What does communization mean?
Communization is the act or process of converting a society, economy, or institution to communist principles and organization. The term can describe a deliberate ideological transformation, including the replacement of private ownership with collective or state ownership, but it is also used more broadly for the establishment or imposition of a communist political system. Because it names a process rather than simply the ideology of communism, it often appears in historical and political discussion of revolutionary governments, policy reforms, and transitions from private enterprise to centrally planned economies. Communization is uncommon in general prose and tends to sound formal, academic, or polemical. In neutral historical analysis it refers to a policy or outcome; in critical writing it may imply that communist institutions were imposed against the wishes of the population. Outside specialized contexts, communization and the more transparent gerund communizing can sound unfamiliar, making the noun especially useful for discussing not communism as an idea but the concrete conversion of an existing society into one organized according to communist principles.
nounThe act or process of converting a society, economy, or institution to communist principles and organization, especially through the establishment or imposition of a communist political system.
- The process of making a society, economy, or institution communist, especially by replacing private ownership with collective or state ownership.
- The establishment or imposition of a communist political system.
"The decree announced the communization of private industry and the abolition of private ownership."
"The reform programme sought the gradual communization of agriculture and industry."
"Historians continue to debate whether the communization of local government represented genuine participation or centralized control."
The plural is rare and normally refers to separate processes of communist transformation or to different attempts at such a transformation.
"The article compares the communizations attempted by several revolutionary governments."
Communization names the moment an idea becomes a system: the conversion of existing institutions into communist organization.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does communization come from?
Communization combines the established English form communist with the process-forming suffix -ization. The English word communist was borrowed from French communiste and ultimately derives from Latin communis, meaning “common” or “shared”; communism, commune, and communal are related English forms. The noun follows a productive English pattern in which the name of a political or social system is converted into a term for the process of establishing that system.
Related word forms
How communization is actually used
Communization is uncommon in general prose and is chiefly found in political, ideological, and historical contexts. It can be neutral when describing a policy or historical process, but it may have a critical connotation when it implies that communist institutions were imposed without popular consent.