World communism, also known as global communism, is the hypothetical ultimate form of communism which of necessity has a universal or global scope. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless (lacking any exploitation of human by human), moneyless (lacking a need for currency to regulate human behavior), and stateless (lacking any violent compulsion of human by human), which may be achieved through an intermediate-term goal of either a voluntary association of sovereign states (a global alliance) or a world government (a single worldwide state).
A series of internationals have worked toward world communism and they have included the First International, the Second International, the Third International (the Communist International or Comintern), the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, Maoist Internationalist Movement, the World Socialist Movement, and variant offshoots. The methods and political theories of each International remain quite heterogeneous in their pursuit of the global communist society.
During the Stalinist era, the novel theory of socialism in one country, flew in the face of the generally accepted practice of Marxism at the time, and became part of the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Justifying the innovation, Joseph Stalin and his supporters concluded that it was naive to think that world revolution was imminent in the 1920s–1930s after Germany's Bavarian Soviet Republic failed to produce the anticipated socialist vanguard state to lead the world in revolution; instead descending into fascism and the murder of Rosa Luxemburg. This caused great disillusionment among many socialists worldwide, who agreed with Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin's analysis that an international scope was vital to communist success but could not at the time explain the fascist deviation in world affairs. Currents of national communism, especially after World War II, broke the prewar hegemonic popularity of internationalist communism in view of standing nations in the Stalinist mold.
The end of the Cold War, with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is often called the fall of communism in the Stalinist mold. Nevertheless, the international communist tendencies remain among Maoists, Trotskyist, left communists, and some present-day Russian communists among others seeking to further refine and revise the theory of dialectical materialism.
Early era (1917–1944) Marxist philosophy observed that because capitalism had begun to exhaust the low hanging fruit of domestic exploitation, it had to become Imperialist and seek the global exploitation of both markets by extraction/colonialism and workers by the exploitation of labour. This need for profit as the sole motivating force of the capitalist class acts like an invisible hand to compel class solidarity among the now international capitalist class of the world against any attempt to unify in solidarity by the (now also international) workers of the world. The capitalist class' goal to maintain profitability and thus their class' dominance is the engine and reason for the class conflict).
Recognition by people of the pain of this exploitation by capitalists inexorably unites the proletariat of the world and necessitates international cooperation to halt the suffering of humankind. This proletarian internationalism has as its aim the end of continuous subjugation via divide and rule by the comparatively few capitalists who seek to stop the development of class consciousness in their workers lest they too form trade unions to counter the capitalists monopolies; (thus the rallying cry of all true socialists "Workers of the world, unite!"). In this view, after a transitional period of international socialism the terminal stage of development of the (future) history of communism would likewise be replaced by world communism.
Theoreticians differ on whether world communism may be achieved peacefully despite the clear class conflict. Those who believe the capitalist class would not put down their property rights to become workers again believe the transition to world communism must be more contentious. World communism as the utopian final goal of the class conflict can only be achieved by world revolution as "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" in the words of noted socialist, Martin Luther King Jr.