History of Communism - Contemporary Communism (1993-Present)

Contemporary Communism (1993-Present)

Further information: List of communist and anti-capitalist parties with parliamentary representation

With the fall of the communist governments in the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc, the power that the state-based Marxist ideologies held on the world was weakened, but there are still many communist movements of various types and sizes around the world. Three other communist nations, particularly those in eastern Asia, the People's Republic of China, Vietnam and Laos, all moved toward market economies but without major privatization of the state sector during the 1980s and 1990s; see Socialism with Chinese characteristics and doi moi for more details. Spain, France, Portugal and Greece have very publicly strong communist movements that play an open and active leading role in the vast majority of their labor marches and strikes, and also anti-austerity protests, all of which are large, pronounced events with much visibility. Also, worldwide marches on International Workers Day sometimes give a clearer picture of the size and influence of current communist movements, particularly within Europe.

Cuba has recently emerged from the crisis sparked by the fall of the Soviet Union given the growth in its volume of trade with its new allies Venezuela and China (the former of whom has recently adopted a "Socialism for the 21st Century" according to Hugo Chavez). Various other countries throughout South and Latin America have also taken similar shifts to more clearly socialistic policies and rhetoric, in a phenomenon academics are calling the "pink tide".

North Korea has had less success in coping with the collapse of the Soviet bloc than its counterparts, which led that government to "supersede" its original Marxism-Leninism with an ideology called Juche. For this reason among others, there are no significant communist movements, whether State-based or local, who consider North Korea to have any connection to communism whatsoever. Cuba, however, does apparently have an ambassador to North Korea, and China still protects North Korean territorial integrity even as it simultaneously refuses to supply the state with material goods or other significant assistance.

In Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) leader Man Mohan Adhikari briefly became Prime Minister and national leader from 1994 to 1995, and the Maoist guerrilla leader Prachanda was elected Prime Minister by the Constituent Assembly of Nepal in 2008. Prachanda has since been deposed as PM, leading the Maoists to abandon their legalistic approach and return to their typical street actions and militancy and to lead sporadic general strikes using their quite substantial influence on the Nepalese labor movement. These actions have oscillated between mild and intense, only the latter of which tends to make world news. They consider Prachanda's removal to be unjust.

The previous national government of India depended on the parliamentary support of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and CPI(M) leads the state governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. The armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is fighting a war against the government of India and is active in half the country; the Indian government has recently declared the Maoists its chief objective to eliminate.

In Cyprus, the veteran communist Dimitris Christofias of AKEL won the 2008 presidential election.

In Moldova, the communist party won the 2001, 2005 and 2009 parliamentary elections. However, the April 2009 Moldovan elections results, in which the communists supposedly won a third time, were massively protested (including an attack on the Parliament and Presidency buildings by angry crowds) and another round was held on July 29 in which three opposition parties (the Liberals, Liberal-Democrats, and Democrats)won and formed the Alliance for European Integration. However failing to elect the president, new parliamentary elections were held in November 2010 which resulted in roughly the same representation in the Parliament. According to Ion Marandici, a Moldovan political scientist the Moldovan Communists differ from those in other countries, because they managed to appeal to the ethnic minorities and the anti-Romanian Moldovans. After tracing the adaptation strategy of the Party of Communists from Republic of Moldova, he finds confirming evidence for five of the factors contributing to the electoral success, already mentioned in the theoretical literature on former Communist parties: the economic situation, the weakness of the opponents, the electoral laws, the fragmentation of the political spectrum and the legacy of the old regime. However, Ion Marandici identified seven additional explanatory factors at work in the Moldovan case: the foreign support for certain political parties, separatism, the appeal to the ethnic minorities, the alliance-building capacity, the reliance on the Soviet notion of the Moldovan identity, the state-building process and the control over a significant portion of the media. It is due to these seven additional factors that the successor party in Moldova managed to consolidate and expand its constituency. According to Ion Marandici, in the post-Soviet area the Moldovan Communists are the only ones who have been in power for so long and did not change the name of the party.

In Ukraine and Russia, the communists came second in the 2002 and 2003 elections, respectively. In the Czech Republic, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia came third in the 2002 elections, as did the Communist Party of Portugal in 2005.

Brazil has the Communist Party of Brazil as a member of the governing leftwing coalition led by president Lula da Silva; his party, Workers' Party (Brazil), itself has many different communist and democratic socialist tendencies within it.

In South Africa, the South African Communist Party (SACP) is a member of the Tripartite alliance alongside the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Sri Lanka has communist ministers in their national governments.

Colombia is in the midst of a civil war which has been waged since 1966 between the Colombian government and aligned rightwing paramilitaries against two communist guerrilla groups; the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).

The Philippines is still experiencing a low scale guerrilla insurgency by the New People's Army.