COMMUNISM, a system of society in which common property is the recognized form. In later times it is an attempt to prevent or remedy the evils arising out of the inequalities of private property by holding property in common. But in primitive societies, in the hunting and pastoral stages of civilization, commun ism was universal. Long after the pri vate use of land had been established, the common ownership of it by the tribe or clan was still recognized and enforced, and the arable land of the community was subject to periodical redistribution with the view to cultivation. Survivals of this system still exist in various coun tries of the world, notably in the Mir of the Russian empire. The Soviet Re public that succeeded in 1917 was in 1920 experimenting with communism.
See COUNCIL OF WORKINGMEN AND SOLDIERS.
In the ancient world a partial com munism prevailed in Crete and Sparta. During the decline of Greece more sys tematic speculations and experiments in communism appeared. The most emi nent example of the former was the Re public of Plato. In Palestine, about the Christian era, the Essenes were a society of recluses with celibacy and the com munity of goods.
A most remarkable instance of com munity of goods is that of the early Christians at Jerusalem, recorded in Acts iv: 32. During the middle ages,
sects holding the community both of goods and women appeared, like the sect of the Giovannali in Corsica.
At the Reformation the anabaptists Miinzer and Bockholt set up communism in Germany, and similar notions had a wide diffusion in other countries. The most eminent literary form of it was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More (1516). Canipanella's "Civitas Solis" (1623) has a community of goods under the despotic rule of the wise men, with a working day of four hours.
At the discovery of America the Span ish conquerors found a system of agri cultural communism under a central des potism both in Mexico and Peru. In the earliest English settlements in Amer ica, both Virginia and New England, a system of common property was at tempted, but soon abandoned. During the fermentation which preceded and ac companied the French Revolution com munistic ideas again emerged in the writings of Morelly and Mably.
Socialism is a vague phenomenon which must not be identified with com munism. In the anarchist, as also in the Marx school to a considerable degree, socialism takes the form of a systematic community of property, associated with vague theories of the emancipation of women.