Communism is a system of society in which common property is the recognised form. In later times it is an attempt to prevent or remedy the evils arising out of the inequalities of private property by holding property in common. But in primitive societies, in the hunting and pastoral stages of civilisation, communism was universal. It was only when the transition was made to a settled life and to agriculture that private ownership in land began to appear, and even then it was slowly introduced. Long after the private use of land had been established, the common ownership of it by the tribe or clan was still recognised and enforced, and the arable land of the community was subject to periodical redistribution with the view to cultivation. Survivals of this system still exist in various countries of the world, notably in Russia under the Mir.
In the ancient world a partial communism prevailed in Crete and Sparta. Towards the decline of Greece more systematic speculations and experiments in communism appeared. The most eminent example of the former was the republic of Plato, in which a community of goods and also of wives was taught, as the form of society among the ruling and military class. These were to be supported by the industrial classes, whose form of life is not indicated. In Palestine, about the Christian era, the Essenes were a society of recluses with celibacy and the community of goods.
A most remarkable instance of community of goods is that of the early Christians at Jerusalem, recorded in Acts, iv. 32. Under the influence of Christianity the rigorous and often merciless ideas and rights of private property developed in the ancient world, especially among the Romans, were greatly modified. Denunciations of wealth tending to communism are not infrequent in the church fathers. Not to mention the corporate property of the church itself, which in medieval times embraced about one-third of the land in the countries where it was established, many of the monastic institutions were based on the community of goods. During the middle ages, sects holding the community both of goods and women appeared, like the sect of the Giovannali in Corsica.
At times of social and spiritual change or fermentation communistic ideas usually grow up with special vigour. Such was the case at the Reformation, when the anabaptists Münzer and Bockholt set up communism in Germany, and similar notions had a wide diffusion in other countries (see ANABAPTISTS). The most eminent literary form of it, combined with the noblest humanitarian ideals and practical suggestions for reform, which even yet have not been realised, was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More (1516). In that great work, besides the institution of common property, we have the most advanced views on toleration, universal education, a mild criminal code, sanitation, and a working-day of six hours. Campanella's Civitas Solis (1623) has a similar community of goods under the despotic rule of the wise men, with a working-day of four hours.
At the discovery of America the Spanish conquerors found a system of agricultural communism under a central despotism both in Mexico and Peru. Like the partial communism of Crete and Sparta it may have been a survival or continuation of the primitive communism. In the earliest English settlements in America, both Virginia and New England, a system of common property was attempted, but soon abandoned. During the fermentation which preceded and accompanied the French Revolution communistic ideas again emerged in the writings of Morelly and Mably. They are also found vaguely expressed in the works of Rousseau, and through him they to some degree affected the principles of Robespierre and St Just; but the general tendency of the Revolution was to consolidate individual rights and private property. The conspiracy of Babeuf was intended to establish a systematic communism by revolution.
Socialism is a vague phenomenon which must not be identified with communism. Yet the movement is largely coloured with communistic conceptions, and in some of its schools a thoroughgoing communism is taught with lax notions as to the relation of the sexes. In the anarchist, as also in the Marx school to a considerable degree, socialism takes the form of a systematic community of property, associated with vague theories of the emancipation of women (see SOCIALISM). Different both from socialism and this aggressive communism are the communistic societies still existing in the United States. The latter are simply quiet efforts to realise for their members a happier state of things by community of property, but without a revolutionary propaganda and remote from the main current of modern social development. See BROOK FARM, PERFECTIONISTS, SHAKERS; Nordhoff's Communistic Societies of the United States (1875): and for the rising of the so-called Communists at Paris in 1871, which was a political and not an economical movement, see COMMUNE.