Capitalism, Socialism, Communism... -
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The last four remaining officially Communist one-party republics are China, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba. The DPRK purports to be one, but nobody with a brain believes that.
China in reality hasn't been 'properly Communist' since Deng Xiaoping. The DPRK is a kleptocracy obviously, Vietnam has been engaging in economic and political reforms and is basically trying to do a China, Laos has sort of shit the bed economically but also engaged in market reforms, and then there's Cuba which also implemented market economics and reforms.
tl;dr not really
nobody2590
kiwifarms.net
North Korea is the closest to a real communist state because the government controls everything, including all facets of industry and social services. However, it's more of an ultranationalist military dictatorship and it's drifted away from the global communist movement with its adherence to the "Juche" ideology. It's too complicated to explain in-depth, but basically it's Marxism-Leninism with "self-reliance" (basically economic autarky), a "military first" policy, and heavy investment in a cult of personality.
Essentially, most "communist states" gave up on communism as an economic idea because it left the populations extremely poor and the economies in a shambles. However, that doesn't mean the Communist parties of said countries are not still in charge. China has a market economy but is otherwise still a dictatorship run by the CCP. I don't know much about Cuba, but you know it's not a free place when the Castro brothers still run the show and you still have huge murals of Che Guevara everywhere.
Essentially, most "communist states" gave up on communism as an economic idea because it left the populations extremely poor and the economies in a shambles. However, that doesn't mean the Communist parties of said countries are not still in charge. China has a market economy but is otherwise still a dictatorship run by the CCP. I don't know much about Cuba, but you know it's not a free place when the Castro brothers still run the show and you still have huge murals of Che Guevara everywhere.
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There never were any communist states to begin with. By the time the first leader got into power, the country was a dictatorship.
nobody2590
kiwifarms.net
Strictly speaking, communism is defined as a dictatorship of the proletariat. So even if they were not "communist" per se, they were following Marxist doctrine. Lenin wrote that communist parties should be the revolutionary vanguard in establishing a proletarian state. Sure, China and the Soviet Union didn't refer to themselves as communist states because communism was the end-goal, but they thought that dictatorship was necessary to reaching that stage.
This is true, but it doesn't... make the DPRK similar to a communist state? The ideologies are totally different, as are the mechanisms for running the countries and how the internal bureaucracy functions. I mean, the end result is similar to the Stalinist USSR in some ways but that's because Stalin was a totalitarian too, USSR and Eastern socialist/communist regimes like the GDR are hardly comparable to the DPRK, nor is USSR post-Krushchev, or China, for that matter.
The problem is that doesn't make any sense. Proles are proles specifically because they are not leaders.
The problem with the soviet system was exactly what gave it its name: the super-legislature known as the Supreme Soviet.
Disregarding the balance and separation of powers necessary for stable government, they placed tremendous power in what amounted to a legislature. Just as with the National Assembly in Revolutionary France, such a body inevitably falls under the control of a strong personality, whether that is a Robespierre in France or Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Once this happens, either by one person or a small group dominating these social institutions, whether that's by formal position or something less direct like chairmanship of a political party, without any counter to such power it rapidly becomes complete.
So you never get to the dictatorship of the proletariat partly because such a thing does not and could not exist, but on top of that, the system inevitably turns into a plain old dictatorship by essentially unavoidable processes inherent in the type of system communism creates.
The thing with communism (and also with "benevolent dictatorships" and anarchic states) is that it all works GREAT on paper so long as every single person involved (especially the ones with power, ie the government) is completely on board and doesn't abuse the system and behaves in a humane and ethical way.
Generally speaking, we as human beings tend to abuse the fuck out of the system. And stuff that works great on paper tends to not actually work in reality because humans are extremely complicated and generally will look out for their own interests versus what's best for the world as a whole or "logical" to the system. This is exactly what we've seen with every single communist state. The higher ups live like the evil, demonic bourgeois while at the same time obsessively policing the proletariat so that won't do the same; the proletariat themselves are starved and overworked and yet can't even complain about their condition or else Big Brother will come and beat them/ship them off to a labor camp for "going against the people" or some bullshit.
Plus, honestly, I think communism is just super outdated at this point. Marx lived at a time when factory workers would lose fucking body parts to machinery and still be expected to work through it (seriously, read The Jungle). People worked themselves to death to make barely enough money to survive anyway, and there was nothing they could do about it. Things aren't perfect today, but worker's rights are taken very seriously. We can argue about minimum wage, health care, and other financial issues all day, but at least if you get injured on the job due to employer incompetence you can sue the living shit out them. I bet Marx couldn't have dreamed of unions and workers' compensation.
Generally speaking, we as human beings tend to abuse the fuck out of the system. And stuff that works great on paper tends to not actually work in reality because humans are extremely complicated and generally will look out for their own interests versus what's best for the world as a whole or "logical" to the system. This is exactly what we've seen with every single communist state. The higher ups live like the evil, demonic bourgeois while at the same time obsessively policing the proletariat so that won't do the same; the proletariat themselves are starved and overworked and yet can't even complain about their condition or else Big Brother will come and beat them/ship them off to a labor camp for "going against the people" or some bullshit.
Plus, honestly, I think communism is just super outdated at this point. Marx lived at a time when factory workers would lose fucking body parts to machinery and still be expected to work through it (seriously, read The Jungle). People worked themselves to death to make barely enough money to survive anyway, and there was nothing they could do about it. Things aren't perfect today, but worker's rights are taken very seriously. We can argue about minimum wage, health care, and other financial issues all day, but at least if you get injured on the job due to employer incompetence you can sue the living shit out them. I bet Marx couldn't have dreamed of unions and workers' compensation.
I think that the main problems with marxism are as follows:
- It is based on an intuitive rather than empirical foundation: although marx can be excused for not provicing statistics as they were much harder to find back then it fundamentally has nothing really supporting it, there is no mathematical foundation for it either which at least the austrian school
- It has the position of human nature being entirely determined by the environment: although this is an extension of the lack of support it is very distinct due to how much is invested in it and how easy it is to argue against. At its most extreme it manifested in a complete rejection of Darwinian evolution in favour of LaMarkian evolution in the form of Lysenkoism in the reign of Stalin. In lesser extremes it is found in people denying sex differences/racial differences without sufficient evidence (I am not going to say anything about either at the moment because I would be doing so without citations, thus making me just as bad as the marxists as well as derailing the thread). Another fundamental problem with lysenkoism is that it cannot explain how any decisions are driven because everything comes from society and thus there is a complete mystery of what could have even lead to the creation of society in the first place
Communism is a dismal failure of an system, and nobody has gotten it right- and probably never will, considering it's over-idealistic nature.
the whole premise of punishing the rich never worked due to the fact they just left the country
I'm a Marxist* because off all political and economic theory I've read, Marx, Engels, and later Marxists, seem to make the most sense to me. I took a pretty sharp left-turn after the recession began and I began to feel a whole lot less secure in American capitalism. It just no longer seemed like it was working, for myself, for my family, or for working people a whole. With this, as well as looming ecological problems like climate change in mind, I just think we need a radical new way of doing things. I'm not particular about what kind of socialism I favor. Leninist vanguardism has a tendency to degrade into oligarchy or despotism, although I think it did have it's place amidst the harsh repression of the Tsarist state and the chaos of the Civil War. I think here, in the 21st century US, some kind of Syndicalism with Leninist elements would be preferable.
As to whether or not Marxists ideals can be implemented, I'm not sure, although I'm certain some kind of socialist or quasi-socialist program could be implemented to the great betterment of the people as a whole, like FDR's New Deal or European Social Democracy. When you say Marxist ideals, I assume you mean Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism and it's ideological descendants like Maoism. You'll get no argument from me there, those where absolutely disasterous, and should be taken by all modern socialists as and example of what NOT to do. But the radical left, inspired ideas like Marxism and Anarchism, was a driving force in getting labor organized enough to win the benefits it currently enjoys in modern capitalism.
Also, the whole 'reactionary tumblr weeb' thing was just me fuckin' with ya'.
*I don't want to get into a semantical discussion of what 'Marxists' means, it would probably be best to just say that I'm a 'socialist who likes Marx'.
Maybe there was just some etymological confusion; by "Marxist" I do mean communist. Socialism's a much better and more realistic alternative to communism, which has never and will never work.
Basically, my philosophy is that extremes never work; ultra-capitalism and ultra-socialism (meaning communism) both fuck up societies. There needs to be a middle, where you can make your own money to buy your own things but at the same time not have to starve to death if you're unable to.
I think communism of some sort could work in a future post-scarcity society. But at this point that's just science fiction. Even Lenin recognized the need for some market involvement with the New Economic Plan.
What do you mean by a post scarcity society because by the definition of scarcity the only way that would work is if we destroyed all desire for anything as the only goods that are not scarce are ones that are undesireable.
For an economy in which there is a very small demand for labour the more likely outcome would be one in which the bourgeoise are even more powerful because they can subsist purely through the means of production and the labour of the proletariat is not required so they will lose their bargaining power
Labor movements were current to his time and he hated them because he thought that they would impede the revolution due to their pacifying influence on the proletariat while still acting within the structure of the capitalist system.
Why do you think that so many of the more extreme leftists favor a world government?
Yeah, that's right. He also saw socialism as just a "stepping stone" to communism.
Also, a lot of communists will point out that technically, communism has never actually existed. Communism is essentially anarchy, where society is classless, stateless, and moneyless. Socialism is meant to provide a transitional stage between capitalism and communism. To Marx, a socialist state is where the means and ends of production are owned by the people, controlled through the state. Eventually, due to the high production levels of the society, everyone would have enough to live happily, and no control by any higher echelons would be exerted.
Of course, we all know what actually happens during this "socialist" stage because we've seen it happen with the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. Those in the government don't want to actually become communist because it means giving up their power, authority, and privileges. Thus we get nightmare totalitarian dystopias, because the government currently has all the power and will do whatever is necessary to keep it, even if it means killing thousands of their own citizens.
It doesn't even matter whether communist countries were actually communist or not; we know from history that any attempts to try to implement communism results in warfare, famine, poverty, genocide, corruption, the absence of the most basic human rights (especially freedom of speech), and intense propaganda. I consider myself to be an optimist, and I believe that most people are inherently good, but even I can see that Marx's communist ideals are completely unobtainable.
I will say that I think that he didn't see the strength of unions in the late 20th century coming though
But then again considering that the unions collapsed I think he may have been right on that
This was actually used as an attempt to keep people calm in former communist states. People were fully aware that the promised prosperity isn't actually there, so the ruling party would just say "oh don't worry, we're not truly communist yet but we're getting there!" - so Communist Poland (as well as the many others) was explicitly referred to as a "socialist nation on the way towards communism" - communism was simply seen as an ideal, a goal. Of course an unachievable one, as part of the ruling party was simply delusional how unworkable it is, while another part never wanted any of this utopian bullshit in the first place and just wanted power.
A lot of Westerners I've talked to actually find the latter idea completely baffling because their nations have not been under any vile occupying force like that for a long time. I firmly believe that Lenin and his comrades never wanted peace love and equality and just used it as a way to control people. A lot of people say that the concept of "evil" doesn't really apply to the real world, but I really wouldn't know any other way to call the founders of communism.
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Yes, OP is autistic.
