Communist propaganda

Communist propaganda is the artistic and social promotion of the ideology of communism, communist worldview, communist society, and interests of the communist movement. While it tends to carry a negative connotation in the Western world, the term propaganda broadly refers to any publication or campaign aimed at promoting a cause and is/was used for official purposes by most communist-oriented governments. The term may also refer to political parties' opponents' campaign. Rooted in Marxist thought, the propaganda of communism is viewed by its proponents as the vehicle for spreading their idea of enlightenment of working class people and pulling them away from the propaganda of who they view to be their oppressors, that they claim reinforces exploitation, such as religion or consumerism. Communist propaganda therefore stands in opposition to bourgeois or capitalist propaganda.

In The ABC of Communism, Bolshevik theoretician Nikolai Bukharin wrote: "The State propaganda of communism becomes in the long run a means for the eradication of the last traces of bourgeois propaganda dating from the old régime; and it is a powerful instrument for the creation of a new ideology, of new modes of thought, of a new outlook on the world."

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia defines communist propaganda as being the expression of the essential worldview of the working class and its natural aims and interests defined by its historical position as the social force which will ultimately usher in the epoch of communism.

According to communist theory, the history of all society has been the history of class struggle and with each phase of this struggle comes a new set of social relationships that dictate the direction of society's development and, fundamentally, the system of producing and distributing goods and services. Arising from the creation of surplus during the Neolithic Revolution, the unequal distribution of this surplus has been reinforced by the state which represents the interests of the ruling class of the time. While all societies and civilizations have had their own unique history of development, they each pass through six distinctive stages of economic relationships sharing common characteristics, these being: primitive communism (hunter-gatherer societies), slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and finally a return to communism in a highly advanced form which is considered to be the epoch of humanity having become fully civilized.

Communist propaganda accordingly serves the same purpose as all its predecessor propaganda: to ideologically enforce the legitimacy of the working class (those who derive a living from selling their labor) as the ruling class of society. Within this context, the main counter-propaganda is bourgeois propaganda, or propaganda that promotes the rule of the capitalist class (those who derive a living from privately owning property and capital assets). Communist propaganda is defined as a scientifically based system of the dissemination of the communist ideology with the purpose of education, training and organizing of the masses.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia identifies the following functions of communist propaganda:

As a common trait of any propaganda and its analogue, advertising, communist propaganda's goals and techniques are tuned according to the target audience. The most broad classification of targets is:

A more detailed list would be