共产主义(communism)
财产公有、全体公民大致按照各自需要分享共同财富的政治经济组织制度。这个理论最早由马克思和恩格斯提出。在他们的《共产党宣言》（1848）中，进一步提出「无产阶级专政」，认为无产阶级将建立一个以财富公有为基础、实行「无产阶级专政」统治的社会。马克思称这个过渡时期为社会主义，而保留共产主义一词用於真正无财产、无阶级、无国家的更高阶段的社会，他断言社会主义仅仅是共产主义的准备阶段。严格地说，共产主义是最终超越阶级分裂、消灭强制性国家的阶段（参阅Marxism）。但是，这个明确区别很早就已开始混淆。「共产主义者」开始被用於具有特定纲领而非其最终目标的特定的党。列宁认为工人阶级不能依靠本身的力量实现革命，而需要一批职业革命家给予指导（参阅Leninism）。史达林统治下的共产主义（参阅Stalinism）可说是极权主义的同义字。毛泽东动员农民而不是城市无产阶级来进行中国共产党的革命（参阅Maoism）。欧洲共产主义因1991年苏联瓦解後，共产主义迅速衰落，已不再是具有活力的思想体系。
English version：
communism
Political theory advocating community ownership of all property, the benefits of which are to be shared by all according to the needs of each. The theory was principally the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Their Communist Manifesto (1848) further specified a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” a transitional stage Marx called socialism; communism was the final stage in which not only class division but even the organized state—seen by Marx as inevitably an instrument of oppression—would be transcended (see Marxism). That distinction was soon lost, and “communist” began to apply to a specific party rather than a final goal. Vladimir Ilich Lenin maintained that the proletariat needed professional revolutionaries to guide it (see Leninism). Joseph Stalin's version of communism (see Stalinism) was synonymous to many with totalitarianism. Mao Zedong mobilized peasants rather than an urban proletariat in China's Communist revolution (see Maoism). European communism (see Eurocommunism) lost most of its following with the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). See also Communist Party, dialectical materialism, First International, Second International.