communism
- 1Any far-left ideology or philosophy that seeks collective control of how resources are produced, especially by taking that control through revolution.
The pamphlet called for communism and the violent overthrow of the factory owners.
The commune's founders hoped to live by a gentle sort of communism, with no private property at all.
Oppositecapitalism
Note
The word came into English from French communisme, built on commun, "common", from Latin commūnis. In this sense it names the idea, not a working state, and it need not be revolutionary: D. H. Lawrence, in a letter, dreams of a little colony with no money "but a sort of communism as far as necessaries of life go". The plural, communisms, covers the many rival versions of the idea.
- 2Any political and social system that puts a communist political philosophy into practice.
The collapse of communism in the region brought free elections within a year.
Under communism, the state ran the farms, the factories and even the corner stores.
Oppositecapitalism
- 3A loose, often disparaging label for any left-wing ideology, or for government regulations or policies promoting a welfare state, nationalization and the like.
Every time the city proposes rent control, someone at the meeting shouts that it's communism.
Opponents dismissed the national health plan as creeping communism.
Similarsocialism
Oppositecapitalism
Note
In this use the word is an insult dressed as a description: it pins the name of a full communist system on a tax plan, rent control or welfare spending the speaker dislikes. It belongs chiefly to Western political argument. Careful writing names the policy itself, and a quoted "That's communism!" tells the reader more about the speaker than about the plan.
- 4The international socialist society in which classes, money, and the state have all ceased to exist.
Socialism was meant to be only a stage on the road to communism, when the state itself would wither away.
Party theorists kept postponing the arrival of full communism to some distant decade.
Note
Here communism is a destination rather than a regime, which is why the phrase "communist state" never points at it. A society with no state cannot be one, so the countries called communist are, in this strict sense, systems built in its name, not communism itself.
Less common meanings
- 5The quality of being shared or held in common; communality.
The poets in the circle drew on a communism of images, passing the same moon and harbor from book to book.
The flood produced a brief communism of feeling among neighbors who had barely spoken before.
Similarcommunality, commonality
Note
Its shape gives it away: an article and an of-phrase, as in a communism of images, and no politics is meant. The use is rare. Thomas Sargent, writing in the Journal of Political Economy in 2025, speaks of "a communism of statistical models", models that every participant holds in common.
- 6Readiness to share scientific findings with others, listed first among the Mertonian norms.
Researchers who hoard their data for years strain the communism that scientific progress depends on.
Sharing raw data with rival labs is Mertonian communism at its most demanding.
Similaropenness
Oppositesecrecy
Note
This word belongs to the study of how science works, and it is rare outside it: the Mertonian norms put readiness to share findings first. The political echo makes a lively title, as in Liam Kofi Bright and Remco Heesen's "To Be Scientific Is To Be Communist" (2022). In ordinary prose, data sharing or openness is safer, or readers may hear the political ideology.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from French communisme, formed from commun (“common”, from Latin commūnis) and the suffix -isme (“-ism”). By surface analysis it is commune + -ism.