I don’t know why my spell-check slipped to Austria-Hungary in post #39. I meant, of course, the Austrian State Treaty of 1955.
A factor I didn’t mention was that Stalin simply imposed the system he had imposed on the USSR, and his successors found it well-nigh impossible to relax it without risking giving free rein to people who had awkwardly independent ideas; they just couldn’t imagine an alternative that didn’t undermine their position (as it almost certainly would). When (of all people) Beria the monster offered to calm down confrontation with the west by allowing a unified but neutral and non-Communist Germany, and some economic liberalisation at home, his rivals offed him.
Not really. Most western nations have reduced inequality via investments in the middle class, social welfare and progressive taxes.
I do wonder to what degree communist nations go totalitarian due to international imperialists (like the US) trying to overthrow their government. But then again, nations like Israel and South Korea have to deal with foreign nations trying to sabotage them too and they are still liberal democracies.
Either way my impression is that communism is a failure and that social democracy has replaced it. I think every communist nation left has abandoned economic communism for market economics (except maybe Cuba).
Well, what AHunter3 said is what Marxism postulates: your disagreement is with Marxism, not with his explanation.
Marxism is an extremely reductionist ideology; its evolution from Marx’ initial postulates has made it even more reductionist. It views economic reasons (often reduced to “money”, when actually “the economy” is a much wider concept) as the root of all human action, views humans as incapable of positive behavior unless coerced or forced by the enlightened few (the vanguard), and in general has an extremely negative view of the world. When a person jumps into the water to save someone else from drowning, the Marxist instinctive response is a combo of “who pushed him?” and “he was expecting a monetary reward.” I find that terribly sad, but then, I’m definitely not a Marxist.
Well, there is that China place. Even if we ignore how the CCP manipulates and controls their markets, you have the fact that a large percentage of their companies and economy are still command driven and state owned (and often owned and controlled by the movers and shakers of the CCP). They trade with the west, but in many key ways they haven’t abandoned communism and embraced capitalism…they merely use capitalism to achieve their own ends. But the reality is the veneer of capitalism is pretty thin once you really start to look at things below skin deep.
I do agree that communism is pretty clearly a failure. I just don’t think the folks in the CCP or other communist states (or folks who still ascribe to communism) believe that.
BTW, Israel and South Korea (and the USA) are in the “flawed democracy” tier according to the Democracy Index, indicating significant faults (in both of those countries they are pretty glaring), but there are obviously much, much worse places to live.
I don’t think “communism is a failure” (or inevitable success) insofar as economic theory does not have to be frozen at 1860, 1960, or 2019. Especially if one finds a way to ostracize the authoritarian or genocidal politicians (easier said than done) and better employ modern analytic/computational tools.
Yeah…they have the US as a ‘flawed democracy’ as well, looks like. And looks like, for some odd reason, China has gone up in their books to just mildly authoritarian. Same as Russia, though of course Russia isn’t communist anymore. Israel and South Korea are the same shade of light green as the US, India and most of western Europe with the exception, for some VERY odd reason, as Spain, which seems to be rated higher. Canada, Australia and most of Scandinavia seem to be the only ones who get the coveted ‘full democracy’ rating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#/media/File:EIU_Democracy_Index_2017.svg
ETA: Oh, and I missed Venezuela…only the same mild authoritarian as China. So, yeah, this is pretty legit!!
China has a mixed economic system, and after the reforms of 1978 their economic growth rates started skyrocketing compared to before.
China is communist in name only from what I know of it. A mixed economic system is not the same thing as a centrally planned economic system. Then again pure capitalism doesn’t work well either.
To my knowledge, almost every nation that adopted communism either gave it up, or gave up economic communism and is just communist in name.
Laos, Vietnam & China all practice market economics. North Korea has a huge capitalist black market and is arguably more fascist than communist at this point (cult of personality, hyper militant, etc). Cuba may be the only communist nation left.
My point about Israel and South Korea is that a nation can be under threat and still maintain a democracy. Taiwan too.
Incorrect. There are two groups within “full democracy”; several Western European countries (Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Luxemburg, UK) are in the lower bracket, and you missed others in the upper bracket (Ireland, Switzerland). Oh, and all of Scandinavia is in the upper bracket.
You misread both the colors and the explanations for them.
The differences between the authoritarian brackets are mainly how much they go into people’s private lives. China is pretty bad there, but nowhere as efficiently bad as Saudi Arabia or NK; Venezuela doesn’t give much of a shit.
Perhaps I’m just color blind, but I see 4 shades of green, and it looks, to me, as if the US, France, Portugal (7-7.99) ect is lighter than German, Spain, the UK (8-8.99), etc, while Ireland and most of Scandinavia is the darkest green (9-10). So, two shades for ‘full democracy’, two shades for ‘flawed democracy’, and assuming I’m seeing the colors correctly that means Spain, Germany etc is lowest level of ‘full democracy’, while the US, Portugal, India etc is the highest level of ‘flawed democracy’…same as Israel and South Korea. On the Authoritarian side it looks to me, again, like China, Russia and Venezuela are the lowest level of ‘authoritarian regimes’ (3-3.99).
I do admit I didn’t read the explanations, as just looking at things as depicted it seems a bit leading to say Israel and South Korea are ‘flawed democracies’ without putting that into the context of the whole map there.
Many Chinese businesses, even the supposed private ones, are controlled to varying degrees directly or indirectly through the CCP. The state controls most of the banks and the banking system. The CCP manipulates their stock market and currency. The domestic media is completely controlled by the state, as is their internal intranet, and they use that both to keep an eye on their people (politically, the CCP is as communist as ever) but also to manipulate their internal markets. Most of their stock bubble as well as their real estate bubble was directly controlled and manipulated by the CCP.
This doesn’t get into all of the other authoritarian communist stuff the CCP still engages in…just touches on the economic side. You are correct that they have a ‘mixed economy’, but saying they are communist in name only is seriously misleading and just wrong. The CCP uses capitalism to enrich itself, true enough, but it’s something THEY control. Yeah, the communist party doesn’t openly and fully control the means of production…but that doesn’t mean they don’t have control of them. Sure, not everything is owned by the state, so if that’s your definition of communism I guess you could say in that respect they have given up on communism (though, of course, many private businesses ARE controlled or owned by members of the CCP…and then there are all those direct state owned ones).
The US and most of the rest of the world does, indeed, use a mixture of capitalism and government control, as well as social democracy to soften pure capitalism. And China does embrace some of the worst aspects of pure capitalism on one had with heavy handed CCP controls on the other. One has but to look at the bike-pocolyps in China to see how it ‘works’, or the ghost cities or the stock market bubble. But at it’s core, the CCP picks the winners and losers in their market, and control (often VERY badly) the direction their economy goes and what it does. Like I said, on the surface it looks one way, but digging even superficially down you see the hand of the CCP in everything.
Here are 2 main theories. 1. Communism grew in countries without a democratic tradition.
To that add: the path out of Communism is difficult.
Communism doesn’t work: in a democratic context, it soon mutates into something else.
I disagree with the middle paragraph. Both the Soviet Union and most militaries run along the lines of central planning. It is viable in a Darwin sense: it can persist indefinitely. The problem arises when the elite in Communist societies see a faster growing alternative abroad and lose confidence in their own system.
But yes, while socialism is democratic friendly, communism runs straight into powerful interest groups that democracy tends to favor. The sorts of economic crises that seizure of the means of production sets off doesn’t enhance communism’s electoral credibility either. So leaders face a choice of losing elections or cracking down on dissent.
Which almost matches what I said but does not match what you’d initially said. Almost because ALL of Scandinavia is in the highest bracket, is there a reason you’re having a problem there? Do you believe that “most” and “all” are alternative spellings of the same word?
Communism is an economic system, so saying the military is “communist” doesn’t really make sense. It’s not democratic in the way it’s run, but neither are most corporations and that doesn’t make corporations “communist”.
No, I simply didn’t see what your objection was. Nor what seemingly said, but perhaps I’m missing something there. Yes, ALL Scandinavian countries are in the highest bracket. Sorry I wasn’t as precise there as you wanted. Do I have an issue with that? Not really. My issue was, I thought, pretty clear…which is that if someone is going to point out that South Korea and Israel are flawed Democracy that some context was needed to put that in perspective.
And no, I couldn’t be arsed to read the rest…it didn’t seem worth my time or effort.
** nods ** I agree completely with your professor’s assessment.
And reciprocally, the tendency of people on the political right to disparage Marxist analysis because of its lack of viable solutions ignores the fact that it has a spot-on description of a real and genuine problem with capitalism.
My opinion is that, at least in the case of The USSR and People’s Republic, that the leaders were attempting to go directly from a feudal system to an industrial one inside a culture that was not ready for the change.
There was also considerable internal and external resistance to this change.
Lenin and Mao, in addition to being opportunists who got lucky, were poor leaders and were more or less incompetent in managing a majestically hugh project. Both were surrounded by aides (I am thinking of Felix Dzerzhinsky and Lavrentiy Beria here, I do not know about Mao’s security apparatus) who were seriously fanatic about security.
Combining these factors it is not surprising that a totalitarian regime would develop. Attempting to build an industrial state from basically nothing with no clear idea of how to accomplish this, combined with constant threats (real and perceived) and a paranoid security apparatus, a totalitarian state seems to be inevitable
I cannot speak about other communist states because of a lack of knowledge, but I suspect that those states may have similar histories.
Once you have power it is hard to let it go, and easy to become draconian, especially if you are literally surrounded by opponents.
Thanks for the interesting OP. I haven’t gotten to discuss this stuff since college.
China has an interesting (and perhaps unique) military system. The People’s Liberation Army doesn’t work for the government of the People’s Republic of China. It’s actually a branch of the Chinese Communist Party.
During WWII the military was an economic system. Corporate heads that wouldn’t cooperate were summarily dismissed. FDR seizes control of Montgomery Ward | December 27, 1944 | HISTORY
Walmart isn’t an economic system insofar as it doesn’t provide free meals, clothing, and shelter for its employees as part of their employment contract. So I maintain my claim: there are close similarities between the US military (and other militaries) and command/control economic systems such as communism.
