An ideology extremely difficult to define. Democratic ideological perspectives tend to clump anything that identifies itself at "communism" together in the same heap. But two camps of communism may be entirely inimical to each other, and have separate means and ends.
Usually, one points to The Communist Manifesto, or Das Kapital, by Karl Marx, as the guideposts into communism, but basically the communist system has many of the same traits of Hitler’s Germany: dictatorial leadership, a single centralized party, ruthless terror, propaganda, censorship, a controlled economy and hostility to all organized religion. Communist ideology emphasized the working class, revolution as a means of social change, and the utopian ideal for a classless society.
[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Communism, history, Karl-Marx, Socialism[/tags]