# Why is no "Communist" country? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 3, 2004, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-no-communist-country/263036 "2004-09-03T22:48:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-no-communist-country/263036/21 "2004-09-05T23:33:49Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > I’m trying to rack my brains for a definition of socialism that excludes the USSR… The only one I can come up with cheats: if you assume that Communism is “evil socialism” and socialism is “good socialism”… > > :dubious: Why? Socialism is not a narrow political philosophy, it’s a continuum that includes virtually all modern economic thought. Stalin was a socialist. Hitler was a socialist. FDR was a socialist. Dubya is a socialist. Some more than others, and they disagree on the particulars, but ultimately they all fall under the umbrella of socialism. There’s nothing wrong with admitting the USSR was socialist any more than there is in admitting they had roads. They weren’t bad because they had socialist economic policies, although those policies were certainly executed with the competence of a monkey on acid. They were bad because they squelched free thought and expression, killed thousands, and were subjected the nations on their border to a series of expansionist campaigns. It’s those things we should condemn and seek to differentiate in ourselves. The problem isn’t that the USSR needs to be excluded from socialism, it’s that the USA (even its Republican elements) need to be included in it. During the Cold War the word was appropriated to try and link anyone left of George Wallace to the communist movement, but I think it’s been long enough now that we can start using it in its proper sense again. We won’t, but we can. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-no-communist-country/263036/22 "2004-09-05T23:45:10Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > All right, all right, all right, clarification time… > > As I understand it, the main distinctions of Communism are 1) Rule by a single party; elections are held, but they’re only to give a pretense of a “government for the people”, and 2) the goverment owns and has the right to distribute all property. And of course, there are all kinds of incidentals like suppression of religion and prison camps and commissars forcing random citizens to cross the street backwards on one foot and whatnot. Not exactly. Those are the components of a totalitarian state. You could say the same of the Reich, for instance, and they certainly weren’t communist. Marxist communism is the idea that as technology and science advance, we will reach the point where scarcity is eliminated and thus economics becomes bunk, leading to a classless and stateless society. Subsequent thinkers, notably Lenin, decided that this could be accomplished by dedication to increased industrial production rather than simply occuring as a result of natural social evolution. Both of these ideas are silly, but that’s for another thread. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-no-communist-country/263036/23 "2004-09-05T23:46:57Z")
Corretion to post 21: killed thousands = killed millions ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-no-communist-country/263036/24 "2004-09-06T00:27:40Z")
> [@](#): > > As I understand it, . . . Unfortunately, it seems that you do not. You continue to use “communist” in the sloppy manner that I noted in my response to **WoodCM** as the third definition. This interferes with any serious discussion, because language that imprecise simply clouds the issue rather than clarifying it. The U.S.S.R. was a totalitarian state. A majority (although not 100%) of those states that have been established under the hope or pretense of fulfilling the vision of Karl Marx have been totalitarian states. However, 100% of them have been socialist. While that might give you a comfortable feeling of knowledge, it needs to be pointed out that there are other totalitarian states that have never attempted to implement the ideas of Marx. In addition, you have missed the point that there are, indeed, socialist states that have free elections and truly representative governments. Socialism is, as noted above, a general belief about economy that extends across a broad spectrum of political efforts. You then go on to claim that the German Karl Marx was Russian, demonstrating an appalling ignorance of the subject. Feel free to ask questions, here, but your assertions are so firmly rooted in ignorance as to be worthless. I think you would have been betterr off posting the question in **GQ**. For that matter, you might want to try a search on “socialism AND communism” in **GQ** , there have been a couple of decent threads discussing the topic, including [Communism Vs. Socialism and others](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=54172) [So, what is Socialism anyway?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=137002) Similar to the OP of this thread: [Why do communist countries call themselves ‘democratic republics’?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=153821) [Facism vs. Communism](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=247350) [Why is Communist economics flawed?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=261004) ---
**Author:** ![electrozion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/85f322/32.png) [@electrozion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/electrozion)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-no-communist-country/263036/25 "2004-09-07T15:16:49Z")
Communism is the free association of individuals in a classless society. There will not be nation states in a communist society, therefore naming a country “Communist Republic” is ridicoulus. If that is what made the vicious criminals in charge of the “evil empire” name their countries “socialist” instead - I don’t know. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-no-communist-country/263036.md?page=1)