum from the Tsarist army killings on Bloody Sunday (22 January 1905), the Bolsheviks encouraged workers to use political violence in order to compel the bourgeois social classes (the nobility, the gentry and the bourgeoisie) to join the proletarian revolution to overthrow the absolute monarchy of the Tsar of Russia.

In practise, the formalities of political participation (the electoral plurality of a multi-party system with the State Duma and the Russian Constitution of 1906) were the Tsar's piecemeal and cosmetic concessions to social progress because public office remained available only to the aristocracy, the gentry and the bourgeoisie.

[103] The principal obstacles to Russian economic development and modernisation were great material poverty and the lack of modern technology which were conditions that orthodox Marxism considered unfavourable to communist revolution.

[110] As Old Bolshevik revolutionaries, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky recommended amelioration of the dekulakisation to lessen the negative social impact in the relations between the Soviet peoples and the party, but Stalin took umbrage and then accused them of uncommunist philosophical deviations from Lenin and Marx.

In 1938, Stalin accommodated the Nazis and the anti-communist West by not defending Czechoslovakia, allowing Hitler's threat of pre-emptive war for the Sudetenland to annex the land and "rescue the oppressed German peoples" living in Czecho.

After military defeat exiled Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang nationalist government to Formosa island (Taiwan), Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.

He realised this with the dismantling of the Gulag archipelago of forced-labour camps and freeing the prisoners as well as allowing Soviet civil society greater political freedom of expression, especially for public intellectuals of the intelligentsia such as the novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose literature obliquely criticised Stalin and the Stalinist police state.

The Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara deposed the military dictatorship (1952–1959) of Fulgencio Batista and established the Republic of Cuba, a state formally recognised by the Soviet Union.

In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) led by Daniel Ortega won the Nicaraguan Revolution (1961–1990) against the government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1 December 1974 – 17 July 1979) to establish a socialist Nicaragua.

The Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992) featured the popularly supported Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, an organisation of left-wing parties fighting against the right-wing military government of El Salvador.

Meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge purged Kampuchea of internal enemies (social class and political, cultural and ethnic) at the Killing Fields, the scope of which became crimes against humanity for the deaths of 2,700,000 people by mass murder and genocide.

[173] According to Paul Hollander, this was one of the features of Communist states that was so attractive to egalitarian Western intellectuals that they quietly justified the killing of millions of capitalists, landowners and supposedly wealthy kulaks in order to achieve this equality.

"[177] The goal of Marxist–Leninist political economy is the emancipation of people from the dehumanisation caused by mechanistic work that is psychologically alienating, without work–life balance, which is performed in exchange for wages that give limited financial-access to the material necessities of life, such as food and shelter.

The reformation of civil law made marriage secular into a "free and voluntary union" between persons who are social-and-legal equals, facilitated divorce, legalised abortion, eliminated bastardy ("illegitimate children"), and voided the political power of the bourgeoisie and the private property-status of the means of production.

[207] According to Daniel Gray, Silvio Pons, and David Martin Walker, Marxist–Leninist regimes have carried out killings and political repression of dissidents and social classes ("enemies of the people"),[204][208] such as the Red Terror and Great Purge in the Soviet Union and the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries in China,[27] partly as a result of Marxist–Leninist ideology.

Parenti further argued that the economies of Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union suffered from "fatal distortions in their development" because of "embargo[s], invasion, devastating wars, and costly arms buildup; excessive bureaucratization and poor incentive systems; lack of administrative initiative and technological innovation; and a repressive political rule that allowed little critical expression and feedback while fostering stagnation and elitism.

[82] According to Parenti, these revolutionary governments "extended a number of popular freedoms without destroying those freedoms that never existed in the previous regimes", such as democracy and individual rights, citing the examples of the "feudal regime" of Chiang Kai-shek in China, the "U.S.-sponsored police state" of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, the "U.S.-supported puppet governments" of Bảo Đại and others in Vietnam as well as French colonialism in Algeria; nonetheless, they "fostered conditions necessary for national self-determination, economic betterment, the preservation of health and human life, and the end of many of the worst forms of ethnic, patriarchal, and class oppression.