Karl Marx, the revolutionary architect of scientific-socialism, was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, Germany. Marx received a classical education and later studied law at Bonn and Berlin.
By 1842, Marx was the editor of Rheinishe Zeitung and moved to Cologne. His term as editor was controversial and the censors eventually shut down the publication.
In 1843 Marx left for Paris where he helped publsh the radical journal, Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher. While in France Marx also wrote Economic and Philosophic Manuscript In 1844 Marx met his life-long companion and collaborator, Friedrich Engels. However, by 1845 Marx had been expelled from Paris for revolutionary activity.
Upon his expulsion from Paris, Marx left for Brussells. Engels soon joined him there. Marx's experience in Brussells prompted him to write The Poverty of Philosophy in response to Proudhon. In the spring of 1847 Marx and Engels joined the Communist League. In 1848, at the request of the Communist League, Marx and Engels wrote The Manifesto of the Communist Party, better known today as The Communist Manifesto. This work outlined in an accessible format, the theory of class conflict and the role of the working class.
Marx was now expelled by the Belgian government and returned to Paris in 1848. Marx was elected chairman of the Central Authority of the Communist League.
In 1849 Marx was expelled from Paris and moved to London. Between 1848 and 1850 Marx and Engels had published several issues of Neue Rheinishe Zeitung. By 1850 Marx had become a regular contriubtor to the New York Tribune. In 1852 Marx wrote the pamphlet, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
In 1859 the first part of Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy was published. In 1864 Marx helped found the International Working Men's Association. Marx finished what might be called his most important work, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I in 1867.
In 1871 Marx helped organize mass worker's protests to support the Paris Commune. Marx continued working on a number of writings and attending worker congresses until his death in 1883 from lung abscess. Marx is buried at Highgate Cemetary in London.
Friedrich Engels, main co-contributor to scientific socialism along with Karl Marx, was born on November 28, 1820 in Prussia. In 1837 Engels was forced by family circumstances to leave secondary school early and enter a commercial house as a clerk. Engels continued to study literature, philosophy, and history.
In 1842 Engels moved to Manchester, England. Engels used his time to investigate the slums where the English workers lived. The widespread poverty and misery shocked Engels. Engels' book The Condition of the Working Class in Englandwas published in 1845.
Engels had met Marx in 1844 while on a trip to Germany. The two worked together easily and spent the rest of their lives developing scientific socialism. In 1845 Marx followed Engels to England and by 1846 they had set up a Communist Correspondence Committee.
In August of 1846 Engels moved to Paris to establish closer links with the French socialist movement. Marx and Engels jointly wrote The Holy Family. Engels followed Marx to Brussels, after Marx's expulsion from Paris. In 1848 The Communist Manifesto was published and both Engels and Marx were subsequently expelled from Brussels.
In 1850 Engels moved back to Manchester to take a job at the 'Ermen and Engels firm' in order to help financially support the Marx family. While in Manchester, Engels began to study military science and the Russian language. Engels continued his studies and support of Marx's family, while publishing several articles on socialism and the workers' movement, until Marx's death in 1883.
Between 1883 and 1885 Engels prepared the three volumes of Marx's Capital for publication. In 1884 Engels wrote Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Over the decade, Engels continued to publish Marx's works and to update them with prefaces.
Engels died on August 5, 1895.
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, was born on April 22, 1870 in what is now Ulyanovsk.
By 1887 Lenin had enrolled at Kazan University to study law. Soon after he was expelled and arrested for participating in revolutionary student demonstrations. During his forced house-arrest Lenin studied Marx and other socialist theoreticians.
After being released from house-arrest he soon moved to St. Petersburg, where he received a law degree from Petersburg University in 1891. By 1895 Lenin had secured a passport and was travelling through France and Germany, establishing contact with other Marxists. Back at home, Lenin had founded The League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. In December of 1895 the League was raided and Lenin was kept in solitary confinement for over a year, where he continued to direct the revolutionary organizations from inside his cell.
In 1897 Lenin was exiled for three years to Siberia. In Siberia he continued his writings and married Krupskaya in 1898. In 1900, once his exile ended, he left for Germany. There he helped found the newspaper Iskra. In London, 1903, a congress was held to unite the various Marxist groups in Russia and the rest of Europe. When the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party split in 1903, Lenin became leader of the Bolshevik group. When revolution broke out in 1905, Lenin left Switzerland for Russia, where he directed the activities of the Bolsheviks. Police persecution forced Lenin underground again in 1906. Although the 1905 revolution was not successful, workers' and soldiers' councils, known as soviets, were formed as a lasting result of the increased revolutionary attitude of the masses.
Lenin spent the years between 1906 and 1908 in Europe writing, attending party congresses, and trying to keep the Bolsheviks together. By 1912 Pravda was established and Lenin had become the main contributor. When World War I broke out in 1914, Lenin was forced to leave Austria for Switzerland. Lenin led a group of Russian revolutionaries who did not succumb to Russian nationalism during the war and promised to broker a peace deal for Russia to withdraw if the Bolsheviks came to power.
By 1917 it was apparent that Russia was losing the war. Food shortages were widespread, while as many as 200,000 striking workers were protesting in the capital. In February the working class and the bourgeoisie united to overthrow Czar Nicholas II. The Petrograd Soviet shared power in the new government.
Lenin returned from Switzerland along with many other exiled revolutionaries. In July the Bolsheviks failed to take power in another attempted revolution, this time to overthrow the liberal bourgeoisie. Lenin fled to Finland, where he wrote The State and Revolution. Lenin soon returned to Petrograd and in October the Bolsheviks overthrew the bourgeoise and came to power under the slogan of "Bread, Peace, & Land".
At the November All-Russian Congress of Soviets Lenin was elected chairman of the council and became head of the new Soviet State. Lenin got the approval of congress to withdraw from the war and to abolish all private land-ownership. The Brest-Litovsk treaty peace treaty was signed on March 3, 1918.
The Red Army was formed in 1918 and the reactionary counter-revolutionary forces were defeated by 1922. Lenin had organized the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 to unite revolutionary socialists around the world under a common program for revolution.
Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy in 1921 as a temporary measure to rebuild the economy. This policy laid the groundwork for a stable transition to socialism (this transition to socialism occurred under Stalin who closely followed Lenin's policies).
By 1923 Lenin had suffered three strokes. A fourth stroke on January 21, 1924 killed him. After Lenin's death the task of socialist construction fell on Stalin who would first have to defeat the left-and-right-deviations in the party and move on to the construction of socialism.
Lenin's practical and theoretical contributions to Marxism, particularly those embodied in The State and Revolution and Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism further developed scientific socialism into what is now called Marxism-Leninism.
Born in 1879 in the province of Georgia, Joseph Stalin eventually succeeded Lenin as General Secretary of the Communist Party and the revolutionary leader of the Soviet Union.
In 1895 after enrolling in Tiflis Theological Seminary, Stalin came in contact with an underground group of Marxists. While at the seminary, Stalin lead a small group of Marxist students and studied the works of Marx and Lenin.
By 1898 Stalin had joined the Georgian Social-Democratic Organization and was leading a group of Marxist railway workers. By 1899 Stalin had been expelled from seminary because of his Marxist views. Between 1900 and 1901 Stalin lead mass worker's strikes, addressed a gathering of workers on May Day, and established contact with an associate of Lenin.
In 1901, after having his residence searched by police, Stalin goes underground. Over the next year and a half, Stalin continued to be engaged in the struggle through leading strikes and helping publish and write for underground revolutionary papers. Stalin was arrested in the spring of 1902 and then exiled to Siberia where Lenin contacted him.
In 1904 Stalin escaped from exile. Over the next several years Stalin continued his revolutionary work, primarily through prolific writing and helping to edit underground papers. By 1912 Stalin was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party while in deportation in Vologda. Between 1912 and 1917 Stalin was arrested off and on again.
After the 1917 revolution, Stalin left Siberia, where he was in exile, for Petrograd. Stalin was appointed to the Pravda board of directors. After the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks overthrow the Provincial Government, Stalin was named People's Commissar for nationalities and soon released a Decree of Nationality extending equal rights to minorities living in Russia. In 1918 Stalin became Director General of Food Supply for South Russia where he was known to have made great improvements to the railway system.
In 1922, after successfully directing several military assignments during the Civil War, Stalin was eleced General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party-Bolshevik [RCP(B)].After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin was elected to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and to the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In 1925 Stalin was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In 1928 Stalin was elected to the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Stalin launched the first five-year plan for the industrialization of the Soviet Union. By the 1930's socialist construction, under the leadership of Stalin, was well underway in the Soviet Union.
In 1930 Stalin was elected a member of the Political Bureau, the Organizing Bureau and the Secretariat of the Central Committee. Stalin was elected as General Secretary of the CPSU. By the end of the 1930's Stalin's plans for farm collectivization and industrialization had greatly increased agricultural output and brought the Soviet Union up to world standards in the most humane industrialization ever to take place.
Between 1942 and 1945 the Soviet Union defeated fascism at the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalin oversaw the rebuilding of the Soviet Union and the reconstruction of the new People's Republics until his death in 1953.
Mao Tse-Tung, widely respected Marxist theoretician and primary architect of the socialist People's Republic of China, was born December 26, 1893 into a peasant family in the village of Shaoshan in the Hunan Province of China. Mao was educated in Confucian classics, philosophy and literature.
Mao travelled to Beijing to work at the Beijing University library in 1918, after graduating from training as a teacher. In 1919 Mao published a series of articles criticizing Confucian values. In 1921 Mao was a delegate at the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao became General Secretary of the Hunan chapter.
When the Kuomintang (KMT) party allied with the CCP to defeat the northern warlords, Mao joined the KMT and served on its Central Committe while continuing to play an active role in the CCP. In 1925 the KMT launched a Northern Expedition to bring all of China under the control of the KMT. By this time Chiang Kai-Shek was head of the KMT, and Mao was increasingly alienated because of his pro-peasant policies.
In 1927 the KMT and Chiang Kai-Shek turned on the CCP in a bloody massacre of communists and workers in the cities. Mao and the CCP immediately began a counter-offensive moving through villages where the peasants were revolting and liberating themselves from the rule of corrupt landlords. By 1930, enough land had been secured by the revolution to establish the South- West Soviet Provincial Government. In 1934, Mao broke out of an encirclement campaign by the KMT with 85,000 troops and 15,00 party officials. This was the beginning of the famous 6,000 mile Long March. When Mao and the marchers arrived in Tsunyi and captured the city, the Politiburo elected Mao Chairman of the CCP.
In 1937 the KMT and CCP found themselves in a shaky alliance to fend of the Japanese invasion of China. The alliance managed to prevent Japan from making inroads into the countryside by limiting their control to the cities. When the Japanese were defeated in 1945, the Red Army and People's militias found themselves back at war with the KMT. The CCP, who had the overwhelming support of peasants in the countryside and the workers in the city, defeated the KMT in 1949 and the People's Republic of China was founded.
Mao came to power in a country that was scarred by war, afflicted with poverty and illiteracy, and threatened with food shortages. Despite these obstacles, by 1953 the People's Republic of China (China)had embarked on a campaign of socialist construction. Under Mao's leadership, land was redistributed for the benefit of everyone (Agrarian Reform Law), the corrupt rule of the landlords was ended in the countryside, the cities began to build up industry, and over one million Chinese, including Mao's son, gave their life fighting to defend the Korean people from United State's aggression.
The Chinese people responded to the reaction that had set in following Kruschevite revisionism in the Soviet Union by launching the Hundred Flowers Campaign of increased liberties for the Chinese people. The result was an atmosphere of pointed criticism of the reactionary tendencies in the CCP and the eventual launching of the Antirightist campaign. From 1953 to 1957, China embarked on the Great Leap Forward to increase agricultural production.
In 1966 the Cultural Revolution was launched by the people of China, under the leadership of Mao. Designed to root out bureaucracy, opportunism, and corruption, the Cultural Revolution has been a lightning rod of controversy since its inception. While some errors may have been committed during the Cultural Revolution, it was an authentic response on the part of the masses to both the revisionism that was gaining hold throughout the international communist movement and to the opportunists who sought to use their positions to gain personal privilege at the expense of the workers and peasants.
Mao died in 1976 and power was usurped by Deng Xiaoping who slowly began steering China away from the path of socialist construction toward the reimplementation of capitalistic practices.
Enver Hoxha was born in Argirocastro, Albania on October 16, 1908. Hoxha graduated from Korce high school and took up university studies in Paris. Here Hoxha sudied Marx and Engels and the October Revolution. Hoxha was also given the opportunity to help write articles on the Albanian situation for the journal Humanite. After finishing his schooling, and spending some time as the secretary to an Albanian consulate in Belgium, Hoxha became a teacher at Korce in 1936. Hoxha was dismissed in 1939, after the Italian invasion, for refusing to join the Albanian Fascist Party. He soon opened a retail tobacco outlet as a front for a communist cell.
Hoxha spent the next few years working to unite the various communist groups into a single party. In 1941 the Communist Party of Albania (CPA) was organized and Enver Hoxha was elected to the provisional Central Committee. In 1942 the National Front for Liberation was formed. By 1943 the first National Conference of the CPA elected Hoxha as General Secretary of the party. In 1944 Hoxha organized the Army of National Liberation which numbered over 70,000 strong. In May of the same year, Hoxha was elected president of the National Anti-Fascist Committee of Liberation. Hoxha led the Army of National Liberation to defeat the fascists troops and feudalistic forces in Albania.
A Constituent Assembly was elected in 1945 and selected Enver Hoxha as Prime Minister in 1946. Over the next couple of years Hoxha resisted Albania's absorption into the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia and fought for a more independent republic. By the 1950's Hoxha was leading the Albanian economy toward industrialization and the construction of a solid socialist foundation for the economy. Hoxha led the fight against feudalistic property relations in agriculture and fought for modernization. Albania made massive gains in food production and quality of life.
After Krushchev's secret speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Hoxha moved toward closer relations with Mao and China. Hoxha was an instrumental force in the battle against revisionism. Some of his polemics include The Anglo-American Threat to Albania, Imperialism and the Revolution, and The Krushchevites. Hoxha, like Mao, was a great Marxist-Leninist theoretician. Although he had many differences with Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, Hoxha always worked with them to defeat revisionism, until the rightists assumed control of party after Mao's death.
Hoxha retired from active politics in the early 1980's. He passed away on April 11, 1985 as a result of cardiac arrest.
Kim Il Sung was born on April 18, 1912 in Pyongyang, north Korea to a poor peasant family. By October of 1926, at the age of 14, Kim Il Sung organized the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DUI)and led strikes against reactionary teachers and the Japanese. In 1927 he organized the Young Communist League of Korea.
Kim Il Sung was jailed for revolutionary activities between 1929 and 1930. After his release from prison in 1930, Kim Il Sung helped organize the party that was the predecessor to the Worker's Party of Korea. That same year, he also organized the Korean Revolutionary Army that engaged in the anti-Japanese struggle.
In 1932 he organized the Korean People's Revolutionary Army and was selected as its commander. In 1936 the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland was founded and he was elected chairman. Kim Il Sung led the anti-Japanese struggle to victory on August 15, 1945.
Later that same year, Kim Il Sung helped organize the Central Organizing Committee of the Communist Party of north Korea and the General Federation of Trade Unions of north Korea. In 1946 he was elected chairman of the Provisional People's Committee of north Korea. The committee served as a revolutionary government based on a worker-peasant alliance.
Kim Il Sung led the push for agrarian reform, the nationalization of industries and helped root out the imperialists and feudalists in north Korea. After the anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist phase, Kim Il Sung led the socialist revolution.
The Worker's Party of Korea was founded on August 28, 1946 through a merger of the Communist Party of north Korea and the New Democratic Party of Korea(DPRK). In 1947 Kim Il sung was elected chairman of the People's Committee of north Korea. By September of 1948, Kim Il Sung had been elected Premier of the Cabinet of the newly founded Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Kim Il Sung led the Fatherland Liberation War between 1950 and 1953, successfully defending the sovereignty of the nation.
Kim Il Sung led the post-war reconstruction effort, ensuring a solid socialist foundation for DPRK. Under his leadership, free education and universal health care was introduced, illiteracy was greatly reduced, free housing and subsidized food prices were offered. While constructing socialism in the north, Kim Il Sung consistently fought for national reunification of the two Korea's divided by imperialism.
Kim Il Sung passed away on July 8, 1994. The nation went into an unusually long period of deep morning following his death.
Che Guevara was born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina. The son of a construction engineer, Che was homeschooled by his mother for most of his early education. After he graduated from secondary school, Che enrolled in the University of Buenos Aires where he studied medicine. In 1951 Che and his friend Alberto Granado went on a motorcycle journey through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. Che was very moved by the poverty that he saw and his diary was eventually published as The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America. In 1953 Che qualified as a doctor with a specialty in dermatology.
Che traveled to Guatemala and stayed for some time under the socialist presidency of Arbenz. Here he witnessed the CIA-sponsored overthrow of the Arbenz government. After the socialistic government of Guatemala fell, Che left for Mexico City in 1954 and worked in the General Hospital. In Mexico City Che met Raul and Fidel Castro.
In 1956, Che left with Fidel Castro for Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the Batista dictatorship. Che was originally needed for his medical expertise, but by 1957 he was named commander and on December 29 of 1958 Che's column fought the decisive battle that overtook Santa Clara. By January, the revolutionaries had succeeded in overthrowing the Batista regime. In 1959 Che was named president of the National Bank
In 1960, Che's book Guerilla Warfare was published. In late 1960 and early 1961 Che traveled to the socialist countries of China, Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. Che was name Minister for Industry in 1961.
By 1965, Che had become disillusioned with some of the "reforms" that had been forced upon the Soviet Union by Kruschev. Che seemed to be moving closer to China and Mao Tse Teng. In 1965, Che left Cuba and for the Congo with a team of Cuban revolutionaries. It is at this time that Che outlined his theory of the new socialist man in his book, Socialism and Man in Cuba.
In 1965, Che had withdrew from the Congo and by 1966 Che was in South America participating in the revolution there. In the first couple of battles on March 23 and April 10, 1967, the guerillas succesfully defeated the Bolivian army. By October 8, the revolutionaries had been cornered. Che was executed on October 9, 1967 after refusing to cooperate with CIA and Bolivian interrogation.
Ho Chi Minh was born May 19, 1890 in the Kim Lien village in Annam, Vietnam. He was born into a poor peasant family. In 1911, at the age of 21, Ho Chi Minh left vietnam as a worker on a French liner. By 1919, Ho was living in France and was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. In 1923 he left for Moscow to receive revolutionary training at the Comintern headquarters. Ho soon made a name for himself as an aggressive advocate of anti-colonial struggle.
In 1924 Ho left for southern China to train Vietnamese exiles in revolutionary tactics. He organized the Revolutionary Youth League and a smaller Communist Youth League inside of the RYL. When the Nationalists began their crack down on Chinese communists in 1927, Ho took refuge in the Soviet Union.
Ho returned to China in 1930 and was a founder of the unified Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). Over the next couple of years the revolutionary movement grew and political turmoil spread throughout Vietnam. By 1931, Ho was arrested in Hong Kong by British police. Upon his release in 1932, Ho traveled to Moscow and spent the next several years studying and teaching at the Lenin Institute.
Ho returned to China in 1938 to advise the Chinese communist forces. In 1941 Ho returned to Vietnam and contacted the ICP. He immediately layed out a plan to exploit the French defeat at the hands of the Germans. Ho was arrested again in 1942 during a meeting with Chinese Communist Party leaders. Ho eventually returned to Vietnam in 1944 with a small guerilla force and began a propaganda campaign to build support for the revolutionary movement.
By 1945 the United Front, under ICP leadership, had set up a provisional government in a liberated zone of about one million people. The ICP-influenced organizations such as the salvation associations, young communist leagues, and trade unions experienced rapid growth between 1945 and 1946.
After Japan's surrender in 1945, the Viet Minh seized power and set up a Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with Ho Chi Minh as president. The French began to immediately reassert control and eventually reoccupied southern Vietnam. The French slowly worked their way back into much of northern Vietnam as well. This lead to increased tensions and clashes between French and Vietnamese soldiers. By 1947, the French were aggressively reoccupying most of Vietnam.
By 1950 the United States had recognised the Associated State of Vietnam (south Vietnam), and China and the Soviet Union recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (northern Vietnam). The ICP was renamed the Vietnam Workers' Party in 1951 and elected Ho as party chairman. By 1953 the Viet Minh had reasserted control over northern Vietnam and consolidated their hold on power. A peace conference in 1954 officially divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel. National elections for a reunited country were set for July 1956 and the agreement received global support.
In 1955 south Vietnam, aided by United States' money and military advisers, announced that it would not participate in national elections and began to crack down on communists. By 1959 the country was in the middle of war as armed self-defense groups in the south began to organise and push for reunification. These southern cells became known as the Viet Cong. The progressive opposition forces in the south formed the National Liberation Front (NLF).
In 1961 the United States began to provide more economic and military assistance to the oppressive southern Vietnamese government. The communists organized a united People's Liberation Armed Force (PLAF) in the south. By 1963 the south Vietnam government was weak and a US-backed military coup took place. The war continued to escalate.
The war spread as the United States supplied more forces and began a bombing campaign over Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh died on September 3, 1969 before ever seeing his country reunified. When the communists finally won in 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.
