“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.
I can see your point if viewing communism as a purely abstract movement instead of actually set of policies
There’s a lot of ground in between these two extremes. Communism cannot be an actual set of policies yet, but it’s much more than an abstract movement
I resist rhetoric in the absence of policy because it is just lip service
As well you should, but the policies of the USSR, China, and every other communist experiment were very concrete and still not communism. They are concrete policy experiments to bring about the conditions of the liberation of the working classes
In other words, the proof is in the pudding (aka policy).
I would say the pudding is the outcomes, not the policies
In this regard communism has never failed
It’s just the sort of thing that doesn’t fail. It’s like saying science fails or doesn’t fail. It’s not a thing science does. Science is a doctrine, not a project with a concrete objective. Communism is a doctrine, not a project with a concrete objective
I would caution this same type of thinking though as it could be used to justify any movement
We’re not justifying movements because they’ve never failed. That would be silly. We justify movements because of our scientific analysis of human society, the correctness of their policies insofar as our analysis understands things, and then based on the outcomes. And based on the outcomes, we update our scientific analysis. That’s how we justify it
it isn’t the policy after all, but a collection of rhetoric waiting for the “right” implementation
There’s a huge difference between an analysis and “rhetoric”, and no one is waiting for the “right” implementation. Communists explicitly reject the possibility of such a thing. Every single revolutionary movement will have a unique implementation. There is no abstract “correct” implementation to be found. We bring about the conditions of our liberation on the basis of our analysis, our policies, and our behaviors being commensurate with reality and we fail to bring about the conditions on the basis of our failure to understand that reality and to propagate behaviors commensurate with it
It is not the spirit or even policies that make them fail, but the human element and our collective culture
It’s our behaviors, which are shaped by material conditions. That’s why communist policies are inclusive of the full spectrum of social possibilities, because we cannot compartmentalize our policies from our social and collective behaviors. They inform each other dialectically. What you’re articulating is the sort of liberal/idealist concept of governance - if we have good policies everything will be fine. That’s not how communists see the world. Our collective culture is inclusive of our policies and our policies must always account accurately for not only the current culture but how that culture will change
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 by olgiarchies pretending to be whatever propaganda resonates with their ruling class
That’s not exactly what I said. We have absolutely experienced central planning in real life. The USSR is the maximalist example. And we learned from it. There were major problems with central planning that had nothing to do with the decay of the revolutionary state into the oligarchy of liberalism
But before the USSR degenerated, it was not an oligarchy and they used central planning to great effect in ending famine, raising the standard of living, and defeating the fascist military axis
And as I said, China is not an oligarchy and while they do have a market, they heavily use central planning for exactly what the communist analysis indicates it is needed for - bringing about the conditions of the liberation of the working class
The non-ruling class is, for the most part, irrelevant as seen in all past and current systems
This is not at all true. Under capitalism, the ruling class is the bourgeoisie, or the owners. The non-ruling class is the workers. Under capitalism, the workers are not irrelevant at all. They must be appeased, they must be pacified, and they must be enlisted in cross-class collaboration. All policies under capitalism are evaluated on the basis of how it will affect the appeasement, pacification, and collaboration of the working class
In a socialist state, the ruling class is the working class and the owning class is absolutely not irrelevant. Policies must be evaluated as to how they ensure the owning class does not gain influence over the state, how the constant pressure of corruption and international trade relations and foreign policy push for the owning class to grow that influence, and what must be done to curtail that influence constantly
The non-ruling class has never been irrelevant, under any system
If you are a small elite group of people calling the shots you are an olgiarchy
Then literally every representative democracy in the history of the world has always been an oligarchy. You can’t run a country of 500M with 250M people being government decision makers. The question is what makes them “elite”. Did you know that in the USSR every single official was subject to recall at any time? Did you know that in order to hold office in China you actually have to study and pass competency exams and that the current elected leader, Xi Xinping, failed his entrance exams multiple times and was not allowed to participate in politics until he passed? These projects did not have hereditary leadership. They did not have leadership on the basis of wealth. There are more members of the Communist Party of China than there are people who vote in elections in the USA. And the Communist Party of China is constantly engaging in outreach to all citizens all over the country and adapting its policies to the needs of the people.
Again, I don’t think we disagree about oligarchy in the degeneration of the USSR, but the idea that every communist country is an oligarchy is a propaganda narrative of the oligarchs in the US and UK
China, for instance, ticks off more boxes of fascism than even the US
It really doesn’t. Just look at criminal justice and it’s obvious. The USA rate of criminal justice supervision (prison, parole, probation) is almost 13x bigger than China’s. The recidivism rate of the USA is at least 4x worse than China’s.
Then there’s the nature of fascism, which is a reactionary formation of liberal capitalism defending against the threat of working class organizing. There’s a reason why fascism emerged after the Bolshevik revolution. China is not this. In fact, China today is the result of a peasant revolt, that focused entirely on meeting the needs of the peasants. There is an unbroken line of history from the peasant revolt to the present today. There are grandparents in China that remember harvesting rice in a subsistence living under the fascist KMT (or even Japanese) and today are using self-driving electric cars to get to and from their multi-generational home. Same peasant. Same government.
You need to reevaluate your assessment that China is somehow more fascist than the USA. Remember, the USA is the model that Germany built the Third Reich from, and when it was clear they would lose, the USA saved 10k Nazis from justice, and when they formed NATO they staffed NATO high command with Nazis, and they organized a covert operation through NATO (Gladio) to recruit, organized, fund, arm, and train nazis and neo-nazis all over Europe. The atrocities that the Third Reich committed were all things they lifted from France, England, Spain, Portugal, and The Dutch, including gas chambers, slavery, mass displacement, apartheid, etc
I am not convinced their prior policies were effective considering the millions of Chinese that died from starvation
You’re not convinced because you haven’t done the reading. Even shitty a.i. slop is capable of seeing this. You don’t understand that the millions who died of starvation during the 4 Pests campaign was an extreme peak of famine-related deaths that were happening in China literally every 2 - 3 years prior to the revolution. And you likely don’t have a mental model of the time involved. Yes, lots of people were poor and dying when the revolution took place. Yes, even more died when the revolution tried to fix it with ineffective policies based on incorrect analysis. But all of that happened in the very early phases. Capitalist reforms didn’t start in China until 1978. The revolution happened in 1949. I know that based on how we normally think of history that has to mean that if there was a major famine before Deng’s “opening up” that clearly everything was horrible prior to 1978. That’s just not the case. The 4 Pests campaign that caused those millions of death was in the middle of those years. They spent a decade improving the quality of life for the masses, and then they tried to solve their famine problem and fucked it up beyond conscience. And then they recovered, and continued to improve people’s lives. It’s wild because it just doesn’t compute, but the reality is that in both the USSR and China, they achieved mass poverty alleviation in less than 30 years while it took liberal democracies between 100 and 150 years to get anywhere near it.
Saying this to a dead person (that their policies were effective for ending poverty) is nonsensical
It’s not, but you’re not being expansive here. You mean to say telling someone who died from poverty, not just anyone. No one, literally no one anywhere, says the 4 Pests campaign was a correct policy. I think what’s happening here is you’re assuming that “policies for ending poverty” are a monolith called “communism” and either they were “right” or “wrong”. The reality is that communist projects design and implement tens of thousands of policies.
“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.
There’s a lot of ground in between these two extremes. Communism cannot be an actual set of policies yet, but it’s much more than an abstract movement
As well you should, but the policies of the USSR, China, and every other communist experiment were very concrete and still not communism. They are concrete policy experiments to bring about the conditions of the liberation of the working classes
I would say the pudding is the outcomes, not the policies
It’s just the sort of thing that doesn’t fail. It’s like saying science fails or doesn’t fail. It’s not a thing science does. Science is a doctrine, not a project with a concrete objective. Communism is a doctrine, not a project with a concrete objective
We’re not justifying movements because they’ve never failed. That would be silly. We justify movements because of our scientific analysis of human society, the correctness of their policies insofar as our analysis understands things, and then based on the outcomes. And based on the outcomes, we update our scientific analysis. That’s how we justify it
There’s a huge difference between an analysis and “rhetoric”, and no one is waiting for the “right” implementation. Communists explicitly reject the possibility of such a thing. Every single revolutionary movement will have a unique implementation. There is no abstract “correct” implementation to be found. We bring about the conditions of our liberation on the basis of our analysis, our policies, and our behaviors being commensurate with reality and we fail to bring about the conditions on the basis of our failure to understand that reality and to propagate behaviors commensurate with it
It’s our behaviors, which are shaped by material conditions. That’s why communist policies are inclusive of the full spectrum of social possibilities, because we cannot compartmentalize our policies from our social and collective behaviors. They inform each other dialectically. What you’re articulating is the sort of liberal/idealist concept of governance - if we have good policies everything will be fine. That’s not how communists see the world. Our collective culture is inclusive of our policies and our policies must always account accurately for not only the current culture but how that culture will change
That’s not exactly what I said. We have absolutely experienced central planning in real life. The USSR is the maximalist example. And we learned from it. There were major problems with central planning that had nothing to do with the decay of the revolutionary state into the oligarchy of liberalism
But before the USSR degenerated, it was not an oligarchy and they used central planning to great effect in ending famine, raising the standard of living, and defeating the fascist military axis
And as I said, China is not an oligarchy and while they do have a market, they heavily use central planning for exactly what the communist analysis indicates it is needed for - bringing about the conditions of the liberation of the working class
This is not at all true. Under capitalism, the ruling class is the bourgeoisie, or the owners. The non-ruling class is the workers. Under capitalism, the workers are not irrelevant at all. They must be appeased, they must be pacified, and they must be enlisted in cross-class collaboration. All policies under capitalism are evaluated on the basis of how it will affect the appeasement, pacification, and collaboration of the working class
In a socialist state, the ruling class is the working class and the owning class is absolutely not irrelevant. Policies must be evaluated as to how they ensure the owning class does not gain influence over the state, how the constant pressure of corruption and international trade relations and foreign policy push for the owning class to grow that influence, and what must be done to curtail that influence constantly
The non-ruling class has never been irrelevant, under any system
Then literally every representative democracy in the history of the world has always been an oligarchy. You can’t run a country of 500M with 250M people being government decision makers. The question is what makes them “elite”. Did you know that in the USSR every single official was subject to recall at any time? Did you know that in order to hold office in China you actually have to study and pass competency exams and that the current elected leader, Xi Xinping, failed his entrance exams multiple times and was not allowed to participate in politics until he passed? These projects did not have hereditary leadership. They did not have leadership on the basis of wealth. There are more members of the Communist Party of China than there are people who vote in elections in the USA. And the Communist Party of China is constantly engaging in outreach to all citizens all over the country and adapting its policies to the needs of the people.
Again, I don’t think we disagree about oligarchy in the degeneration of the USSR, but the idea that every communist country is an oligarchy is a propaganda narrative of the oligarchs in the US and UK
It really doesn’t. Just look at criminal justice and it’s obvious. The USA rate of criminal justice supervision (prison, parole, probation) is almost 13x bigger than China’s. The recidivism rate of the USA is at least 4x worse than China’s.
Then there’s the nature of fascism, which is a reactionary formation of liberal capitalism defending against the threat of working class organizing. There’s a reason why fascism emerged after the Bolshevik revolution. China is not this. In fact, China today is the result of a peasant revolt, that focused entirely on meeting the needs of the peasants. There is an unbroken line of history from the peasant revolt to the present today. There are grandparents in China that remember harvesting rice in a subsistence living under the fascist KMT (or even Japanese) and today are using self-driving electric cars to get to and from their multi-generational home. Same peasant. Same government.
You need to reevaluate your assessment that China is somehow more fascist than the USA. Remember, the USA is the model that Germany built the Third Reich from, and when it was clear they would lose, the USA saved 10k Nazis from justice, and when they formed NATO they staffed NATO high command with Nazis, and they organized a covert operation through NATO (Gladio) to recruit, organized, fund, arm, and train nazis and neo-nazis all over Europe. The atrocities that the Third Reich committed were all things they lifted from France, England, Spain, Portugal, and The Dutch, including gas chambers, slavery, mass displacement, apartheid, etc
You’re not convinced because you haven’t done the reading. Even shitty a.i. slop is capable of seeing this. You don’t understand that the millions who died of starvation during the 4 Pests campaign was an extreme peak of famine-related deaths that were happening in China literally every 2 - 3 years prior to the revolution. And you likely don’t have a mental model of the time involved. Yes, lots of people were poor and dying when the revolution took place. Yes, even more died when the revolution tried to fix it with ineffective policies based on incorrect analysis. But all of that happened in the very early phases. Capitalist reforms didn’t start in China until 1978. The revolution happened in 1949. I know that based on how we normally think of history that has to mean that if there was a major famine before Deng’s “opening up” that clearly everything was horrible prior to 1978. That’s just not the case. The 4 Pests campaign that caused those millions of death was in the middle of those years. They spent a decade improving the quality of life for the masses, and then they tried to solve their famine problem and fucked it up beyond conscience. And then they recovered, and continued to improve people’s lives. It’s wild because it just doesn’t compute, but the reality is that in both the USSR and China, they achieved mass poverty alleviation in less than 30 years while it took liberal democracies between 100 and 150 years to get anywhere near it.
It’s not, but you’re not being expansive here. You mean to say telling someone who died from poverty, not just anyone. No one, literally no one anywhere, says the 4 Pests campaign was a correct policy. I think what’s happening here is you’re assuming that “policies for ending poverty” are a monolith called “communism” and either they were “right” or “wrong”. The reality is that communist projects design and implement tens of thousands of policies.