The general population in N. Korea are starving. Cuba is an impoverished third world country. In the former Soviet Union, people had to wait in line for weeks, or months for basic things like toilet paper. So far, China is about the only communist country that’s seemed to hold up over the years. And that’s partially because they’ve recently are beginning to mix in capitalism with their brand of communism.
While government officials live, or lived well, I’m sure, did/do they, looking at the impoverished, and miserable conditions that common people have had to, and have to live under actually believe that communism is what’s best for the people?
I don’t believe that they do.
I believe all forms of government boil down to power and who controls it.
I’m always reminded of the serfs in the middle ages. These serfs would give one third of their crops or income to the feudal Lord for protection. How is that different from the typical American paying one third of their income to the government, ostensibly for …protection.
Oh, communists use class warfare to divide the people. Fascists use Nationality. All of it is eaten up by their willing subjects.
I’ve always believed that there are only three categories of people. Those who want to rule, those who want to be ruled, and those who want to be left alone. Unfortunetly, those who want to be ruled are the majority.
Hmmm… dunno about the current leadership in any of these countries being real committed marxist-leninists vs. just plain old dictators with a convenient academically-fancy excuse… From what I’ve been told/read it seems Vietnam’s Ho Chih Minh was a true red; and apparently Castro was surrounded by them in the early 60s, but eventually purged them away. Pol Pot and his gang in Kampuchea were just bloody crazy.
(Of course, in some cases, the ID with “communism” was an alignment-of-convenience for “revolutionary” or “national liberation” leaders who weren’t about to get any money or arms from the US or UK, so they’d ally themselves to the USSR or China, or even proclaim themselves independent communists just to be contrary)
One problem any true-believer M-L would have in the apparat is that they’d have to face the ideological cognitive dissonance of holding power and privilege for the sake of doing away with power and privilege. Meanwhile some dude w/o such scruples will be ready to shoot our sincere revolutionary in the back.
It’s hard to pry into the minds of folks who are bound to say nothing that didn’t support the system that gave them power. But what the hell, here goes:
If China wanted to compare themselves to India for instance, they might be able to say they had a better solution than them. I’m also of the opinion that if the US lifted sanctions on Cuba they’d be a lot better off.
In the end though, I think it doesn’t matter what economic system you have, those in power are simply interested in keeping power. So I don’t think they’re really all that benevolent. It matters not a whit to them, whether it’s best for the people, the state controlled monopoly on economic capital helps preserve their power.
Because they are not truly democratic, the means of production don’t belong to the people, they belong to the government. They’ve essentially established one giant mega-corporation fused with the government that has all the accompanying sluggishness and bureaucracy that entails.
Lenin probably did. But not Stalin.
As for the rest, who knows? 
Every man is the sole inspector of his own conscience.
Well the russians seem to be wishing back those good old waiting in line for toilet paper days…
http://www.ptb.be/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3ABBE&obid=8491
No praise for me for the USSR. Just some perspective. Things are rarely what they seem…
I guess you can count me in with those who want to be left alone 
Oh yeah, and also, as for the serf comparison, I don’t think that that’s totally accurate. I mean, besides national security, we do need to get the money somewhere to pave the roads, pay the police and fire fighters, manage water and sewer services, and so on. Now granted, we have tons of pork barrel spending, but still, taxes are necessary.
Wow, that’s pretty interesting and informative. One of those posts that “Makes you think.”
Gee, although I didn’t read that much about it myself, from everything I was taught and told, Communism was supposed to be about the people jointly controlling everything. Of course I’ve also heard that there’s supposed to be a period of a benevolent dictatorship until true Communism can flourish. Yeah right, a benevolent dictator, whatever :rolleyes:
Yeah, it always seemed funny to me that, while Communists talked about how it was wrong to have the rich live in luxury, and the poor in squalor, in Communist nations, government officials live in luxury, and the common people live in squalor. Basically, to me anyway, they’ve subsisted government official for rich, and the rest of the masses for poor.
That’s true, but the question I posted isn’t asking if you know what they were thinking, just, in your opinion, do you think that they thought, or think, that Communism is good for the people.
Yeah, I’ve heard too that there are regrets because with the collapse, things have, in some ways, gotten worse, but then again, things were so bad, for so long, that it’ll probably take a very long time to repair their economy.
That’s what they said in 1917
Maybe so. We don’t really know, do we? After all, Russia was in a pretty nasty place before the commies too. As was Cuba. So for sure, many communist leaders may have thought / may be thinking they are doing the right thing…
I think that a lot of people both within government and outside belief in Marxist ideas. I also think that the vast majority are perfectly aware that to be applied, it needs to be adapted and interpreted flexibly, like any ideology. The Chinese have chosen to go down the route of financing the Communist system through a few concessions to capitalism. In a different way, this has happened in Cuba, although the situations of the two countries are pretty much incomparable, and their cultures are entirely different.
But like any belief system, Marxism rests on assumptions, and if one doesn’t accept these, the rest of it makes no sense. For example, the “American Dream” rests partly on the assumption that if you leave people alone to do what they wish, they will eventually make something of themselves, but this just isn’t true for everyone, and many fall through the net (which is why we have social security and the Welfare State). However by and large, we accept this assumption.
In a Marxist frame of belief, the pursuit of wealth and happiness through individual efforts is not the driving force. It is a sort of Utopian social engineering process whereby people work for the common good rather than for their individual success (Phillistine analogy: it’s a bit like in Star Trek where they work for Humanity’s betterment rather than for material possessions, since there is none). The problem is that it would seem that this great dream of human solidarity goes against human nature, but it is an appealing idea. Only so far, no-one has made it work. The Chinese may yet pull it off, and Cuba would have a damned good crack at it if the US would stop this ridiculous blockade of a harmless Carribean island. It’s even possible that if the Cubans became wealthier, they could afford the luxury of actively pursuing the “revolurionary dream” of their own accord, and old Fidel wouldn’t need to lock people up for disagreeing quite so much.
Of course, as in any totalitarian regime, there is an overwhelming temptation to just go nuts and use ideological rhethoric to justify just about anything. So to answer the original question, I think the Cuban and the Vietnamese leaderships are probably about as close to pure Marxist ideology as you can expect. They are both the products of popular revolutions, and the people of both countries are highly politicised, know their Marxism back to front (because that’s what they fought for) and you can’t really pull the ideological wool over their eyes. Besides, if Castro did he’d be dessecrating the memory of Che Guevara (bad political move), and if the Vietnamese did they’d be snubbing Ho Chi Minh (really bad move).
Well, in the beginning they may have thought that they were doing the right thing, but, if 30 years later or so, your country is still third world, wouldn’t you have second thoughts? That is, if you were really interested in the well being of the people, and not just simply keeping your own power.
Most don’t
Oh, it’s not that easily done - a country going from being a “third world country” to being something else… You don’t really say what that “else” ought to be.
How many successful transformations would you say there are?
How many unsuccessful attempts have there been?
On Cuba:
Cuba are doing okay in many respects, compared to many other poor countries. Cuba is also, as noted above, under embargo from the worlds biggest economic force, which has a small something to do with their impoverishment. So here we should rather ask: “Do the United States government really think they are doing what’s best for the Cuban people?”.
(Re: Joel)
OK, so, in theory…
- The idea is that everyone works together for everyone’s benefit. This will bring about a sort of utopia.
- All of the people share in the wealth and power equally.
But, in reality… - The countries closest to this ideal, as you put it, are anything but utopic. People live in fear of the very government they helped put into power.
- The wealth and power are anything but controlled, and shared by the people. Everything is owned by, and controlled by, the government. And it’s only representative of a few elite, and definitely not by the general public.
Of course, I’m guessing that this might bother those who believe in pure communism, but, as other people here have said, most communist leaders aren’t true communists, just dictators using communism to justify their rule.