World Communist Movement

The World Communist Movement is an informal community of certain Communist parties around the world. It evolved out of the Communist International, which was dissolved in 1943. The WCM does not consist of all parties claiming to be communist, and it excludes Trotskyist parties as well as the anti-revisonist Marxist-Leninist organizations (the latter generally refer to themselves as belonging to an uncentered International Communist Movement).

Related Topics:
Communist parties - Communist International - 1943 - Trotskyist - Anti-revisonist - Marxist-Leninist

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Broadly, the components of the WCM come out of the pro-Soviet Communist tradition. The general principle has been that one country hosts only one WCM member party. Exceptions from this rule were West Germany and Spain, which had separated regional CPs in West Berlin and Catalonia respectively.

Related Topics:
Soviet - West Germany - Spain - West Berlin - Catalonia

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However, the WCM has not been devoid of internal strife. Under the leadership of the Italian Communist Party, a eurocommunist countercurrent emerged. The eurocommunists did not however break away entirely from the WCM, but remained as a faction within. In some countries (such as Sweden, United Kingdom, Australia, Finland, Spain, etc.) where eurocommunists at some point emerged victorious in the internal debates within the national parties, orthodox pro-Soviet forces organized separate communist parties, leading to situations when more than one party from one country was being represented in the WCM.

Related Topics:
Italian Communist Party - Eurocommunist - Sweden - United Kingdom - Australia - Finland - Spain

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The downfall of the Soviet Union caused a severe political crisis to most pro-Soviet communist parties around the world. There were, however, clear national and regional differences in how the movement developed in the post-1989 situation.

Related Topics:
Soviet Union - 1989

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A series of international and regional conferences and the international magazine World Marxist Review can be seen as gathering points of the WCM. Today, the role of gathering the movement has to some extent been taken over by the Communist Party of Greece, which hosts an annual meeting of communist parties.

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