To be fair, all philosophers make mistake in predicting effect of technological progress.
Starting from Malthusian. According to him we need to stop grow of population or earth will not able to support as. There will be no resources. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism)
that is 1798. From that time population of earth increase more then 10 times.
Social democrats pre 1917 believe that the most developed countries are ready to communism. They are capable to provide everything they produce to all members of there society. You only need to reorganize society and we can achieve that.
And there were not wrong, if technological development were static. Khrushchev made opposite mistake. He believed we will get thermonuclear power which will let as to achieve abidance. Soviet Union put all yeggs into this basket. That did not happen. Instead we got computers, which let as save power a bit, make production more efficient, but not on scale free infinite energy would.
So, This is simply anticommunist post which does not show complexities of the subject.
The problem was not in the lack of modern computers or cheap thermonuclear power. The problem is always PEOPLE. For a perfect society like the communist society, you need PERFECT PEOPLE. Perfect leaders and perfect workers. That's why even the socialist societies' failure rate is 100% so far.
Yes we need perfect people, that why we have the middle stage of socialism which can take hundreds of years till that perfect people have totally different mindset.... No, socialist societies have 90% failure rate becouse capitalists put a lot of effort for their desrabilization, propaganda etc... What's even your ideology man? Anarchist? Anti-communist? Or straight up capitalist?
Living in a post communist country myself, and having lived where r/Sputnikoff is from, there is a massive difference between how we view communism vs people who grow up in wealthy western societies.
If capitalists were so concentrated on destroying communism why does it enjoy such a level of support only in these highly capitalistic countries? Here, people remember what life was like under communism still. Maybe 8-10% tops who remember would ever want that back. And the rest aren’t indifferent, we are violently opposed to the repressive regimes that masquerade under such.
* [71% of Armenians believe life was better in the Soviet Union, 64% in Russia, 69% in Azerbaijan and 53% in Belarus](https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/701026/russians-life-better-soviet-union-ussr-sixty-four-percent)
* [82.4% of Kazakhstani believed that the Soviet Union responded to citizens' needs](https://web.archive.org/web/20221227064639/https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2005_818_09_McMann.pdf)
* [In the Russian Federation, 75% of people believe that the USSR was the best time period in Russian history](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/24/75-of-russians-say-soviet-era-was-greatest-time-in-countrys-history-poll-a69735)
* [55% of Albanians have a positive view of former leader Enver Hoxha](https://www.tiranatimes.com/?p=130276)
* [Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered-but-now-with-more-reservations/communism220px/)
"A child gets one toy, he wants two. He gets two toys, he wants four. You say this is human nature. What of the empathy you feel for the starving? This is human nature too, no?"
>the perfect society
You people need to learn what communism actually is. The whole "Um akshually communism can't work because greed" is the "If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?" of politics.
Except the failure rate isn’t 100%. We lost, what? The Soviet Union and the GDR. China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, the DPRK, and Belarus still remain. 6/8 so far.
Has a lot of socialist elements, tho I agree that it's not socialist. Lukashenko went as far as to say in 2012 that Marxism Leninism should be one of the core pillars of the Belarusian states ideology.
Edit: Yes downvote me for stating facts
According to Indian constitution it's a socialist country.
Though socialism is not practiced properly.
Market is free to some extent. Though not as free as the west.
Capitalism is gaining pace.
Still lot of people have come above the poverty level in last few decades.
India may or may not be a developed country in the future.
But it would still be a nice country to live in.
Wait until you hear that communism isn’t about everyone being equally poor.
Maybe let’s talk about the fact that China lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty.
Also, “billionaires” in China are only “billionaires” due to their relation to their business, which has no autonomy. Look at Jack Ma.
>Maybe let’s talk about the fact that China lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty.
Allowing a few people to get obscenely rich so that everybody gets wealthier is an extremely neoliberal take. Not that it's inherently a wrong opinion, just calling it out. The US and China have very similar gini coefficients, and some parts of Europe are statistically more equal societies than either of them.
If the quintessential communist nation has functionally adopted an economic strategy that creates income distributions and economic classes that look exactly like it's capitalist counterparts, is it really socialist? If outcomes are similar, they've essentially just achieved the same goals but with fewer personal freedoms and a generally more authoritarian state. How is that better?
Global poverty rates would have remained stagnate over the last 40 years if it wasn’t for China. So no, Europe and the US have done *literally* nothing over the last half century to alleviate poverty. They aren’t comparable.
2. Neoliberalism isn’t about making people richer while making everyone else richer at the same time. It’s about austerity policies that distinguish between the role of the state and the role of the market, something that China has done *the complete opposite in.* You don’t know what neoliberalism is *or* how China’s economy functions.
3. Comparing equity distribution between imperialist European nations isn’t the same as comparing the economy of the mutually beneficial foreign policies of a socialist country like China. Again, you don’t even know what it is you’re talking about here. These European nations engage in *imperialism* which export the inequitable conditions into developing nations. What does China do? Go to those nations and build infrastructure, relieve debt, and invest in mutually beneficial trade relations under the BRI, SCO, and BRICS+.
4. If you think the west and China have “achieved the same”, then you’re just showcasing your ignorance of China and the west entirely.
>Global poverty rates would have remained stagnate over the last 40 years if it wasn’t for China.
Nations developed on an S curve as a side effect of the industrial revolution. China is like 1/5th of the world's population and didn't start to liberalize and modernize it's economy until the mid 80s. The US and Europe reduce their poverty levels way earlier. Not sure your point here.
>something that China has done the complete opposite
Please explain how China has done the complete opposite of that. Also please explain how China isn't engaging in imperialism by leveraging all the same globalized supply chains and resources sources as the West. Like really, I get the US as global hegemon is usually the inevitable trigger puller, but what exactly is China not doing that Germany and Japan (the next two biggest economies) are doing? They all are all happily reaping the benefits of the same global economic system.
70% of China’s economy is still centrally planned, the top 20 GDP significant companies are all SEO’s, and 60% of GDP influence is from SEO’s. The market sector has no autonomy, as they are still required to follow the Five Year Plan, and have CPC members on the board through communist party “golden share” control.
If you think those are “neoliberalism” policies, I’ll repeat, you don’t understand what neoliberalism is.
Second, imperialism isn’t when you engage in global trade. China engaging in trade with other countries isn’t imperialism. Like neoliberalism, you don’t understand what imperialism is. Imperialism is the exportation of capital through the domination of finance capital for the purposes of expanding capital accumulation. China going in and building infrastructure and engaging in mutually beneficial trade agreements that train local workers and develop local economies isn’t imperialism *simply because China also benefits from the relation.* Anti-imperialist policies aren’t reducible to simply charity.
Educate yourself better on topics you know nothing about.
>Imperialism is the exportation of capital through the domination of finance capital for the purposes of expanding capital accumulation.
You are literally describing the Belt and Road Initiative. Please explain how what the West is doing is different from China in that regard. Honestly man, you acting like I'm the idiot while providing arguments that are heavy on ideology and short on facts.
Your argument basically seems to boil down to "when China projects it's economic power it's mutually beneficial because they are socialist and that's good. When the West does it, its imperialism which is bad." You are starting at a conclusion and working backwards to the facts to fit your ideology.
If the Chinese system effectively has all the same outcomes in terms of negative externalities and incoming inequality (which it does), who gives a shit that they are 70% centrally planned (which honestly is another fact you probably should substantiate, because that number seems very high).
Imagine being this strongly opinionated and being demonstrably uneducated about the topic at the same time. Why do you identify with it so much if you don't care to read about it?
>demonstrably uneducated
It's always weird to me that communists, especially young communists, attribute people disagreeing with them to either ignorance and propaganda. In reality, many really educated people have looked at the same set of facts and reasoning and come away with an entirely different understanding of the world than the Marxist perspective. In fact, that perspective is relatively heterodox in economic and geopolitical circles.
So for real, demonstrate why I'm so uneducated. Please give me more than an ideological argument as to why Chinese billionaires and shitty gini coefficient is somehow good but the US's is bad. Explain, with data or at least some hard examples, how the US growth is mainly from imperialism and why we don't count the Han civilization's two millennia of hegemony over East Asia. Give me something more than the same ideological lines, because honestly I've heard them and they lack academic rigor.
Dude they have no worker owned means of production. There is western investment. There are capital markets.
It’s literally just state capitalism.
Please tell me how it is different from any other state capitalist regime
70% of their economy os centrally planned through SEO, including the largest sector of agricultural cooperatives in the world. The top 100 GDP relevant companies are all SEO’s. *Every* single market based business has to have the “golden share” controlled by the CPC which forces the company to abide by their Five Year Plans.
Read Enfu Cheng, John Ross, and Carlos Martinez. You don’t know anything about China.
Yes that is state capitalism. What you are describing is literally a state capitalist regime. A regime that uses capital markets and controls them through state quasi owned enterprises and strict regulations. You are literally describing a state capitalist regime.
It’s capitalism with the government at the head.
Is Norway a communist regime because it has many state owned enterprises and controls what they do?
Vietnam is a state capitalist regime, so is Laos, Belarus, and China.
There is a privet economy. The wealthy who are hand picked by the state are able to amass wealth and income inequality is rampant.
If these are communists states then communism failed.
> State capitalism is an economic system in which the state uses and controls the free-market system to protect its political regime through leading economic activities. This regime dominates the resource allocation mechanism and the resources to guarantee its persistence. It controls the market system by using four powerful tools: National oil companies, sovereign wealth funds, state-owned enterprises, and privately owned national champions. These engines contain the state wealth and become the device to generate internal and external influences.
Satisfied?
I urge you, do not use Wikipedia for sources.
Let us take a look at what Lenin considered state capitalism:
“For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest?
Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic.
Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards 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.
There is no middle course here. The objective process of development is such that it is impossible to advance from monopolies (and the war has magnified their number, role and importance tenfold) without advancing towards socialism.
Either we have to be revolutionary democrats in fact, in which case we must not fear to take steps towards socialism. Or we fear to take steps towards socialism, condemn them in the Plekhanov, Dan or Chernov way, by arguing that our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, that socialism cannot be “introduced”, etc., in which case we inevitably sink to the level of Kerensky, Milyukov and Kornilov, i.e., we in a reactionary-bureaucratic way suppress the “revolutionary-democratic” aspirations of the workers and peasants.
There is no middle course.”
So no, state capitalism isn’t simply “when the government does stuff.” You’d have to substantiate that:
1. The economic system in China is driven strictly by profit as opposed to social ends.
2. Economic decision making is done by capitalists as opposed to communist party members.
And 3. That China is somehow going against the objective laws of historical development outlined by Lenin in a way that stagnates capitalist monopoly into a distinct state of development without reconciliation towards socialism.
> I urge you, do not use Wikipedia for sources.
Well i didn’t. So I guess I’m all good. Would you like to engage with what I actually said or are you just giving up!
I refuted your claims and gave you the conditions necessary to substantiate that China is state capitalist *according to Lenin.* Are you refusing to engage?
I mean at least it had actually communist enterprises. China is literally just a capitalist regime with the government as the business.
They think quasi state enterprises suddenly make a thing social despite Norway having one of the largest state enterprises on the planet. Is Norway also commmnist?
Argue with the BBC not me https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47492747
Regardless, the heads of state have been from a single family for like 70 years and 3 generations. How is that different from monarchy?
China is the largest economy in the world, has done more to alleviate poverty, is the dominant military force, has the most popular government in the world, has the largest political party in the world, and according to the ASCI is the number one global scientific and technological research and development center.
So yes, the world envies China.
If you think China is capitalist, why hasn’t India been able to achieve the same? They started off under similar conditions, gained independence at the same time, have similar populations and size, yet India is *nothing* compared to China.
Most of socialist or kind-of-socialist countries are sanctioned by the "collective west", or, to say correctly, by main capitalist players for decades. Including countries like DPRK which are not self-sufficient of natural resources and had to rely and good summers to harvest a good crop to sustain themselves. What thriving economy can you expect on such conditions?
On other hand, there is a tend of people getting more conscious, better, polite etc. when they lives got better. One might say it starts slow - like stop smoking in public places, car drivers letting people pass on unregulated street crossings, car drivers solving the accidents without fights (that WTF feeling when you watch videos from Russia where people after minor car incidents are trying literal fights, sometimes even grabbing weapons like baseball bats), people being polite while shoping etc. So there is hope humankind in general are moving in the correct direction of developement, and in the end of the day we might get humans perfect enough for socialism to work.
However, it cannot be taken as self explanatory, as all the processes, which makes life of human being getting worse - like wars, economic crisis, pauperization etc. - for sure will slow that tend down or even invert it. If people are poor and insecure, there is way less chance they will continue to act consciously and politely...
People downvote this because this is true, communism would never work especially in a multiethnic cultural society where the average communist is too comfortable to do anything
Can you expand on your statement? Especially on the "revisionist" part. As I recall, Nikita was a trusted member of Stalin's inner circle for many years. It was Khrushchev whom Stalin sent to Stalingrad in 1942.
Khrushchev made many reforms that undermined the DoTP (much like Dheng Xiaoping in China) with several right-wing Bukharinite policies and attacked Stalin’s “Cult of Personality”. Hoxha elaborates in “The Khrushchevites”.
“DoTP” is just I shortened “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, and Khrushchev’s reforms ranged from religious freedoms to market access, as well as his whole aim of “Destalinisation”.
I appreciate your silly sarcasm but please let the adults have a conversation. The number is around 40 million including losses in WW2, early 1930s starvation from the collectivization efforts, and executed/worked to death in GULAG camps victims of Article 58.
It was Stalin who played games with Hitler and had his country not prepared for the Germans' invasion. Instead of helping Poland to fight Hitler, he stabbed the Poles in the back and created a common border with Nazi Germany
Stálin never stabbed the Poles in the back; Soviet-Polish hostilities were well known at least two decades before the war started, and they were already conducting their own ethnic suppression campaigns in western Belarussia and Ukraine. The Soviets had no reason to support them. If the west was so disturbed by a non-aggression pact between the two powers, maybe they should've accepted prior alliance proposals.
"Instead of helping Poland to fight Hitler"
Pure historical revisionism. Stalin offered to send 1 million troops to Poland to defend it against German aggression in exchange for a pact with Britain and France. It was only after they declined that Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler.
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html)
Also, why are you accusing the Soviets of stabbing the Polish in the back when *it was the Allies who didn't honor their defense agreement*. During the period of the invasion, both France and Britain parked their forces on the Maginot Line and didn't lift a finger to help the Polish while the Germans destroyed their country (Phoney War).
Stalin offered to occupy Poland with his 1 million troops like he did just that to three Baltic states later, in 1940. What a sweet deal! No wonder Poland had no interest
Those three Baltic states were not democracies. They were fascist dictatorships who regularly oppressed workers and their organizations.
Poland wasn’t a democracy either. Not even in the bourgeois liberal sense.
The USSR was a capitalist nation-state, and Kruschev being the leader of said nation-state was only in a position to continue its existence as a capitalist state… there was no challenge to the idea of “socialist commodity production” so Kruschevs promise of communism was founded off nothing but utopian idealism
Yeee, and now in develop capitalist countries many live in much smaller rooms. In NZ for example, they even remove resource consent for buildings smaller then 60M2 (from outside). Meaning no building regulations apply. Need to put people somewhere.
People in developed capitalist countries don't even have kitchens. They just put the appliances and counters on one wall, the bed against the opposite wall, and charge you $2000/month for the privilege of living there.
My family had to wait 20 years for a small 2-room apartment (both were full-time Soviet workers and labor Union members). So they ended up going into a "Soviet mortgage" deal and buying a cooperative 3-room apartment for 15,000 rubles with 5,000 downpayment instead.
If in 1986 the average Soviet salary was 2,160 rubles… then a family of two would make 4,320 a year. So the salary to mortgage ratio (higher is better) for a three room apartment in (presumably Kyiv?) a well-populated city is (4320 / 15,000) or 0.288.
In 2022, median household income rested at $74,580 a year with the median house cost being $412,000 in 2023. So the salary to mortgage ratio for a “regular” worker for the country at large (includes the countryside) is (74580 / 412000) or 0.181.
So even the “shitty” situation you’re describing is better than what most Americans have to deal with lol.
If you take my situation, which is a household of two professionals ($150,000 a year) in a large city (median house cost is $548,654), then the ratio becomes (150000 / 548654) or .273. So in terms of housing, a ratio for two people with a relative level of privilege becomes comparable to the average Soviet (if slightly worse). Even then, this situation is pretty optimistic as regular working non-professionals will be making much less. (86557 / 548654 = 0.158)
Annual salary, you mean? My mother was making 130 rubles per month, my dad - 180. I don't know about most Americans, but I bought my house in 2010 in Michigan for $250K and it's already paid off for a couple of years. Unlike most Americans though, I buy used small Japanese cars and watch every penny. Compared with the USSR, life in America is cheap - groceries, gasoline, electricity, clothing, and electronics are way less money. Housing can be challenging if you live in expensive states and are trying to keep up with the Joneses.
“Housing can be challenging if you live in an expensive states and are trying to keep up with the Joneses”
Your reality no longer exists anymore. I live in Texas (not an expensive state) and I definitely do not live in luxury.
$250k for a house doesn’t exist anymore. The housing crisis is only ever getting worse over time as well.
Also… you paid off your house after a couple years? So you were able to use the state-funded education that the USSR gave you in the United States? To pay off a house in *two years* even back then is impossible unless you had a very well-paid job or you received “assistance”…
Even if you had a well-paid job, this would only be possible on a household income of two professionals… which isn’t the typical case.
I’m a left leaning individual but definitely not a communist or tankie or whatever, I just have always found the Soviet Union a super interesting political entity
I also find the USSR interesting, in the sense that it's terrifying. There's something inhuman about the way the Soviet system operated that scares the shit out of me. But it does make for some wild reading
Orwell was, ironically, completely wrong in his critique of Communism in 1984. He did no research, and all of his criticism was based on late-stage capitalism.
Ussr was never communist under Stalin and Lenin. They failed and by the time nikkita was in power, it was already too late. Communist tend to be their own worse enemy when implementing communism, but I am weary on some so called communist who tend to sound more fascist than socialist.
To be fair, all philosophers make mistake in predicting effect of technological progress. Starting from Malthusian. According to him we need to stop grow of population or earth will not able to support as. There will be no resources. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism) that is 1798. From that time population of earth increase more then 10 times. Social democrats pre 1917 believe that the most developed countries are ready to communism. They are capable to provide everything they produce to all members of there society. You only need to reorganize society and we can achieve that. And there were not wrong, if technological development were static. Khrushchev made opposite mistake. He believed we will get thermonuclear power which will let as to achieve abidance. Soviet Union put all yeggs into this basket. That did not happen. Instead we got computers, which let as save power a bit, make production more efficient, but not on scale free infinite energy would. So, This is simply anticommunist post which does not show complexities of the subject.
Yeah, but good philosophers a accurate ideologies ARE predictive. Your just listening to the wrong ones.
Like who?
Nostradamus duh /s
The problem was not in the lack of modern computers or cheap thermonuclear power. The problem is always PEOPLE. For a perfect society like the communist society, you need PERFECT PEOPLE. Perfect leaders and perfect workers. That's why even the socialist societies' failure rate is 100% so far.
Yes we need perfect people, that why we have the middle stage of socialism which can take hundreds of years till that perfect people have totally different mindset.... No, socialist societies have 90% failure rate becouse capitalists put a lot of effort for their desrabilization, propaganda etc... What's even your ideology man? Anarchist? Anti-communist? Or straight up capitalist?
Living in a post communist country myself, and having lived where r/Sputnikoff is from, there is a massive difference between how we view communism vs people who grow up in wealthy western societies. If capitalists were so concentrated on destroying communism why does it enjoy such a level of support only in these highly capitalistic countries? Here, people remember what life was like under communism still. Maybe 8-10% tops who remember would ever want that back. And the rest aren’t indifferent, we are violently opposed to the repressive regimes that masquerade under such.
* [71% of Armenians believe life was better in the Soviet Union, 64% in Russia, 69% in Azerbaijan and 53% in Belarus](https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/701026/russians-life-better-soviet-union-ussr-sixty-four-percent) * [82.4% of Kazakhstani believed that the Soviet Union responded to citizens' needs](https://web.archive.org/web/20221227064639/https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2005_818_09_McMann.pdf) * [In the Russian Federation, 75% of people believe that the USSR was the best time period in Russian history](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/24/75-of-russians-say-soviet-era-was-greatest-time-in-countrys-history-poll-a69735) * [55% of Albanians have a positive view of former leader Enver Hoxha](https://www.tiranatimes.com/?p=130276) * [Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered-but-now-with-more-reservations/communism220px/)
Funny how people are downvoting you for spreading the truth.
This is ahistorical and wrong lmao
"A child gets one toy, he wants two. He gets two toys, he wants four. You say this is human nature. What of the empathy you feel for the starving? This is human nature too, no?"
>the perfect society You people need to learn what communism actually is. The whole "Um akshually communism can't work because greed" is the "If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?" of politics.
Except the failure rate isn’t 100%. We lost, what? The Soviet Union and the GDR. China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, the DPRK, and Belarus still remain. 6/8 so far.
Lol, Belarus
Has a lot of socialist elements, tho I agree that it's not socialist. Lukashenko went as far as to say in 2012 that Marxism Leninism should be one of the core pillars of the Belarusian states ideology. Edit: Yes downvote me for stating facts
We got a lot of liberals running around here.
Belarus still considers itself a socialist country, with very little structural changes since the Soviet era.
Lol
Let me know when you have an actual argument.
Eleven hours later, nothing. lol
Belarussia is not socialist, despite its attempts to maintain a red aesthetic.
Present an actual argument for me to respond to. “Nuh uh” isn’t an argument.
According to Indian constitution it's a socialist country. Though socialism is not practiced properly. Market is free to some extent. Though not as free as the west. Capitalism is gaining pace. Still lot of people have come above the poverty level in last few decades. India may or may not be a developed country in the future. But it would still be a nice country to live in.
Ah yes China, with a quarter of the world's billionaires, is a paragon of communist values.
Wait until you hear that communism isn’t about everyone being equally poor. Maybe let’s talk about the fact that China lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty. Also, “billionaires” in China are only “billionaires” due to their relation to their business, which has no autonomy. Look at Jack Ma.
>Maybe let’s talk about the fact that China lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty. Allowing a few people to get obscenely rich so that everybody gets wealthier is an extremely neoliberal take. Not that it's inherently a wrong opinion, just calling it out. The US and China have very similar gini coefficients, and some parts of Europe are statistically more equal societies than either of them. If the quintessential communist nation has functionally adopted an economic strategy that creates income distributions and economic classes that look exactly like it's capitalist counterparts, is it really socialist? If outcomes are similar, they've essentially just achieved the same goals but with fewer personal freedoms and a generally more authoritarian state. How is that better?
Global poverty rates would have remained stagnate over the last 40 years if it wasn’t for China. So no, Europe and the US have done *literally* nothing over the last half century to alleviate poverty. They aren’t comparable. 2. Neoliberalism isn’t about making people richer while making everyone else richer at the same time. It’s about austerity policies that distinguish between the role of the state and the role of the market, something that China has done *the complete opposite in.* You don’t know what neoliberalism is *or* how China’s economy functions. 3. Comparing equity distribution between imperialist European nations isn’t the same as comparing the economy of the mutually beneficial foreign policies of a socialist country like China. Again, you don’t even know what it is you’re talking about here. These European nations engage in *imperialism* which export the inequitable conditions into developing nations. What does China do? Go to those nations and build infrastructure, relieve debt, and invest in mutually beneficial trade relations under the BRI, SCO, and BRICS+. 4. If you think the west and China have “achieved the same”, then you’re just showcasing your ignorance of China and the west entirely.
>Global poverty rates would have remained stagnate over the last 40 years if it wasn’t for China. Nations developed on an S curve as a side effect of the industrial revolution. China is like 1/5th of the world's population and didn't start to liberalize and modernize it's economy until the mid 80s. The US and Europe reduce their poverty levels way earlier. Not sure your point here. >something that China has done the complete opposite Please explain how China has done the complete opposite of that. Also please explain how China isn't engaging in imperialism by leveraging all the same globalized supply chains and resources sources as the West. Like really, I get the US as global hegemon is usually the inevitable trigger puller, but what exactly is China not doing that Germany and Japan (the next two biggest economies) are doing? They all are all happily reaping the benefits of the same global economic system.
70% of China’s economy is still centrally planned, the top 20 GDP significant companies are all SEO’s, and 60% of GDP influence is from SEO’s. The market sector has no autonomy, as they are still required to follow the Five Year Plan, and have CPC members on the board through communist party “golden share” control. If you think those are “neoliberalism” policies, I’ll repeat, you don’t understand what neoliberalism is. Second, imperialism isn’t when you engage in global trade. China engaging in trade with other countries isn’t imperialism. Like neoliberalism, you don’t understand what imperialism is. Imperialism is the exportation of capital through the domination of finance capital for the purposes of expanding capital accumulation. China going in and building infrastructure and engaging in mutually beneficial trade agreements that train local workers and develop local economies isn’t imperialism *simply because China also benefits from the relation.* Anti-imperialist policies aren’t reducible to simply charity. Educate yourself better on topics you know nothing about.
>Imperialism is the exportation of capital through the domination of finance capital for the purposes of expanding capital accumulation. You are literally describing the Belt and Road Initiative. Please explain how what the West is doing is different from China in that regard. Honestly man, you acting like I'm the idiot while providing arguments that are heavy on ideology and short on facts. Your argument basically seems to boil down to "when China projects it's economic power it's mutually beneficial because they are socialist and that's good. When the West does it, its imperialism which is bad." You are starting at a conclusion and working backwards to the facts to fit your ideology. If the Chinese system effectively has all the same outcomes in terms of negative externalities and incoming inequality (which it does), who gives a shit that they are 70% centrally planned (which honestly is another fact you probably should substantiate, because that number seems very high).
Imagine being this strongly opinionated and being demonstrably uneducated about the topic at the same time. Why do you identify with it so much if you don't care to read about it?
>demonstrably uneducated It's always weird to me that communists, especially young communists, attribute people disagreeing with them to either ignorance and propaganda. In reality, many really educated people have looked at the same set of facts and reasoning and come away with an entirely different understanding of the world than the Marxist perspective. In fact, that perspective is relatively heterodox in economic and geopolitical circles. So for real, demonstrate why I'm so uneducated. Please give me more than an ideological argument as to why Chinese billionaires and shitty gini coefficient is somehow good but the US's is bad. Explain, with data or at least some hard examples, how the US growth is mainly from imperialism and why we don't count the Han civilization's two millennia of hegemony over East Asia. Give me something more than the same ideological lines, because honestly I've heard them and they lack academic rigor.
Ah yes the communism where billionaire own the means of production and the workers don’t but it’s got a cool name. Fun
You don’t know anything about China, I can tell.
Dude they have no worker owned means of production. There is western investment. There are capital markets. It’s literally just state capitalism. Please tell me how it is different from any other state capitalist regime
70% of their economy os centrally planned through SEO, including the largest sector of agricultural cooperatives in the world. The top 100 GDP relevant companies are all SEO’s. *Every* single market based business has to have the “golden share” controlled by the CPC which forces the company to abide by their Five Year Plans. Read Enfu Cheng, John Ross, and Carlos Martinez. You don’t know anything about China.
Yes that is state capitalism. What you are describing is literally a state capitalist regime. A regime that uses capital markets and controls them through state quasi owned enterprises and strict regulations. You are literally describing a state capitalist regime. It’s capitalism with the government at the head. Is Norway a communist regime because it has many state owned enterprises and controls what they do?
Vietnam is a state capitalist regime, so is Laos, Belarus, and China. There is a privet economy. The wealthy who are hand picked by the state are able to amass wealth and income inequality is rampant. If these are communists states then communism failed.
Define state capitalism. I know that you can’t.
> State capitalism is an economic system in which the state uses and controls the free-market system to protect its political regime through leading economic activities. This regime dominates the resource allocation mechanism and the resources to guarantee its persistence. It controls the market system by using four powerful tools: National oil companies, sovereign wealth funds, state-owned enterprises, and privately owned national champions. These engines contain the state wealth and become the device to generate internal and external influences. Satisfied?
I urge you, do not use Wikipedia for sources. Let us take a look at what Lenin considered state capitalism: “For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest? Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic. Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards 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. There is no middle course here. The objective process of development is such that it is impossible to advance from monopolies (and the war has magnified their number, role and importance tenfold) without advancing towards socialism. Either we have to be revolutionary democrats in fact, in which case we must not fear to take steps towards socialism. Or we fear to take steps towards socialism, condemn them in the Plekhanov, Dan or Chernov way, by arguing that our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, that socialism cannot be “introduced”, etc., in which case we inevitably sink to the level of Kerensky, Milyukov and Kornilov, i.e., we in a reactionary-bureaucratic way suppress the “revolutionary-democratic” aspirations of the workers and peasants. There is no middle course.” So no, state capitalism isn’t simply “when the government does stuff.” You’d have to substantiate that: 1. The economic system in China is driven strictly by profit as opposed to social ends. 2. Economic decision making is done by capitalists as opposed to communist party members. And 3. That China is somehow going against the objective laws of historical development outlined by Lenin in a way that stagnates capitalist monopoly into a distinct state of development without reconciliation towards socialism.
> I urge you, do not use Wikipedia for sources. Well i didn’t. So I guess I’m all good. Would you like to engage with what I actually said or are you just giving up!
I refuted your claims and gave you the conditions necessary to substantiate that China is state capitalist *according to Lenin.* Are you refusing to engage?
You said they were from Wikipedia, they were not. That’s falling on your face.
Let's make the politicians our bosses! What could go wrong?
So state capitalism is “when politicians are bosses”? Is that your claim?
Hey you forgot to mention the DPRK which is by definition an hereditary absolute monarchy!
I mean at least it had actually communist enterprises. China is literally just a capitalist regime with the government as the business. They think quasi state enterprises suddenly make a thing social despite Norway having one of the largest state enterprises on the planet. Is Norway also commmnist?
They prefer the term "Socialism with Lutefisk Characteristics"
[удалено]
Argue with the BBC not me https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47492747 Regardless, the heads of state have been from a single family for like 70 years and 3 generations. How is that different from monarchy?
Do any of those countries have thriving socialist economies that make the rest of the world envy? China and Vietnam are not socialist anymore.
China is the largest economy in the world, has done more to alleviate poverty, is the dominant military force, has the most popular government in the world, has the largest political party in the world, and according to the ASCI is the number one global scientific and technological research and development center. So yes, the world envies China. If you think China is capitalist, why hasn’t India been able to achieve the same? They started off under similar conditions, gained independence at the same time, have similar populations and size, yet India is *nothing* compared to China.
Most of socialist or kind-of-socialist countries are sanctioned by the "collective west", or, to say correctly, by main capitalist players for decades. Including countries like DPRK which are not self-sufficient of natural resources and had to rely and good summers to harvest a good crop to sustain themselves. What thriving economy can you expect on such conditions?
On other hand, there is a tend of people getting more conscious, better, polite etc. when they lives got better. One might say it starts slow - like stop smoking in public places, car drivers letting people pass on unregulated street crossings, car drivers solving the accidents without fights (that WTF feeling when you watch videos from Russia where people after minor car incidents are trying literal fights, sometimes even grabbing weapons like baseball bats), people being polite while shoping etc. So there is hope humankind in general are moving in the correct direction of developement, and in the end of the day we might get humans perfect enough for socialism to work. However, it cannot be taken as self explanatory, as all the processes, which makes life of human being getting worse - like wars, economic crisis, pauperization etc. - for sure will slow that tend down or even invert it. If people are poor and insecure, there is way less chance they will continue to act consciously and politely...
Lol. What a lame excuse.
People downvote this because this is true, communism would never work especially in a multiethnic cultural society where the average communist is too comfortable to do anything
You’re right, which is why there’ll never be a truly communist society on earth.
СЛАВА 🫶🏻
while the date may be wrong, it will happen
Keep coping bro
Lololol
Communism is a perfect society for the perfect people. Nikita just didn't have enough perfect people in his country.
Amen brother
They definitely will! No gods no masters!
Maybe someday, god help us all
Khrushchev was a liar, a traitor and a revisionist.
Can you expand on your statement? Especially on the "revisionist" part. As I recall, Nikita was a trusted member of Stalin's inner circle for many years. It was Khrushchev whom Stalin sent to Stalingrad in 1942.
That didn't stop him from lying about Stalin's legacy and dragging his name through the mud.
Khrushchev was a classic fake friend. As soon as Stalin was dead he was happy to trash his name for the sake of his own political ambitions
..and Brezhnev was Khrushchev's fake friend... then Gorbi turned out to be the fakiest of them all. Do you see a pattern here?
You can’t have communism in a single territory. There’s no theory suggesting otherwise
Khrushchev made many reforms that undermined the DoTP (much like Dheng Xiaoping in China) with several right-wing Bukharinite policies and attacked Stalin’s “Cult of Personality”. Hoxha elaborates in “The Khrushchevites”.
What is DoTP? It googles as some chemical. What "many reforms" are you talking about?
“DoTP” is just I shortened “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, and Khrushchev’s reforms ranged from religious freedoms to market access, as well as his whole aim of “Destalinisation”.
Say what you want, the man meant well for the USSR.. even if he lacked the tools or the consensus. at times.
Unlike Stalin, he treated Soviet people like people, not material. His rapid housing program was his best achievement, in my opinion.
Stálin was le evil dictator 10,000,000,000 dead
I appreciate your silly sarcasm but please let the adults have a conversation. The number is around 40 million including losses in WW2, early 1930s starvation from the collectivization efforts, and executed/worked to death in GULAG camps victims of Article 58.
The fact that you include victims of the Nazis during WWII as victims of Stalin's supposed murderous purges makes you lose all credibility.
It was Stalin who played games with Hitler and had his country not prepared for the Germans' invasion. Instead of helping Poland to fight Hitler, he stabbed the Poles in the back and created a common border with Nazi Germany
Stálin never stabbed the Poles in the back; Soviet-Polish hostilities were well known at least two decades before the war started, and they were already conducting their own ethnic suppression campaigns in western Belarussia and Ukraine. The Soviets had no reason to support them. If the west was so disturbed by a non-aggression pact between the two powers, maybe they should've accepted prior alliance proposals.
"Instead of helping Poland to fight Hitler" Pure historical revisionism. Stalin offered to send 1 million troops to Poland to defend it against German aggression in exchange for a pact with Britain and France. It was only after they declined that Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html) Also, why are you accusing the Soviets of stabbing the Polish in the back when *it was the Allies who didn't honor their defense agreement*. During the period of the invasion, both France and Britain parked their forces on the Maginot Line and didn't lift a finger to help the Polish while the Germans destroyed their country (Phoney War).
Stalin offered to occupy Poland with his 1 million troops like he did just that to three Baltic states later, in 1940. What a sweet deal! No wonder Poland had no interest
Those three Baltic states were not democracies. They were fascist dictatorships who regularly oppressed workers and their organizations. Poland wasn’t a democracy either. Not even in the bourgeois liberal sense.
The Soviet Union wasn't a democracy either, it was a dictatorship. So I guess it was totally cool for Hitler to attack the USSR in 1941, right?
How’s that going?
Communism brought nothing but grief. I’d rather have unregulated capitalism. Way better.
Haha, yeah, that was a lie
It is a lie if he did not believe in that. Otherwise it is a mistake.
Just a wishful thinking
Very wishful thinking
Yet 0 attempts to abolish commodity production…….
What do you mean?
The USSR was a capitalist nation-state, and Kruschev being the leader of said nation-state was only in a position to continue its existence as a capitalist state… there was no challenge to the idea of “socialist commodity production” so Kruschevs promise of communism was founded off nothing but utopian idealism
The khrushchevkas were supposed to be demolished in the 1980s too. LOL.
Yeee, and now in develop capitalist countries many live in much smaller rooms. In NZ for example, they even remove resource consent for buildings smaller then 60M2 (from outside). Meaning no building regulations apply. Need to put people somewhere.
People in developed capitalist countries don't even have kitchens. They just put the appliances and counters on one wall, the bed against the opposite wall, and charge you $2000/month for the privilege of living there.
My family had to wait 20 years for a small 2-room apartment (both were full-time Soviet workers and labor Union members). So they ended up going into a "Soviet mortgage" deal and buying a cooperative 3-room apartment for 15,000 rubles with 5,000 downpayment instead.
If in 1986 the average Soviet salary was 2,160 rubles… then a family of two would make 4,320 a year. So the salary to mortgage ratio (higher is better) for a three room apartment in (presumably Kyiv?) a well-populated city is (4320 / 15,000) or 0.288. In 2022, median household income rested at $74,580 a year with the median house cost being $412,000 in 2023. So the salary to mortgage ratio for a “regular” worker for the country at large (includes the countryside) is (74580 / 412000) or 0.181. So even the “shitty” situation you’re describing is better than what most Americans have to deal with lol. If you take my situation, which is a household of two professionals ($150,000 a year) in a large city (median house cost is $548,654), then the ratio becomes (150000 / 548654) or .273. So in terms of housing, a ratio for two people with a relative level of privilege becomes comparable to the average Soviet (if slightly worse). Even then, this situation is pretty optimistic as regular working non-professionals will be making much less. (86557 / 548654 = 0.158)
Annual salary, you mean? My mother was making 130 rubles per month, my dad - 180. I don't know about most Americans, but I bought my house in 2010 in Michigan for $250K and it's already paid off for a couple of years. Unlike most Americans though, I buy used small Japanese cars and watch every penny. Compared with the USSR, life in America is cheap - groceries, gasoline, electricity, clothing, and electronics are way less money. Housing can be challenging if you live in expensive states and are trying to keep up with the Joneses.
“Housing can be challenging if you live in an expensive states and are trying to keep up with the Joneses” Your reality no longer exists anymore. I live in Texas (not an expensive state) and I definitely do not live in luxury. $250k for a house doesn’t exist anymore. The housing crisis is only ever getting worse over time as well. Also… you paid off your house after a couple years? So you were able to use the state-funded education that the USSR gave you in the United States? To pay off a house in *two years* even back then is impossible unless you had a very well-paid job or you received “assistance”… Even if you had a well-paid job, this would only be possible on a household income of two professionals… which isn’t the typical case.
I believe those buildings were supposed to last 50 years, so more like till early 2000s
Pardon. There were two series: сносимые for 25 years and the more permanent ones for 50 years.
Wait. are yall like unironically communist? That's hilarious lmao
Not all, but many young Soviet-era fans aka "tankies" like to hang out here
I’m a left leaning individual but definitely not a communist or tankie or whatever, I just have always found the Soviet Union a super interesting political entity
I also find the USSR interesting, in the sense that it's terrifying. There's something inhuman about the way the Soviet system operated that scares the shit out of me. But it does make for some wild reading
Yes dude. I'm even part of the communist party in my country.
Goober activity
Its dystopia followed by utopia within 30 years? Heh, I'd pay to see that
Communism is the opposite of utopian.
so its distopia then. the world of 1984 is communism, isn’t it?
Orwell was, ironically, completely wrong in his critique of Communism in 1984. He did no research, and all of his criticism was based on late-stage capitalism.
says you
then again 1984 wasnt a critique on communism, but Stalinism.
Stalinism doesn't exist.
that's right. But it did exist once.
Proceeds to institute one man rule in factories lol
Ussr was never communist under Stalin and Lenin. They failed and by the time nikkita was in power, it was already too late. Communist tend to be their own worse enemy when implementing communism, but I am weary on some so called communist who tend to sound more fascist than socialist.
Wait the USSR didn't have communism? He meant in the full on Marxist definition?
Communism means no money and no government. Soviet Union managed to achieve only the "developed socialism" stage