What Countries Are Communist Today? Which Ones Used to Be?

With an acknowledgment that there exists some disagreement around the whole "socialism vs. communism" question — more on that below — here is a list of the countries that today can be said to align with the communist ideology, at least insofar as they are run by a communist party of some stripe.

1. China

China — officially, the People's Republic of China — with over 1.4 billion inhabitants, is the world's second-most populous country. Its government is entirely ruled by the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party.

Today, while economic control is concentrated at the state level, various industries have undergone market-based reforms, and there is a level of private ownership, as well as some very wealthy individuals.

They are a far cry from a classless society, in other words, but are still thought of as a communist country.

2. Vietnam

Officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, this country of over 100 million inhabitants is another example of an economic system that's compatible with communism.

In Vietnam, the Communist Party of Vietnam is the only political party, and maintains fairly extensive control over the economy, with many state owned enterprises still operating. Since the 1980s, however, the economic system has become more mixed, with private ownership becoming more common.

3. North Korea

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is also commonly referred to as a communist country. Political power is held exclusively by the Worker's Party of Korea, which is centered around the Kim family, despite its claims to being a democratic state.

The 26 million people of North Korea have long suffered from human rights abuses, severe shortages of basic necessities and very little contact with the outside world. Still, the extensive state ownership of the means of production has led to its association with the ideals of communism.

4. Cuba

Home to about 10 million people, the Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea. While the ruling communist party has held power since the 1960s, like many communist states, the economic system has become increasingly friendly to private enterprise, especially in recent years.

Cuba is also known for its impressive achievements in public health, despite being a relatively poor country.

5. Laos

The Lao People's Democratic Republic, like its neighbor Vietnam, is one of two countries in Southeast Asia committed to building a communist society. Like many communist governments, it has only one legally recognized party: the Lao People's Revolutionary Party.

Also like many present-day socialist countries, it has seen increased tolerance for market reforms and private property, especially in recent years.

Communism is an influential strain of modern political and economic ideology. Broadly speaking, it might be best summed up by Karl Marx, who famously said "to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities."

It means a system free of exploitation, where everyone contributes to the common good as they are able.

While some of the ideals of communism go back into the ancient world, by the modern era — especially the latter half of the 19th century — they had taken shape in their currently-recognizable form: common ownership of property, the abolition of social classes and the eventual dissolution of the state.

What that looks like in practice, as well as how to actually get there from the current system — which most political and economic thinkers agree is some version of capitalism — is something that pretty much nobody agrees upon.

Still, there have been attempts (many of them fairly recent) to create such a society, or to begin a transition to that system.

Part of the confusion surrounding the term "communism" has to do with the difference between communist parties, communist countries and communism as a desired end-state.

Many people in countries under so-called "communist rule," or who belong to this or that communist party, will be quick to respond that what they are doing isn't actually communism; that will come later.

That's because in the communist grand scheme of things, the progression goes something like:

Capitalism > Socialism > Communism

Eventually, according to many thinkers, the capitalist economy will fall apart due to its own inherent contradictions, ushering in state socialism, where the state will own and direct the economy on behalf of the workers.

Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, the state will "wither away" and we'll be left with people who are working, playing, consuming and generally enjoying life without the need for the state apparatus.

How all of this works is subject to a lot of debate. Famously, the Soviet Union was created as the result of a violent revolution (same for the People's Republic of China), which is how most exponents of communism believed change had to happen.

But then, after the Soviet Union collapsed, lots of communist parties had to revise their way of thinking and behaving in the world.

Crucially, then and now, nobody really claimed that they had finally achieved communism. In fact, some of the names of the countries themselves are a hint of this: the USSR stands for the United Soviet Socialist Republics, Vietnam's official name is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and so forth.

The idea is, while the political parties are committed to the cause of communism, they are still administering an interim state that is technically socialist.

In the middle of the 20th century, there were many more countries under communist rule. After the Soviet Union collapsed, and the balance of power shifted dramatically towards the capitalist states — especially the United States — things changed fairly quickly.

But if we go back to the years after World War II, when the Soviet Union was still a major power, there were many other communist-led states.

The following countries were led by communist parties for some years after WWII. Many of them were in or allied with the Soviet Union, and when that political system collapsed in 1991, they became non-communist states virtually overnight (of course, the social transition wasn't instantaneous).