[f. L. commūn-is or F. commun COMMON + -ISM. In mod.F. communisme.]
1. A theory that advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labor organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants.
‘I also conversed [in 1840] with some of the most advanced minds of the French metropolis, and there, in the company of some disciples of Babeœuf, then called Equalitarians, I first pronounced the name of Communism, which has since … acquired that world-wide reputation (Goodwyn Barmby, in The Apostle, No. i. 1848).
1843. New Age, 20 May, 24. Works on Communism, Religious, Political, and Domestic.
1844. The Movement, 25 Sept., 353. The journals … teem with criticisms and reports of Communists and Communism.
1848. Forster, Diary, 11 May, in T. W. Reid, Life (1888), I. vii. 237. I learn that the great distinction between communism and socialism is that the latter believes in payment according to work done, and the former does not.
1851. J. M. Ludlow, Chr. Socialism, 11. Communism starts from the thing, and is in essential antagonism to absolute property; Socialism starts from the person, and is in essential antagonism to human discord and rivalry.
1888. trans. Marx & Engels’ Communist Manifesto, 11. A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
1890. G. J. Holyoake, Labour World, No. 11, col. 39. Communism means a self-supporting society distinguished by common labour, common property, and common means of intelligence and recreation.
2. Applied to any practice that carries out this theory in whole or part; e.g., that mentioned in Acts ii. 44 seq., as practised in the church of Jerusalem, or that prevailing in monastic communities. Also transf.
1857. Wood, Com. Obj. Seashore, 75. In these curious creatures communism prevails to its fullest extent, one for all and all for one.
1874. H. Reynolds, John Bapt., iii. § 2. 177. The communism, the vows of silence, the ceaseless struggle after a higher life amongst the Essenes.
1882. A. M. Fairbairn, in Contemp. Rev., XLII. 870. Communism seems to the new-born religious society but the proper social expression of its brotherhood.
c. Co-ownership of land.
1866. Rogers, Agric. & Prices, I. xxvii. 652. A village system, which … was a kind of simple communism.
1875. Poste, Gaius, II. (ed. 2), 254. Communism or co-ownership appears to be an older institution than individual ownership.
3. Community of feeling; the spirit of a community. rare.
1870. Daily News, 18 Nov. A tribunal where the natural bias of mercantile communism could not influence the judgment of those who had to decide the question.
¶ Sometimes improperly used for COMMUNALISM, and the spirit of the COMMUNE of Paris, in 1871.
1871. Graphic, III. 563/2. It [the Hôtel de Ville] is now a complete wreck; nevertheless, the Parisians regard it with affection, and have proposed that the ruins should be enclosed in a large square, and be preserved as an everlasting reproach to Communism and its doctrines.
