# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/61 "2014-03-17T03:20:04Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > China is basically a state-capitalist regime and if anything the Right would want to insinuate China is communist to play up their threat. The fact is they have moved away centralized planning and nationalization. Please tell me how they are “Communist” in anything but name at this point. You could at least bring up Cuba as an example of a semi-successful communist society. State-owned “companies” make up, what, over half of the economy? The government directly invests in huge start-ups and makes the major decisions, the planning, of the economy. We aren’t talking about sending forks to some province, but it’s planning on a large scale. ---
**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 17, 2014, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/62 "2014-03-17T03:22:55Z")
> [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](#): > > State-owned “companies” make up, what, over half of the economy? > The government directly invests in huge start-ups and makes the major decisions, the planning, of the economy. We aren’t talking about sending forks to some province, but it’s planning on a large scale. In other words, it’s capitalism, with the state as the capitalist. Communism is not “central planning” or “state ownership of the economy”; it’s the exact opposite. ---
**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 17, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/63 "2014-03-17T03:28:40Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > hey… I wish we could say that you are right, We can, because I am. > [@](#): > > but, if it has been tried many times and failed, that means it is a flawed system. “You mean those first ten times you tried to build a heavier-than-air powered flying machine didn’t work? And you’re telling me you tried a different way, different materials, etc. each time? Give up!” Shit’s contingent. All we know is that those particular historical attempts in those particular historical situations failed. Nothing else. There can be no meaningful conclusions drawn beyond that. ---
**Author:** ![Randvek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a6a055/32.png) [@Randvek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randvek)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/64 "2014-03-17T03:44:31Z")
> [@Frank\_Merton](#): > > That’s an interesting twist, and it has an appeal. The women who have run countries arbitrarily have all done pretty well. Not necessarily that they are running things, but at the very least, their voices can’t be so easily ignored. Universal suffrage saved capitalism, in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/65 "2014-03-17T04:14:43Z")
So the five remaining “Communist” countries are Vietnam, China, Laos, Cuba and North Korea. With the exception of NK they all seem to be doing OK since they have adopted market forces into the mix. but I don’t think they are doing better than countries with democratic/capitalist forces in place. It seems that once a country get’s too big it becomes harder to manage and the central power then has to bring in draconian laws to keep it stable. If we look at the socialist/democratic countries that seem to work they tend to be smaller, Norway, Finland, Australia etc. So my thinking is that although countries like the US may remain large we may see some move towards to more sovereignty for states with the central power being used less. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/66 "2014-03-17T04:24:48Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#): > > We can, because I am. > > “You mean those first ten times you tried to build a heavier-than-air powered flying machine didn’t work? And you’re telling me you tried a different way, different materials, etc. each time? Give up!” > > Shit’s contingent. All we know is that those particular historical attempts in those particular historical situations failed. Nothing else. There can be no meaningful conclusions drawn beyond that. The same can be said for feudalism or absolute monarchy or laissez-faire capitalism. The difference with heavier-than-air flight is that is an end while communism is a means to an end (ie a society with a better standard of living for all). > [@sisu](#): > > So the five remaining “Communist” countries are Vietnam, China, Laos, Cuba and North Korea. With the exception of NK they all seem to be doing OK since they have adopted market forces into the mix. > but I don’t think they are doing better than countries with democratic/capitalist forces in place. > > It seems that once a country get’s too big it becomes harder to manage and the central power then has to bring in draconian laws to keep it stable. If we look at the socialist/democratic countries that seem to work they tend to be smaller, Norway, Finland, Australia etc. > > So my thinking is that although countries like the US may remain large we may see some move towards to more sovereignty for states with the central power being used less. The United States is not “too big” to manage nor is it so culturally divergent that it needs to be broken up. If anything the federal government needs more power and state boundaries don’t reflect reality. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/67 "2014-03-17T04:46:42Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > The United States is not “too big” to manage nor is it so culturally divergent that it needs to be broken up. If anything the federal government needs more power and state boundaries don’t reflect reality. hmmmm not sure I agree with you, I am not saying break it up but allow smaller groups of residents stronger control over local issues. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/68 "2014-03-17T04:47:29Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > hmmmm not sure I agree with you, I am not saying break it up but allow smaller groups of residents stronger control over local issues. I wouldn’t mind that if it was organized on the lines of metropolitan areas rather than the states. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/69 "2014-03-17T05:22:04Z")
Well, according to Mencius Moldbug, who notes that his grandparents in the US Communist Party used the word \*“progressive” \*for communist, it [continues on in the US](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.nz/) 🙂 > [@](#): > > I know two ways to answer this laugh: the fast way and the slow way. The fast way: agree and amplify. “That’s right. America is a communist country. For workers and peasants, read: blacks and Hispanics.” > > …Whereas actually, codewords like “progressive,” “social justice,” “change,” etc, are shared across the Popular Front community for the entire 20th century. They are just as likely to be used by a Cheka cheerleader from the '20s, as a Clinton voter from the '90s… > > Of course, communism is an ambiguous term and we can define it in any way. One of the easiest ways to see why America is a communist country, for instance, is to define communism as a cultural tradition, essentially a religion, which is transmitted through early nurture like a language. … > > What this means is that if you look for Americans in 1913 who have the same basic worldview of an ordinary American college student in 2013, you can find them. But you can’t find a lot of them. The cultural mainstream of 2013 is not descended from the cultural mainstream of 1913, most of whose traditions are entirely extinct. Rather, it is descended from a very small cultural aristocracy in 1913, whose bizarre, shocking and decadent tropes and behaviors are confined almost entirely to exclusive upper-crust circles found only in places such as Harvard and Greenwich Village. > > What were these people called? By themselves and others? Communists, generally. Though when they wanted to confuse outsiders, they’d say “progressive” - and still do. ---
**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 17, 2014, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/70 "2014-03-17T06:18:45Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > I wouldn’t mind that if it was organized on the lines of metropolitan areas rather than the states. I strongly endorse that; I think the city-state, or _polis_ (a central city with suburbs and nearby smaller cities and surrounding countryside) is far and away the best form of government. The problem is nations nearby tend to want to annex them. ---
**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 17, 2014, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/71 "2014-03-17T06:21:28Z")
I would say America is not a Communist country in one important way – Communist countries are single-party states without the electoral corruption and inefficiency and illusion of power to the people that is present in the States. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/72 "2014-03-17T14:32:50Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#): > > “You mean those first ten times you tried to build a heavier-than-air powered flying machine didn’t work? And you’re telling me you tried a different way, different materials, etc. each time? Give up!” > > Shit’s contingent. All we know is that those particular historical attempts in those particular historical situations failed. Nothing else. There can be no meaningful conclusions drawn beyond that. Well, **Qin** already addressed this, but a better analogy would be: Flight is a goal. All those times you tried to achieve flight with machines that flapped their wings like a bird? It was tried lots of times, and it never brought us any closer to flying. Bernoulli’s principle had to be learned before the goal was possible. Similarly, economic and political equality is a goal. All those times we tried to achieve it through communism has so far failed. Each time, the amount of economic and political power available doesn’t seem to be distributed more evenly. It just goes to a different group of folks, who generally try to leverage it into more power, just like the last group. People have tried applying the system several times, and it’s worked about as well at reaching its ends as the machines that tried to fly by flapping their wings. It’s looking more and more like we need to adopt a different principle if we’re going to reach our goal. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/73 "2014-03-17T15:04:11Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > No…real, serious monarchists, the ones who think, in terms of real political science, that government by a single person, with much more power than the current few remaining figurehead monarchs, is a good idea and would result in better governance than by parliaments. > > There aren’t many…but they do exist. I’d guess they number somewhere below communists, but perhaps above anarchists. I think there was at least one of them on these boards somewhere. > [@Zero-syde](#): > > No matter how many people say a tomato is not a fruit - a tomato **is a fruit** (scientifically). This is a bad example. What “fruit” means is dependent on context. In a scientific classification context, yes, a tomato is a fruit. But using botanical definitions, peas, cucumbers, pine nuts, and corn are also fruits. And using one definition of “vegetable” (food coming from plants), all fruits are vegetables anyway. From [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit): > [@](#): > > **Botanic fruit and culinary fruit** > > In the culinary sense of these words, a fruit is usually any sweet-tasting plant product, especially those associated with seeds; a vegetable is any savory or less sweet plant product; and a nut is any hard, oily, and shelled plant product.[5] > > These culinary vegetables that are botanically fruit include cucurbits (e.g., squash, pumpkin, and cucumber), tomatoes, peas, beans, corn, eggplant, and sweet pepper. In addition, some spices, such as allspice and chilies, are fruits, botanically speaking.[6] In contrast, rhubarb is often referred to as a fruit, because it is used to make sweet desserts such as pies, though only the petiole (leaf stalk) of the rhubarb plant is edible.[7] Edible gymnosperm seeds are often given fruit names, e.g., pine nuts, ginkgo nuts. > > Botanically, a cereal grain, such as corn, wheat or rice, is also a kind of fruit, termed a caryopsis. However, the fruit wall is very thin, and is fused to the seed coat, so almost all of the edible grain is actually a seed.[8] > > Many common terms for seeds and fruit do not correspond to the botanical classifications. In botany, seeds are ripened ovules; fruits are the ripened ovaries or carpels that contain the seeds and a nut is a type of fruit and not a seed. ---
**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 17, 2014, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/74 "2014-03-17T15:52:01Z")
I would say I am a Communist in a Leninist sort of way. I don’t think the state will dwindle way until we have almost total automation and no need for labor input for hardly anything and any such labor is done voluntarily for fun. In the meantime the greed of capitalism and the laziness of most people needs dealing with, generally with economic incentives and controls. Politics is avoided by having an elite single party in control. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2014, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/75 "2014-03-18T15:47:11Z")
> [@Frank\_Merton](#): > > Politics is avoided by having an elite single party in control. I think it just limits politics to internal party disputes, which have often ended up bloody in single party states. That doesn’t sound like an improvement. Besides, how do you limit politics to one party without a totalitarian state? ---
**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 18, 2014, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/76 "2014-03-18T15:56:11Z")
It avoids politics such as single-interest voters, vote buying, gerrymandering, influence trading, partisanship, excessive influence of fame or wealth, and all sorts of things. It is in a sense totalitarian state, but then so too are the democracies; they just pretend they are not. The only time when they are not is when they are gridlocked and not functioning. The key is government by consensus, with the party members who work with each other having closer personal knowledge of each other so that you tend to evolve meritocracy. Strictly enforced term limits help keep any single person from excessive power, plus the fact that any sign of self-aggrandizement scares the party (as it should given history). ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2014, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/77 "2014-03-18T16:48:09Z")
> [@Frank\_Merton](#): > > It is in a sense totalitarian state, but then so too are the democracies; they just pretend they are not. The only time when they are not is when they are gridlocked and not functioning. You and I clearly have different definitions of a totalitarian state. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2014, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/78 "2014-03-18T17:18:14Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#): > > In other words, it’s capitalism, with the state as the capitalist. > > Communism is not “central planning” or “state ownership of the economy”; it’s the exact opposite. What is it, then? How does it work? Who owns things and who runs things? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2014, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/79 "2014-03-18T17:22:15Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > What this means is that if you look for Americans in 1913 who have the same basic worldview of an ordinary American college student in 2013, you can find them. But you can’t find a lot of them. The cultural mainstream of 2013 is not descended from the cultural mainstream of 1913, most of whose traditions are entirely extinct. Rather, it is descended from a very small cultural aristocracy in 1913, whose bizarre, shocking and decadent tropes and behaviors are confined almost entirely to exclusive upper-crust circles found only in places such as Harvard and Greenwich Village. Hmmm . . . Where, I wonder, is the Greenwich Village of today, whose fringe culture will be mainstream culture in 100 years? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2014, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739/80 "2014-03-18T17:24:05Z")
> [@scabpicker](#): > > I think it just limits politics to internal party disputes, which have often ended up bloody in single party states. That doesn’t sound like an improvement. Besides, how do you limit politics to one party without a totalitarian state? Mexico during the decades of PRI hegemony was never totalitarian. I guess it depends on the nature of the one party and whether it **wants** totalitarianism or not. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-replaced-communism/683739.md?page=5)