Communism Today

Are its days numbered?

  • By:Alex Kingsbury
  • Content Type: Report
  • Publisher: CQ Press
    • Publication year: 2011
    • Online pub date:
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/cqrglobal20110802

Introduction

When Fidel Castro said earlier this year that communism had failed in Cuba, one might have thought the sun had finally set worldwide on the Marxist-Leninist ideology. But, despite Cuba's shaky economy and the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellite states nearly 20 years ago, one in five people on the planet still lives under communist rule. Single-party authoritarian communist governments still run five countries: Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and — most significantly — China, with its 1.3 billion inhabitants. In addition, elected communist parties run the governments in Nepal and Cyprus, while communist parties are members of ruling coalitions in South Africa, Belarus, Brazil and six other nations. In Europe and elsewhere, modern communist parties are more centrist than their leftist ...

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