What is Communism?

Here are eight things Communists believed:

1. The ideas of Karl Marx [Karl Marx: German 19th-century scholar, who founded Marxism (key theory of Communism). ].
2. People should contribute to the public wealth according to their ability, but receive according to their needs.
3. The means of production should be owned equally by the whole community (hence communism), not as in capitalism where individuals (who might be very rich) own the means of production and leave the rest of society to be poor and oppressed wage slaves.
4. A deterministic interpretation of history, which said that society must inevitably develop through successive stages of slavery, feudalism, then capitalism, ending up with the violent overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a communist society.
5. They should work to overthrow capitalism throughout the world by means of a revolution by the proletariat (workers).
6. Class was a feature of capitalist society, and should be destroyed and replaced by a society of equals.
7. The economy should be planned - controlled by the government.
8. Lenin changed Marx's ideas to add that a Communist government first had to be a dictatorship which was essential in order to bring in the communist state safely.