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If your first instinct as a westerner is to criticize and lecture 3rd world communist movements, instead of learning from their successes, then you have internalized the patronizing arrogance of the colonial system you claim to oppose.
i’m not sure there’s any metric by which the soviet union could be called a success but go off king
This l find a general attitude among the Westerners.
I wrote my thesis about how we can learn from Cuba’s green farming movements (because they were essentially locked out of capitalism) and was criticized for it.
What are some succesful 3rd world communist movements? Asking for a friend
China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, DPRK
The obvious one is China. But if you wanna learn a little something, read about Sankara. If you want a whole book of histories of the third world national liberation and socialist movements, read The Darker Nations by Vijay Prashad.
According to some theories, China.
Meanwhile the success in question: The 3rd world communist countries have managed to more or less industrialize and build up wealth, but under (state) capitalist system with all the bells of whistles which are markets, commodity production, wage labor, etc. In other words, they used capitalism to build up wealth.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually think they had some absolutely amazing policies for the workers like free housing and social benefits, and good on them for building themselves up. However, this has nothing to do with socialism (socialist mode of production in this case) or communism as it was achieved via capitalism, the same system that drove colonialism.
That is another western chauvinist talking point. That any development of industry (the primary task of countries who’ve just freed themselves from colonial rule), is a “betrayal” of socialism, because it didn’t go according to whatever the given critic laid out as sufficiently socialist enough, and that only the western critics of socialist countries have the correct plan.
China specifically can’t be called state capitalist in the slightest, considering that the CPC stands above the political system, unlike capitalist dictatorships where capital rises above political power:
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
You’ve done a really good job misrepresenting my argument, keep it up.
That is another western chauvinist talking point.
Yeah, any critique of 3rd world communist countries is western chauvinism, therefore we should avoid looking at those countries through objective materialist perspective and uncritically support them just because they’re third-worldist - that’s something an imperialist crakkka like me should know.
That any development of industry (the primary task of countries who’ve just freed themselves from colonial rule), is a “betrayal” of socialism, because it didn’t go according to whatever the given critic laid out as sufficiently socialist enough, and that only the western critics of socialist countries have the correct plan.
I’d like you to point out where I said that industrialization is bad. The argument is literally about how the development was achieved and I concluded that it was through (state) capitalism and capitalist mode of production rather than socialism, even saying how it’s good that they managed to build up wealth. I explicitly didn’t moralize this either, this is literally how these countries materially functioned.
My critique also comes strictly from Marxism which is essentially the basis for communism regardless of culture, but sure.
China specifically can’t be called state capitalist in the slightest, considering that the CPC stands above the political system
You’re confusing political power with class relations, the key isn’t who holds political power but what social relations of production are. If a state (CPC controlled or otherwise) oversees an economy where wage labor, capital accumulation, commodity exchange persists, then it’s still state capitalism.
Trade and wage labor also aren’t exclusive to capitalism.
I think China is a socialist country, and Vietnam is a socialist country as well. And they insist that they’ve introduced all the necessary reforms, precisely to stimulate development and to continue advancing towards the objectives of socialism. There are no chemically pure regimes or systems.
In Cuba, for example, we have many forms of private property. We have tens of thousands of landowners who own, in some cases, up to 45 hectares; in Europe they would be considered latifundistas. Practically all Cubans own their own homes and, what’s more, we are more than open to foreign investment. But none of this detracts from Cuba’s socialist character.
- Fidel Castro
Some more quotes from an article on China’s Long road to socialism:
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly
The state capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our state capitalism differs essentially from the state capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the state with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry.“
- Lenin
it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse”.
- Karl Marx, “The German Ideology”
“”We want to do business.” Quite right, business will be done. We are against no one except the domestic and foreign reactionaries who hinder us from doing business. … When we have beaten the internal and external reactionaries by uniting all domestic and international forces, we shall be able to do business with all foreign countries on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty.
- Mao Ze Dong, On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship
So, to build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty. True, we are building socialism, but that doesn’t mean that what we have achieved so far is up to the socialist standard. Not until the middle of the next century, when we have reached the level of the moderately developed countries, shall we be able to say that we have really built socialism and to declare convincingly that it is superior to capitalism. We are advancing towards that goal.
- Deng XiaoPing
Trade and wage labor also aren’t exclusive to capitalism.
Yes, trade isn’t exclusive to capitalism, I never claimed otherwise. However, there is a distinction between commodity exchange for exchange-value (capitalist trade) and international distribution of goods to satisfy needs (socialist distribution), whether through planned allocation or transitional forms like labor vouchers.
Wage labor is specific to capitalism, it’s a sale of labor-power as a commodity, exchanged for a wage, with surplus value being appropriated by a class/managerial apparatus. This is THE fundamental relation of capitalism, and you’d be better off reading theory than blindly quoting it.
Though I will give a concession - socialism is such a meaningless term that it means like 4 different things depending on who says it: liberals would say it’s social democracy, ML’s say its state capitalism, Marxists and Leninists say it’s socialist mode of production (post-transition period) and Posadists would say it’s when nuclear annihilation. A word doesn’t make a thing so if you consider state capitalism to be socialist - fair, all power to you. However - Marxists, Leninists, Liberals would all collectively disagree. You did drop a Lenin quote to strengthen your argument so let me do the same:
- Lenin, The Tax in Kind
No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order.
In the same text he also calls NEP USSR as state capitalist due to the concessions he had to make for the transition, which is explicitly made distinct from Socialism.
You liberals act like these arguments against “state capitalism” haven’t been debunked for > 100 years, even by Marx and Engels themselves.
If a state (CPC controlled or otherwise) oversees an economy where wage labor, capital accumulation, commodity exchange persists, then it’s still state capitalism.
Socialist states have a surplus, after all, they do need to use some of the value to defend themselves from imperialist aggression, and to direct it into social services, research / science, and capital accumulation just like any country. The point is, that this surplus is not controlled by private capital, but by political decision within the communist party, whose members are made up of the worker-peasant alliance.
From Parenti:
The upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism” or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world–as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.
First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West [even more so when compared with today’s grotesque compensation packages to the executive and financial elites.—Eds], as were their personal incomes and lifestyles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess. {Nor could they transfer such “wealth” by inheritance or gift to friends and kin, as is often the case with Western magnates and enriched political leaders. Just vide Tony Blair.—Eds]
The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.
Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.
Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.
Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.
All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.
But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
We’ve spoken on this before, ultimately you still cling to the “One Drop Rule” as a consequence of undercooked study of Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
And I’m adamant that it’s a mischaracterization. Identifying the dominant mode of production is not a “one drop rule”, it’s literally foundational Marxist analysis - modes are defined by prevailing relations of production, not how it’s managed or ideological labels put onto them.
But you don’t identify the dominant mode of production. You see an overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned economy, and call it “capitalism.” There is no transition from Capitalism to Communism for you, it remains Capitalism until every last drop of former society is eradicated. I’m going to recommend What is Socialism? one more time, as it directly addresses your line of thought.
What no theory does to you.
No seriously, you need to read on this, you clearly have at best a very simplistic understanding of the subject.
Private property and markets can’t just be abolished immediately after a revolution, it’s not magic. Young socialist systems have to go through a transitional phase during which private property and markets are still allowed under strict oversight of the state.
His does not make them capitalist as the proletariat still has control over this private sector via the socialist state, such as in China where all of the essential industry that is necessary for every other, known as the commanding heights, are fully state owned and the enterprises that are private are required by law to have a party member on their board as well as a “golden share” owned by the state that allow it unchallenged veto power over the board’s decisions among other means of authority over the private sector.
What no theory does to you.
Yeah, if you’re operating within Stalinist ML bubble. Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s inherently “true”, and it can be healthy to read other communist sides/perspectives. Some recommendations would be Marx’s writings, Lenin, Bordiga if you want a lesser known but still respected Leninist who’s critical of ML’s/Stalinism.
No one claims magic here, and it’s true - a transitional DOTP period must happen, but it’s not a license to preserve the capitalist relations indefinitely. The fundamental relations of production that I’ve mentioned must be consciously dismantled over time as a precondition for socialism, that’s what the proletarian dictatorship is literally for. If not, then it’s only a matter of time until the state reverts to bourgeois control disguised as “socialist”.
Nationalizing capital while leaving value production intact leaves capitalism functionally preserved, read Critique of the Gotha Programme by Marx where he makes this explicit - converting private to state property without abolishing wage labor/value mediation and calling it Socialism is literally Lassallean nonsense.
Capitalist production is not magically nullified by the presence of a party member or state shareholding either: workers still sell their labor-power, surplus value is still extracted, production is for market sale or in other words, capitalist mode of production prevails at full force. Legal oversight is a managerial form, not an abolition of class relations.
Stalin died 70 years ago, there is no Stalinist ML bubble.
Bordiga lmao
I don’t do shit but hate on communists, and that’s the truly revolutionary stance.
At least his critique is clear and coherent.
If validity of theory was based on what its writers had done, then Marx would be worthless and Urban Guerilla doctrine would be invaluable.
Validity of theory isn’t based on what its writers do, but on what its students do. It’s a social science and without practical application it is absolutely worthless.
Marx, Engels and Lenin have been proven right by the practice of Marxist-Leninists, it isn’t the rule that the best theorists are also revolutionary leaders, but revolutionary leaders by their success prove the worth of the theory they applied to their circumstances.
I’ve never met a Bordiga follower whose achievements amount to more than writing in opposition to AES. You didn’t need to read leftcoms for that.
Private property and markets can’t just be abolished immediately after a revolution, it’s not magic. Young socialist systems have to go through a transitional phase during which private property and markets are still allowed under strict oversight of the state.
That makes sense
His does not make them capitalist as the proletariat still has control over this private sector via the socialist state, such as in China where all of the essential industry that is necessary for every other, known as the commanding heights, are fully state owned
Okay… but when will this “transitionary period” finish.
If a “transitionary period” takes more than a decade at what point do we say “they aren’t transitioning” and call it what it is, state owned capitalism.
If a “transitionary period” takes more than a decade at what point do we say “they aren’t transitioning” and call it what it is, state owned capitalism.
I mean, how could we know how much time is needed for the transition? It has never happened yet, we’re still experimenting.
Capitalism spent centuries being the secondary mode of production under feudalism before the bourgeoisie had developed the productive forces enough to transition away from feudalism. The USSR, Albania and others attempted to force a socialist mode or production before the productive forces were sufficiently developed and it didn’t work. China’s strategy of development of the productive forces has had very little downside and I think it’s unreasonable and kind of suspect to want them to turn back (to policies that ultras would also condemn for one reason or another, as they always do). Poverty fetishism isn’t Marxist and isn’t scientific.
Or you could just read The State and Revolution where Lenin goes into it for about a hundred pages. It’s been out for over a century.
What do you think the transition from Socialism to Communism looks like? Especially when Communism must be global.
The fact that the transition takes a very long time isn’t proof that it isn’t transitioning. What even is this assumption that transitional periods must last less than a decade? Seriously, where the heck does that even come from?
To answer your question, this transitional state is necessary as long as capitalism remains the overwhelmingly dominant mode of production on the planet because in a mainly capitalist world, transfer of technology and resources mostly happen between businesses doing business.
If you try to go to a higher stage of socialism while the world is still almost only capitalist you’ll end up with all the problems that plagued the soviet union, with the capitalist countries able to very easily sanction and isolate you since they can’t get access to your markets even if they don’t anyway and with you having to re-invent every new technology the rest of the capitalist world create just to keep up since there is no way the capitalists would give you the blueprints among other problems.
The fact that the transition takes a very long time isn’t proof that it isn’t transitioning.
Okay, what proof is there China has been making progress on the transition?
What even is this assumption that transitional periods must last less than a decade? Seriously, where the heck does that come from?
That’s approximately the time Xi has been president. Since 2012. I’m not going to place blame on him for regimes before him.
When Lenin attempted to implement this transition he eventually fell ill and was unable to prevent Stalin’s authoritarian takeover.
It seems as though there needs to be some time limit on having full state power consolidated in one place because every regime change risks the goals being changed.
If a leader gets in who realizes that having a board seat on powerful companies can benefit them personally, and they decide not to transition, what can be done at that point?
To answer your question, this transitional state is necessary as long as capitalism remains the overwhelmingly dominant mode of production on the planet because in a mainly capitalist world, transfer of technology and resources mostly happen between businesses doing business.
China was the second-largest supplier of the US in 2024, with goods valued at $462.62 billion.
Capitalism will remain the dominant mode of production as long as China continues to play a key role in funding of the American economy and continuing to loan them increasingly more money.
Okay, what proof is there China has been making progress on the transition?
There are several. The private sector has never dominated the economy, the public sector always kept a firm hold on banking, raw materials, energy production and infrastructure that the private sector is dependent on to make and deliver what they sell, in other word, a massive leverage the state can use to pressure the private sector.
They can literally starve private companies of financing if they want, which they did when they let real estate speculators go bankrupt after the state voluntarily burst the real estate bubble. Something a bourgeois ruled capitalist country would have never done.
Moreover since a few years ago, the proportion of the economy that is privately owned has been decreasing while the state’s control over them has increased.
Here is a video explaining China’s socialist system in which some such evidences are presented.
That’s approximately the time Xi has been president. Since 2012. I’m not going to place blame on him for regimes before him.
That’s still very arbitrary.
When Lenin attempted to implement this transition he eventually fell ill and was unable to prevent Stalin’s authoritarian takeover.
I’ll let answering this one to someone with more more knowledge on 1922-1925 period. I’ll only say that Lenin never tried to prevent Stalin from taking power. The Lenin testament, assuming you are at least partially referring to that, is most likely forged. We know from Lenin’s numerous letters and other writing that Lenin had an extremely poor opinion of Trotsky and his politics, and as such would have never recommended Trotsky as a potential general secretary of the party. Furthermore, Lenin and Stalin were close friends.
It seems as though there needs to be some time limit on having full state power consolidated in one place because every regime change risks the goals being changed.
If a leader gets in who realizes that having a board seat on powerful companies can benefit them personally, and they decide not to transition, what can be done at that point?
They can be voted out of their position. Literally.
The political system in China, to put it very simply, is a bottom up elected council system. The peoples vote for local administrators like mayors and such, these local administrator vote to elect the rank above them, who themselves vote in the ranks above them and so on all the way up to the congress general secretary (side note: Xi is both the president and the general secretary, but the president is a largely ceremonial role and doesn’t have that much power, Xi’s real political power comes from him being the general secretary, no from him being the president).
And for each rank, the elected officials can be un-elected by the ranks bellow. Even Xi could be un-elected, he won’t because he is very popular among both the peoples and the party members, but he could be. This is one of the rational behind why they removed the terms limit by the way, why have a time limit that automatically end the general secretary’s term when he can be un-elected at any time?
China was the second-largest supplier of the US in 2024, with goods valued at $462.62 billion.
Capitalism will remain the dominant mode of production as long as China continues to play a key role in funding of the American economy and continuing to loan them increasingly more money.
Yes, as I said, in a capitalist world exchanges between countries are done mostly through businesses. So in order to have exchanges of resources and technology and not be cut of and starved like the USSR was, having businesses selling to other countries and businesses coming to sell in yours is a necessary evil.
Although, China has been reducing their exchanges with the US for almost a decade now, and it is only accelerating with Trump’s lunacy. Right now, Chinese money is overall leaving the US, not entering it. China is now a net seller of US treasury bonds instead of a net buyer like it still was until relatively recently. China also banned the export of a lot of dual use metals, especially rare earths, to the US. And since China controls between 30 to 90% of production depending on the specific mineral, the US can’t really get those from anywhere else.
If you are offended by this, you might be incapable of self-reflection
Imagine getting offended by this instead of just being anti-colonialist
Why do white crackers have to be so set in their ways?
Simply put: maintaining the status quo is prerequisite to their comfortable living.
Dang I didn’t know there were successful communist nations in developing countries.
Dang I didn’t know there were successful communist nations in developing countries.
Funnily enough, two started off as developing and ended up as world superpowers.
I’m assuming your talking about Russia and China I think it very fare to criticise them, considering they are both totalitarian nations which don’t respect the needs of there citizens.
The USSR (Soviet Union) and the PRC (China). The USSR is not Russia, and it doesn’t exist anymore.
And of course it’s fair, and in fact important to criticize them. We have the benefit of hindsight and can see how some of their decisions were serious mistakes. On the other hand, it’s also important to analyze what they did good and learn from that too. Neither was perfect, both were improvements, and the terrible fates of Russia and Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union is proof of how much good the SU was for its citizens.
which don’t respect the needs of there citizens.
They both inherited countries plagued with regular famine and have both eliminated it. In fact, in 1983 the CIA documented the SU as having a better typical diet than the USA. Clearly they respected the food security of their citizens.
The SU managed to rapidly build low-cost housing after repelling a HUGE invasion of extermination from Nazi Germany. The “commieblocks” were critical in housing people after war. China has also made huge strides in home ownership and elimination of poverty. Meanwhile, poverty and homelessness is increasing under capitalist countries, with them doing little to resolve their housing crises. Clearly they respected the need for shelter of their citizens.
Keep in mind, that both these countries were devastated by world wars and civil wars. Their countries started off in serious crisis and had already had revolutions. If they didn’t respect the needs of their citizens, they would have ended up failed states overthrown by their desperate population or quickly collapsing to invasions.
As for China, the government, despite censorship and political repression, still remains popular among its citizens, according to censorship-resistant US studies[1]. It’s largely avoided war, hugely reduced poverty, and has become a world leader in technology.
There are many valid reasons to criticize these countries and it’s important we do that. But they clearly respected the basic needs of their citizens. There are few other countries which have done more to reduce poverty and homelessness than them.
Thank you for telling me that. I never really thought that communist nations have done good things in the past, I suppose I already knew that about china. But I did not know that about the USSR. There is no education about any good thing communist nations have done well, at least in the curriculum I grew up with. And communism is therefore ingrained in people essentially as a synonym for bad.
Glad I could help :) My curriculum was similar, mine didn’t really talk about communist countries at all, and since a lot of our media like movies come from the US during the Cold War, when their government’s biggest enemies were the Soviet Union and the worker labor movement fighting for more worker rights, those movies often chose communist countries or communists as an easy choice for villains, so there’s a shallow but very widespread and normal idea that those countries are just simply evil, and ours is good. On top of that, most newspapers and television channels are owned by the richest people (mega-millionaires and billionaires, not just middle-class money), rich enough to own or invest in them, and funded by large companies advertising, and usually the people with that much money love how capitalism is working and are threatened by socialism or communism, so they have a self-interest in highlighting all the mistakes of those countries and all the wins of their own. I was amazed that a few years before, the US government was putting out posters like these during World War II, where Russian and Chinese soldiers are celebrated as allies alongside Canadians and English!
On a related point, it’s also important to remember that many people instinctively compare these countries to rich, developed countries like Britain, the USA, and others, instead of comparing them to how they were before and after. I used to do this too, but countries are so different, with different histories, resources and neighbors that it’s usually unfair to simply compare them like that. This short 3 minute clip from a Michael Parenti lecture gives some good examples of this, focusing on their experience talking to Cubans.
What do you call Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, the former Burkina Fasso under Sankara, or the former USSR? Do you sincerely believe those countries had a better standard of living for all people, especially workers and peasants, under capitalism? Isn’t the great fall from grace of the USSR proof that the benefits their people had received were indeed the fruits of socialism and not the “rising tide” of global capitalist development (which was actually exacerbating poverty in the global South outside of the socialist countries)?
Maybe it’s just capitalist propaganda but from what I’ve heard, China is a mass surveillance state which doesn’t protect any of the citizens rights for privacy and has lacklustre working environments which is why everything is so cheap to be made there. Cuba is stuck with a poor economy, but I guess that’s all developing nations so i don’t know much other than that. For Vietnam my source is a friend who’s family mostly live in Vietnam, he says people in Vietnam dislike communism but can’t say it out loud. And I don’t know much about Laos or Burkina fasso.
To be clear I do consider myself a leftist and anti capitalist but I don’t believe there have been many properly successful socialist nations outside of Europe really.
China is a mass surveillance state which doesn’t protect any of the citizens rights for privacy and has lacklustre working environments
It is a mass surveillance state, but it’s definitely not any more mass surveillance than any developed country. Maybe one important difference is that in China the government has fewer restrictions for how they will spy on you, but in the US for example the NSA will do blatantly illegal things that aren’t even allowed under the Patriot Act and no one can do anything about it, so the extent to which surveillance is legal or not is irrelevant IMO. I would understand your criticism if China was actually a very repressive country where dissent wasn’t allowed and a huge portion of the population was jailed, but I think the quick response to the anti-lockdown protests and the fact they jail far fewer people than the US (while having 4x the population) means that it’s not a very reasonable criticism. Especially not when you consider the Western countries built up their stability while exploiting others, and China had to go through a hard process of occupation, civil war, and then many mistakes during the Cultural Revolution which still breed resentment at the state, even if things have gotten better.
As for the working environments, you’ll always see the worst of the worst in negative coverage of China (the suicide nets in Foxconn factories, for example, which to my knowledge have been debunked). Still, it is undeniable that China has had pretty bad working conditions. I think the key element to understand why working conditions are poor, yet more than 80% of Chinese people approve of their government, is that Chinese people understand that their government is committed to improving things and they consistently see those improvements. They also have a much more responsive political system that listens to their individual concerns very well, so whatever problems they have are more likely to be dealt with than if they had a situation in a western liberal democracy, where you write a letter to your representative and your representative has been paid off by 3 different lobby groups to ignore your concerns.
Cuba is stuck with a poor economy, but I guess that’s all developing nations so i don’t know much other than that.
That’s a huge understatement. Cuba faces a horrible, economy-stifling blockade from the US that essentially shuts them off from the entire global economy because they can’t access the global banking system or buy a huge number of basic goods. Despite that, they’re a global leader in medicine, have a far better education system than the US at all levels, have sent revolutionaries to assist in decolonizing countries in Africa, and were leaders of the NAM.
And I don’t know much about Laos or Burkina fasso.
Laos is honestly quite similar to Vietnam.
Burkina Fasso had a very successful few years of developing infrastructure and improving living conditions for the people under Sankara. It’s a very tragic story because he was assassinated and replaced by a regime that reversed much of the good he had accomplished. Nowadays, Ibrahim Traore is essentially just playing it back with many of the same ideas Sankara had, and he has been massively popular and successful for it (look no further than the fact his security team have had to stop many assassination attempts already, much like Castro).
To be clear I do consider myself a leftist and anti capitalist but I don’t believe there have been many properly successful socialist nations outside of Europe really.
What has been successful in Europe? Yugoslavia and the Warsaw Pact countries were great, but could only exist because of the pressure of the USSR on the capitalist bloc. All the social democracies are only social democracies, they have never put the workers in charge of their own destiny and are therefore not socialist at all.
Ok, first of all you clearly know a lot about this than I do and I would love to learn more, where do you find information related to socialism and socialist nations? Obviously I cannot expect to learn all of this from you.
What has been successful in Europe? First of all many European nations such as Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have a progressive multi party system which prioritize good urban planning and privacy laws (the latter I am not 100% sure about but believe to be true) And the European union as a whole regularly enforce regulations ensuring fare practices among big companies such as recently they enforced apple to require side loading and meta to remove the consent or pay advertising model. As well as when apple was required to use usb-c on there iphones. This is just my limited knowledge so feel free to prove me wrong and two examples may not be enough evidence.
Also I read your other arguments but I simply don’t have enough knowledge to have anything to say about them, but I very much go by the quote “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and therefore find it difficult to believe that any dictator can be better than a democracy.
don’t believe there have been many properly successful socialist nations outside of Europe
???
I remember watching a documentary about North Korea and one of the guides was talking about how people in NK and Asia more broadly don’t necessarily want to live under the same liberal-democratic capitalist system that the west tries to impress on them.
How arrogant are we to act like we have it all figured out and that countries outside of Europe and North America are backwards shitholes?
There is absolutely a discussion to be had here.
Of course people should be allowed to have their own government setups and authorities. It would be wrong to assume that we in the west have it all figured out.
However there are still questions of fundamental human rights. In many places of the world a woman can legally be raped, it’s the woman’s responsibility to always have a male relative with them. If we were to ask women what they thought about it they would probably say that there is no problem with it, that’s just how it works. These women have been so indoctrinated by it that they don’t question it.
We could also use slavery in America as an example. Many slaves probably accepted the argument that they had a better living standard as slaves, or some other argument that made them accept the status quo. Should Europe just have accepted that that is the way life goes over there?
Where does the line go between fundamental human rights and respecting other ways of life go? Western fundamental rights such as equal rights, right to a trial, right to life, etc. are just that, western.
Liberals desperately need to read Losurdo - Liberalism, a counter-history.
Even the liberal equality before the law, (ie, the illegality for the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges and beg for food* was denied to colonized peoples and peoples of colonial origin.
Every one of your liberal ideologues was extremely racist, and didn’t think colonized peoples deserved any of the rights they proclaimed for the white community. John Locke, and the first 5 or so US presidents owned slaves. Tocqueville pushed for the decimation of civilians in Algeria at the hands of the french imperialists, and wrote a book on the US that ignored slavery, lynchings, and native eviction. There are too many more cases to cover.
I am hard pressed to think of any Americans older than twenty five that I have ever met IRL that was truly opposed to colonialism. High-schoolers and college students; sure. That’s about it though.
Lemmy libs in this thread showing they have an aversion to reading
there are libs on Lemmy?
Check on some .world comms and let us know what you find. Hint: it’s libs as far as the thumb can scroll.
Almost every community on every instance of Lemmy is a liberal circlejerk lol
Wait lol you’re a MAGA account but you accidentally came to the right conclusion? JDPON Don does it again.
it’s always hilarious when conservatives are right on accident and they don’t even know why
I have a better one:
About all politics. No exceptions.
Signed: Brazilian.
I like how the circle also looks like America and Hawaii and parts of Canada are not included lol
The capitalism can not spread where the ice flows and the coconuts reign.
Hawaii should be free anyway. Send all the USians home and give the people of Hawaii their nation back.
Wow. Not everyone agrees with what’s going on, so let’s alienate those people too, because they live there. This is some wild stuff. Oh, NM, this is .ml lol
Also, with your SFT being super corrupt, deforestation of the Amazon, Indigenous land rights and illegal mining, and the military getting involved in politics, and a slew of other issues in Brazil. Maybe look inwards before trying to silence others.
Everywhere has issues.
My only complaint is that the Baltics aren’t included in the Shut The Fuck Up Zone.
Is that a whale
The “Shut the Fuck Up Gringo” whale.
Western liberals who think they are entirely objective and free of bias really struggle to get to grips with how much of their world view is just patronizing racist chauvinism.
Also I’m not even sure why liberals are permitted on lemmy. Send them and their disgusting violent ideology back to corporate media.
They don’t have any problems with US corporate media’s ideology. They’re just mad reddit took away their app treats.
… And a swing and a miss
…no? Pretty spot-on.
Why? What’s your wisdom you’d like to share with us socialists outside of the imperialist countries?
Idk how anyone can defend how we (the US) does shit. Especially after this year. If you weren’t already privy to how monstrous we can be now you are, and now we pulled any good shit we might have done, too.
Name one successful communist movement.
Vietnam, Cuba, PRC, DPRK, USSR (for 80 years at least). All of them defeated either US, Japanese, French, and German imperialists, and uplifted their people despite the US never letting up.
The PRC’s acheivements:
- Uplifted more people out of poverty than any country in history, so much so that if we remove the PRC from rankings, world poverty would be increasing.
- Eliminated Urban Poverty. On track to eliminate all poverty within a decade.
- CGTN documentary - China’s war on poverty
Some of the USSR’s acheivements:
- USSR had a more nutritious diet than the US, according to the CIA. Calories consumed surpassed the US. source. Ended famines.
- Productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. It was illegal to hire others and accumulate personal wealth from their labor.
- Had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century after Japan. The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.
- Free Universal Health care, and most doctors per capita in the world. 42 doctors per 10k population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US.
- Had near zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. The “continuous” part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.
- USSR moved from 58.5-hour workweeks to 41.6 hour workweeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960
- USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996., 2
- In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67.
- All education, including university level, free. 2
- 99% literacy.
- Saved the world from Fascism, Taking on the majority of Nazi divisions, and killing 90% of Nazi soldiers. Bore the enormous cost of blood and pain in WW2 (25M dead), with the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare.. An estimated 70% of Soviet housing was destroyed by Nazi invasion. Nazis were in retreat after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, a full 2 years before the US landed troops in normandy.
- Doubled life expectancy. Eliminated poverty.
- Combatted sex inequality. Equal wages for men and women mandated by law, but sex inequality, although not as pronounced as under capitalism, was perpetuated in social roles. Very important lesson to learn.
- Combatted Racial inequality.
- Feudalism to space travel in 40 years. First satellite, rocket, space walk, woman, man, animal, space station, moon and mars probes.
- Soviet power production per capita in 1990 was more than the EU, Great Britain, or China’s in 2014.
- Housing was socialized by localized community organizations, and there was virtually no homelessness. Houses were often shared by two families throughout the 20s and 30s – so unlike capitalism, there were no empty houses, but the houses were very full. In the 40s there was the war, and in the 50s there were a number of orphans from the war. The mass housing projects began in the 60s, they were completed in the 70s, and by the 70s, there were homeless people, but they often had genuine issues with mental health.
- 66% of Russians polled in 2015 want the USSR back. The story is the same for all the former eastern-bloc countries: 72% of Hungarians say their country is worse off now than under communism, 57% of East Germans, 63% of Romanians, 77% of Czechs, 81% of Serbs (for Yugoslavia), 70% of Ukrainians, 60% of Bulgarians.
You either never went.to cuba or you are bending reality to fit your narrative.
Also, are you uaing the USSR as EXAMPLE?! you need better undertanding of people’s lifes befora talking shit. I have many friends that lived in the USSR and NONE of them.feel it was good at all
Cubans are more satisfied with their political system than americans
According to a bunch of polls, in the majority of former eastern block countries most of the population (as high as 70% and no lower than 40%) think life under socialism was better. Also, you were literally given a big list of sources for the USSR example. But clearly didn’t bother reading any.
2 things can be true at the same time. Im not american i dont care. But saying ussr and cuba are amazing shows that you are very very young or very uninformed
Uninformed? Then where is your knowledge, evidence, data, links, anything? It seems to me you’re just talking the blue out of the sky.
You’re a big fan of Cuba under Batista then?
The DPRK defeated the US despite it killing 1 out of every 5 people, and having nearly half their country destroyed:
Vietnam suffered similar ruthless civilian bombing campaigns and massacres, and defeated the US.
unironically calling the DPRK a success
Typical arrogant chauvinism, that this very meme highlights.
Just go live there.
Yes
Why are you arguing that their military movement is what made them successful? Vietnam is successful from their governance not because many died.
Vietnan won militar combat against 3 imperialist countries, if you havent heard about it
Yes, that’s literally what I responded to. Governance is their real success story is my obvious point
Militarily driving out the French and Burger imperialists was a prerequisite for their governmental success. After all, if they hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t be governing themselves in the first place.
I don’t understand. Nearly every successful anti-colonial revolution in the 20th century was communist or Marxist influenced, Vietnam was no different. Vietnam was successful because their decades long struggle against french and US imperialism, guided by Marxist theory.
My clear point was a revolution is one thing but running the country so well ever since is their real success story :)
Ah my bad, yes I agree, both are success stories.
I’m willing to take the bait, but first re-read the meme and tell me what you missed?
I didn’t miss anything. I just see people throwing their opinions around without providing any supporting data.
I see that OP posted a long list of links in the comments to support their point of view. I haven’t read them yet, so I can’t say I agree or not, but now their opinion is not completely invalid.
I haven’t read them yet, so I can’t say I agree or not, but now their opinion is not completely invalid.
The state of liberal “intellectualism”.
Go read them
You can look at China right now, especially in the context of the US basically shitting the bed completely, and see success. It also depends on what you’re using to determine what “success” is. If the marker for comparison is a capitalist country… lol we see how well that’s playing out.
No system or place is perfect, but the US has trillions of dollars at its disposal and does zero for its people. Meanwhile, even folks with a meager income can live a comfortable life in China. I’ve heard this verbatim from Americans that have lived there—some of which for 15+ years.
The PRC is quite obviously the easiest example, but I’d say every existing Socialist system has achieved remarkable success in the face of horrible opposition.
Tim Pool ass comment
It really depends on how you define “successful.” If your measure of success is based on how closely these societies resemble Western, liberal, capitalist societies, then, yeah, you’re probably not going to see a whole lot of “success,” but that’s not what these revolutionary movements were trying to achieve. I would say that first and foremost what essentially every communist movement was striving for was just autonomy and independence, and many have been successful in that regard. Vietnam is an independent nation, instead of a French colony. China, similarly, is no longer under the thumb of the British. You may not like what these nations do with their autonomy, but that is what they were striving for and they have achieved it.
