Marxism has never existed outside of mental exercise. Every single time it has been imposed it has failed to do anything but act as a rhetoric for power and control. We desperately need something modern to look up to and we should drop Marxism in the dustbin of failed historical movements. A great idea for its time.
“Marxism has never existed outside of mental exercise. Every single time it has been imposed it has failed to do anything but act as a rhetoric for power and control.”
This, as the last commenter said, is completely ahistorical and incorrect. Every society in which Marxists have come to power was previously unequal, impoverished, unindustrialized, and most of the time a colony of another power. Every time this has happened the countries end up industrializing and eliminating severe poverty within a few decades, as well as providing housing, healthcare, food, transportation, work, and every other basic necessity for each one of their citizens. This can be seen with a simple look past the cold war rhetoric and into the actual history of the world.
Communism was also the primary force which defeated fascism everywhere that it popped up up until the 80s or 90s.
I am not counting a bunch of olgiarchy’s that used communist rhetoric to enrich themselves while never even getting close to actual communism or socialism. Please try again. Where is the shinning example of any of these nations? What is that, they all failed and became fascist… That is right kiddo!
Defeated fascism, oh wow you have got to be fucking joking me right? By what measure has fascism ever been defeated and please do not list Germany or Italy as the US industrialists helped bankroll both countries before WWII. Fascism has never been defeated. Some nations that are fascist have fallen, but not specifically because of fascism.
So liberal democracies promised universal rights and utopia. Instead each Liberal state produced between 100 and 150 years of abject poverty, massive wars, and domestic repression of labor movements with the military or paramilitary police.
Communism promised universal rights and utopia. Instead they produced about 10 - 30 years of major famines and poverty and displacement and then after that initial period eliminated abject poverty while speed running industrialization without creating a class of robber barons that ran the government.
Fascism was defeated in its objective of destroying the world’s first workers’ state. The US and UK supported the rise of the Third Reich and Germany fielded the most powerful military ever fielded at that time. The USSR lost 7M people fighting all the way across Europe to sack Berlin and end the Nazi project. And for that, they will never be forgiven.
Thanks for that. I think you are well spoken/read, but I do view a few things slightly differently.
Liberal Democracy is just a window dressing for ogliarchy. A convincing bit of propaganda that centers around a false sense of political choice. Choice always exists, even in a totalitarian regime, so liberalism has always been a belief system built on a false premise.
Communism has never existed. Some oligarchies used a more centralized planning approach under the guise of communism or socialism. The USSR definitely accomplished a lot but it was not due to communism unless you believe they were doing it in the spirit of communism in a failed effort to create it.
What either rose out or put people into poverty was how the surplus of industrialization was distributed. A great example of this is with China’s embrace of capitalism and the subsequent raising up of hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. A counter example is found in several nations like the UK that saw income inequality increase as productivity skyrocketed from the use of machinery.
It just so happens that governments that enact socialist inspired policies try to do a better job at this distribution. It is almost like intent matters. I don’t want to totally disparage countries attempting to create communism, even if they failed miserably. There is no doubt that the US and other countries did everything they could to sabotage communism.
You point out the ugly fascist truth that the UK and US support of fascism in Europe was a major factor in WWII. Certainly Nazi Germany greatly benefited from industrialists like Ford. It is ironic that the US tries to claim to be the good guys when they supported the Nazi and showed up at the end of the European WWII theatre after Russia had done all the hard work to claim victory.
Good effort. I think you don’t have a robust understanding of the history of the movement for communism, but generally we occupy similar positions.
Where I would first push back is on this position you have that not only had there never been communism but that every communist party must prove that they were trying and failed.
Communism, as Engels wrote, is the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes. It’s not to be understood as a goal, or a system of government. It’s not something people implement, or choose. It’s a movement with a specific understanding of the world arrived at through analysis which dictates a specific direction and set of abstract objectives.
Socialism, as Lenin wrote, is the attempt to build a state according to Communism, that is to say, according to the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes.
Socialism, therefore, is fundamentally an attempt to build something that literally no one has ever seen before, has never succeeded at, does not have known recipe, does not have known ingredients, and for which we do not have empirical data.
Central planning, as far as the analysis of class society is concerned, is a requirement for developing a state along the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes. Central planning is not equivalent with socialism, as fascism also uses central planning, but the use of central planning, as far as human beings have determined, is a necessity for creating the conditions for ending class society.
So the great things that the USSR achieved was because of the movement for communism overthrowing the ruling class and establishing a socialist state. That is to say they took control of a state that was currently in a feudal/capitalist transition and then they set about eliminating the last remaining feudalist elements and then eliminating what capitalist elements they could (like private property and anarchy of the markets). Having been the first ever group to attempt such a thing, they were operating with vague theories and no empirical evidence of what not to do. And, despite all the great things they did achieve, they failed to maintain the movement for communism.
A great example of this is with China’s embrace of capitalism and the subsequent raising up of hundreds of millions of people living in poverty.
This is a pro-capitalist framing. The more nuanced reality is that prior to adopting capitalist techniques for resource allocation and distribution, China was outpacing most industrialized countries in poverty alleviation and increasing quality of life. This was “easy” because China was coming from the poorest position in the world, so even modest absolute gains were massive relative gains. But they achieved massive poverty alleviation without capitalism.
They adopted capitalism not because they wanted to alleviate more poverty, but because there are problems that central planning is currently not sufficiently advanced enough to address. Central planning and markets are just tools for solving problems. China had an advantage over the USSR - it could learn from the mistakes of the USSR. One of those mistakes was using central planning when it was not up to the task. Another of those mistakes was the establishment of hardline isolationist trading bloc. Chinese communists analyzed these behaviors and found they led to outcomes that threatened the movement for communism, but they also did not abandon central planning, for that too would threaten the movement from communism. So they apply central planning insofar as it is necessary, sufficient, and advantageous to do so, and they allow markets insofar as they are effective and advantageous to do so.
I don’t want to totally disparage countries attempting to create communism, even if they failed miserably.
There’s only 2 that failed - the USSR and Yugoslavia. The rest are still operating.
There is no doubt that the US and other countries did everything they could to sabotage communism.
Generally the US is the reason why revolutions fail, but not why socialist states revert to capitalism. Both USSR and Yugoslavia failed the movement for communism long before they were destroyed. If the Cuban communist party loses control of the state, that one we can firmly blame the US for. But the US usually kills movements before they take over the state. I mean, they invaded Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cuba, and many others in an attempt to kill the movement for communism before it could establish control.
And then, as for your reference to oligarchies, which seems directed at communist states, really the main one I can think of is late stage USSR. After Kruschev took office he started by changing the national conversation away from its revolutionary past, then accumulated more wealth into the state as a way of solving hard economic problems but without any strong controls in place, which led to massive corruption that could not be stopped which led to the empowerment of a new oligarchy who then liberalized the economy, which led to massive poverty, and then they attempted to join the West and become an imperial partner, until they finally dismantled the project and the oligarchs emerged.
Other than that.
Stalin was a poor laborer son of a poor laborer from a national ethnicity that was considered dirty and stupid. He died owning basically nothing and without any money to pass on to anyone.
Chinese business tycoons aren’t able to buy elections and they can lose everything including their lives if they try to do anything that would change the balance of power.
There is no wealth in Cuba or North Korea to be hoarded because the countries can barely function on the international markets with the sanctions and thus there’s no mechanism to accumulate capital through trade and domestically it’s not like they can become robber barons and then take over government through political parties.
I wouldn’t consider Vietnam or Laos to be oligarchies. Their inequality is slightly worse than the most advanced European nations but still better than Bulgaria and Lithuania.
That’s all I got for now. Let me know what you think.
I can see your point if viewing communism as a purely abstract movement instead of an actuall.set of policies. I resist rhetoric in the absence of policy because it is just lip service. In other words, the proof is in the pudding (aka policy).
In this regard communism has never failed. I would caution this same type of thinking though as it could be used to justify any movement because it isn’t the policy after all, but a collection of rhetoric waiting for the “right” implementation.
This gets at a bigger issue of culture and why many movements have failed. It is not the spirit or even policies that make them fail, but the human element and our collective culture. You can create the best laws and policies, but they are useless if the culture ignores them. We can see this in the lack of enforcement on monopoly in the US or the banning of the 6 day 12 hour work week in China.
I think you make the correct distinction for central planning as every government uses it. The degree it is used and who makes the decisions and why is the important part. As far as what degree is needed or not needed for socialism, it is debatable. As you pointed out we have never experienced it in a real life example, unless you are counting the imperfect attempt at policies driven by olgiarchies pretending to be whatever propaganda resonates with their ruling class. The non-ruling class is, for the most part, irrelevant as seen in all past and current systems.
I don’t really care what you claim you are. If you are a small elite group of people calling the shots you are an olgiarchy. I am sure there is nuance here just like with fascism. China, for instance, ticks off more boxes of fascism than even the US. What a country says it is worthless except to study and understand why they use that rhetoric. We don’t let governments define what they are, we define it.
I suppose we will just have to disagree about market driven economic liberalization being the tool that did the most to reduce poverty in China. I am not convinced their prior policies were effective considering the millions of Chinese that died from starvation. Saying this to a dead person (that their policies were effective for ending poverty) is nonsensical. The US also failed in this regard on the opposite end during the great depression. What does supposed liberty matter when you starve to death. That is the very definition of failure for me.
If you believe in the ideals (rhetoric) of communism or socialism then adopting a scheme of private enterprise (AKA capitalism) is a dramatic failure. I know you probably can’t see it that way and that is okay. Perhaps some ideals are never meant to be converted into policy and they will always just live rent free in our head to be used as excuses and justifications of the world we live in.
You are speaking of it being more along the lines of religion. I reject this. He had some interesting things to say for his time and that is about it. We desperately need something modern and frankly Marxism fanatics are never going to move the needle.
the fact that something was written 150 years ago doesnt make it outdated, you have to prove with facts as to why you think its outdated. Something isnt always something better
But it does, listen to yourself. 150 years ago still relevant to this day! A lot has changed since then and no one cares about Marx except fanatics. The time has passed and you need something new to remain relevant.
Buddy. People are still invoking John Locke’s concepts of private property that he penned in the 1600s. What are you talking about Marx is irrelevant because a lot has changed in 150 years. You think Marx’s arguments are based on the level of technology at that time? Hell, the US constitution is 250 years old and it runs the country. The Doctrine of Discovery is based on the papal bulls from the 1400s and RBG cited them in the mid 2000s to explain how the USA’s claim to territory is fundamentally based on those documents.
But Marx is relevant for more reasons than just that his writing is recent. Hundreds of millions of people in China study Marx every year. It’s part of the core curriculum, it’s part of business theory, it’s part of their economics writing, their political writing, it’s part of party entrance exams.
Yes the books Marx wrote are dead and old. But the ideas are very much alive and adapting today just like the ideas of Locke and Burke.
I know it’s hard for Americans because their country is so young, but ideas don’t become irrelevant just because they age. Ideas that maintain their life despite their age are the most relevant ideas of our society. And Marx’s ideas inform so much from politics and economics to psychology to sociology to media and journalism.
buddy, the whitehouse is putting up deranged tweets against communism and kamal herself called trump a communist dictator. Communism is very well alive
Where is communism alive!? Please just stop now, if your proof is the deranged postings of Trump’s staff then you are not going to convince me or anyone else.
A nation guided first and foremost by Marxist philosophy (with a lot of modern development for sure) is currently #2 by GDP and is poised to be the main driver of human development in the next half-century at least. But sure, it’s only a mental exercise.
Oh fuck, I hope to God your not talking about China who has pumped out more billionaires than the US for the third straight year. The one that used a planned economy to corner the global markets. They are so far from Communism or Socialism it isn’t funny.
China who has pumped out more billionaires than the US for the third straight year
They also have about 4x the population.
China’s mixed model does unfortunately still allow haute capitalists to spring up in certain industries. However the worst offenders are regularly captured and imprisoned, their wealth redistributed.
When was the last time a US or EU billionaire went to prison for any serious length of time and got their wealth confiscated?
The one that used a planned economy to corner the global markets
Oh no, a centrally planned & industrialized economy works better than unplanned, de-industrialized and over-financialized economy. Evil asians are cornering the market!
They are so far from Communism or Socialism it isn’t funny.
They are really far from communism as Marx defined it still. But they do have a working “mixed” system, with workers principally in control of the state, the state planning the economy, and the state directly controlling most important industries including finance, with regulated&limited capitalist development strategically allowed in some sectors of economy in order to advance the productive forces. This is consistent with (initial stages of) socialism in the most commonly understood Marxist-Leninist sense, similar to NEP if you’re familiar with the history of USSR. It is not socialism in the Stalinist or classical Maoist sense but I don’t think you are advocating for either of those.
But the amount of billionaires the US is printing is already problematic and that’s a capitalist country. The US should not be a country to compare to. It’s like if someone said “Well the Rwanda genocide actually caused more deaths than the Israeli one against Palestine”. Like yes, technically true, but the fact that there’s even a comparison to be made should be a big enough red flag.
When was the last time a US or EU billionaire went to prison for any serious length of time and got their wealth confiscated?
Unfortunately doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should, but with China since they seem to prefer executing them, I do suspect they’re largely political opponents they’re trying to keep quiet for good, not just criminals.
Oh no, a centrally planned & industrialized economy works better than unplanned, de-industrialized and over-financialized economy. Evil asians are cornering the market!
You DO realize China uses underhanded tactics, right? Subsidizing goods to be sold overseas is called dumping and there’s a reason the EU throws tariffs on tons of categories of goods from China. If it costs 20€ to make something in the EU but 15€ in China and then the Chinese government throws in another 5€ so the company could sell it even cheaper, that’s a bit of an issue for the EU’s industry.
But the amount of billionaires the US is printing is already problematic and that’s a capitalist country.
Yes, fully agreed. China is producing haute capitalists and it’s a problem they need to deal with.
The US should not be a country to compare to.
Both China and the US are global superpowers so a comparison is a necessary tool.
Out of two bad things, I will choose the less bad one.
they seem to prefer executing them
If you actually look at the last decade or so, they don’t actually execute most of them and it’s pretty much a “life without parole but you shouldn’t be naughty in prison”. I am also against capital punishment in all forms, and most prisons, I believe that even the worst billionaires can be reformed if you give them the chance. So this is indeed a valid criticism of China and I hope they can improve on that front.
largely political opponents they’re trying to keep quiet for good, not just criminals.
Yes, capitalists are the natural political enemy of the working class. You do not earn a billion dollars, you rob others of a billion dollars, and it’s only natural that people who did that will not have the best political intentions in mind. They all need to be kept at bay (actually just stripped of wealth and sent to do community service for a long time or smth).
Subsidizing goods to be sold overseas is called dumping
China is subsidizing its economy primarily to develop productive forces which is seen as a necessary step towards communism. This means also that it will be more competitive at the international stage; this is primarily just socialism winning in the “free market of ideas”.
there’s a reason the EU throws tariffs on tons of categories of goods from China
Or, hear me out, they could also subsidize their industries where it matters. But they can’t really because most of that subsidy will be promptly absorbed by the capitalist in charge, and that is primarily the point.
Like, think about this on a global scale. If every state stopped subsidizing all industries, we would only be left with what’s most profitable or the most popular with the working class, depending on the dominant mode of production. If everyone subsidized the industries necessary for human development, we would get human development. How is that not a win?
Yes, capitalists are the natural political enemy of the working class. You do not earn a billion dollars, you rob others of a billion dollars, and it’s only natural that people who did that will not have the best political intentions in mind. They all need to be kept at bay (actually just stripped of wealth and sent to do community service for a long time or smth).
They still allow capitalists to become billionaires. It’s the ones the people in power don’t like that get life in prison or execution. Enemies of the party, not enemies of the working class.
Or, hear me out, they could also subsidize their industries where it matters.
They do and China also puts tariffs on those industries to protect their own. But no other country, save for the US, has the funds China does. The rest of us can’t just subsidize entire industries until international competition falls apart completely. There are subsidies to help an industry develop, and there’s economic warfare.
They still allow capitalists to become billionaires. It’s the ones the people in power don’t like that get life in prison or execution. Enemies of the party, not enemies of the working class.
In this case, enemies of the party ⊂ enemies of the working class. Is it ideal that there are haute capitalists at all? No. Is it better in that respect than almost any country on earth? Yes.
But no other country, save for the US, has the funds China does
Well maybe countries could band together to engage in some kind of an international economic cooperation to pool funds together, strategically invest in their industry, and better their economies. Maybe countries in Europe can form a Union of some kind. If they did, their combined GDP would be on par with that of China or the US, and they would have a lot of resources available for investment…
Again, the problem is not how much cash the EU has to invest in itself, the problem is that subsidies under capitalism lead mostly to profit increases for capitalists and actual industry development is limited. Nationalization (or at least much tighter control) of key industries is required to speed up development of productive forces.
China is verifiably a socialist country in Marxist-Leninist sense. Unless you also want to claim that USSR under NEP was not a socialist country in a Marxist-Leninist sense in which case cool, you know Marxism-Leninism better than Lenin, congrats.
If you want to critique China there are hundreds of ways to do so, from human rights to urbanism to policing issues, but the economic equality or non-adherance to socialist principles is far down the list.
(clearly) unlike you, I’ve been to China and spoke to people there and read academic research on the subject.
China is not fascist, in fact it is quite close to the opposite (do you even know what characterizes fascism?).
China is not an oligarchy but a one-party bureaucracy (same as mid-to-late USSR). Not great either but the power is not concentrated in the hands of the few in the same sense as it is in the US, party factions and members have significant power&leverage all the way from local to national level.
Marxism has never existed outside of mental exercise. Every single time it has been imposed it has failed to do anything but act as a rhetoric for power and control. We desperately need something modern to look up to and we should drop Marxism in the dustbin of failed historical movements. A great idea for its time.
Ahistorical and incorrect. Marxism has never been more relevant.
Sure whatever you say /s
“Marxism has never existed outside of mental exercise. Every single time it has been imposed it has failed to do anything but act as a rhetoric for power and control.”
This, as the last commenter said, is completely ahistorical and incorrect. Every society in which Marxists have come to power was previously unequal, impoverished, unindustrialized, and most of the time a colony of another power. Every time this has happened the countries end up industrializing and eliminating severe poverty within a few decades, as well as providing housing, healthcare, food, transportation, work, and every other basic necessity for each one of their citizens. This can be seen with a simple look past the cold war rhetoric and into the actual history of the world.
Communism was also the primary force which defeated fascism everywhere that it popped up up until the 80s or 90s.
I am not counting a bunch of olgiarchy’s that used communist rhetoric to enrich themselves while never even getting close to actual communism or socialism. Please try again. Where is the shinning example of any of these nations? What is that, they all failed and became fascist… That is right kiddo!
Defeated fascism, oh wow you have got to be fucking joking me right? By what measure has fascism ever been defeated and please do not list Germany or Italy as the US industrialists helped bankroll both countries before WWII. Fascism has never been defeated. Some nations that are fascist have fallen, but not specifically because of fascism.
So liberal democracies promised universal rights and utopia. Instead each Liberal state produced between 100 and 150 years of abject poverty, massive wars, and domestic repression of labor movements with the military or paramilitary police.
Communism promised universal rights and utopia. Instead they produced about 10 - 30 years of major famines and poverty and displacement and then after that initial period eliminated abject poverty while speed running industrialization without creating a class of robber barons that ran the government.
Fascism was defeated in its objective of destroying the world’s first workers’ state. The US and UK supported the rise of the Third Reich and Germany fielded the most powerful military ever fielded at that time. The USSR lost 7M people fighting all the way across Europe to sack Berlin and end the Nazi project. And for that, they will never be forgiven.
Thanks for that. I think you are well spoken/read, but I do view a few things slightly differently.
Liberal Democracy is just a window dressing for ogliarchy. A convincing bit of propaganda that centers around a false sense of political choice. Choice always exists, even in a totalitarian regime, so liberalism has always been a belief system built on a false premise.
Communism has never existed. Some oligarchies used a more centralized planning approach under the guise of communism or socialism. The USSR definitely accomplished a lot but it was not due to communism unless you believe they were doing it in the spirit of communism in a failed effort to create it.
What either rose out or put people into poverty was how the surplus of industrialization was distributed. A great example of this is with China’s embrace of capitalism and the subsequent raising up of hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. A counter example is found in several nations like the UK that saw income inequality increase as productivity skyrocketed from the use of machinery.
It just so happens that governments that enact socialist inspired policies try to do a better job at this distribution. It is almost like intent matters. I don’t want to totally disparage countries attempting to create communism, even if they failed miserably. There is no doubt that the US and other countries did everything they could to sabotage communism.
You point out the ugly fascist truth that the UK and US support of fascism in Europe was a major factor in WWII. Certainly Nazi Germany greatly benefited from industrialists like Ford. It is ironic that the US tries to claim to be the good guys when they supported the Nazi and showed up at the end of the European WWII theatre after Russia had done all the hard work to claim victory.
Good effort. I think you don’t have a robust understanding of the history of the movement for communism, but generally we occupy similar positions.
Where I would first push back is on this position you have that not only had there never been communism but that every communist party must prove that they were trying and failed.
Communism, as Engels wrote, is the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes. It’s not to be understood as a goal, or a system of government. It’s not something people implement, or choose. It’s a movement with a specific understanding of the world arrived at through analysis which dictates a specific direction and set of abstract objectives.
Socialism, as Lenin wrote, is the attempt to build a state according to Communism, that is to say, according to the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes.
Socialism, therefore, is fundamentally an attempt to build something that literally no one has ever seen before, has never succeeded at, does not have known recipe, does not have known ingredients, and for which we do not have empirical data.
Central planning, as far as the analysis of class society is concerned, is a requirement for developing a state along the doctrine of the liberation of the working classes. Central planning is not equivalent with socialism, as fascism also uses central planning, but the use of central planning, as far as human beings have determined, is a necessity for creating the conditions for ending class society.
So the great things that the USSR achieved was because of the movement for communism overthrowing the ruling class and establishing a socialist state. That is to say they took control of a state that was currently in a feudal/capitalist transition and then they set about eliminating the last remaining feudalist elements and then eliminating what capitalist elements they could (like private property and anarchy of the markets). Having been the first ever group to attempt such a thing, they were operating with vague theories and no empirical evidence of what not to do. And, despite all the great things they did achieve, they failed to maintain the movement for communism.
This is a pro-capitalist framing. The more nuanced reality is that prior to adopting capitalist techniques for resource allocation and distribution, China was outpacing most industrialized countries in poverty alleviation and increasing quality of life. This was “easy” because China was coming from the poorest position in the world, so even modest absolute gains were massive relative gains. But they achieved massive poverty alleviation without capitalism.
They adopted capitalism not because they wanted to alleviate more poverty, but because there are problems that central planning is currently not sufficiently advanced enough to address. Central planning and markets are just tools for solving problems. China had an advantage over the USSR - it could learn from the mistakes of the USSR. One of those mistakes was using central planning when it was not up to the task. Another of those mistakes was the establishment of hardline isolationist trading bloc. Chinese communists analyzed these behaviors and found they led to outcomes that threatened the movement for communism, but they also did not abandon central planning, for that too would threaten the movement from communism. So they apply central planning insofar as it is necessary, sufficient, and advantageous to do so, and they allow markets insofar as they are effective and advantageous to do so.
There’s only 2 that failed - the USSR and Yugoslavia. The rest are still operating.
Generally the US is the reason why revolutions fail, but not why socialist states revert to capitalism. Both USSR and Yugoslavia failed the movement for communism long before they were destroyed. If the Cuban communist party loses control of the state, that one we can firmly blame the US for. But the US usually kills movements before they take over the state. I mean, they invaded Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cuba, and many others in an attempt to kill the movement for communism before it could establish control.
And then, as for your reference to oligarchies, which seems directed at communist states, really the main one I can think of is late stage USSR. After Kruschev took office he started by changing the national conversation away from its revolutionary past, then accumulated more wealth into the state as a way of solving hard economic problems but without any strong controls in place, which led to massive corruption that could not be stopped which led to the empowerment of a new oligarchy who then liberalized the economy, which led to massive poverty, and then they attempted to join the West and become an imperial partner, until they finally dismantled the project and the oligarchs emerged.
Other than that.
Stalin was a poor laborer son of a poor laborer from a national ethnicity that was considered dirty and stupid. He died owning basically nothing and without any money to pass on to anyone.
Chinese business tycoons aren’t able to buy elections and they can lose everything including their lives if they try to do anything that would change the balance of power.
There is no wealth in Cuba or North Korea to be hoarded because the countries can barely function on the international markets with the sanctions and thus there’s no mechanism to accumulate capital through trade and domestically it’s not like they can become robber barons and then take over government through political parties.
I wouldn’t consider Vietnam or Laos to be oligarchies. Their inequality is slightly worse than the most advanced European nations but still better than Bulgaria and Lithuania.
That’s all I got for now. Let me know what you think.
I can see your point if viewing communism as a purely abstract movement instead of an actuall.set of policies. I resist rhetoric in the absence of policy because it is just lip service. In other words, the proof is in the pudding (aka policy).
In this regard communism has never failed. I would caution this same type of thinking though as it could be used to justify any movement because it isn’t the policy after all, but a collection of rhetoric waiting for the “right” implementation.
This gets at a bigger issue of culture and why many movements have failed. It is not the spirit or even policies that make them fail, but the human element and our collective culture. You can create the best laws and policies, but they are useless if the culture ignores them. We can see this in the lack of enforcement on monopoly in the US or the banning of the 6 day 12 hour work week in China.
I think you make the correct distinction for central planning as every government uses it. The degree it is used and who makes the decisions and why is the important part. As far as what degree is needed or not needed for socialism, it is debatable. As you pointed out we have never experienced it in a real life example, unless you are counting the imperfect attempt at policies driven by olgiarchies pretending to be whatever propaganda resonates with their ruling class. The non-ruling class is, for the most part, irrelevant as seen in all past and current systems.
I don’t really care what you claim you are. If you are a small elite group of people calling the shots you are an olgiarchy. I am sure there is nuance here just like with fascism. China, for instance, ticks off more boxes of fascism than even the US. What a country says it is worthless except to study and understand why they use that rhetoric. We don’t let governments define what they are, we define it.
I suppose we will just have to disagree about market driven economic liberalization being the tool that did the most to reduce poverty in China. I am not convinced their prior policies were effective considering the millions of Chinese that died from starvation. Saying this to a dead person (that their policies were effective for ending poverty) is nonsensical. The US also failed in this regard on the opposite end during the great depression. What does supposed liberty matter when you starve to death. That is the very definition of failure for me.
If you believe in the ideals (rhetoric) of communism or socialism then adopting a scheme of private enterprise (AKA capitalism) is a dramatic failure. I know you probably can’t see it that way and that is okay. Perhaps some ideals are never meant to be converted into policy and they will always just live rent free in our head to be used as excuses and justifications of the world we live in.
Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is scientific and hence it is the TRUTH.
You are speaking of it being more along the lines of religion. I reject this. He had some interesting things to say for his time and that is about it. We desperately need something modern and frankly Marxism fanatics are never going to move the needle.
the fact that something was written 150 years ago doesnt make it outdated, you have to prove with facts as to why you think its outdated. Something isnt always something better
We either go marxist, or we perish.
But it does, listen to yourself. 150 years ago still relevant to this day! A lot has changed since then and no one cares about Marx except fanatics. The time has passed and you need something new to remain relevant.
Buddy. People are still invoking John Locke’s concepts of private property that he penned in the 1600s. What are you talking about Marx is irrelevant because a lot has changed in 150 years. You think Marx’s arguments are based on the level of technology at that time? Hell, the US constitution is 250 years old and it runs the country. The Doctrine of Discovery is based on the papal bulls from the 1400s and RBG cited them in the mid 2000s to explain how the USA’s claim to territory is fundamentally based on those documents.
But Marx is relevant for more reasons than just that his writing is recent. Hundreds of millions of people in China study Marx every year. It’s part of the core curriculum, it’s part of business theory, it’s part of their economics writing, their political writing, it’s part of party entrance exams.
Yes the books Marx wrote are dead and old. But the ideas are very much alive and adapting today just like the ideas of Locke and Burke.
I know it’s hard for Americans because their country is so young, but ideas don’t become irrelevant just because they age. Ideas that maintain their life despite their age are the most relevant ideas of our society. And Marx’s ideas inform so much from politics and economics to psychology to sociology to media and journalism.
We can definitely agree on this. Cheers!
“No one cares about marx”
buddy, the whitehouse is putting up deranged tweets against communism and kamal herself called trump a communist dictator. Communism is very well alive
Where is communism alive!? Please just stop now, if your proof is the deranged postings of Trump’s staff then you are not going to convince me or anyone else.
Its well alive I am in a communist party myself and we actively organize workers and oppressed people
and there are thousands of parties with millions of volunteers like us around the globe
not to mention the maoist factions who are engaging in guerilla wars
It exists as mental excercise in your head I suppose. Well, good luck with that. Peace be with you.
A nation guided first and foremost by Marxist philosophy (with a lot of modern development for sure) is currently #2 by GDP and is poised to be the main driver of human development in the next half-century at least. But sure, it’s only a mental exercise.
Oh fuck, I hope to God your not talking about China who has pumped out more billionaires than the US for the third straight year. The one that used a planned economy to corner the global markets. They are so far from Communism or Socialism it isn’t funny.
They also have about 4x the population.
China’s mixed model does unfortunately still allow haute capitalists to spring up in certain industries. However the worst offenders are regularly captured and imprisoned, their wealth redistributed.
When was the last time a US or EU billionaire went to prison for any serious length of time and got their wealth confiscated?
Oh no, a centrally planned & industrialized economy works better than unplanned, de-industrialized and over-financialized economy. Evil asians are cornering the market!
They are really far from communism as Marx defined it still. But they do have a working “mixed” system, with workers principally in control of the state, the state planning the economy, and the state directly controlling most important industries including finance, with regulated&limited capitalist development strategically allowed in some sectors of economy in order to advance the productive forces. This is consistent with (initial stages of) socialism in the most commonly understood Marxist-Leninist sense, similar to NEP if you’re familiar with the history of USSR. It is not socialism in the Stalinist or classical Maoist sense but I don’t think you are advocating for either of those.
But the amount of billionaires the US is printing is already problematic and that’s a capitalist country. The US should not be a country to compare to. It’s like if someone said “Well the Rwanda genocide actually caused more deaths than the Israeli one against Palestine”. Like yes, technically true, but the fact that there’s even a comparison to be made should be a big enough red flag.
Unfortunately doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should, but with China since they seem to prefer executing them, I do suspect they’re largely political opponents they’re trying to keep quiet for good, not just criminals.
You DO realize China uses underhanded tactics, right? Subsidizing goods to be sold overseas is called dumping and there’s a reason the EU throws tariffs on tons of categories of goods from China. If it costs 20€ to make something in the EU but 15€ in China and then the Chinese government throws in another 5€ so the company could sell it even cheaper, that’s a bit of an issue for the EU’s industry.
Yes, fully agreed. China is producing haute capitalists and it’s a problem they need to deal with.
Both China and the US are global superpowers so a comparison is a necessary tool.
Out of two bad things, I will choose the less bad one.
If you actually look at the last decade or so, they don’t actually execute most of them and it’s pretty much a “life without parole but you shouldn’t be naughty in prison”. I am also against capital punishment in all forms, and most prisons, I believe that even the worst billionaires can be reformed if you give them the chance. So this is indeed a valid criticism of China and I hope they can improve on that front.
Yes, capitalists are the natural political enemy of the working class. You do not earn a billion dollars, you rob others of a billion dollars, and it’s only natural that people who did that will not have the best political intentions in mind. They all need to be kept at bay (actually just stripped of wealth and sent to do community service for a long time or smth).
China is subsidizing its economy primarily to develop productive forces which is seen as a necessary step towards communism. This means also that it will be more competitive at the international stage; this is primarily just socialism winning in the “free market of ideas”.
Or, hear me out, they could also subsidize their industries where it matters. But they can’t really because most of that subsidy will be promptly absorbed by the capitalist in charge, and that is primarily the point.
Like, think about this on a global scale. If every state stopped subsidizing all industries, we would only be left with what’s most profitable or the most popular with the working class, depending on the dominant mode of production. If everyone subsidized the industries necessary for human development, we would get human development. How is that not a win?
They still allow capitalists to become billionaires. It’s the ones the people in power don’t like that get life in prison or execution. Enemies of the party, not enemies of the working class.
They do and China also puts tariffs on those industries to protect their own. But no other country, save for the US, has the funds China does. The rest of us can’t just subsidize entire industries until international competition falls apart completely. There are subsidies to help an industry develop, and there’s economic warfare.
In this case, enemies of the party ⊂ enemies of the working class. Is it ideal that there are haute capitalists at all? No. Is it better in that respect than almost any country on earth? Yes.
Well maybe countries could band together to engage in some kind of an international economic cooperation to pool funds together, strategically invest in their industry, and better their economies. Maybe countries in Europe can form a Union of some kind. If they did, their combined GDP would be on par with that of China or the US, and they would have a lot of resources available for investment…
Again, the problem is not how much cash the EU has to invest in itself, the problem is that subsidies under capitalism lead mostly to profit increases for capitalists and actual industry development is limited. Nationalization (or at least much tighter control) of key industries is required to speed up development of productive forces.
They are not socialist or communist period. They have some socialist policies but they are ruled by an oligarchy and are more fascist than the US.
Also, bad when US corners market on China but good when China does similar. Pure garbage.
China is verifiably a socialist country in Marxist-Leninist sense. Unless you also want to claim that USSR under NEP was not a socialist country in a Marxist-Leninist sense in which case cool, you know Marxism-Leninism better than Lenin, congrats.
If you want to critique China there are hundreds of ways to do so, from human rights to urbanism to policing issues, but the economic equality or non-adherance to socialist principles is far down the list.
Cool, you deny they are a fascist oligarchy. Good job with the bullshit propaganda.
I did critique China just now. You offered nothing to counter except lousy rhetoric. Have a good day sir.
(clearly) unlike you, I’ve been to China and spoke to people there and read academic research on the subject.
China is not fascist, in fact it is quite close to the opposite (do you even know what characterizes fascism?).
China is not an oligarchy but a one-party bureaucracy (same as mid-to-late USSR). Not great either but the power is not concentrated in the hands of the few in the same sense as it is in the US, party factions and members have significant power&leverage all the way from local to national level.
Fascism is when step on snek, obviously.
Clearly you regurgitate propaganda well. Next you are going to tell me that the US is a representative democracy.
China is so clearly fascist it isn’t fucking funny. Being in denial is pretty funny though, thanks for that. I appreciate you naivety.
China is not an oligarchy? Why do they have a concentrated wealthy ruling class!? Please, grow up.