Modern China, for better or for worse. Despite economic liberalization and a relaxing of state intrusion in daily life, political structure is still entirely Leninist. The architecture of power is basically the same as Soviet Russia. That part has not changed. While private economic activity is allowed, it is by state permission and in service to the state to serve specific political aims.
And in some ways, the modified formula works. They’ve achieved incredible economic results, and some pretty big social ones as well.
Exactly. Tsarist Russia didn’t have a loyal population and faced open revolt more than once. Loyalty to Stalin may have been based on fear rather than love, but he had a lot more loyalty than the tsars. Not that loyalty to the tsars wasn’t based on fear as well. As to ‘China-like levels of economic growth rates on the eve of the First World War,’ the Russian economy couldn’t handle the strain of war and collapsed. There were chronic shortages of ammunition and there weren’t even enough rifles to go around, leading to conscripts being sent into battle unarmed and told to pick up rifles from the dead. In the end large parts of the Russian army voted with their feet and deserted, mutinied or surrendered.
Oh, and the PPSh-41. Everyone remembers the AK-47 but forgets the PPSh which was the visible symbol of being a Soviet client state before the AK took its place. Entering service in late '41, over 6 million were produced during the war. Contrast that with tsarist Russia not being able to provide 6 million rifles.
Norwegian workers are more productive per hour but American workers produce more per year. American workers create more wealth per year than any other worker.
Oh crap, I forgot one of the best things about the PPSh-41. While the practical value of such a thing is debatable, the Soviets created one of the coolest looking things ever by modifying a Tu-2 bomber’s bomb bay and fitting it with 88 PPSh-41’s mounted at a 45 degree angle, each with a 71 round drum magazine.
Well, as defined by modern conservatives, socialism is anything that is not laissez-faire capitalism. So, socialism is far superior to capitalism, if you accept their definition.
The Holodomir was a political thing, I made a distinction there. It was very dangerous to get on the political shit-list in Soviet Russia, but you know, things did get better in that respect when Stalin died. When the Soviet empire collapsed and gangsters started forcing people out of their homes so they could rent them at higher prices through tactics such as “brutality” a lot of Soviets found themselves wishing for the good old days.
As for nobody forced out of their homes by capitalism … where have YOU been since, I dunno … 2008?
I don’t want the digression on American productivity to continue in this thread so let’s just agree I’m wrong on this point. If I want to argue it again I’ll do it in another thread.
Didn’t the Soviet Union indirectly help a lot of technological advancements?
What I mean is because the U.S. government (and other NATO countries) were always trying to be ahead of the USSR they spent a lot of money on inventing knew technologies, like basically everything made by ARPA/DARPA.
I dunno, Hitler, had he come to power in a non-Bolshevik-Revolution timeline, still would have wanted to destroy the nations of Poland and non-Communist Russia, just so a Greater Germany could be built on their bones (and all the Jews there exterminated) – Ostpolitik was already an ancient tradition in Germany, and murderous racist imperialism was Hitler’s take on it.
Wasn’t the USSR and unfortunate but not unforeseeable result of Russian civilization? They’ve always gotten things done by treating each other like crap. (Would you volunteer to be the boyar who pushed a translated Magna Carta under Ivan the Terrible’s nose?)
Same with China. A civilization that was running farmers markets and restaurants back when the pyramids at Giza were vacant lots will always be capitalist. Years from now Communism will be remembered as a tough measure used to get organized and on an even footing with the West.
Funny thing, though, for most of Chinese history the dominant cultural-value narrative – Confucianism – denigrated commerce and merchants. Scholars and soldiers should rule, peasants/farmers/craftsmen are respectable contributors to society as economic producers, but merchants are parasites who don’t produce anything, or something like that. None of which prevented commerce from thriving in China at any pre-Communist time, AFAIK. (Other things, like war, might have at times prevented commerce from thriving, but not Confucian prejudice.)
Seems to me the question is not whether China can be capitalist, or be anything else, but whether China can ever become a libertarian society in the . . . let’s call it the autonomist sense. The presumption that apart from taxes, a society’s claims on the individual are mostly negative (don’t do this or that) and anything not forbidden by law is permitted, and generally that there are legitimate limits on what government can and can’t do, there is a law above even the state and its rulers, and balances of power within government are good, balances between government and civil-society organizations independent of the state are good, etc., etc. Now, the idea that that government governs best that governs least is perfectly Chinese – Taoist – but, for the rest of it, whatever functions a Chinese government does or does not choose to perform, it never seems to be questioned that government can and will and legitimately may govern absolutely. And in a centralized fashion; federalism has never been a powerful concept in China, any government/dynasty that does not hold centralized national power is a dying one. And the existence of any civil society independent of the state is traditionally not encouraged. Might lead to rebellion.
The one thing that used to moderate the Emperor’s absolute power was the necessity of ruling through a bureaucracy of civil servants chosen for their depth of indoctrination with (as inferred from the depth of their knowledge of (as inferred from their facility at writing elegant commentaries thereon in ancient literary Chinese language and characters in the civil-service-exam booths)) the Confucian classics and Confucian ethics and values, including honesty and diligence in public service, benevolence to the people, etc. This also indoctrinated all the local-community leaders everywhere in China in these values, because only about 5% of the candidates ever passed an exam (only so many government jobs available) but all had spent years studying for it, and ex-exam-candidates had social prestige, etc. All in all it was a system that Western philosophers admired, at least back in the 18th Century. (In the 19th Century the Imperial-Confucian system started getting in the way of Westerners making money in China, and Western regard for it declined . . .)
I wonder – seriously – has the Communist Party of China, at any time since 1949, performed any functions in any way similar or comparable, in Chinese society? Does anybody know?
They’ve got to work that thing into a Bond movie sometime. Bond is on the tarmac under the baddie’s parked escape plane, holding a gun on him . . . Above Bond’s head, the bomb bay doors open . . . And he gives the biggest WTF?! look that ever crossed a Bond face since Dr. No before running flat-out . . .
More or less what I was going to say. I’ve seen a Russian guy on another forum make that point; centralized planning and authoritarianism is quite good at building an industrial infrastructure, it falls down when it comes to deciding what to do with that infrastructure.
Is that supposed to . . . shoot bullets . . . at ground targets?