The Bolsheviks, also known in English as the Bolshevists, were a radical, far-left, and revolutionary Marxist faction founded by Vladimir Lenin that split from the Menshevik faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898, at its Second Party Congress in 1903.
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and by some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and Bolshevik–Leninist, a follower of Marx, Engels, and of 3L: Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favor of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists also criticize the bureaucracy that developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Workers' Struggle is the name by which the French Trotskyist political party Communist Union is usually known, after the name of its weekly paper. Arlette Laguiller has been its spokeswoman since 1973 and ran in each presidential election until 2012, when Nathalie Arthaud was the candidate. Robert Barcia (Hardy) was its founder and central leader. Lutte Ouvrière is a member of the Internationalist Communist Union. It emphasises workplace activity and has been critical of such recent phenomena as alter-globalization.
The Communist Party of Brazil is a political party in Brazil. The PCdoB officially adheres to Marxist–Leninist theory. It has national reach and deep penetration in the trade union and students movements, but little representation in elected positions.
The Brazilian Communist Party, originally the Communist Party of Brazil, is a political party in Brazil founded in 1922 which makes the disputed claim of being the oldest political party still active in the nation. It played an important role in the country's 20th-century history despite the relatively small number of members. A factional dispute led to the formation of PCdoB in the 1960s, though both communist parties were united in opposition to the Brazilian military government that ruled from 1964 to 1985. But with the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism circa 1990, the party lost power and international support. An internal coup in 1992 divided the party and formed a new party, called Socialist People's Party, using the former identification number of the PCB, 23. This party has since moved towards the centre and now goes by the name Cidadania.
The New Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Britain. The origins of the NCP lie in the Communist Party of Great Britain from which it split in 1977. The organisation takes an anti-revisionist stance on Marxist-Leninism and is opposed to Eurocommunism. After the fall of the Soviet Union the party was one of two original British signatories to the Pyongyang Declaration in 1992. It publishes a newspaper named The New Worker.
The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia was a communist political party active in Catalonia between 1936 and 1997. It was the Catalan branch of the Communist Party of Spain and the only party not from a sovereign state to be a full member of the Third International.
The Communist Party of Germany (Opposition), generally abbreviated as KPO or KPD(O), was a communist opposition organisation established at the end of 1928 and maintaining its existence until 1939 or 1940. After the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to power in January 1933, the KPO existed only as an illegal and underground organization. The group initially sought to modify, later to replace, the mainstream Communist Party of Germany (KPD) headed by Ernst Thälmann. The KPO was the first national section affiliated to the International Communist Opposition (ICO).
Vicente Lombardo Toledano was one of the foremost Mexican labor leaders of the 20th century, called "the dean of Mexican Marxism [and] the best-known link between Mexico and the international world of Marxism and socialism." In 1936 he founded the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party founded by President Lázaro Cárdenas, the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). After he was purged from the union after World War II, Lombardo Toledano co-founded the political party "Partido Popular" along with Narciso Bassols, which later became known as the Partido Popular Socialista.
Fidel Velázquez Sánchez was the preeminent Mexican union leader of the 20th century. In 1936 he was one of the original founders, along with Vicente Lombardo Toledano, of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He replaced Lombardo as the leader of the CTM in 1941, then expelled him from it in 1948. He led the CTM, which grew increasingly corrupt and conservative, until his death in 1997.
The Workers' Party of North Korea was a communist party in North Korea from 1946 to 1949 and was a predecessor of the current Workers' Party of Korea. It was founded at a congress on 28–30 August 1946, by the merger of the northern branch of the Communist Party of Korea and the New People's Party of Korea. Kim Tu-bong, the leader of the New People's Party, was elected Chairman of the party. Vice Chairmen of the party were Chu Yong-ha and Kim Il-sung. At the time of establishment, the party is believed to have had about 366,000 members organized in around 12,000 party cells.
Communist Party of Western Ukraine was a political party in eastern interwar Poland. Until 1923 it was known as the Communist Party of Eastern Galicia.
The Communist movement in Korea emerged as a political movement in the early 20th century. Although the movement had a minor role in pre-war politics, the division between the communist North Korea and the anti-communist South Korea came to dominate Korean political life in the post-World War II era. North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, continues to be a Juchesocialist state under the rule of the Workers' Party of Korea. In South Korea, the National Security Law has been used to criminalize advocacy of communism and groups suspected of alignment with North Korea. Due to end of economic aid from Soviet Union after its dissolution in 1991 and impractical ideological application of Stalinist policies in North Korea over years of economic slowdown in the 1980s and receding during the 1990s, North Korea replaced Communism with the Juche ideology in its 1992 and 1998 constitutional revisions for the personality cult of Kim's family dictatorship and opening of North Korean market economy reform, though it still retains a command economy with complete state control of industry and agriculture. North Korea maintains collectivized farms and state-funded education and healthcare.
The Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat was a communist political party in Mexico, founded in March 1964 by members of the 'Antonio Gramsci' cell who were expelled from the Bolshevik Communist Party. It was led by Guillermo Rousset Banda.
Revolutionary Action Party was a leftist political party in Guatemala during the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution. Formed in 1945, the party went through a series of mergers and fractures before dissolving in 1954 after the United States-backed coup d'état.
The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist political grouping. They are the United States section of the International Communist League, formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacus League of Weimar Republic in Germany, but the current League has no formal descent from it. The League self-identifies as a "revolutionary communist" organization.
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress.
The Workers Revolutionary Party is a Trotskyist group in Britain once led by Gerry Healy. In the mid-1980s, it split into several smaller groups, one of which retains possession of the name.
The Revolutionary Communist Party was a British Trotskyist group, formed in 1944 and active until 1949, which published the newspaper Socialist Appeal and a theoretical journal, Workers International News.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. Originally a group in the Communist Party USA that supported Leon Trotsky against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, it places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.
