What historical and political factors explain why people who support communist ideas often continue living in capitalist

People who support communist ideas are not necessarily waiting for a one-way ticket out of a capitalist country. In fact, history and politics explain why they are often right where they are.

Communist ideas were born inside capitalist countries

Modern communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe as a program to replace capitalism with a stateless, classless, and moneyless society [1][7]. At the time of the American Revolution, socialism and communism were not practical alternatives, and communism had not yet been invented [23]. Marxism was Western by birth: the first line of the Communist Manifesto says “A specter is haunting Europe,” and the early movement was geographically limited to Europe and North America, focused almost exclusively on the industrial working class [53]. In Marx’s own theory, communist ideas arise from an alienated industrial working class inside capitalist society [38], and Marx believed the prospects for socialism were better in the more developed capitalist countries [40]. So the first communists were living under capitalism because that is where the ideas came from.

The goal is not an existing “communist country”

Within Marxist theory, communism presupposes a stateless society, so the very idea of a “communist state” is something of a contradiction [5][8]. No state that is conventionally called communist has ever officially called itself that; states labeled communist by outsiders described themselves as socialist because they did not claim to have achieved communism [4][9]. Communist parties, in line with earlier usage, also described themselves as socialist and dedicated to socialism [3]. Western journalists applied the “Communist” label to both regimes and movements, including movements that were barely communist in any sense [2]. If the goal is a future stateless condition [5], supporters do not necessarily need to live in an existing state that claims the label.

Communist parties work legally inside capitalist democracies

Communist parties have pressed Western governments to include economic rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [6]. Today, the Communist Party USA openly says socialism is a common-sense path to a fairer, more prosperous, and more democratic USA [10], that socialism is a desperate necessity because capitalism’s profit drive threatens the planet [11], and that the fight for socialism is a dynamic process for the nation and the world [12]. It describes its task as staying active in the struggle and building working-class leadership [13], argues communism is “better than capitalism” [16], and says communism would replace wage-based production for private profit with democratic production for use [17]. It also criticizes capitalism for producing wealth while condemning billions to poverty, insecurity, genocide, and war [18], adopts local programs such as one for Philadelphia [19], and openly recruits members [20]. Communists see liberal democracy as an institution that gives the capitalist class supremacy [21], and a communist party may practice “democratic centralism” while aiming to eliminate capitalism [22]. But rather than leaving, they organize where they live.

In Western Europe, communist parties were part of several post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced them out of government, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process [55]. By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western communist parties criticized communist states, distanced themselves from them, and developed a democratic road to socialism known as Eurocommunism [56]. After the Soviet Union dissolved, communist parties split: some remained hardline, while others, such as The Left in Germany, worked within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism [57]. Reformed communist parties outside communist states have led or joined left-leaning governments and coalitions, including in the former Eastern Bloc [58]. From the 1990s, many communist parties adopted democratic principles and shared power in government [60]. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is reformist rather than revolutionary, aiming to lessen the inequalities of Russia’s market economy [61]. Communist parties, or their descendants, remain politically important in several countries [63].

Capitalism’s survival and global spread made this normal

Late in the 20th century, capitalism overcame the challenge of centrally planned economies and became the encompassing system worldwide, with the mixed economy as its dominant form in the industrialized Western world [30]. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union allowed capitalism to become truly global [33], after it had already spread through globalization in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially before World War I and again after the Cold War [34]. Most economies today are mixed economies that combine free markets, state intervention, and sometimes economic planning [35]. Even many countries with “socialist” in their official title are primarily capitalist economies with strong welfare states [37]. Capitalism also adapted to avoid the revolutionary overthrow that seemed inevitable in the 19th century [32], and its opponents split between those who want revolution and those who want slow political reform [31]. That reformist path keeps many communist supporters inside capitalist systems.

Communist ideas stayed alive in public debate

Marxist and anti-capitalist ideas continue to circulate inside capitalist countries. Progressives have interpreted the American Revolution through Marxist critiques, seeing it as another effort by a privileged class to exploit the masses [24]. A whole school of Marxist historians has offered economistic readings of American history [25], even as others argue that a Marxist assumption that material interests always drive history does not explain the American Revolution [26]. One observer notes that after Marx, many became historical materialists, though economic interest is not the only human motivation [27]. Even earlier, Jeffersonian critics were horrified at independent landowners being turned into wage workers, a critique that anticipated future Marxist theory [28]. Marx and Engels themselves described capitalism’s impulse to revolutionize production and disturb all social conditions [29]. This cultural presence helps explain why people with communist ideas do not need to go anywhere.

Why communist parties stayed but did not win in the West

Since the end of World War II, nearly 20 countries acquired governments professing Marxist ideas [41], but Marxism’s success was mainly in the Third World, contrasting with its more checkered fate in developed countries [42]. Western Marxism is based in advanced capitalist countries and addresses problems faced by people there [52], but it has largely become an academic current whose relevance is often questioned and which is often said to be in crisis [39]. One source describes it as existing mainly in an academic ivory tower while still seeping into broader revolutionary movements [48]. In richer capitalist countries, the longer-term material benefits of the system softened the impact of inequality and disguised class power, making anti-capitalist sentiment harder to arouse [43]. Lenin also recognized that high monopoly profits in a few rich countries create the economic possibility of corrupting the upper strata of the proletariat, producing a privileged layer of workers with a material interest in imperialism [51]. Many Western Marxists focused on the Third World and paid insufficient attention to politics in their own countries [44], and some copied Third World guerrilla tactics instead of building a politics that could understand the staying power of capitalist democracy [45]. Meanwhile, Western socialists tried to rethink orthodox Marxism by emphasizing democracy and social forces beyond the working class, including women, Blacks, urban squatters, and anti-nuclear movements [46], and libertarian Marxism developed further in the 1960s with the New Left [62]. Critics also argue that Western Marxism is Eurocentric and dogmatic, rejecting both actually existing socialism and national liberation [49], and that academic success in capitalist countries encourages an essentially inert Marxism that does not fundamentally threaten imperialism [50]. These political struggles happen inside capitalist societies, not by moving away from them.

Not even exile meant leaving capitalist countries

Marx was one of the first strategists of working-class internationalism, designed to respond to capitalist globalization [47], and Marx and Engels came to link the struggle of workers in capitalist countries with the struggles of oppressed nations against colonial oppressors [54]. Even communists expelled from a communist-ruled state continued organizing in capitalist countries: Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and while in exile he continued his campaign against Stalin, founding the Fourth International in 1938 [59]. In short, the evidence suggests that communist supporters have mostly lived in capitalist countries because that is where communist ideas were born, where communist parties are legally active, and where many have chosen to fight for reform or revolution without leaving.