Currents of Communism since 1917

How the communist movement divided by doctrine after the October Revolution, across its currents: left and council communism, Trotskyism, reform and Western Marxism, the Marxist–Leninist mainstream, and national roads. For the organisational splits see The Internationals; for Russian factions before 1917 see the Russian Marxism genealogy. Click a node to open its dictionary entry.

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 Left and council communism Trotskyism Reform and Western Marxism Marxist–Leninist mainstream Yugoslavia, Cuba, Albania Chinese and Korean roads Brest-Litovsk, 1918 1920 'Left-Wing' Communism debate after Lenin 1923 inner-party debate internationalised after 1929 exile 1928 collectivisation dispute Lukács and Korsch, 1923 Cominform expulsion, 1948 Juche speech, 1955 1956 Secret Speech the revisionism polemic guerrilla warfare Sino-Albanian split, 1978 Third Plenum, 1978 condemning the 1968 invasion Gramsci The faction of Bukharin, Osinsky and others that opposed the Brest-Litovsk peace and state capitalismLeftCommunists(Russia)1918 The German and Dutch left (Pannekoek, Gorter, the KAPD): rejected trade-union and parliamentary work and saw workers' councils as the organs of revolutionCouncilcommunism1920–1933 The line of Amadeo Bordiga, first leader of the Communist Party of Italy: abstention from parliament and opposition to the united front; expelled in 1930Bordiga'sLeftCommunism(Italy)1921–1930 Trotsky's supporters demanding inner-party democracy and faster industrialisation; expelled from the party in 1927LeftOpposition1923–1927 Trotsky's theory that the democratic revolution in a backward country must grow into a socialist and then an international revolutionPermanentrevolution1905 / 1929 The international current of the exiled Trotsky's followers, which defined the Stalinist regime as a bureaucratically degenerated workers' stateTrotskyism1929– FourthInternational1938– FourthInternationalsplits andreunification1953 / 1963 Lenin's theory and practice built on the vanguard party, the theory of imperialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet powerLeninism1902–1924 Socialismin onecountry1924–1926 Marxism–Leninism systematised as state doctrine under Stalin; the 1938 Short Course became its canonMarxism–Leninismcodified(the ShortCourse)1924–1938 People'sdemocracy1945– De-Stalinisation(20thCongress)1956 Developedsocialism1967–1986 Perestroika1985–1991 Dissolutionof theSovietUnion1991 NewDemocracy(Mao)1940–1949 Mao Zedong Thought, named the party's guiding ideology at the CCP's Seventh Congress in 1945; stressed peasant revolution, people's war and the mass lineMaoism (MaoZedongThought)1945– Titoism1948–1991 Juche1955– The guerrilla-nucleus (foco) theory of revolution drawn from the Cuban Revolution, and the 'new man'Guevarism(focotheory)1959–1967 Sino-Sovietsplit1956–1966 CulturalRevolution1966–1976 The anti-revisionist line of Albania after its break with China, which branded the USSR, Yugoslavia and China alike as revisionistHoxhaism1978–1991 Reform andOpening-up1978– From Lukács, Korsch and Gramsci to the Frankfurt School and Althusser: the rethinking of Marxism, centred on philosophy and culture, outside Soviet official doctrineWesternMarxism1923– RightOpposition(Bukharin)1928–1930 Polycentrism(Togliatti)1956– Socialismwith ahuman face1968 Eurocommunism1975–
succession · split · merger influence antagonism suppression