# What has replaced communism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 15, 2014, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739 "2014-03-15T02:00:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/21 "2014-03-15T13:06:37Z")
The argument about communist economics and whether they have been tried or not (I assume they have, and they didn’t really work) isn’t really relevant to my argument. My point is that nations and people are going to want a model that is fair but that also leads to decent economic growth and rising standards of living. In Venezuela under Chavez the standard of living for the poor increased very well. But it was my understanding that several nations abandoned economic communism in the last 30 odd years because they found it didn’t work that well. Either way, I agree that islamic fundamentalism is (or was) on the rise but that isn’t the same as communism. Communism is a rejection of a wealthy power structure via colonialism, imperialism, poverty, inequality, monarchy, aristocracy, plutocracy, etc. as well as a rejection of oppressive cultural attitudes that keep down various groups (races, genders, ethnicities, etc). Islamic fundamentalism is not really concerned about these issues except for some concern about cultural colonialism. Islamic fundamentalism is more a form of theocratic fascism, which would make it an opponent of communism which tries to support equality. But the desire to create a fair and just economic and political system still exists. Just because communism has fallen out of favor (there are only 5 governments on earth that are communist, of those maybe Cuba is the only one that is actually communist still. The rest are something else. NK is more fascist, while Laos, Vietnam & China are authoritarian with market economies). Again, aside from democratic socialism (which has caught on in latin america & western europe) I don’t see anything else that matches the bill of communism. But I haven’t heard democratic socialism catch on in Asia, Africa or the middle east. ---
**Author:** ![Chihuahua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@Chihuahua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chihuahua)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/22 "2014-03-15T13:35:29Z")
Maybe I don’t understand your question… Islamofacism is definitely going to be the “ism” of the next century, and it’s going to be a generational fight the same way Communism took generations to defeat. I’m confused that it seems to want to identify an “ism” that serves the same social function and espouses the same principles as communism. Which would still be called communism. There isn’t anything that is exactly like communism and yet not communism. ---
**Author:** ![Agnostic\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Agnostic\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agnostic_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/23 "2014-03-15T14:31:48Z")
From [here](http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/communism_and_marxism.htm): For a more established definition of Communism. I don’t know if this is what **Zero-syde** and others have in mind, but it agrees with what I learned about Marxism. > [@](#): > > The Marxist Communists originally focused on a few major points: > > They held that democracy as it existed only served the interests of the wealthy (keep in mind that Communism was developed while America still had slavery and women and non-property owners were not allowed to vote anywhere in the world) and they promoted the idea of the working classes forcefully taking control of the political machinery to allow equal access to democracy for people of all races, genders, and economic positions, as opposed to just wealthy white males. > > They maintained that all religion was a form of deception and oppression that was used to control the masses and thus religion and superstition should be abolished and replaced with science, reason, philosophy, and ethics. > > They believed in total equality of gender and race and that all people could and would positively contribute to society if given opportunity. > > They viewed the world in terms of class struggle between minority capitalists (people who own the “means of production”) and majority wage-laborers (people who do not own any part of the means of production and sell their labor to capitalists for wages), and believed that capitalists were in a position that was beneficial to themselves and therefore they would never freely give up their position of control so that the majority would have to forcefully impose their will upon the powerful and controlling capitalist minority in order to correct perceived exploitation of the laboring majority by the capitalist minority. > > They believed that the class struggle was a universal struggle and they acted on an international level, seeking to eventually do away with all national boundaries and unite the world into a single cooperative community of people who shared freely among each other. The Communists were always strongly focused on internationalism and intended for a Communist Revolution to be international in scope. > > There is much more to Communist ideology than this, but that is a brief outline of the most basic ideas. And this is an important point from the same page. > [@](#): > > The difference between working towards communism and “communism” itself is like the difference between building a house and living in a house. The Soviet Union, for example, never claimed to have achieved communism. In theory, what was taking place in the Soviet Union was an attempt to do the work needed to construct a communist society. Just as building a house is hard work, that has to be done in order to have a house to live in, the Stalinist system of the Soviet Union was seen as the hard work that was being done by everyone to build a communist system. It was never seen by any of the Communists as “communism” itself, any more than a construction foreman would think that the act of building a home is the same as lounging on the couch inside a home. In truth, most Communists today recognize that the Soviet Union was mostly just a large, corrupt, top down bureaucracy that didn’t represent the ideals of Marxism or Communism. If the Soviet Union was the only aberration, it may be claimed it does not represent the _ideals_ of Marxist Communism, but it was not. It was the norm, mostly because it did represent the _reality_ of Marx’s program. If everyone who follows the ‘blueprints’ for a particular house, and keeps ending up with an entirely different structure, then either the blueprints are fraudulent, or there are serious flaws in the plan. I think it was a bit of both, but mostly the latter. Marx was a decent economist for his time, but failed at political science, sociology and social psychology. As per the definition above, his views on religion were severely wrong - that organized religions might be used by the powers that be to control the masses is irrelevant. The masses themselves want religion, or at least spirituality or a sense of higher purpose that secularism just cannot provide. As far as class struggle, he completely misread history. Viewing struggles purely in terms of economics and how that translates into political power overestimates its value, and fatally in my opinion, underestimates more powerful sociological forces such as culture, religion, faith, along with racism, sexism, and patriarchalism that have nothing to do with economics. He also incidentally surrendered the worst argument to the other side, which is that profit derived from production is the most important metric, and so the most important aspect is who controls the means of production. I argue that why the factory is built is more important that who owns it. And that leads us back to the OP. I see the 21st century becoming a contest between liberal democracies and social democracies, the primary difference is the former favors liberty even if it leads to great inequality, while the latter is the opposite. It favors greater equality even if it leads to less liberty. It will not be concerned so much with who owns what, but how resources are used, regardless of ownership. That process has been building with the corporate social responsibility movement. Profit is fine, as long as the new improved social/environmental contract is observed, so no more violations of human rights, degradation of the environment, and so forth. The political battles will be over the specifics - what are human rights? The ‘right’ to an abortion? The ‘right’ to bear arms? How much pollution causes irreversible damage, or is prohibitively expensive to clean up? and so forth. Yet it will not be the ideological battle that the 20th century was. At least I hope not, and do not see it becoming such. Rather than hard left or hard right partisans claiming the _entire world_ must be one or the other, countries will seek a balance according to their constituents, some favoring liberty, others equality. (I prefer the latter, yet live a country that definitely favors liberty, and will continue to do so for at least another generation. So my political goals lie outside the US. But that is a digression.) Something that will help it become less ideological is allowing greater freedom of movement for people, so they can chose which country best represents their views. Three caveats though: 1) religious fundamentalism (of all stripes, including, sadly, Buddhist) throws wrenches into all of the above, because they do have _universal_ views, and human rights only seem to apply to those who share their views; 2) countries must be actual _strong_ i.e. substantive, not just procedural, democracies - not dictatorships, monarchies or plutocracies or some other non-democratic government, whether formal or not; 3) a major political battle being fought now is how government should govern - through litigation and common law (which is favored by liberal governments), or through regulation and civil law (which is favored by socialist governments)? The TPP is an example of such - should companies be able to sue countries? For what purposes? How binding should rulings be? How that will play out is what will dominate at least the first half of this century based on the disputes I see being played out currently, such as the TPP. The Arab Spring began as an attempt to achieve strong democracies, but has become a three-way civil war between the ‘democrats’, Islamofascists, and the old guard. Who wins that war? I hope the democrats, but far too soon to tell. ---
**Author:** ![Frank\_Merton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Frank\_Merton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank_Merton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/24 "2014-03-15T14:33:31Z")
I picked up one line that struck my interest – that it is a Communist theme that Western Democracies mainly serve the wealthy. Do you deny this? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/25 "2014-03-15T15:08:18Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > Maybe I don’t understand your question… Islamofacism is definitely going to be the “ism” of the next century, and it’s going to be a generational fight the same way Communism took generations to defeat. > > I’m confused that it seems to want to identify an “ism” that serves the same social function and espouses the same principles as communism. Which would still be called communism. There isn’t anything that is exactly like communism and yet not communism. The way I worded my question probably leaves it open to interpretation. What I meant was ‘now that communism has failed, what other ideology is devoted to fighting imperialism, poverty, social repression and a ruling class’. However I think people are interpreting it as ‘what ideology is the new enemy of western nations’. I meant it as the former question. As far as what is like communism but not like it, the desire to fight imperialism, poverty, a corrupt ruling class, fascism, military-corporate dictatorships, monarchy, social repression, etc. still exists. It has to be channeled into something. If communism doesn’t exist, something else will take up the mantle. Maybe its a mix of small things rather than one overarching movement. There is no democratic socialism revolution in the middle east like there was in latin america, but there was an arab spring fighting against monarchy and military juntas. There was a color revolution in eastern europe. Some middle income nations are trying to address poverty, pollution, inequality, lack of health services, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Frank\_Merton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Frank\_Merton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank_Merton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/26 "2014-03-15T15:10:41Z")
I dunno; Islam has been around a long time and has a long history. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/27 "2014-03-15T16:11:40Z")
Top down, democratic socialism. Bottom up, intentional/experimental communities. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/28 "2014-03-15T16:25:22Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > I think most of the world has figured out by now that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried. > > (Apologies to Winnie Churchill.) Perfectly true. But I would not be so quick to make such a facile declaration about capitalism as an economic system. ---
**Author:** ![Anondragon2012](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@Anondragon2012](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anondragon2012)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/29 "2014-03-15T16:48:49Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > It seems communism was a failure. The economic models of central planning didn’t work (China, Vietnam, Laos, etc. all started to grow much faster when they abandoned communist economics), and the nations tended to be run by evil, incompetent dictators. > > But the motives for communism which include resistance to imperialism, plutocracy, fascism, poverty, inequality, etc. still exist and are going to be channeled into something. The urge to fight those things isn’t going to go away. > > So what is the new philosophy that the world is open to? I was under the impression [democratic socialism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism) was the human rights friendly communism lite for the 21st century. It seems latin america and western europe have a lot of democratic socialist tendencies. But has anything like that caught on in Asia, the middle east or Africa? > > Or was the 20th century a unique century that had a lot of strong ideologies. Fascism, communism, religious fundamentalism, pan-arabism, etc. and the idea of a strong ideology really isn’t as well liked this century because people saw how bad things worked out. > > Or has the fact that there is no USSR or communist China that nations can lean on anymore removed a lot of support nations would have to reform their governments? Democratic socialists in Africa can’t rely on the USSR or China to help them diplomatically, militarily or economically. Lmao communism is far from dead. It has simply evolved. If you think China, Vietnam, and even Russia are not communist, you should visit these countries. The fact is communism has never been about the economic system, but about totalitarianism. Communism is often mistaken for Marxism, which has never been applied in reality. You might then ask what is difference between USA and West and China/Vietnam/Russia/etc? - “Democracy” vs. Totalitarian regime. (quotation marks next to democracy because really democracies are not democracies especially the electoral system) - Economic Free Market vs. Dirigisme and control of labor. Let me tell you if the Chinese government says “Lets send 10,000 Chinese workers” to dig holes here and there, they will do it. Chinese government totally controls the population although there is lots of corruption and pretty much the old castes run the show and have freedom. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/30 "2014-03-15T16:51:46Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > Maybe I don’t understand your question… Islamofacism is definitely going to be the “ism” of the next century, and it’s going to be a generational fight the same way Communism took generations to defeat. It might if it existed. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/31 "2014-03-15T16:53:04Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > The idea that everyone who tried to run a communist state and then turned it into a bloody dictatorship wasn’t a real communist . . . Well, not something Marx would have approved of, at any rate. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/32 "2014-03-15T16:59:04Z")
Not as an ideology but as a system, the Soviet model of state socialism might have some future. From [_Economics Explained,_](http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Explained-Everything-About-Economy/dp/0684846411/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0323301-0796122?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182793941&sr=8-1) by Robert Heilbroner and Lester Thurow: > [@](#): > > The reason it [the Soviet system] did last [as long as it did] is that in the beginning the system very much resembled a military operation. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin confronted an almost totally disorganized society, and tried at first to build a “socialism” that was partly capitalist – private farming and private small enterprise – and partly socialist, in the form of state-owned banks and large centers of production. Russia staggered along under this mixed system for a few years, without either great success or great failure, but after Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin took command and rapidly instituted the highly centralized system we have sketched in. > > Stalin’s methods were ferocious and bloody, but they were successful in bringing about an immense accumulation of wealth, much as did the ruthless ways of the ancient pharoahs of Egypt and emperors of Rome or China. The difference was that whereas the latter built palaces and cities, Stalin built factories, steel mills, hydroelectric plants, and railway systems – the ingredients of an industrial economy. The fact that Stalin’s Russia was strong enough to resist Hitler’s armies – and efficient enough, after its reconstruction following World War II, to impress the world with its industrial and military capabilities – shows that Soviet central planning was by no means a failure in its initial years. That is why “military socialism” may yet be a model for development efforts in the future. China is today a semi-military socialism which appears to be successfully negotiating the early stages of industrialization, much aided by a carefully supervised free market sector attached to the planned core. **Hence the collapse of the Soviet system should not lead us to the snap judgment that centralized socialism is no longer on the agenda of the coming century. That is indeed likely to be the case with the North, but it is not a foregone conclusion in the troubled countries of the South.** > > THE COLLAPSE > > But we are ahead of ourselves. After so successful a beginning, why did Soviet socialism finally break down? The answer is that it is a great deal easier to design and build the skeleton of a mighty economy than to run it. Building a steel plant requires good industrial draftsmanship, but running a steel plant requires good industrial management. Management, in turn, depends on the ability to adapt flows of production to ever-changing conditions – the unforeseen contingencies, mistakes, mismatches, shortages, and overruns that are inescapable in any complex undertaking. > > In a market system, these mistakes are repaired and remedied as soon as possible because they cost the factory or store money. Hence suppliers are told to hurry up, or to hold back on shipments, unprofitable items are canceled and profitable ones run overtime, the Yellow Pages are searched for last-minute necessities. None of this can happen in a society planned from top to bottom. When mistakes are made, they bring about a kind of gridlock in the flow of production, so that the pace of Soviet economic production was a never-ending sequence of feast or famine, too much or too little, with no way of remedying the errors other than recasting next year’s plan or seeking the semi-illegal channels of “tolkachi” – fixers. See North and South Korea, the nearest thing possible to a controlled experiment since the two states’ native cultures are identical and their geographic circumstances nearly identical. Up until the 1980s the NKs were actually eating better than the SKs, or so I’ve read; but then NK’s economic growth hit a wall while SK’s kept going. Lesson: Stalinism does work, but only up to a certain point; if you’re going to try it, you need to be prepared later to scrap it or phase it out. ---
**Author:** ![Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steely_Dan_Fan)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/33 "2014-03-15T17:02:35Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > The idea that everyone who tried to run a communist state and then turned it into a bloody dictatorship wasn’t a real communist is an obscene fallacy perpetuated by diehards and apologists to dismiss the consequences of mass murder and atrocious corruption run amok. No, it’s a true statement perpetuated by people who actually know what they’re talking about. Especially since, you know, the very phrase “communist state” is a contradiction in terms. > [@](#): > > Communism _was_ tried, and the result was horror and madness and death. Nope. A _specific means of attempting to create a communist society_ was tried, and the result was horror and madness and death _in the specific conditions in which those attempts took place_, conditions which, it should be noted, most outside observers agree were very much _not_ the preconditions which the major theoreticians of their particular mode of creating communism, held were necessary for that mode to succeed. And, once again, this doesn’t even begin to account for the wide variety of non-Marxist (and even explicitly anti-Marxist) schools of communist thought. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/34 "2014-03-15T17:13:06Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > Bottom up, intentional/experimental communities. Or simply, grassroots power. The self-organized community councils in Venezuela are important now and are not going to go away if Chavez’/Maduro’s party falls from power. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/35 "2014-03-15T17:17:04Z")
Also bottom-up: Experiments with different forms of business organization – worker-owned cooperatives, factories, etc. – things that can exist within a capitalist system. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/36 "2014-03-15T20:47:11Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > But the motives for communism which include resistance to imperialism, plutocracy, fascism, poverty, inequality, etc. still exist and are going to be channeled into something. The urge to fight those things isn’t going to go away. > > So what is the new philosophy that the world is open to? Capitalism. It lifts people out of poverty amazingly fast wherever it’s tried. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/37 "2014-03-15T21:15:35Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Capitalism. It lifts people out of poverty amazingly fast wherever it’s tried. In 1900 none of the European empires was socialist, but the vast majority of their colonial subjects were poor. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/38 "2014-03-15T21:38:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > In 1900 none of the European empires was socialist, but the vast majority of their colonial subjects were poor. And there were a lot of poor people in Europe, too, come to think of it. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2014, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/39 "2014-03-15T23:06:08Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > What has replaced communism No, What’s on second. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/40 "2014-03-16T03:00:48Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > No, What’s on second. I Don’t Know replaced fascism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739.md?page=3)