communisms

Noun

communism (countable and uncountable, plural communisms)

1. Any far-left political ideology or philosophy advocating holding the production of resources collectively, especially by seizing it through revolution.
   • I want to gather together about twenty souls and sail away from this world of war and squalor and found a little colony where there shall be no money but a sort of communism as far as necessaries of life go, and some real decency.1932, D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Edited by A. Huxley, page 219

   Synonyms:

   aspheterism

2. Any political social system that implements a communist political philosophy.
3. The international socialist society where classes, money, and the state no longer exist.
4. (Western, colloquial, derogatory, often) Any left-wing ideology, government regulations, or policies promoting a welfare state, nationalisation, etc.
   • This tax plan is communism!
5. (rare) Readiness to share scientific findings (the first of the Mertonian norms).
   • A recent survey of 633 South Korean scientists found not only that communism was the Mertonian norm they thought most respected in practice (Kim and Kim 2018, 9), but also that younger scientists’ replies showed evidence of ‘mounting tension between the commercialisation of academic science and the...2022 January 26, Liam Kofi Bright, Remco Heesen, “To Be Scientific Is To Be Communist”, in Social Epistemology, volume 37, number 3, →DOI
6. (rare) communality, sharedness.
   • Rational expectations econometrics extends a communism of statistical models to include a “sharing with nature” that is an essential input into making maximum likelihood or generalized method of moments be good estimators.2025 November, Thomas Sargent, “Macroeconomics after Lucas”, in Journal of Political Economy, volume 133, number 11, →DOI

See all 9 meanings of communism