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Communist state

October 20, 2023

This article is about sovereign states governed by communist parties. For the hypothetical social stage proposed by Marxist theory, see Communist society. For a list of states designated as communist, see List of communist states.

A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comintern after Bolshevisation and the communist states within the Comecon, the Eastern Bloc, and the Warsaw Pact.[1] Marxism–Leninism currently still remains the ideology of a few parties around the world. After its peak when many communist states were established, the Revolutions of 1989 brought down most of the communist states, however, it is still the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam,[2] and to a lesser extent, North Korea.[3][4] During most of the 20th century, before the Revolutions of 1989, around one-third of the world's population lived under communist states.[5]

The flags of the Communist Party of Vietnam that were flown besides the Vietnamese national flags in Hanoi, Vietnam

Communist states are typically authoritarian and are typically administered through democratic centralism by a single centralised communist party apparatus. These parties are usually Marxist–Leninist or some national variation thereof such as Maoism or Titoism, with the official aim of achieving socialism and progressing toward a communist society. There have been several instances of communist states with functioning political participation (i.e. Soviet democracy) processes involving several other non-party organisations such as direct democratic participation, factory committees, and trade unions, although the communist party remained the centre of power.[6][7][8][9][10]

As a term, communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, and media to refer to these countries. However, these states do not describe themselves as communist nor do they claim to have achieved communism, as it would constitute an oxymoron—they refer to themselves as socialist states that are in the process of constructing socialism.[11][12][13][14] Terms used by communist states include national-democratic, people's democratic, socialist-oriented, and workers and peasants' states.[15] Academics, political commentators, and other scholars tend to distinguish between communist states and democratic socialist states, with the first representing the Eastern Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries that have been democratically-governed by socialist parties such as France, Sweden, and Western social-democracies in general, among others.[16][17][18][19]

Overview

 
An anachronous map of countries that have been ruled by a one-party Marxist-Leninist state at some point in their history. From 1979 to 1983, during the time of the People's Revolutionary Government in Grenada, all the colored nations above were simultaneously Marxist-Leninist.

Development

During the 20th century, the world's first constitutionally communist state was in Russia at the end of 1917. In 1922, it joined other former territories of the empire to become the Soviet Union. After World War II, the Soviet Army occupied much of Eastern Europe and helped bring the existing communist parties to power in those countries. Originally, the communist states in Eastern Europe were allied with the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia would declare itself non-aligned, and Albania later took a different path. After a war against Japanese occupation and a civil war resulting in a Communist victory, the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Communist states were also established in Cambodia, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. In 1989, the communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed after the Iron Curtain broke as a result of the Pan-European Picnic, under public pressure during a wave of mostly non-violent movements as part of the Revolutions of 1989 which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. China's socio-economic structure has been referred to as "nationalistic state capitalism" and the Eastern Bloc (Eastern Europe and the Third World) as "bureaucratic-authoritarian systems."[20][21]

Today, the existing communist states in the world are in China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea (DPRK). These communist states often do not claim to have achieved socialism or communism in their countries but to be building and working toward the establishment of socialism in their countries. The preamble to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's Constitution states that Vietnam only entered a transition stage between capitalism and socialism after the country was re-unified under the communist party in 1976[22] and the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Cuba states that the role of the communist party is to "guide the common effort toward the goals and construction of socialism."[23] The DPRK's constitution outlines a socialist economy and the ruling Workers' Party of Korea remains ideologically committed to communism.

Institutions

Communist states share similar institutions, which are organised on the premise that the communist party is a vanguard of the proletariat and represents the long-term interests of the people. The doctrine of democratic centralism, developed by Vladimir Lenin as a set of principles to be used in the internal affairs of the communist party, is extended to society at large.[24] According to democratic centralism, the people must elect all leaders, and all proposals must be debated openly, but once a decision has been reached, all people have a duty to account to that decision. When used within a political party, democratic centralism is meant to prevent factionalism and splits. When applied to an entire state, democratic centralism creates a one-party system.[24] The constitutions of most communist states describe their political system as a form of democracy.[25] They recognize the sovereignty of the people as embodied in a series of representative parliamentary institutions. Such states do not have a separation of powers and instead have one national legislative body (such as the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet Union), which is bestowed with unitary power and is often defined as the highest organ of state power. Unitary power means that the legislature has the power of the judiciary, legislature and executive but chooses to delegate these powers to other institutions.[26]

In communist states, the unitary legislatures often have a similar structure to the parliaments in liberal republics, with two significant differences. First, the deputies elected to these unitary legislatures are not expected to represent the interests of any particular constituency but rather the long-term interests of the people as a whole; and second, against Karl Marx's advice, the unitary legislatures of communist states are not in permanent session. Instead, they convene once or several times yearly in sessions that usually last only a few days.[27] When the unitary legislature is not in session, its powers are transferred to a smaller council (often called a presidium) which acts as a collective head of state. In some systems, the presidium is composed of crucial communist party members who vote the resolutions of the communist party into law.[27]

A feature of communist states is the existence of numerous state-sponsored social organisations (associations of journalists, teachers, writers and other professionals, consumer cooperatives, sports clubs, trade unions, youth organisations, and women's organisations) which are integrated into the political system. In communist states, the social organisations are expected to promote social unity and cohesion, to serve as a link between the government and society and to provide a forum for the recruitment of new communist party members.[28]

Historically, the political organisation of many socialist states has been dominated by a one-party monopoly. Some communist governments such as those in China, Czechoslovakia, or East Germany have or had more than one political party, but all minor parties are or were required to follow the leadership of the communist party. In communist states, the government may not tolerate criticism of policies that have already been implemented in the past or are being implemented in the present.[29]

State

According to Marxist–Leninist thought, the state is a repressive institution led by a ruling class.[30] This class dominates the state and expresses its will through it.[30] By formulating law, the ruling class uses the state to oppress other classes and form a class dictatorship.[30] However, the goal of the communist state is to abolish that state.[30] The Soviet Russia Constitution of 1918 stated: "The principal object of the Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R., which is adapted to the present transition period, consists in the establishment of a dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry, in the form of a powerful All-Russian Soviet power; the object of which is to secure complete suppression of the bourgeoisie, the abolition of exploitation of man by man, and the establishment of Socialism, under which there shall be neither class division nor state authority".[30] The communist state is the dictatorship of the proletariat, where the advanced elements of the proletariat are the ruling class.[31] In Marxist–Leninist thinking, the socialist state is the last repressive state since the next stage of development is that of pure communism, a classless and stateless society.[31] Friedrich Engels commented on the state, writing: "State interference in social relations, becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not 'abolished'. It dies out."[32]

In "The Tax in Kind", Vladimir Lenin argued: "No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order."[33] The introduction of the first five-year plan in the Soviet Union got many communists to believe that the withering away of the state was imminent.[34] However, Joseph Stalin warned that the withering away of the state would not occur until after the socialist mode of production had achieved dominance over capitalism.[34] Soviet jurist Andrey Vyshinsky echoed this assumption and said that the socialist state was necessary "in order to defend, to secure, and to develop relationships and arrangements advantageous to the workers, and to annihilate completely capitalism and its remnants."[35]

Ideology permeates these states.[36] According to scholar Peter Tang, "[t]he supreme test of whether a Communist Party-state remains revolutionarily dedicated or degenerates into a revisionist or counterrevolutionary system lies in its attitude toward the Communist ideology."[37] Therefore, the sole ideological purpose of communist states is to spread socialism and to reach that goal these states have to be guided by Marxism–Leninism.[37] The communist states have opted for two ways to achieve this goal, namely govern indirectly by Marxism–Leninism through the party (Soviet model), or commit the state officially through the constitution to Marxism–Leninism (Maoist China–Albania model).[38] The Soviet model is the most common and is currently in use in China.[39]

Marxism–Leninism was mentioned in the Soviet constitution.[36] Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet constitution stated: "The Communist Party, armed with Marxism–Leninism, determines the general perspective of the development of society and the course of the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR."[36] This contrasts with the 1976 Albanian constitution which stated in Article 3: "In the People's Socialist Republic of Albania the dominant ideology is Marxism–Leninism. The entire social order is developing on the basis of its principles."[39] The 1975 Chinese constitution had a similar tone, stating in Article 2 that "Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought is the theoretical basis guiding the thinking of our nation."[39] The 1977 Soviet constitution did also use phrases such as "building socialism and communism", "on the road to communism", "to build the material and technical basis of communism" and "to perfect socialist social relations and transform them into communist relations" in the preamble.[36]

People's democratic state

The people's democratic state was implemented in Eastern Europe after World War II.[40] It can be defined as a state and society in which feudal vestiges have been liquidated and where the system of private ownership exists, but the state-owned enterprises in the field of industry, transport, and credit eclipse it.[41]

In the words of Eugene Varga, "the state itself and its apparatus of violence serve the interests, not of the monopolistic bourgeoisie, but of the toilers of town and country."[41] Soviet philosopher N. P. Farberov stated: "People's democracy in the people's republics is a democracy of the toiling classes, headed by the working class, a broad and full democracy for the overwhelming majority of the people, that is, a socialist democracy in its character and its trend. In this sense, we call it popular."[41]

People's republican state

The people's republican state is a socialist state with a republican constitution. Although the term initially became associated with populist movements in the 19th century, such as the German Völkisch movement and the Narodniks in Russia, it is now associated with communist states. A number of the short-lived communist states which formed during World War I and its aftermath called themselves people's republics. Many of these sprang up in the territory of the former Russian Empire following the October Revolution.[42][43][44][45][46]

Additional people's republics emerged following the Allied victory in World War II, mainly within the Soviet Union's Eastern Bloc.[47][48][49][50][51][52][53] In Asia, China became a people's republic following the Chinese Communist Revolution[54] and North Korea also became a people's republic.[55]

During the 1960s, Romania and Yugoslavia ceased to use the term people's republic in their official name, replacing it with the term socialist republic as a mark of their ongoing political development. Czechoslovakia also added the term socialist republic into its name during this period; it had become a people's republic in 1948, but the country had not used that term in its official name.[56] Albania used both terms in its official name from 1976 to 1991.[57]

National-democratic state

The concept of the national-democratic state tried to theorize how a state could develop socialism by bypassing the capitalist mode of production.[58] While Vladimir Lenin first articulated the theory of non-capitalist development, the novelty of this concept was applying it to the progressive elements of the national liberation movements in the Third World.[58] The term national-democratic state was introduced shortly after the death of Stalin, who believed colonies to be mere lackeys of Western imperialism and that the socialist movement had few prospects there.[58]

The countries where the national liberation movements took power and instituted an anti-imperialist foreign policy and sought to construct a form of socialism were considered national-democratic states by Marxist–Leninists.[58] An example of a national-democratic state is Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser which was committed to constructing Arab socialism.[59] Except Cuba, none of these states developed socialism.[59] According to scholar Sylvia Woodby Edington, this might explain why the concept of the national-democratic state "never received full theoretical elaboration as a political system."[59] However, one feature was clearly defined, namely, that these states did not need to be led by a Marxist–Leninist party.[60]

Socialist-oriented state

A socialist-oriented state seeks to reach socialism by non-capitalist development.[61] As a term, it substantially differs from the concept of the national-democratic state.[61] The singular difference is that the socialist-oriented state was divided into two stages: a national-democratic socialist-oriented state and a people's democratic socialist-oriented state.[60] Countries belonging to the national-democratic socialist-oriented state category were also categorised as national-democratic states.[60] Examples of national-democratic socialist-oriented states are Algeria, ruled by the National Liberation Front, Ba'athist Iraq, and Socialist Burma.[60] In contrast, people's democratic socialist-oriented states had to be guided by Marxism–Leninism and accept the universal truths of Marxism–Leninism and reject other notions of socialism such as African socialism.[60]

The socialist-oriented states had seven defining features, namely, they were revolutionary democracies, had a revolutionary-democratic party, class dictatorship, defense of the socialist-oriented states, had organs of socialisation, initiated socialist construction, and the type of socialist-oriented state (either national-democratic or people's democratic).[62] The political goal of revolutionary democracy is to create the conditions for socialism in countries where the social, political, and economic conditions for socialism do not exist.[63] The second feature to be met is the establishment of a revolutionary-democratic party which has to establish itself as the leading force and guide the state by using Marxist–Leninist ideology.[64] While introduced in these states, democratic centralism is rarely upheld.[65]

Unlike capitalism which is ruled by the bourgeoisie class, and socialism, where the proletariat leads, the socialist-oriented state represents a broad and heterogeneous group of classes that seek to consolidate national independence.[65] Since peasants were usually the largest class in socialist-oriented states, their role was emphasised—similar to the working class in other socialist states.[66] However, Marxist–Leninists admitted that these states often fell under the control of certain cliques such as the military in Ethiopia.[66] The establishment of a legal system and coercive institutions are also noted to safeguard the socialist-oriented nature of the state.[67] The fifth feature is that the socialist-oriented state must take over the media and educational system while establishing mass organisations to mobilize the populace.[68] Unlike the Soviet economic model, the economy of the socialist-oriented states are mixed economies that seek to attract foreign capital and which seeks to maintain and develop the private sector.[69] In the words of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, these states were in the process of taking over the commanding heights of the economy and instituting a state-planned economy.[59] According to Soviet sources, Laos was the one socialist-oriented state that has managed to develop into a socialist state.[70]

Socialist state

A socialist state is more than a form of government and can only exist in countries with a socialist economy. There are examples of several states that have instituted a socialist form of government before achieving socialism. The former socialist states of Eastern Europe were established as people's democracies (a developmental stage between capitalism and socialism). Regarding the Marxist–Leninist-ruled countries of Africa and the Middle East, the Soviet Union deemed none of them socialist states—referring to them as socialist-oriented states. While many countries with constitutional references to socialism and countries ruled by long-standing socialist movements exist, within Marxist–Leninist theory a socialist state is led by a communist party that has instituted a socialist economy in a given country.[71] It deals with states that define themselves either as a socialist state or as a state led by a governing Marxist–Leninist party in their constitutions. For this reason alone, these states are often called communist states.[11][72][73]

The state system of unitary power

Main article: Unitary power

Legislatures as the highest organ of state power

 
The meeting place of the Chinese National People's Congress

All communist political systems practices unitary state power. This means that the legislature, usually defined as the highest organ of state power, has executive, legislative and judicial power and can interfere in these organs as long as the law does not illegalise it. This is because both Marx and Lenin abhorred the parliamentary systems of bourgeois democracy, but neither sought to abolish the legislature as an institution.[74] Lenin wrote that it would be impossible to develop proletarian democracy "without representative institutions."[74] Both of them considered the governing model of the Paris Commune of 1871, in which executive and legislative were combined in one body, to be ideal.[74] More importantly, Marx applauded the election process by "universal suffrage in the various wards and towns."[74] While the institution of such a legislature might not be important in itself, they "have a place in the literature and rhetoric of the ruling parties which cannot be ignored—in the language of the party's intimacy with working masses, of its alleged knowledge about interests of working people, of social justice and socialist democracy, of the mass line and learning from the people."[75] This reasoning gives communist legislatures the right to interfere in every state institution unless the legislature itself has made a law that bars it from it. This also means there are no limits to politicisation, unlike in liberal democracies, where politicians are legally barred from interfering in judicial work. This is a firm rejection of the separation of powers found in liberal democracies since no institution can legally enforce checks and balances on the communist legislature. The legislature passes the constitution, which can only be amended by the legislature. Soviet legal theorists denounced judicial review and extra-parliamentary review as bourgeoisie institutions. They also perceived it as a limitation of the people's supreme power. The legislature, together with its suborgans, oversaw the constitutional order.[76] Since the legislature is the supreme judge of constitutionality, the legislature's acts cannot be unconstitutional.[77] Moreover, this means that judicial independence in communist states does not mean the same as in liberal democracies. In communist states, judicial independence means stopping all interference not granted by law, but interference in itself is not barred.

The Supreme Soviet was the first socialist legislature, and the Soviet legislative system was introduced in all communist states.[78] The Supreme Soviet convened twice a year, usually for two or three days each, making it one of the world's first frequently-convened legislatures during its existence.[79] The same meeting frequency was the norm in the Eastern Bloc countries and modern-day China.[80] China's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), is modelled on the Soviet one.[81] As with the Soviet one, the NPC is the highest organ of the state and elects a Standing Committee (the Soviets had a Presidium), the government (named the State Council in China and the Council of Ministers in the Soviet Union), the Supreme Court (such as the Supreme Court of East Germany), the Supreme Procuratorate (such as the Supreme People's Procuracy of Vietnam), the Chairman of the National Defence Council (for example, the Chairman of the Council for National Defense and Security of Vietnam), National Supervisory institutions (such as the Director of China's National Supervisory Commission) and other institutions if they exist.[82] Moreover, in all communist states, the ruling party has either had a clear majority, such as China or held every seat as they did in the Soviet Union, in their Supreme Soviet. A majority in the legislature ensures the centralised and unitary leadership of the central committee of the ruling Marxist–Leninist party over the state.[83]

By having legislatures, the Marxist–Leninist parties try to keep ideological consistency between supporting representative institutions and safeguarding the party's leading role.[74] They seek to use the legislatures as a linkage between the rulers and the ruled.[74] These institutions are representative and usually mirror the population in areas such as ethnicity and language, "yet with occupations distributed in a manner skewed towards government officials."[74] Unlike in liberal democracies, legislatures of communist states are not to act as a forum for conveying demands or interest articulation—they meet too infrequently for this to be the case.[84] This might explain why communist states have not developed terms such as delegates and trustees to give legislature representatives the power to vote according to their best judgement or in the interest of their constituency.[84] Scholar Daniel Nelson has noted: "As with the British parliament before the seventeenth-century turmoil secured its supremacy, legislative bodies in communist states physically portray the 'realm' ruled by (to stretch an analogy) 'kings'. Members of the assemblies 'represent' the population to whom the rulers speak and over whom they govern, convening a broader 'segment of society' [...] than the court itself."[84] Despite this, it does not mean that the communist states use legislatures to strengthen their communication with the populace—the party, rather than the legislature, could take that function.[84]

Ideologically, it has another function, namely, to prove that communist states do not only represent the interests of the working class but all social strata.[85] Communist states are committed to establishing a classless society and use legislatures to show that all social strata, whether bureaucrat, worker, or intellectual, are committed and have interests in building such a society.[85] As is the case in China, national institutions such as the legislature "must exist which brings together representatives of all nationalities and geographic areas."[85] It does not matter if the legislatures only rubber stamp decisions because by having them, it shows that communist states are committed to incorporating minorities and areas of the country by including them in the composition of the legislature.[85] In communist states, there is usually a high proportion of members who are government officials.[86] In this instance, it might mean that it's less important what legislatures do and more important who its representatives are.[86] The members of such legislatures at central and local levels are usually either government or party officials, leading figures in their community, or national figures outside the communist party.[86] This shows that legislatures are tools to garner popular support for the government in which leading figures campaign and spread information about the party's policies and ideological development.[86]

Furthermore, Western researchers have devoted little attention to legislatures in communist states. The reason is that there are no significant bodies of political socialisation compared to legislatures in liberal democracies. While political leaders in communist states are often elected as members of legislatures, these posts are not relevant to political advancement. The role of legislatures is different from country to country. In the Soviet Union, the Supreme Soviet did "little more than listen to statements from Soviet political leaders and to legitimate decisions already made elsewhere" while in the legislatures of Poland, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia it has been more active and had an impact on rule-making.[87]

Constitution

Role of constitutions

Marxist–Leninists view the constitution as a fundamental law and as an instrument of force.[88] The constitution is the source of law and legality.[89] Unlike in liberal democracies, the Marxist–Leninist constitution is not a framework to limit the power of the state.[89] To the contrary, a Marxist–Leninist constitution seeks to empower the state—believing the state to be an organ of class domination and law to be the expression of the interests of the dominant class.[89] Marxist–Leninists believe that all national constitutions do this to ensure that countries can strengthen and enforce their own class system.[89] In this instance, it means that Marxist–Leninists conceive of constitutions as a tool to defend the socialist nature of the state and attack its enemies.[89] This contrasts with the liberal conception of constitutionalism that "law, rather than men, is supreme."[90]

Unlike the relatively constant (and, in some instances, permanently fixed) nature of democratic constitutions, a Marxist–Leninist constitution is ever-changing.[91] Andrey Vyshinsky, a Procurator General of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, notes that the "Soviet constitutions represent the total of the historical path along which the Soviet state has travelled. At the same time, they are the legislative basis of subsequent development of state life."[91] That is, the constitution sums up what has already been achieved.[92] This belief is also shared by the Chinese Communist Party, which argued that "the Chinese Constitution blazes a path for China, recording what has been won in China and what is yet to be conquered."[91] A constitution in a communist state has an end.[93] The preamble of the 1954 Chinese constitution outlines the historical tasks of the Chinese communists, "step by step, to bring about the socialist industrialisation of the country and, step by step, to accomplish the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft and capitalist industry and commerce."[93]

In communist states, the constitution was a tool to analyse the development of society.[94] The Marxist–Leninist party in question would have to study the correlation of forces, literally society's class structure, before enacting changes.[94] Several terms were coined for different developmental states by Marxist–Leninist legal theorists, including new democracy, people's democracy, and the primary stage of socialism.[92] This is also why amendments to constitutions are not enough and major societal changes need a novel constitution which corresponds with the reality of the new class structure.[92]

With Nikita Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalin's practices in the "Secret Speech" and the Chinese Communist Party's repudiation of certain Maoist policies, Marxist–Leninist legal theories began to emphasise "the formal, formerly neglected constitutional order."[95] Deng Xiaoping, not long after Chairman Mao Zedong's death, noted that "[d]emocracy has to be institutionalised and written into law, to make sure that institutions and laws do not change whenever the leadership changes or whenever the leaders change their views. [...] The trouble now is that our legal system is incomplete. [...] Very often what leaders say is taken as law and anyone who disagrees is called a lawbreaker."[96] In 1986, Li Buyan wrote that "the policies of the Party usually are regulations and calls which to a certain extent are only principles. The law is different; it is rigorously standardised. It explicitly and concretely stipulates what the people should, can, or cannot do."[97] These legal developments were echoed in later years in Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. This has led to the development of the communist concept of socialist rule of law, which runs parallel to, and is distinct from, the liberal term of the same name.[98] In the last years, this emphasis on the constitution as both a legal document and a paper which documents society's development has been noted by the Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping, who stated in 2013 that "[n]o organisation or individual has the privilege to overstep the Constitution and law."[99]

Constitutional supervision

After Soviet Union general secretary Joseph Stalin's death, several communist states have experimented with some sort of constitutional supervision.[100] These organs were designed to safeguard the supreme power of the legislature from circumvention by political leaders.[100] Romania was the first to experiment with constitutional supervision when it established a Constitutional Committee in 1965.[100] It was elected by the legislature, and leading jurists sat in the committee, but it was only empowered to advise the legislature.[100] Keith Hand has commented that "[i]t was not an effective institution in practice", being unable to prevent Nicolae Ceausescu's emasculation of Romania's Great National Assembly after the inauguration of the July Theses.[100]

Hungary and Poland experimented with constitutional supervision in the early 1980s.[100] Hungary established the Council of Constitutional Law, which was elected by the legislature and consisted of several leading jurists.[100] It was empowered to review the constitutionality and legality of statutes, administrative regulations, and other normative documents; however, if the agency in question failed to heed its advice, it needed to petition the legislature.[100] In 1989, the Soviets established the Constitutional Supervision Committee, which "was subordinate only to the USSR constitution."[101] It was empowered "to review the constitutionality and legality of a range of state acts of the USSR and its republics. Its jurisdiction included laws [passed by the legislature], decrees of the Supreme Soviet's Presidium, union republic constitutions and laws, some central administrative decrees, Supreme Court explanations, and other central normative documents."[101] If the committee deemed the legislature to have breached legality, the legislature was obliged to discuss the issue, but it could reject it if more than two-thirds voted against the findings of the Constitutional Supervision Committee.[101] While it was constitutionally powerful, it lacked enforcement powers, it was often ignored, and it failed to defend the constitution during the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.[102]

The Chinese leadership has argued against establishing any corresponding constitutional supervisory committee due to their association with the failed communist states of Europe.[103] None of the surviving communist states (China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam) have experimented with constitutional supervision committees or constitutional supervision of any kind outside the existing framework until 2018, when the Constitution and Law Committee of the National People's Congress was bestowed the right of constitutional review.[104]

Government as the highest administrative agency of state power

The government of communist states is usually defined as the "executive organ of the highest state organ of power" or as the "highest administrative agency of state power".[105] It functions as the executive organ of the legislature.[105] This model has been introduced with variations in all communist states.[78] For most of its existence, the Soviet government was known as the Council of Ministers[105] and identical names were used for the governments of Albania, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.[106] It was independent of the other central agencies such as the legislature and its standing committee, but the Supreme Soviet was empowered to decide on all questions it wished.[107] The Soviet government was responsible to the legislature, and in between sessions of the legislature, it reported to the legislature's standing committee.[108] The standing committee could reorganise and hold the Soviet government accountable, but it could not instruct the government.[108]

In communist states, the government was responsible for the overall economic system, public order, foreign relations, and defense.[108] The Soviet model was more or less identically implemented in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, with few exceptions.[106] One exception was Czechoslovakia, where it had a president and not a collective head of state.[109] Another exception was in Bulgaria, where the State Council was empowered to instruct the Council of Ministers.[110]

Judicial organs and socialist law

Main article: Socialist law

In every communist state, the judicial and procuratorial bodies are organs of the legislature. For instance, China's Supreme People's Court is the "legislative organ of governance that manages the judicial system in the name of the" National People's Congress, and through it, the Chinese Communist Party.[111] These bodies are responsible to and report on their work to the legislature. For instance, the Prosecutor-General of Vietnam's Supreme People's Procuracy delivers an annual Work Report to the legislature, the National Assembly, every year. Moreover, all communist states have been established in countries with a civil law system.[112] The countries of Eastern Europe had formally been governed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German Empire, and Russian Empire—all of whom had a civil law legal system.[112] Cuba had a civil law system imposed on them by Spain, while China introduced civil law to overlay with Confucian elements, and Vietnam used French law.[112] Since the establishment of the Soviet Union, there has been a scholarly debate on whether socialist law is a separate legal system or is a part of the civil law tradition.[112] Legal scholar Renè David wrote that the socialist legal system "possesses, in relation to our French law, particular features that give it a complete originality, to the extent that it is no longer possible to connect it, like the former Russian law, to the system of Roman law."[113] Similarly, Christoper Osakwe concludes that socialist law is "an autonomous legal system to be essentially distinguished from the other contemporary families of law."[114] Proponents of socialist law as a separate legal system have identified the following features:[114]

  1. The socialist law is to disappear with the withering away of the state.[114]
  2. The rule of the Marxist–Leninist party.[114]
  3. The socialist law is subordinate and reflects changes to the economic order (the absorption of private law by public law).[114]
  4. The socialist law has a religious character.[115]
  5. The socialist law is prerogative rather than normative.[115]

Legal officials argue differently for their cases compared to Westerners.[116] For instance, "[t]he predominant view among Soviet jurists in the 1920s was that Soviet law of that period was Western-style law appropriate for a Soviet economy that remained capitalist to a significant degree."[116] This changed with the introduction of the command economy, and the term socialist law was conceived to reflect this in the 1930s.[116] Hungarian legal theorist Imre Szabó acknowledged similarities between socialist law and civil law, but he noted that "four basic types of law may be distinguished: the laws of the slave, feudal, capitalist, and socialist societies."[117] Using the Marxist theory of historical materialism, Szabó argues that socialist law cannot belong to the same law family since the material structure is different from the capitalist countries as their superstructure (state) has to reflect these differences.[118] In other words, law is a tool by the ruling class to govern.[118] As Renè David notes, socialist jurists "isolate their law, to put into another category, a reprobate category, the Romanist laws and the common law, is the fact that they reason less as jurists and more as philosophers and Marxists; it is in taking a not strictly legal viewpoint that they affirm the originality of their socialist law."[119] However, some socialist legal theorists, such as Romanian jurist Victor Zlatescu differentiated between type of law and family of law. According to Zlatescu, "[t]he distinction between the law of the socialist countries and the law of the capitalist countries is not of the same nature as the difference between Roman-German law and the common law, for example. Socialist law is not a third family among the others, as in certain writings of Western comparatists."[120] In other words, socialist law is civil law, but it is a different type of law for a different society.[120]

Yugoslav jurist Borislav Blagojević [sr] noted that a "great number of legal institutions and legal relations remain the same in socialist law", further stating that it is "necessary and justified" to put them to use if they are "in conformity with the corresponding interests of the ruling class in the state in question."[121] Importantly, socialist law had retained civil law institutions, methodology, and organisation.[122] This can be discerned by the fact that East Germany retained the 1896 German civil code until 1976 while Poland used existing Austrian, French, German, and Russian civil codes until adoption of its own civil code in 1964.[123] Scholar John Quigley wrote that "[s]ocialist law retains the inquisitorial style of trial, law-creation predominantly by legislatures rather than courts, and a significant role for legal scholarship in construing codes."[122]

Military

Control

Communist states have established two types of civil-military systems. The armed forces of most socialist states have historically been state institutions based on the Soviet model,[124] but in China, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam, the armed forces are party-state institutions. However, several differences exist between the statist (Soviet) and the party-state models (China). In the Soviet model, the Soviet armed forces was led by the Council of Defense (an organ formed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union) while the Council of Ministers was responsible for formulating defence policies.[125] The party leader was ex officio the Chairman of the Council of Defense.[125] Below the Council of Defense, there was the Main Military Council which was responsible for the strategic direction and leadership of the Soviet armed forces.[125] The working organ of the Council of Defense was the General Staff tasked with analysing military and political situations as they developed.[126] The party controlled the armed forces through the Main Political Directorate (MPD) of the Ministry of Defense, a state organ that functioned "with the authority of a department of the CPSU Central Committee."[127] The MPD organised political indoctrination and created political control mechanisms at the centre to the company level in the field.[128] Formally, the MPD was responsible for organising party and Komsomol organs as well as subordinate organs within the armed forces; ensuring that the party and state retain control over the armed forces; evaluates the political performance of officers; supervising the ideological content of the military press; and supervising the political-military training institutes and their ideological content.[128] The head of the MPD was ranked fourth in military protocol, but it was not a member of the Council of Defense.[129] The Administrative Organs Department of the CPSU Central Committee was responsible for implementing the party personnel policies and supervised the KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense.[130]

In the Chinese party-state model, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is a party institution.[131] In the preamble of the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, it is stated: "The Communist Party of China (CPC) shall uphold its absolute leadership over the People's Liberation Army and other people's armed forces."[131] The PLA carries out its work in accordance with the instructions of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.[132] Mao Zedong described the PLA's institutional situation as follows: "Every communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' Our principle is that the party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party."[133] The Central Military Commission (CMC) is both an organ of the state and the party—it is an organ of the CCP Central Committee and an organ of the national legislature, the National People's Congress.[134] The CCP General Secretary is ex officio party CMC Chairman and the President of the People's Republic of China is by right state CMC Chairman.[134] The composition of the party CMC and the state CMC are identical.[134] The CMC is responsible for the command of the PLA and determines national defence policies.[134] fifteen departments report directly to the CMC and that are responsible for everything from political work to administration of the PLA.[135] Of significance is that the CMC eclipses by far the prerogatives of the CPSU Administrative Organs Department while the Chinese counterpart to the Main Political Directorate supervises not only the military, but also intelligence, the security services, and counterespionage work.[136]

Representation

Unlike in liberal democracies, active military personnel are members and partake in civilian institutions of governance.[137] This is the case in all communist states.[137] The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has elected at least one active military figure to its CPV Politburo since 1986.[138] In the 1986–2006 period, active military figures sitting in the CPV Central Committee stood at an average of 9,2 per cent.[138] Military figures are also represented in the national legislature (the National Assembly) and other representative institutions.[138] In China, the two CMC vice chairmen have had by right office seats in the CCP Politburo since 1987.[139]

Ruling party

Leading role

A Marxist–Leninist party has led every communist state.[71] This party seeks to represent and articulate the interests of the classes exploited by capitalism.[71] It seeks to lead the exploited classes to achieve communism.[71] However, the party cannot be identified with the exploited class in general.[71] Its membership comprises members with advanced consciousness above sectional interests.[71] Therefore, the party represents the advanced section of the exploited classes and, through them, leads the exploited classes by interpreting the universal laws governing human history towards communism.[140]

In Foundations of Leninism (1924), Joseph Stalin wrote that "the proletariat [working class] needs the Party first of all as its General Staff, which it must have for the successful seizure of power. [...] But the proletariat needs the Party not only to achieve the [class] dictatorship; it needs it still more to maintain the [class] dictatorship."[141] The current Constitution of Vietnam states in Article 4 that "[t]he Communist Party of Vietnam, the vanguard of the Vietnamese working class, simultaneously the vanguard of the toiling people and of the Vietnamese nation, the faithful representative of the interests of the working class, the toiling people, and the whole nation, acting upon the Marxist–Leninist doctrine and Ho Chi Minh's thought, is the leading force of the state and society."[142] In a similar form, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) describes itself as "the vanguard of the Chinese working class, the Chinese people, and the Chinese nation."[143] As noted by both communist parties, the ruling parties of communist states are vanguard parties. Vladimir Lenin theorised that vanguard parties were "capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organising the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organising their social life without the bourgeoisie."[144] This idea eventually evolved into the concept of the party's leading role in leading the state[144] as seen in the CCP's self-description and Vietnam's constitution.[142][143]

Internal organisation

The Marxist–Leninist governing party organises itself around the principle of democratic centralism and through it, the state too.[145] It means that all directing bodies of the party, from top to bottom, shall be elected; that party bodies shall give periodical accounts of their activities to their respective party organisations; that there shall be strict party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority; and that all decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all party members.[145]

The highest organ of a Marxist–Leninist governing party is the party congress.[146] The congress elects the central committee and either an auditing commission and a control commission, or both, although not always.[146] The central committee is the party's highest decision-making organ in-between party congresses and elects a politburo and a secretariat amongst its members and the party's leader.[146] When the central committee is not in session, the politburo is the highest decision-making organ of the party and the secretariat is the highest administrative organ.[146] In certain parties, either the central committee or the politburo elects amongst its members a standing committee of the politburo which acts as the highest decision-making organ in between sessions of the politburo, central committee, and the Congress. This leadership structure is identical all the way down to the primary party organisation of the ruling party.[146]

Economic system

From reading their works, many followers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels drew the idea that the socialist economy would be based on planning and not market mechanisms.[147] These ideas later developed into believing that planning was superior to the market mechanism.[148] Upon seizing power, the Bolsheviks began advocating a national state planning system.[148] The 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) resolved to institute "the maximum centralisation of production [...] simultaneously striving to establish a unified economic plan."[148] The Gosplan, the State Planning Commission, the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy, and other central planning organs were established during the 1920s in the era of the New Economic Policy.[149] On introducing the planning system, it became a common belief in the international communist movement that the Soviet planning system was a more advanced form of economic organisation than capitalism.[150] This led to the system being introduced voluntarily in countries such as China, Cuba, and Vietnam and, in some cases, imposed by the Soviet Union.[150]

In communist states, the state planning system had five main characteristics.[151] Firstly, except for field consumption and employment, practically all decisions were centralized at the top.[151] Secondly, the system was hierarchical—the centre formulated a plan that was sent down to the level below, which would imitate the process and send the plan further down the pyramid.[151] Thirdly, the plans were binding in nature, i.e. everyone had to follow and meet the goals outlined in them.[151] Fourthly, the predominance of calculating in physical terms to ensure planned allocation of commodities were not incompatible with planned production.[151] Finally, money played a passive role within the state sector since the planners focused on physical allocation.[151]

According to Michael Ellman, in a centrally-planned economy, "the state owns the land and all other natural resources and all characteristics of the traditional model, the enterprises, and their productive assets. Collective ownership (e.g. the property of collective farms) also exists but plays a subsidiary role and is expected to be temporary."[151] The private ownership of the means of production still exists, although it plays a somewhat more minor role.[152] Since the class struggle in capitalism is caused by the division between owners of the means of production and the workers who sell their labour, state ownership (defined as the property of the people in these systems) is considered as a tool to end the class struggle and empower the working class.[153]

Analysis

See also: Criticism of communist party rule and Postsocialism

Countries such as the Soviet Union and China were criticised by Western authors and organisations based on the lack of the representative nature of multi-party liberal democracy,[154][155] in addition to several other areas where socialist society and Western societies differed. Socialist societies were commonly characterised by state ownership or social ownership of the means of production either through administration through communist party organisations, democratically elected councils and communes, and co-operative structures—in opposition to the liberal democratic capitalist free-market paradigm of management, ownership and control by corporations and private individuals.[156] Communist states have also been criticised for the influence and outreach of their respective ruling parties on society, in addition to lack of recognition for some Western legal rights and liberties such as the right to own property and the restriction of the right to free speech.[157] The early economic development policies of communist states have been criticised for focusing primarily on the development of heavy industry.[citation needed]

Soviet advocates and socialists responded to criticism by highlighting the ideological differences in the concept of freedom. McFarland and Ageyev noted that "Marxist–Leninist norms disparaged laissez-faire individualism (as when housing is determined by one's ability to pay), also [condemning] wide variations in personal wealth as the West has not. Instead, Soviet ideals emphasized equality—free education and medical care, little disparity in housing or salaries, and so forth."[158] When asked to comment on the claim that former citizens of communist states enjoy increased freedoms, Heinz Kessler, former East German Minister of National Defence, replied: "Millions of people in Eastern Europe are now free from employment, free from safe streets, free from health care, free from social security."[159]

In his analysis of states run under Marxist–Leninist ideology, economist Michael Ellman of the University of Amsterdam notes that such states compared favorably with Western states in some health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy.[160] A 1986 study published in the American Journal of Public Health and a 1992 study published in International Journal of Health Services stated, respectively, that "between countries at similar levels of economic development, socialist countries showed more favorable PQL (physical quality of life) outcomes" and that socialism was "for the most part, more successful than capitalism in improving the health conditions of the world's populations."[161][162]

Philipp Ther posits that there was an increase in the standard of living throughout Eastern Bloc countries as the result of modernisation programs under communist governments.[163] Similarly, Amartya Sen's own analysis of international comparisons of life expectancy found that several Marxist–Leninist states made significant gains and commented "one thought that is bound to occur is that communism is good for poverty removal."[164] The dissolution of the Soviet Union was followed by a rapid increase in poverty,[165][166][167] crime,[168][169] corruption,[170][171] unemployment,[172] homelessness,[173][174] rates of disease,[175][176][177] infant mortality, domestic violence,[178] and income inequality,[179] along with decreases in calorie intake, life expectancy, adult literacy, and income.[180]

Memory

Monuments to the victims of communist states exist in almost all the capitals of Eastern Europe and there are several museums documenting communist rule such as the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Lithuania, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in Riga, and the House of Terror in Budapest, all three of which also document Nazi rule.[181][182] In Washington D.C., a bronze statue based upon the 1989 Tiananmen Square Goddess of Democracy sculpture was dedicated as the Victims of Communism Memorial in 2007, having been authorized by the United States Congress in 1993.[183][184] The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation plans to build an International Museum on Communism in Washington. As of 2008, Russia contained 627 memorials and memorial plaques dedicated to victims of the communist states, most of which were created by private citizens and did not have a national monument or a national museum.[185] The Wall of Grief in Moscow, inaugurated in October 2017, is Russia's first monument for victims of political persecution by Stalin during the country's Soviet era.[186] In 2017, Canada's National Capital Commission approved the design for a memorial to the victims of communism to be built at the Garden of the Provinces and Territories in Ottawa.[187] On 23 August 2018, Estonia's Victims of Communism 1940–1991 Memorial was inaugurated in Tallinn by President Kersti Kaljulaid.[188] The memorial construction was financed by the state and is managed by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.[189] The opening ceremony was chosen to coincide with the official European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.[190]

According to anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee, efforts to institutionalize the victims of communism narrative, or the moral equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust (race murder) and the victims of communism (class murder), and in particular the recent push at the beginning of the global financial crisis for commemoration of the latter in Europe, can be seen as the response by economic and political elites to fears of a leftist resurgence in the face of devastated economies and extreme inequalities in both the East and West as the result of the excesses of neoliberal capitalism. Ghodsee argues that any discussion of the achievements under communist states, including literacy, education, women's rights, and social security is usually silenced, and any discourse on the subject of communism is focused almost exclusively on Stalin's crimes and the double genocide theory.[191] According to Laure Neumayer, this is used as an anti-communist narrative "based on a series of categories and figures" to "denounce Communist state violence (qualified as 'Communist crimes', 'red genocide' or 'classicide') and to honour persecuted individuals (presented alternatively as 'victims of Communism' and 'heroes of anti totalitarian resistance')."[192]

See also

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Communist countries.

References

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Bibliography

General

References for when the individuals were elected to the office of CCP leader, the name of the offices and when they established and were abolished are found below.

Articles and journal entries

  • Bui, T. (2016). "Constitutionalizing Single Party Leadership in Vietnam: Dilemmas of Reform" (PDF). Asian Journal of Comparative Law. Cambridge University Press. 11 (2): 219–234. doi:10.1017/asjcl.2016.22.
  • Chang, Yu-nan (August 1956). "The Chinese Communist State System Under the Constitution of 1954". The Journal of Politics. The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association. 18 (3): 520–546. doi:10.2307/2127261. JSTOR 2127261. S2CID 154446161.
  • Guins, George (July 1950). "Law Does not Wither Away in the Soviet Union". The Russian Review. Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review. 9 (3): 187–204. doi:10.2307/125763. JSTOR 125763.
  • Hand, Keith (2016). "An Assessment of Socialist Constitutional Supervision Models and Prospects for a Constitutional Supervision Committee in China: The Constitution as Commander?". Legal Studies Research Paper Series. University of California (150). SSRN 2624663.
  • Hazard, John (August 1975). "Soviet Model for Marxian Socialist Constitutions". Cornell Law Review. Cornell University. 60 (6): 109–118.
  • Imam, Zafar (July–September 1986). "The Theory of the Soviet State Today". The Indian Journal of Political Science. Indian Political Science Association. 47 (3): 382–398. JSTOR 41855253.
  • Keith, Richard (March 1991). "Chinese Politics and the New Theory of 'Rule of Law'". The China Quarterly. Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 125 (125): 109–118. doi:10.1017/S0305741000030320. JSTOR 654479. S2CID 154980279.
  • Kokoshin, Andrey (October 2016). "2015 Military Reform in the People's Republic of China" (PDF). Belfer Center Paper. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
  • Kramer, Mark N. (January 1985). "Civil-Military Relations in the Warsaw Pact: The East European Component". International Affairs. Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. 61 (1): 45–66. doi:10.2307/2619779. JSTOR 2619779.
  • Miller, Alice (January 2018). "The 19th Central Committee Politburo" (PDF). China Leadership Monitor. Hoover Institute (55).
  • Mulvenon, James (January 2018). "The Cult of Xi and the Rise of the CMC Chairman Responsibility System" (PDF). China Leadership Monitor. Hoover Institute (55).
  • Poelzer, Greg (1989). An Analysis of Grenada as a Socialist-Oriented State (Thesis). Carleton University.
  • Skilling, H. Gordon (January 1961). "People's Democracy and the Socialist Revolution: A Case Study in Communist Scholarship. Part I". Soviet Studies. Vol. 12, no. 3. Taylor & Francis. pp. 241–262.
  • Snyder, Stanley (1987). Soviet Troop Control and the Power Distribution (Thesis). Naval Postgraduate School. hdl:10945/22490.
  • National Foreign Assessment Center (1980). (PDF) (Report). Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2017.
  • Steiner, H. Arthur (1951). "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 277: 56–66. doi:10.1177/000271625127700107. ISSN 0002-7162. JSTOR 1030252. S2CID 145485494.
  • Stone Sweet, Alec; Bu, Chong; Zhuo, Ding (25 May 2023). "Breaching the Taboo? Constitutional Dimensions of the New Chinese Civil Code". Asian Journal of Comparative Law: 1–26. doi:10.1017/asjcl.2023.18. S2CID 258915998.
  • Tang, Peter S. H. (February 1980). "The Soviet, Chinese and Albanian Constitutions: Ideological Divergence and Institutionalized Confrontation?". Studies in Soviet Thought. Springer Publishing. 21 (1): 39–58. doi:10.1007/BF00832025. JSTOR 20098938.pdf. S2CID 144486393.
  • Thayer, Carlyle (2008). "Military Politics in Contemporary Vietnam" (PDF). In Mietzner, Marcus (ed.). The Political Resurgence of the Military in Southeast Asia: Conflict and Leadership. Routledge. ISBN 9780415460354.
  • Quigley, John (Autumn 1989). (PDF). The American Journal of Comparative Law. Oxford University Press. 37 (4): 781–808. doi:10.2307/840224. JSTOR 840224. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 May 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2019.

Books

October 20, 2023
communist, state, this, article, about, sovereign, states, governed, communist, parties, hypothetical, social, stage, proposed, marxist, theory, communist, society, list, states, designated, communist, list, communist, states, communist, state, also, known, ma. This article is about sovereign states governed by communist parties For the hypothetical social stage proposed by Marxist theory see Communist society For a list of states designated as communist see List of communist states A communist state also known as a Marxist Leninist state is a one party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism Leninism Marxism Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union the Comintern after Bolshevisation and the communist states within the Comecon the Eastern Bloc and the Warsaw Pact 1 Marxism Leninism currently still remains the ideology of a few parties around the world After its peak when many communist states were established the Revolutions of 1989 brought down most of the communist states however it is still the official ideology of the ruling parties of China Cuba Laos Vietnam 2 and to a lesser extent North Korea 3 4 During most of the 20th century before the Revolutions of 1989 around one third of the world s population lived under communist states 5 The flags of the Communist Party of Vietnam that were flown besides the Vietnamese national flags in Hanoi VietnamCommunist states are typically authoritarian and are typically administered through democratic centralism by a single centralised communist party apparatus These parties are usually Marxist Leninist or some national variation thereof such as Maoism or Titoism with the official aim of achieving socialism and progressing toward a communist society There have been several instances of communist states with functioning political participation i e Soviet democracy processes involving several other non party organisations such as direct democratic participation factory committees and trade unions although the communist party remained the centre of power 6 7 8 9 10 As a term communist state is used by Western historians political scientists and media to refer to these countries However these states do not describe themselves as communist nor do they claim to have achieved communism as it would constitute an oxymoron they refer to themselves as socialist states that are in the process of constructing socialism 11 12 13 14 Terms used by communist states include national democratic people s democratic socialist oriented and workers and peasants states 15 Academics political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between communist states and democratic socialist states with the first representing the Eastern Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries that have been democratically governed by socialist parties such as France Sweden and Western social democracies in general among others 16 17 18 19 Contents 1 Overview 1 1 Development 1 2 Institutions 2 State 2 1 People s democratic state 2 2 People s republican state 2 3 National democratic state 2 4 Socialist oriented state 2 5 Socialist state 3 The state system of unitary power 3 1 Legislatures as the highest organ of state power 3 1 1 Constitution 3 1 1 1 Role of constitutions 3 1 1 2 Constitutional supervision 3 2 Government as the highest administrative agency of state power 3 3 Judicial organs and socialist law 3 4 Military 3 4 1 Control 3 4 2 Representation 3 5 Ruling party 3 5 1 Leading role 3 5 2 Internal organisation 4 Economic system 5 Analysis 5 1 Memory 6 See also 7 References 8 Bibliography 8 1 General 8 2 Articles and journal entries 8 3 BooksOverview nbsp An anachronous map of countries that have been ruled by a one party Marxist Leninist state at some point in their history From 1979 to 1983 during the time of the People s Revolutionary Government in Grenada all the colored nations above were simultaneously Marxist Leninist Development During the 20th century the world s first constitutionally communist state was in Russia at the end of 1917 In 1922 it joined other former territories of the empire to become the Soviet Union After World War II the Soviet Army occupied much of Eastern Europe and helped bring the existing communist parties to power in those countries Originally the communist states in Eastern Europe were allied with the Soviet Union Yugoslavia would declare itself non aligned and Albania later took a different path After a war against Japanese occupation and a civil war resulting in a Communist victory the People s Republic of China was established in 1949 Communist states were also established in Cambodia Cuba Laos North Korea and Vietnam In 1989 the communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed after the Iron Curtain broke as a result of the Pan European Picnic under public pressure during a wave of mostly non violent movements as part of the Revolutions of 1989 which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 China s socio economic structure has been referred to as nationalistic state capitalism and the Eastern Bloc Eastern Europe and the Third World as bureaucratic authoritarian systems 20 21 Today the existing communist states in the world are in China Cuba Laos Vietnam and North Korea DPRK These communist states often do not claim to have achieved socialism or communism in their countries but to be building and working toward the establishment of socialism in their countries The preamble to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam s Constitution states that Vietnam only entered a transition stage between capitalism and socialism after the country was re unified under the communist party in 1976 22 and the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Cuba states that the role of the communist party is to guide the common effort toward the goals and construction of socialism 23 The DPRK s constitution outlines a socialist economy and the ruling Workers Party of Korea remains ideologically committed to communism Institutions Communist states share similar institutions which are organised on the premise that the communist party is a vanguard of the proletariat and represents the long term interests of the people The doctrine of democratic centralism developed by Vladimir Lenin as a set of principles to be used in the internal affairs of the communist party is extended to society at large 24 According to democratic centralism the people must elect all leaders and all proposals must be debated openly but once a decision has been reached all people have a duty to account to that decision When used within a political party democratic centralism is meant to prevent factionalism and splits When applied to an entire state democratic centralism creates a one party system 24 The constitutions of most communist states describe their political system as a form of democracy 25 They recognize the sovereignty of the people as embodied in a series of representative parliamentary institutions Such states do not have a separation of powers and instead have one national legislative body such as the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet Union which is bestowed with unitary power and is often defined as the highest organ of state power Unitary power means that the legislature has the power of the judiciary legislature and executive but chooses to delegate these powers to other institutions 26 In communist states the unitary legislatures often have a similar structure to the parliaments in liberal republics with two significant differences First the deputies elected to these unitary legislatures are not expected to represent the interests of any particular constituency but rather the long term interests of the people as a whole and second against Karl Marx s advice the unitary legislatures of communist states are not in permanent session Instead they convene once or several times yearly in sessions that usually last only a few days 27 When the unitary legislature is not in session its powers are transferred to a smaller council often called a presidium which acts as a collective head of state In some systems the presidium is composed of crucial communist party members who vote the resolutions of the communist party into law 27 A feature of communist states is the existence of numerous state sponsored social organisations associations of journalists teachers writers and other professionals consumer cooperatives sports clubs trade unions youth organisations and women s organisations which are integrated into the political system In communist states the social organisations are expected to promote social unity and cohesion to serve as a link between the government and society and to provide a forum for the recruitment of new communist party members 28 Historically the political organisation of many socialist states has been dominated by a one party monopoly Some communist governments such as those in China Czechoslovakia or East Germany have or had more than one political party but all minor parties are or were required to follow the leadership of the communist party In communist states the government may not tolerate criticism of policies that have already been implemented in the past or are being implemented in the present 29 StateAccording to Marxist Leninist thought the state is a repressive institution led by a ruling class 30 This class dominates the state and expresses its will through it 30 By formulating law the ruling class uses the state to oppress other classes and form a class dictatorship 30 However the goal of the communist state is to abolish that state 30 The Soviet Russia Constitution of 1918 stated The principal object of the Constitution of the R S F S R which is adapted to the present transition period consists in the establishment of a dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry in the form of a powerful All Russian Soviet power the object of which is to secure complete suppression of the bourgeoisie the abolition of exploitation of man by man and the establishment of Socialism under which there shall be neither class division nor state authority 30 The communist state is the dictatorship of the proletariat where the advanced elements of the proletariat are the ruling class 31 In Marxist Leninist thinking the socialist state is the last repressive state since the next stage of development is that of pure communism a classless and stateless society 31 Friedrich Engels commented on the state writing State interference in social relations becomes in one domain after another superfluous and then dies out of itself the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and by the conduct of processes of production The state is not abolished It dies out 32 In The Tax in Kind Vladimir Lenin argued No one I think in studying the question of the economic system of Russia has denied its transitional character Nor I think has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order 33 The introduction of the first five year plan in the Soviet Union got many communists to believe that the withering away of the state was imminent 34 However Joseph Stalin warned that the withering away of the state would not occur until after the socialist mode of production had achieved dominance over capitalism 34 Soviet jurist Andrey Vyshinsky echoed this assumption and said that the socialist state was necessary in order to defend to secure and to develop relationships and arrangements advantageous to the workers and to annihilate completely capitalism and its remnants 35 Ideology permeates these states 36 According to scholar Peter Tang t he supreme test of whether a Communist Party state remains revolutionarily dedicated or degenerates into a revisionist or counterrevolutionary system lies in its attitude toward the Communist ideology 37 Therefore the sole ideological purpose of communist states is to spread socialism and to reach that goal these states have to be guided by Marxism Leninism 37 The communist states have opted for two ways to achieve this goal namely govern indirectly by Marxism Leninism through the party Soviet model or commit the state officially through the constitution to Marxism Leninism Maoist China Albania model 38 The Soviet model is the most common and is currently in use in China 39 Marxism Leninism was mentioned in the Soviet constitution 36 Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet constitution stated The Communist Party armed with Marxism Leninism determines the general perspective of the development of society and the course of the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR 36 This contrasts with the 1976 Albanian constitution which stated in Article 3 In the People s Socialist Republic of Albania the dominant ideology is Marxism Leninism The entire social order is developing on the basis of its principles 39 The 1975 Chinese constitution had a similar tone stating in Article 2 that Marxism Leninism Mao Zedong Thought is the theoretical basis guiding the thinking of our nation 39 The 1977 Soviet constitution did also use phrases such as building socialism and communism on the road to communism to build the material and technical basis of communism and to perfect socialist social relations and transform them into communist relations in the preamble 36 People s democratic state The people s democratic state was implemented in Eastern Europe after World War II 40 It can be defined as a state and society in which feudal vestiges have been liquidated and where the system of private ownership exists but the state owned enterprises in the field of industry transport and credit eclipse it 41 In the words of Eugene Varga the state itself and its apparatus of violence serve the interests not of the monopolistic bourgeoisie but of the toilers of town and country 41 Soviet philosopher N P Farberov stated People s democracy in the people s republics is a democracy of the toiling classes headed by the working class a broad and full democracy for the overwhelming majority of the people that is a socialist democracy in its character and its trend In this sense we call it popular 41 People s republican state The people s republican state is a socialist state with a republican constitution Although the term initially became associated with populist movements in the 19th century such as the German Volkisch movement and the Narodniks in Russia it is now associated with communist states A number of the short lived communist states which formed during World War I and its aftermath called themselves people s republics Many of these sprang up in the territory of the former Russian Empire following the October Revolution 42 43 44 45 46 Additional people s republics emerged following the Allied victory in World War II mainly within the Soviet Union s Eastern Bloc 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 In Asia China became a people s republic following the Chinese Communist Revolution 54 and North Korea also became a people s republic 55 During the 1960s Romania and Yugoslavia ceased to use the term people s republic in their official name replacing it with the term socialist republic as a mark of their ongoing political development Czechoslovakia also added the term socialist republic into its name during this period it had become a people s republic in 1948 but the country had not used that term in its official name 56 Albania used both terms in its official name from 1976 to 1991 57 National democratic state The concept of the national democratic state tried to theorize how a state could develop socialism by bypassing the capitalist mode of production 58 While Vladimir Lenin first articulated the theory of non capitalist development the novelty of this concept was applying it to the progressive elements of the national liberation movements in the Third World 58 The term national democratic state was introduced shortly after the death of Stalin who believed colonies to be mere lackeys of Western imperialism and that the socialist movement had few prospects there 58 The countries where the national liberation movements took power and instituted an anti imperialist foreign policy and sought to construct a form of socialism were considered national democratic states by Marxist Leninists 58 An example of a national democratic state is Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser which was committed to constructing Arab socialism 59 Except Cuba none of these states developed socialism 59 According to scholar Sylvia Woodby Edington this might explain why the concept of the national democratic state never received full theoretical elaboration as a political system 59 However one feature was clearly defined namely that these states did not need to be led by a Marxist Leninist party 60 Socialist oriented state A socialist oriented state seeks to reach socialism by non capitalist development 61 As a term it substantially differs from the concept of the national democratic state 61 The singular difference is that the socialist oriented state was divided into two stages a national democratic socialist oriented state and a people s democratic socialist oriented state 60 Countries belonging to the national democratic socialist oriented state category were also categorised as national democratic states 60 Examples of national democratic socialist oriented states are Algeria ruled by the National Liberation Front Ba athist Iraq and Socialist Burma 60 In contrast people s democratic socialist oriented states had to be guided by Marxism Leninism and accept the universal truths of Marxism Leninism and reject other notions of socialism such as African socialism 60 The socialist oriented states had seven defining features namely they were revolutionary democracies had a revolutionary democratic party class dictatorship defense of the socialist oriented states had organs of socialisation initiated socialist construction and the type of socialist oriented state either national democratic or people s democratic 62 The political goal of revolutionary democracy is to create the conditions for socialism in countries where the social political and economic conditions for socialism do not exist 63 The second feature to be met is the establishment of a revolutionary democratic party which has to establish itself as the leading force and guide the state by using Marxist Leninist ideology 64 While introduced in these states democratic centralism is rarely upheld 65 Unlike capitalism which is ruled by the bourgeoisie class and socialism where the proletariat leads the socialist oriented state represents a broad and heterogeneous group of classes that seek to consolidate national independence 65 Since peasants were usually the largest class in socialist oriented states their role was emphasised similar to the working class in other socialist states 66 However Marxist Leninists admitted that these states often fell under the control of certain cliques such as the military in Ethiopia 66 The establishment of a legal system and coercive institutions are also noted to safeguard the socialist oriented nature of the state 67 The fifth feature is that the socialist oriented state must take over the media and educational system while establishing mass organisations to mobilize the populace 68 Unlike the Soviet economic model the economy of the socialist oriented states are mixed economies that seek to attract foreign capital and which seeks to maintain and develop the private sector 69 In the words of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev these states were in the process of taking over the commanding heights of the economy and instituting a state planned economy 59 According to Soviet sources Laos was the one socialist oriented state that has managed to develop into a socialist state 70 Socialist state A socialist state is more than a form of government and can only exist in countries with a socialist economy There are examples of several states that have instituted a socialist form of government before achieving socialism The former socialist states of Eastern Europe were established as people s democracies a developmental stage between capitalism and socialism Regarding the Marxist Leninist ruled countries of Africa and the Middle East the Soviet Union deemed none of them socialist states referring to them as socialist oriented states While many countries with constitutional references to socialism and countries ruled by long standing socialist movements exist within Marxist Leninist theory a socialist state is led by a communist party that has instituted a socialist economy in a given country 71 It deals with states that define themselves either as a socialist state or as a state led by a governing Marxist Leninist party in their constitutions For this reason alone these states are often called communist states 11 72 73 The state system of unitary powerMain article Unitary power Legislatures as the highest organ of state power nbsp The meeting place of the Chinese National People s CongressAll communist political systems practices unitary state power This means that the legislature usually defined as the highest organ of state power has executive legislative and judicial power and can interfere in these organs as long as the law does not illegalise it This is because both Marx and Lenin abhorred the parliamentary systems of bourgeois democracy but neither sought to abolish the legislature as an institution 74 Lenin wrote that it would be impossible to develop proletarian democracy without representative institutions 74 Both of them considered the governing model of the Paris Commune of 1871 in which executive and legislative were combined in one body to be ideal 74 More importantly Marx applauded the election process by universal suffrage in the various wards and towns 74 While the institution of such a legislature might not be important in itself they have a place in the literature and rhetoric of the ruling parties which cannot be ignored in the language of the party s intimacy with working masses of its alleged knowledge about interests of working people of social justice and socialist democracy of the mass line and learning from the people 75 This reasoning gives communist legislatures the right to interfere in every state institution unless the legislature itself has made a law that bars it from it This also means there are no limits to politicisation unlike in liberal democracies where politicians are legally barred from interfering in judicial work This is a firm rejection of the separation of powers found in liberal democracies since no institution can legally enforce checks and balances on the communist legislature The legislature passes the constitution which can only be amended by the legislature Soviet legal theorists denounced judicial review and extra parliamentary review as bourgeoisie institutions They also perceived it as a limitation of the people s supreme power The legislature together with its suborgans oversaw the constitutional order 76 Since the legislature is the supreme judge of constitutionality the legislature s acts cannot be unconstitutional 77 Moreover this means that judicial independence in communist states does not mean the same as in liberal democracies In communist states judicial independence means stopping all interference not granted by law but interference in itself is not barred The Supreme Soviet was the first socialist legislature and the Soviet legislative system was introduced in all communist states 78 The Supreme Soviet convened twice a year usually for two or three days each making it one of the world s first frequently convened legislatures during its existence 79 The same meeting frequency was the norm in the Eastern Bloc countries and modern day China 80 China s legislature the National People s Congress NPC is modelled on the Soviet one 81 As with the Soviet one the NPC is the highest organ of the state and elects a Standing Committee the Soviets had a Presidium the government named the State Council in China and the Council of Ministers in the Soviet Union the Supreme Court such as the Supreme Court of East Germany the Supreme Procuratorate such as the Supreme People s Procuracy of Vietnam the Chairman of the National Defence Council for example the Chairman of the Council for National Defense and Security of Vietnam National Supervisory institutions such as the Director of China s National Supervisory Commission and other institutions if they exist 82 Moreover in all communist states the ruling party has either had a clear majority such as China or held every seat as they did in the Soviet Union in their Supreme Soviet A majority in the legislature ensures the centralised and unitary leadership of the central committee of the ruling Marxist Leninist party over the state 83 By having legislatures the Marxist Leninist parties try to keep ideological consistency between supporting representative institutions and safeguarding the party s leading role 74 They seek to use the legislatures as a linkage between the rulers and the ruled 74 These institutions are representative and usually mirror the population in areas such as ethnicity and language yet with occupations distributed in a manner skewed towards government officials 74 Unlike in liberal democracies legislatures of communist states are not to act as a forum for conveying demands or interest articulation they meet too infrequently for this to be the case 84 This might explain why communist states have not developed terms such as delegates and trustees to give legislature representatives the power to vote according to their best judgement or in the interest of their constituency 84 Scholar Daniel Nelson has noted As with the British parliament before the seventeenth century turmoil secured its supremacy legislative bodies in communist states physically portray the realm ruled by to stretch an analogy kings Members of the assemblies represent the population to whom the rulers speak and over whom they govern convening a broader segment of society than the court itself 84 Despite this it does not mean that the communist states use legislatures to strengthen their communication with the populace the party rather than the legislature could take that function 84 Ideologically it has another function namely to prove that communist states do not only represent the interests of the working class but all social strata 85 Communist states are committed to establishing a classless society and use legislatures to show that all social strata whether bureaucrat worker or intellectual are committed and have interests in building such a society 85 As is the case in China national institutions such as the legislature must exist which brings together representatives of all nationalities and geographic areas 85 It does not matter if the legislatures only rubber stamp decisions because by having them it shows that communist states are committed to incorporating minorities and areas of the country by including them in the composition of the legislature 85 In communist states there is usually a high proportion of members who are government officials 86 In this instance it might mean that it s less important what legislatures do and more important who its representatives are 86 The members of such legislatures at central and local levels are usually either government or party officials leading figures in their community or national figures outside the communist party 86 This shows that legislatures are tools to garner popular support for the government in which leading figures campaign and spread information about the party s policies and ideological development 86 Furthermore Western researchers have devoted little attention to legislatures in communist states The reason is that there are no significant bodies of political socialisation compared to legislatures in liberal democracies While political leaders in communist states are often elected as members of legislatures these posts are not relevant to political advancement The role of legislatures is different from country to country In the Soviet Union the Supreme Soviet did little more than listen to statements from Soviet political leaders and to legitimate decisions already made elsewhere while in the legislatures of Poland Vietnam and Yugoslavia it has been more active and had an impact on rule making 87 Constitution Role of constitutions Marxist Leninists view the constitution as a fundamental law and as an instrument of force 88 The constitution is the source of law and legality 89 Unlike in liberal democracies the Marxist Leninist constitution is not a framework to limit the power of the state 89 To the contrary a Marxist Leninist constitution seeks to empower the state believing the state to be an organ of class domination and law to be the expression of the interests of the dominant class 89 Marxist Leninists believe that all national constitutions do this to ensure that countries can strengthen and enforce their own class system 89 In this instance it means that Marxist Leninists conceive of constitutions as a tool to defend the socialist nature of the state and attack its enemies 89 This contrasts with the liberal conception of constitutionalism that law rather than men is supreme 90 Unlike the relatively constant and in some instances permanently fixed nature of democratic constitutions a Marxist Leninist constitution is ever changing 91 Andrey Vyshinsky a Procurator General of the Soviet Union during the 1930s notes that the Soviet constitutions represent the total of the historical path along which the Soviet state has travelled At the same time they are the legislative basis of subsequent development of state life 91 That is the constitution sums up what has already been achieved 92 This belief is also shared by the Chinese Communist Party which argued that the Chinese Constitution blazes a path for China recording what has been won in China and what is yet to be conquered 91 A constitution in a communist state has an end 93 The preamble of the 1954 Chinese constitution outlines the historical tasks of the Chinese communists step by step to bring about the socialist industrialisation of the country and step by step to accomplish the socialist transformation of agriculture handicraft and capitalist industry and commerce 93 In communist states the constitution was a tool to analyse the development of society 94 The Marxist Leninist party in question would have to study the correlation of forces literally society s class structure before enacting changes 94 Several terms were coined for different developmental states by Marxist Leninist legal theorists including new democracy people s democracy and the primary stage of socialism 92 This is also why amendments to constitutions are not enough and major societal changes need a novel constitution which corresponds with the reality of the new class structure 92 With Nikita Khrushchev s repudiation of Stalin s practices in the Secret Speech and the Chinese Communist Party s repudiation of certain Maoist policies Marxist Leninist legal theories began to emphasise the formal formerly neglected constitutional order 95 Deng Xiaoping not long after Chairman Mao Zedong s death noted that d emocracy has to be institutionalised and written into law to make sure that institutions and laws do not change whenever the leadership changes or whenever the leaders change their views The trouble now is that our legal system is incomplete Very often what leaders say is taken as law and anyone who disagrees is called a lawbreaker 96 In 1986 Li Buyan wrote that the policies of the Party usually are regulations and calls which to a certain extent are only principles The law is different it is rigorously standardised It explicitly and concretely stipulates what the people should can or cannot do 97 These legal developments were echoed in later years in Cuba Laos and Vietnam This has led to the development of the communist concept of socialist rule of law which runs parallel to and is distinct from the liberal term of the same name 98 In the last years this emphasis on the constitution as both a legal document and a paper which documents society s development has been noted by the Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping who stated in 2013 that n o organisation or individual has the privilege to overstep the Constitution and law 99 Constitutional supervision After Soviet Union general secretary Joseph Stalin s death several communist states have experimented with some sort of constitutional supervision 100 These organs were designed to safeguard the supreme power of the legislature from circumvention by political leaders 100 Romania was the first to experiment with constitutional supervision when it established a Constitutional Committee in 1965 100 It was elected by the legislature and leading jurists sat in the committee but it was only empowered to advise the legislature 100 Keith Hand has commented that i t was not an effective institution in practice being unable to prevent Nicolae Ceausescu s emasculation of Romania s Great National Assembly after the inauguration of the July Theses 100 Hungary and Poland experimented with constitutional supervision in the early 1980s 100 Hungary established the Council of Constitutional Law which was elected by the legislature and consisted of several leading jurists 100 It was empowered to review the constitutionality and legality of statutes administrative regulations and other normative documents however if the agency in question failed to heed its advice it needed to petition the legislature 100 In 1989 the Soviets established the Constitutional Supervision Committee which was subordinate only to the USSR constitution 101 It was empowered to review the constitutionality and legality of a range of state acts of the USSR and its republics Its jurisdiction included laws passed by the legislature decrees of the Supreme Soviet s Presidium union republic constitutions and laws some central administrative decrees Supreme Court explanations and other central normative documents 101 If the committee deemed the legislature to have breached legality the legislature was obliged to discuss the issue but it could reject it if more than two thirds voted against the findings of the Constitutional Supervision Committee 101 While it was constitutionally powerful it lacked enforcement powers it was often ignored and it failed to defend the constitution during the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev 102 The Chinese leadership has argued against establishing any corresponding constitutional supervisory committee due to their association with the failed communist states of Europe 103 None of the surviving communist states China Cuba Laos and Vietnam have experimented with constitutional supervision committees or constitutional supervision of any kind outside the existing framework until 2018 when the Constitution and Law Committee of the National People s Congress was bestowed the right of constitutional review 104 Government as the highest administrative agency of state power The government of communist states is usually defined as the executive organ of the highest state organ of power or as the highest administrative agency of state power 105 It functions as the executive organ of the legislature 105 This model has been introduced with variations in all communist states 78 For most of its existence the Soviet government was known as the Council of Ministers 105 and identical names were used for the governments of Albania East Germany Hungary Poland and Romania 106 It was independent of the other central agencies such as the legislature and its standing committee but the Supreme Soviet was empowered to decide on all questions it wished 107 The Soviet government was responsible to the legislature and in between sessions of the legislature it reported to the legislature s standing committee 108 The standing committee could reorganise and hold the Soviet government accountable but it could not instruct the government 108 In communist states the government was responsible for the overall economic system public order foreign relations and defense 108 The Soviet model was more or less identically implemented in Bulgaria Czechoslovakia East Germany Hungary Poland and Romania with few exceptions 106 One exception was Czechoslovakia where it had a president and not a collective head of state 109 Another exception was in Bulgaria where the State Council was empowered to instruct the Council of Ministers 110 Judicial organs and socialist law Main article Socialist law In every communist state the judicial and procuratorial bodies are organs of the legislature For instance China s Supreme People s Court is the legislative organ of governance that manages the judicial system in the name of the National People s Congress and through it the Chinese Communist Party 111 These bodies are responsible to and report on their work to the legislature For instance the Prosecutor General of Vietnam s Supreme People s Procuracy delivers an annual Work Report to the legislature the National Assembly every year Moreover all communist states have been established in countries with a civil law system 112 The countries of Eastern Europe had formally been governed by the Austro Hungarian Empire German Empire and Russian Empire all of whom had a civil law legal system 112 Cuba had a civil law system imposed on them by Spain while China introduced civil law to overlay with Confucian elements and Vietnam used French law 112 Since the establishment of the Soviet Union there has been a scholarly debate on whether socialist law is a separate legal system or is a part of the civil law tradition 112 Legal scholar Rene David wrote that the socialist legal system possesses in relation to our French law particular features that give it a complete originality to the extent that it is no longer possible to connect it like the former Russian law to the system of Roman law 113 Similarly Christoper Osakwe concludes that socialist law is an autonomous legal system to be essentially distinguished from the other contemporary families of law 114 Proponents of socialist law as a separate legal system have identified the following features 114 The socialist law is to disappear with the withering away of the state 114 The rule of the Marxist Leninist party 114 The socialist law is subordinate and reflects changes to the economic order the absorption of private law by public law 114 The socialist law has a religious character 115 The socialist law is prerogative rather than normative 115 Legal officials argue differently for their cases compared to Westerners 116 For instance t he predominant view among Soviet jurists in the 1920s was that Soviet law of that period was Western style law appropriate for a Soviet economy that remained capitalist to a significant degree 116 This changed with the introduction of the command economy and the term socialist law was conceived to reflect this in the 1930s 116 Hungarian legal theorist Imre Szabo acknowledged similarities between socialist law and civil law but he noted that four basic types of law may be distinguished the laws of the slave feudal capitalist and socialist societies 117 Using the Marxist theory of historical materialism Szabo argues that socialist law cannot belong to the same law family since the material structure is different from the capitalist countries as their superstructure state has to reflect these differences 118 In other words law is a tool by the ruling class to govern 118 As Rene David notes socialist jurists isolate their law to put into another category a reprobate category the Romanist laws and the common law is the fact that they reason less as jurists and more as philosophers and Marxists it is in taking a not strictly legal viewpoint that they affirm the originality of their socialist law 119 However some socialist legal theorists such as Romanian jurist Victor Zlatescu differentiated between type of law and family of law According to Zlatescu t he distinction between the law of the socialist countries and the law of the capitalist countries is not of the same nature as the difference between Roman German law and the common law for example Socialist law is not a third family among the others as in certain writings of Western comparatists 120 In other words socialist law is civil law but it is a different type of law for a different society 120 Yugoslav jurist Borislav Blagojevic sr noted that a great number of legal institutions and legal relations remain the same in socialist law further stating that it is necessary and justified to put them to use if they are in conformity with the corresponding interests of the ruling class in the state in question 121 Importantly socialist law had retained civil law institutions methodology and organisation 122 This can be discerned by the fact that East Germany retained the 1896 German civil code until 1976 while Poland used existing Austrian French German and Russian civil codes until adoption of its own civil code in 1964 123 Scholar John Quigley wrote that s ocialist law retains the inquisitorial style of trial law creation predominantly by legislatures rather than courts and a significant role for legal scholarship in construing codes 122 Military Control Communist states have established two types of civil military systems The armed forces of most socialist states have historically been state institutions based on the Soviet model 124 but in China Laos North Korea and Vietnam the armed forces are party state institutions However several differences exist between the statist Soviet and the party state models China In the Soviet model the Soviet armed forces was led by the Council of Defense an organ formed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union while the Council of Ministers was responsible for formulating defence policies 125 The party leader was ex officio the Chairman of the Council of Defense 125 Below the Council of Defense there was the Main Military Council which was responsible for the strategic direction and leadership of the Soviet armed forces 125 The working organ of the Council of Defense was the General Staff tasked with analysing military and political situations as they developed 126 The party controlled the armed forces through the Main Political Directorate MPD of the Ministry of Defense a state organ that functioned with the authority of a department of the CPSU Central Committee 127 The MPD organised political indoctrination and created political control mechanisms at the centre to the company level in the field 128 Formally the MPD was responsible for organising party and Komsomol organs as well as subordinate organs within the armed forces ensuring that the party and state retain control over the armed forces evaluates the political performance of officers supervising the ideological content of the military press and supervising the political military training institutes and their ideological content 128 The head of the MPD was ranked fourth in military protocol but it was not a member of the Council of Defense 129 The Administrative Organs Department of the CPSU Central Committee was responsible for implementing the party personnel policies and supervised the KGB the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense 130 In the Chinese party state model the People s Liberation Army PLA is a party institution 131 In the preamble of the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party it is stated The Communist Party of China CPC shall uphold its absolute leadership over the People s Liberation Army and other people s armed forces 131 The PLA carries out its work in accordance with the instructions of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party 132 Mao Zedong described the PLA s institutional situation as follows Every communist must grasp the truth Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun Our principle is that the party commands the gun and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party 133 The Central Military Commission CMC is both an organ of the state and the party it is an organ of the CCP Central Committee and an organ of the national legislature the National People s Congress 134 The CCP General Secretary is ex officio party CMC Chairman and the President of the People s Republic of China is by right state CMC Chairman 134 The composition of the party CMC and the state CMC are identical 134 The CMC is responsible for the command of the PLA and determines national defence policies 134 fifteen departments report directly to the CMC and that are responsible for everything from political work to administration of the PLA 135 Of significance is that the CMC eclipses by far the prerogatives of the CPSU Administrative Organs Department while the Chinese counterpart to the Main Political Directorate supervises not only the military but also intelligence the security services and counterespionage work 136 Representation Unlike in liberal democracies active military personnel are members and partake in civilian institutions of governance 137 This is the case in all communist states 137 The Communist Party of Vietnam CPV has elected at least one active military figure to its CPV Politburo since 1986 138 In the 1986 2006 period active military figures sitting in the CPV Central Committee stood at an average of 9 2 per cent 138 Military figures are also represented in the national legislature the National Assembly and other representative institutions 138 In China the two CMC vice chairmen have had by right office seats in the CCP Politburo since 1987 139 Ruling party Leading role A Marxist Leninist party has led every communist state 71 This party seeks to represent and articulate the interests of the classes exploited by capitalism 71 It seeks to lead the exploited classes to achieve communism 71 However the party cannot be identified with the exploited class in general 71 Its membership comprises members with advanced consciousness above sectional interests 71 Therefore the party represents the advanced section of the exploited classes and through them leads the exploited classes by interpreting the universal laws governing human history towards communism 140 In Foundations of Leninism 1924 Joseph Stalin wrote that the proletariat working class needs the Party first of all as its General Staff which it must have for the successful seizure of power But the proletariat needs the Party not only to achieve the class dictatorship it needs it still more to maintain the class dictatorship 141 The current Constitution of Vietnam states in Article 4 that t he Communist Party of Vietnam the vanguard of the Vietnamese working class simultaneously the vanguard of the toiling people and of the Vietnamese nation the faithful representative of the interests of the working class the toiling people and the whole nation acting upon the Marxist Leninist doctrine and Ho Chi Minh s thought is the leading force of the state and society 142 In a similar form the Chinese Communist Party CCP describes itself as the vanguard of the Chinese working class the Chinese people and the Chinese nation 143 As noted by both communist parties the ruling parties of communist states are vanguard parties Vladimir Lenin theorised that vanguard parties were capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism of directing and organising the new system of being the teacher the guide the leader of all the working and exploited people in organising their social life without the bourgeoisie 144 This idea eventually evolved into the concept of the party s leading role in leading the state 144 as seen in the CCP s self description and Vietnam s constitution 142 143 Internal organisation The Marxist Leninist governing party organises itself around the principle of democratic centralism and through it the state too 145 It means that all directing bodies of the party from top to bottom shall be elected that party bodies shall give periodical accounts of their activities to their respective party organisations that there shall be strict party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority and that all decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all party members 145 The highest organ of a Marxist Leninist governing party is the party congress 146 The congress elects the central committee and either an auditing commission and a control commission or both although not always 146 The central committee is the party s highest decision making organ in between party congresses and elects a politburo and a secretariat amongst its members and the party s leader 146 When the central committee is not in session the politburo is the highest decision making organ of the party and the secretariat is the highest administrative organ 146 In certain parties either the central committee or the politburo elects amongst its members a standing committee of the politburo which acts as the highest decision making organ in between sessions of the politburo central committee and the Congress This leadership structure is identical all the way down to the primary party organisation of the ruling party 146 Economic systemFrom reading their works many followers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels drew the idea that the socialist economy would be based on planning and not market mechanisms 147 These ideas later developed into believing that planning was superior to the market mechanism 148 Upon seizing power the Bolsheviks began advocating a national state planning system 148 The 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party Bolsheviks resolved to institute the maximum centralisation of production simultaneously striving to establish a unified economic plan 148 The Gosplan the State Planning Commission the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy and other central planning organs were established during the 1920s in the era of the New Economic Policy 149 On introducing the planning system it became a common belief in the international communist movement that the Soviet planning system was a more advanced form of economic organisation than capitalism 150 This led to the system being introduced voluntarily in countries such as China Cuba and Vietnam and in some cases imposed by the Soviet Union 150 In communist states the state planning system had five main characteristics 151 Firstly except for field consumption and employment practically all decisions were centralized at the top 151 Secondly the system was hierarchical the centre formulated a plan that was sent down to the level below which would imitate the process and send the plan further down the pyramid 151 Thirdly the plans were binding in nature i e everyone had to follow and meet the goals outlined in them 151 Fourthly the predominance of calculating in physical terms to ensure planned allocation of commodities were not incompatible with planned production 151 Finally money played a passive role within the state sector since the planners focused on physical allocation 151 According to Michael Ellman in a centrally planned economy the state owns the land and all other natural resources and all characteristics of the traditional model the enterprises and their productive assets Collective ownership e g the property of collective farms also exists but plays a subsidiary role and is expected to be temporary 151 The private ownership of the means of production still exists although it plays a somewhat more minor role 152 Since the class struggle in capitalism is caused by the division between owners of the means of production and the workers who sell their labour state ownership defined as the property of the people in these systems is considered as a tool to end the class struggle and empower the working class 153 AnalysisSee also Criticism of communist party rule and Postsocialism Countries such as the Soviet Union and China were criticised by Western authors and organisations based on the lack of the representative nature of multi party liberal democracy 154 155 in addition to several other areas where socialist society and Western societies differed Socialist societies were commonly characterised by state ownership or social ownership of the means of production either through administration through communist party organisations democratically elected councils and communes and co operative structures in opposition to the liberal democratic capitalist free market paradigm of management ownership and control by corporations and private individuals 156 Communist states have also been criticised for the influence and outreach of their respective ruling parties on society in addition to lack of recognition for some Western legal rights and liberties such as the right to own property and the restriction of the right to free speech 157 The early economic development policies of communist states have been criticised for focusing primarily on the development of heavy industry citation needed Soviet advocates and socialists responded to criticism by highlighting the ideological differences in the concept of freedom McFarland and Ageyev noted that Marxist Leninist norms disparaged laissez faire individualism as when housing is determined by one s ability to pay also condemning wide variations in personal wealth as the West has not Instead Soviet ideals emphasized equality free education and medical care little disparity in housing or salaries and so forth 158 When asked to comment on the claim that former citizens of communist states enjoy increased freedoms Heinz Kessler former East German Minister of National Defence replied Millions of people in Eastern Europe are now free from employment free from safe streets free from health care free from social security 159 In his analysis of states run under Marxist Leninist ideology economist Michael Ellman of the University of Amsterdam notes that such states compared favorably with Western states in some health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy 160 A 1986 study published in the American Journal of Public Health and a 1992 study published in International Journal of Health Services stated respectively that between countries at similar levels of economic development socialist countries showed more favorable PQL physical quality of life outcomes and that socialism was for the most part more successful than capitalism in improving the health conditions of the world s populations 161 162 Philipp Ther posits that there was an increase in the standard of living throughout Eastern Bloc countries as the result of modernisation programs under communist governments 163 Similarly Amartya Sen s own analysis of international comparisons of life expectancy found that several Marxist Leninist states made significant gains and commented one thought that is bound to occur is that communism is good for poverty removal 164 The dissolution of the Soviet Union was followed by a rapid increase in poverty 165 166 167 crime 168 169 corruption 170 171 unemployment 172 homelessness 173 174 rates of disease 175 176 177 infant mortality domestic violence 178 and income inequality 179 along with decreases in calorie intake life expectancy adult literacy and income 180 Memory Monuments to the victims of communist states exist in almost all the capitals of Eastern Europe and there are several museums documenting communist rule such as the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Lithuania the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in Riga and the House of Terror in Budapest all three of which also document Nazi rule 181 182 In Washington D C a bronze statue based upon the 1989 Tiananmen Square Goddess of Democracy sculpture was dedicated as the Victims of Communism Memorial in 2007 having been authorized by the United States Congress in 1993 183 184 The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation plans to build an International Museum on Communism in Washington As of 2008 Russia contained 627 memorials and memorial plaques dedicated to victims of the communist states most of which were created by private citizens and did not have a national monument or a national museum 185 The Wall of Grief in Moscow inaugurated in October 2017 is Russia s first monument for victims of political persecution by Stalin during the country s Soviet era 186 In 2017 Canada s National Capital Commission approved the design for a memorial to the victims of communism to be built at the Garden of the Provinces and Territories in Ottawa 187 On 23 August 2018 Estonia s Victims of Communism 1940 1991 Memorial was inaugurated in Tallinn by President Kersti Kaljulaid 188 The memorial construction was financed by the state and is managed by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory 189 The opening ceremony was chosen to coincide with the official European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism 190 According to anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee efforts to institutionalize the victims of communism narrative or the moral equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust race murder and the victims of communism class murder and in particular the recent push at the beginning of the global financial crisis for commemoration of the latter in Europe can be seen as the response by economic and political elites to fears of a leftist resurgence in the face of devastated economies and extreme inequalities in both the East and West as the result of the excesses of neoliberal capitalism Ghodsee argues that any discussion of the achievements under communist states including literacy education women s rights and social security is usually silenced and any discourse on the subject of communism is focused almost exclusively on Stalin s crimes and the double genocide theory 191 According to Laure Neumayer this is used as an anti communist narrative based on a series of categories and figures to denounce Communist state violence qualified as Communist crimes red genocide or classicide and to honour persecuted individuals presented alternatively as victims of Communism and heroes of anti totalitarian resistance 192 See also nbsp Communism portal nbsp Socialism portal nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Communist countries List of socialist states List of anarchist communities Capitalist state List of anti capitalist and communist parties with national parliamentary representation List of communist parties Marxism Leninism Maoism StalinismReferences Bottomore T B 1991 A Dictionary of Marxist Thought Wiley Blackwell p 54 Cooke Chris ed 1998 Dictionary of Historical Terms 2nd ed pp 221 222 305 Lee Grace Spring 2003 The Political Philosophy of Juche v 3 n 1 Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs Quote The DPRK claims that juche is Kim Il Sung s creative application of Marxist Leninist principle to the modern political realities in North Korea Atsuhito Isozaki 21 June 2021 A Revival of North Korean Communism The rhetoric is there But what does it mean The Diplomat Retrieved 2 December 2022 In his closing address at the Conference of Cell Secretaries of the Workers Party of Korea in late April Kim mentioned the word communism six times His recent claim that North Korea aims to become a communist utopia is a notable change in rhetoric Ball Terence Dagger Richard eds 2019 1999 Communism Encyclopaedia Britannica revised ed Retrieved 10 June 2020 Webb Sidney Webb Beatrice 1935 Soviet Communism A New Civilisation London Longmans Sloan Pat 1937 Soviet Democracy London Left Book Club Victor Gollancz Ltd Farber Samuel 1992 Before Stalinism The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy Studies in Soviet Thought 44 3 229 230 Getzler Israel 2002 1982 Kronstadt 1917 1921 The Fate of a Soviet Democracy Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521894425 Busky Donald F 20 July 2000 Democratic Socialism A Global Survey Praeger p 9 ISBN 978 0275968861 In a modern sense of the word communism refers to the ideology of Marxism Leninism a b Wilczynski 2008 p 21 Contrary to Western usage these countries describe themselves as Socialist not Communist The second stage Marx s higher phase or Communism is to be marked by an age of plenty distribution according to needs not work the absence of money and the market mechanism the disappearance of the last vestiges of capitalism and the ultimate whithering away of the State Steele 1999 p 45 Among Western journalists the term Communist came to refer exclusively to regimes and movements associated with the Communist International and its offspring regimes which insisted that they were not communist but socialist and movements which were barely communist in any sense at all Rosser amp Rosser 2003 p 14 Ironically the ideological father of communism Karl Marx claimed that communism entailed the withering away of the state The dictatorship of the proletariat was to be a strictly temporary phenomenon Well aware of this the Soviet Communists never claimed to have achieved communism always labeling their own system socialist rather than communist and viewing their system as in transition to communism Williams Raymond 1983 Socialism Keywords A vocabulary of culture and society revised edition Oxford University Press p 289 ISBN 978 0 19 520469 8 The decisive distinction between socialist and communist as in one sense these terms are now ordinarily used came with the renaming in 1918 of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Bolsheviks as the All Russian Communist Party Bolsheviks From that time on a distinction of socialist from communist often with supporting definitions such as social democrat or democratic socialist became widely current although it is significant that all communist parties in line with earlier usage continued to describe themselves as socialist and dedicated to socialism Nation R Craig 1992 Black Earth Red Star A History of Soviet Security Policy 1917 1991 Cornell University Press pp 85 6 ISBN 978 0801480072 Archived from the original on 1 August 2019 Retrieved 19 December 2014 via Google Books Barrett William 1 April 1978 Capitalism Socialism and Democracy A Symposium Commentary Retrieved 14 June 2020 If we were to extend the definition of socialism to include Labor Britain or socialist Sweden there would be no difficulty in refuting the connection between capitalism and democracy Heilbroner Robert L Winter 1991 From Sweden to Socialism A Small Symposium on Big Questions Dissident Barkan Joanne Brand Horst Cohen Mitchell Coser Lewis Denitch Bogdan Feher Ferenc Heller Agnes Horvat Branko Tyler Gus pp 96 110 Retrieved 17 April 2020 Kendall Diana 2011 Sociology in Our Time The Essentials Cengage Learning pp 125 127 ISBN 9781111305505 Sweden Great Britain and France have mixed economies sometimes referred to as democratic socialism an economic and political system that combines private ownership of some of the means of production governmental distribution of some essential goods and services and free elections For example government ownership in Sweden is limited primarily to railroads mineral resources a public bank and liquor and tobacco operations Li He 2015 Political Thought and China s Transformation Ideas Shaping Reform in Post Mao China Springer pp 60 69 ISBN 9781137427816 The scholars in camp of democratic socialism believe that China should draw on the Sweden experience which is suitable not only for the West but also for China In the post Mao China the Chinese intellectuals are confronted with a variety of models The liberals favor the American model and share the view that the Soviet model has become archaic and should be totally abandoned Meanwhile democratic socialism in Sweden provided an alternative model Its sustained economic development and extensive welfare programs fascinated many Numerous scholars within the democratic socialist camp argue that China should model itself politically and economically on Sweden which is viewed as more genuinely socialist than China There is a growing consensus among them that in the Nordic countries the welfare state has been extraordinarily successful in eliminating poverty Morgan W John 2001 Marxism Leninism The Ideology of Twentieth Century Communism In Wright James D ed International Encyclopedia of the Social amp Behavioral Sciences 2nd ed Oxford Elsevier pp 657 662 Andrai Charles F 1994 Comparative Political Systems Policy Performance and Social Change Armonk New York M E Sharpe pp 24 25 VN Embassy Constitution of 1992 Archived 9 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine Full Text From the Preamble On 2 July 1976 the National Assembly of reunified Vietnam decided to change the country s name to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the country entered a period of transition to socialism strove for national construction and unyieldingly defended its frontiers while fulfilling its internationalist duty Cubanet Constitution of the Republic of Cuba 1992 Archived 9 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine Full Text From Article 5 The Communist Party of Cuba a follower of Marti s ideas and of Marxism Leninism and the organised vanguard of the Cuban nation is the highest leading force of society and of the state which organises and guides the common effort toward the goals of the construction of socialism and the progress toward a communist society a b Furtak 1987 pp 8 9 Furtak 1987 p 12 Furtak 1987 p 13 a b Furtak 1987 p 14 Furtak 1987 pp 16 17 Furtak 1987 pp 18 19 a b c d e Guins 1950 p 187 a b Guins 1950 pp 187 188 Imam 1986 p 383 Lenin Vladimir 21 April 1921 The Tax in Kind Marxists Internet Archive Retrieved 15 June 2020 a b Guins 1950 p 188 Guins 1950 pp 188 189 a b c d Tang 1980 p 43 a b Tang 1980 p 41 Tang 1980 pp 42 43 a b c Tang 1980 p 42 Skilling 1961 p 16 a b c Skilling 1961 p 21 Aslund Anders 2009 How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy Peterson 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Washington Post Retrieved 19 November 2020 Satter David 2011 It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway Russia and the Communist Past Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 17842 5 Wall of Grief Putin opens first Soviet victims memorial BBC News 30 October 2017 Retrieved 19 November 2020 Victims of communism monument could be unveiled next spring CBC News 19 March 2018 Retrieved 19 November 2020 Estonia s Victims of Communism 1940 1991 Kommunismiohvrite memoriaal 23 August 2018 2018 Retrieved 19 November 2020 Cornerstone laid for new memorial for victims of communist crimes ERR News 4 May 2018 Retrieved 19 November 2020 Victims of Communism Memorial opened in Tallinn ERR News 24 August 2018 Retrieved 19 November 2020 Ghodsee Kristen Fall 2014 A Tale of Two Totalitarianisms The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism History of the Present A Journal of Critical History 4 2 115 142 doi 10 5406 historypresent 4 2 0115 JSTOR 10 5406 historypresent 4 2 0115 Neumayer Laure 2018 The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War London Routledge ISBN 9781351141741 BibliographyGeneral References for when the individuals were elected to the office of CCP leader the name of the offices and when they established and were abolished are found below 19th National Congress 2017 Constitution of the Communist Party of China Chinese Communist Party Gungwu Wang 2012 China Development and Governance World Scientific Publishing Company pp 12 13 ISBN 978 9814425841 Articles and journal entries Bui T 2016 Constitutionalizing Single Party Leadership in Vietnam Dilemmas of Reform PDF Asian Journal of Comparative Law Cambridge University Press 11 2 219 234 doi 10 1017 asjcl 2016 22 Chang Yu nan August 1956 The Chinese Communist State System Under the Constitution of 1954 The Journal of Politics The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association 18 3 520 546 doi 10 2307 2127261 JSTOR 2127261 S2CID 154446161 Guins George July 1950 Law Does not Wither Away in the Soviet Union The Russian Review Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review 9 3 187 204 doi 10 2307 125763 JSTOR 125763 Hand Keith 2016 An Assessment of Socialist Constitutional Supervision Models and Prospects for a Constitutional Supervision Committee in China The Constitution as Commander Legal Studies Research Paper Series University of California 150 SSRN 2624663 Hazard John August 1975 Soviet Model for Marxian Socialist Constitutions Cornell Law Review Cornell University 60 6 109 118 Imam Zafar July September 1986 The Theory of the Soviet State Today The Indian Journal of Political Science Indian Political Science Association 47 3 382 398 JSTOR 41855253 Keith Richard March 1991 Chinese Politics and the New Theory of Rule of Law The China Quarterly Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies 125 125 109 118 doi 10 1017 S0305741000030320 JSTOR 654479 S2CID 154980279 Kokoshin Andrey October 2016 2015 Military Reform in the People s Republic of China PDF Belfer Center Paper Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Kramer Mark N January 1985 Civil Military Relations in the Warsaw Pact The East European Component International Affairs Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 61 1 45 66 doi 10 2307 2619779 JSTOR 2619779 Miller Alice January 2018 The 19th Central Committee Politburo PDF China Leadership Monitor Hoover Institute 55 Mulvenon James January 2018 The Cult of Xi and the Rise of the CMC Chairman Responsibility System PDF China Leadership Monitor Hoover Institute 55 Poelzer Greg 1989 An Analysis of Grenada as a Socialist Oriented State Thesis Carleton University Skilling H Gordon January 1961 People s Democracy and the Socialist Revolution A Case Study in Communist Scholarship Part I Soviet Studies Vol 12 no 3 Taylor amp Francis pp 241 262 Snyder Stanley 1987 Soviet Troop Control and the Power Distribution Thesis Naval Postgraduate School hdl 10945 22490 National Foreign Assessment Center 1980 Political Control of the Soviet Armed Forces PDF Report Central Intelligence Agency Archived from the original PDF on 21 January 2017 Steiner H Arthur 1951 The Role of the Chinese Communist Party The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 277 56 66 doi 10 1177 000271625127700107 ISSN 0002 7162 JSTOR 1030252 S2CID 145485494 Stone Sweet Alec Bu Chong Zhuo Ding 25 May 2023 Breaching the Taboo Constitutional Dimensions of the New Chinese Civil Code Asian Journal of Comparative Law 1 26 doi 10 1017 asjcl 2023 18 S2CID 258915998 Tang Peter S H February 1980 The Soviet Chinese and Albanian Constitutions Ideological Divergence and Institutionalized Confrontation Studies in Soviet Thought Springer Publishing 21 1 39 58 doi 10 1007 BF00832025 JSTOR 20098938 pdf S2CID 144486393 Thayer Carlyle 2008 Military Politics in Contemporary Vietnam PDF In Mietzner Marcus ed The Political Resurgence of the Military in Southeast Asia Conflict and Leadership Routledge ISBN 9780415460354 Quigley John Autumn 1989 Socialist Law and the Civil Law Tradition PDF The American Journal of Comparative Law Oxford University Press 37 4 781 808 doi 10 2307 840224 JSTOR 840224 Archived from the original PDF on 17 May 2018 Retrieved 26 December 2019 Books Blasko Dennis 2006 The Chinese Army Today Tradition and Transformation for the 21st Century Routledge ISBN 9781135988777 Dimitrov Vessellin 2006 Bulgaria A Core Against the Odds In Dimitrov Vessellin Goetz H Klaus Wollmann Hellmut eds Governing after Communism Institutions and Policymaking 2nd ed Martinus Nijhoff Publishers pp 159 203 ISBN 9780742540095 Ellman Michael 2014 Socialist Planning 3rd ed Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781107427327 Evans Daniel 1993 Soviet Marxism Leninism The Decline of an Ideology ABC CLIO ISBN 9780275947637 Feldbrugge F J M 1985 Council of Ministers In Feldbrugge F J M Van den Berg G P Simons William B eds Encyclopedia of Soviet Law 2nd ed Martinus Nijhoff Publishers pp 202 204 ISBN 1349060860 Furtak Robert K 1987 The Political Systems of the Socialist States New York City St Martin s Press ISBN 9780312625276 Gardner John Schopflin George White Stephen 1987 Communist Political Systems 2nd ed Macmillan Education ISBN 0 333 44108 7 Harding Neil 1981 What Does It Mean to Call a Regime Marxist In Szajkowski Bogdan ed Marxist Governments Vol 1 Palgrave Macmillan pp 22 33 ISBN 978 0 333 25704 3 Hazard John 1985 Constitutional Law In Feldbrugge F J M Van den Berg G P Simons William B eds Encyclopedia of Soviet Law 2nd ed Martinus Nijhoff Publishers pp 162 163 ISBN 1349060860 Li Lin 2017 Building the Rule of Law in China Elsevier ISBN 9780128119303 Loeber Dietrich Andre 1984 On the Status of the CPSU within the Soviet Legal System In Simons William White Stephen eds The Party Statutes of the Communist World Martinus Nijhoff Publishers pp 1 22 ISBN 9789024729753 Nelson Daniel 1982 Communist Legislatures and Communist Politics In Nelson Daniel White Stephen eds Communist Legislatures in Comparative Perspective Vol 1 Palgrave Macmillan pp 1 13 ISBN 1349060860 Rosser Barkley Rosser Marianne 2003 Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy MIT Press ISBN 978 0262182348 Staar Richard 1988 Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe 4th ed Hoover Press ISBN 9780817976934 Steele David Ramsay September 1999 From Marx to Mises Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation Open Court ISBN 978 0875484495 Triska Jan ed 1968 Constitution of the Communist Party States Hoover Institution Publications ISBN 978 0817917012 Tung W L 2012 The Political Institutions of Modern China 2nd ed Springer Science amp Business Media ISBN 9789401034432 Wilczynski J 2008 The Economics of Socialism after World War Two 1945 1990 Aldine Transaction ISBN 9780202362281 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Communist state amp 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