Why hasn’t a “true” communist nation risen and survived?

[Arebours]

This is too optimistic for me. We do have to choose, as climate change gets worse and worse, we'll eventually need to choose how to allocate each ounce of water.

Working on both at the same time is dream that belongs in the 20th century.

Click to shrink...

We have to choose but not between progress on space travel and climate change. They don't relate to each other in any way beyond technological and scientific overlap which if anything is a positive feature. If you mean that we have to choose in the way that we should choose a system that doesn't create absurdly rich people that can go off and spend millions on their pet projects then I'm inclined to agree with you but in terms of allocating the resources that we spend on space travel to combating climate change, well that wouldn't have any effect at all and might actually be overall negative.

 

[samoyed]

We have to choose but not between progress on space travel and climate change. They don't relate to each other in any way beyond technological and scientific overlap which if anything is a positive feature.

Click to shrink...

The underground bunkers humanity flees to after the surface becomes too hot can work in space, this is true.

Bug-soy protein gruel can also be cultivated in space.

 

[Arebours]

The underground bunkers humanity flees to after the surface becomes too hot can work in space, this is true.

Bug-soy protein gruel can also be cultivated in space.

Click to shrink...

NASA spinoff technologies.
And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Xerzix]

Because we are humans, and we suck as a species.

 

[Bastables]

"Explain how the US "overthrew and installed dictators" with Stalin's USSR leading to communism's failure. Or with Lenin. Or Mao's China."

Why can't you answer this question? You felt such a statement was so undeniable that it would end the thread. Surely it should be easy to do so if it's so self-evident?

Click to shrink...

Communist regimes had to waste economic power building beloved tanks, invest heavily in nuclear weapon research to begin even attempting to gain parity with the "west", subsidise much smaller economies due to western "containment/sanctions".

 

[Sander VF]

This is too optimistic for me. We do have to choose, as climate change gets worse and worse, we'll eventually need to choose how to allocate each ounce of water.

Working on both at the same time is dream that belongs in the 20th century.

Click to shrink...

That may be true for an "outward bound", but and an "upward" one, as in, space infrastructure around the planet, would be pretty beneficial for counteracting climate change.

Controlling Earth's atmosphere with mirrors and shades might be a pipe dream in a world where it's an insurmountable logistic and economical clusterfuck, but quite less so in the world where infrastructure is up there in space.

That and space-based solar.

Fusion would be the ultimate boon however. Not only would we gain a clean ass source of energy, but it would be in such an excess, that it would enable us to advance vertical farming to the point where we can relinquish a lot of farmland to nature, desalinate ocean waters cheaply and all the other good shit that is too cost-prohibitive.

 

[Pure Spirit]

Chinese revolutionary communists liberated my wife's family of the factory they worked decades to build. My wife's grandparents went from reasonably well-off to poor, living in a dusty, tiny, apartment flat. Due to Chinese policies against speech that disturbs the public peace, my wife's parents choose not to discuss the finer points of the communist revolution's impact on their lives, so I don't know their opinions on the matter. If you asked them, they'd probably say they fully support the CCP and quickly change the subject. Bodies worn down by decades of labor, they now subsist entirely on a small annuity and money we send their way.

Can't say I'm a fan.

 

[HarryHengst]

"People are too selfish for communism to work!"

Not wanting to die in the salt mines so another person can be a worthless bureaucrat is selfish? O..kay...

If you have an answer who is going to willingly work in the salt mines when they can be a worthless bureaucrat with a nice reclining office chair, you have the answer to communism.

Click to shrink...

Luckily capitalism found the solution: child labour, slave labour and now prison labour! Look at all those profits to be made by making people work for nothing!

 

[Dr. Mario]

I'll give you child labor, where it can be more lucrative short term for kids to work than go to school, but prison and slave labor obviously have nothing intrinsically to do with capitalism.

 

[Black_Red]

I must have missed them overthrowing Stalin, or any of the pre-WW2 communist nations.

Why waste time posting something that can be so instantly disproved?

Click to shrink...

Because we cant have more recent examples thanks to the CIA.

Also, capitalism is just as broken, its only that people on this forum are in the nice part of the system.

 

[samoyed]

I'll give you child labor, where it can be more lucrative short term for kids to work than go to school, but prison and slave labor obviously have nothing intrinsically to do with capitalism.

Click to shrink...

Capitalism is defined by the relationship between owners and "means of production", aka profit generators. In slave societies, slaves are basically automated profit generators that can be bought by and sold to owners.

Now if there was only an ideology that rejected the owner class and their control over the means of production...

Prison labor is a different beast. It's the end result of market forces unchecked by humanitarian impulses, but I guess it is not tied to capitalism per se. I think it is more a consequence of the mix of state compulsion (the ability of the state to force you to do what it wants, with the threat violence if you disobey) and capitalism. Fittingly, communism also rejects the state for this and other similar reasons, the forced compulsion by the state.

 

[Ichthyosaurus]

Luckily capitalism found the solution: child labour, slave labour and now prison labour! Look at all those profits to be made by making people work for nothing!

Click to shrink...

About that...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_in_the_Soviet_Union

 

[Dr. Mario]

A central tenet of capitalism is voluntary exchange, which obviously doesn't happen with slavery (though you could make a case for indentured servitude). Nor with prison labor, which is even the collective enforcing punishment. Most communist countries turn into institutionalized prison labor because the system collapses if people are given free will to choose their profession.
(Of course I don't mean to cape for unbridled late stage capitalism, I'm more of a European social liberalism, third way person, just going with definitions here)

 

[samoyed]

A central tenet of capitalism is voluntary exchange

Click to shrink...

I disagree but this is semantics. Even if it were true, then child labor doesn't apply either, unless you think parents own their kids like a commodity and then lose that ownership once they reach adulthood. Guardianship is not ownership. And very few children voluntarily exchange their own labor.

The commonality between child labor, slave labor and prison labor is market liberalism, i.e. the upholding of monetary profit over all other concerns. Liberalism (in the classic sense, its modern name is libertarianism) is not exactly the same thing as capitalism though. Western Liberalism is/was composed of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and various other "isms" I'm not able to list exhaustively.

That said, some economic Marxists interpret profit to be central to the functioning of capitalism, and if you do think this, then anything done for the sake of profit is done in the service of capitalism.

 

[Emergency & I]

One of my closest friends is Cuban.
One of my closest colleagues is Czech.
They have nothing but bad things to say.

 

[Ichthyosaurus]

I disagree but this is semantics. Even if it were true, then child labor doesn't apply either, unless you think parents own their kids like a commodity and then lose that ownership once they reach adulthood. Guardianship is not ownership. And very few children voluntarily exchange their own labor.

The commonality between child labor, slave labor and prison labor is market liberalism, i.e. the upholding of monetary profit over all other concerns. Liberalism (in the classic sense, its modern name is libertarianism) is not exactly the same thing as capitalism though. Western Liberalism is/was composed of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and various other "isms" I'm not able to list exhaustively.

That said, some economic Marxists interpret profit to be central to the functioning of capitalism, and if you do think this, then anything done for the sake of profit is done in the service of capitalism.

Click to shrink...

How does this apply to communist slavery? Your framing suggests that slavery is unique to capitalism.

 

[El Bombastico]

Luckily capitalism found the solution: child labour, slave labour and now prison labour! Look at all those profits to be made by making people work for nothing!

Click to shrink...

...So you're just ignoring the gulags in the USSR?

 

[CherryWoodFuton]

Humans will fuck that shit up eventually (look at China, former Soviet Union, etc) just like they fucked up capitalism

Scandinavia found a nice middle ground I believe. Pure capitalism sucks but I like to travel and have money and material things sue me

 

[samoyed]

How does this apply to communist slavery? Your framing suggests that slavery is unique to capitalism.

Click to shrink...

I"m not really interested in Stalinism or Stalinist societies.

And it is not "unique" to capitalism. Slavery predates capitalism by many centuries. I simply pointed out the common concepts between capitalism and slavery vis a vis private ownership of MoP. When the Atlantic Slave Trade still existed, the dominant economic school of the day was "mercantilism", which is not capitalism but its predecessor. Mercantilism emphasized trade and exports, and slaves were one of those commodities being traded.

 

[mescalineeyes]

any ideology that is beholden to the benevolence of the people in power is inherently broken, and so is communism.

of course it'd be neat if we were all equal, but as soon as you introduce a system that is meant to keep people equal, you automatically create a caste of people that aren't.

 

[jman2050]

Because we cant have more recent examples thanks to the CIA.

Also, capitalism is just as broken, its only that people on this forum are in the nice part of the system.

Click to shrink...

Capitalism isn't broken. It just isn't designed to do what you think it's designed to do.

Heck, Capitalism not being broken is the entire issue. If Capitalism were broken, then it would be a trivial matter for the system to break down under pressure and supplanted by other economic systems, but that hasn't happened at all and probably won't in our lifetimes barring significant unpredictable factors.

 

[mescalineeyes]

Capitalism isn't broken. It just isn't designed to do what you think it's designed to do.

Heck, Capitalism not being broken is the entire issue. If Capitalism were broken, then it would be a trivial matter for the system to break down under pressure and supplanted by other economic systems, but that hasn't happened at all and probably won't in our lifetimes barring significant unpredictable factors.

Click to shrink...

ironically, capitalism is being kept alive by the socialist structures underpinning our current system, but sort of turned upside down to help the wealthy and the powerful keep their position on top of the food chain instead of helping the people on the bottom.

 

[Ichthyosaurus]

I"m not really interested in Stalinism or Stalinist societies.

Click to shrink...

You should be, what with them being communist. Communism doesn't get to skate by this subject ignoring its past.

And it is not "unique" to capitalism. Slavery predates capitalism by many centuries. I simply pointed out the common concepts between capitalism and slavery vis a vis private ownership of MoP. When the Atlantic Slave Trade still existed, the dominant economic school of the day was "mercantilism", which is not capitalism but its predecessor. Mercantilism emphasized trade and exports, and slaves were one of those commodities being traded.

Click to shrink...

While true you're still framing as if the practice revolves around capitalism while communism is not included.

 

[mescalineeyes]

I love that every time a critique of communism comes up the knee jerk reaction of every wannabe tankie is to get mad at capitalism lol

 

[jman2050]

ironically, capitalism is being kept alive by the socialist structures underpinning our current system, but sort of turned upside down to help the wealthy and the powerful keep their position on top of the food chain instead of helping the people on the bottom.

Click to shrink...

Indeed, and that's pretty much the greatest strength of the Capitalist system. It's endlessly adaptable. It turns out that when you design an economy with a driving force as abstract as "the acquisition of capital", it is no longer is important how this capital is obtained or even what form the capital takes, so long as the desired result is achieved. It's quite brilliant when you think about it, at least for those who stand to benefit. When your economic system is fluid enough that the super-inflationary Weimer Republic and the charred remains of Imperial Japan are considered prime investment opportunities then you know you've hit the jackpot.

Communism, for all its theoretical advantages, cannot hope to ever compete with that.

 

[samoyed]

any ideology that is beholden to the benevolence of the people in power is inherently broken, and so is communism.

of course it'd be neat if we were all equal, but as soon as you introduce a system that is meant to keep people equal, you automatically create a caste of people that aren't.

Click to shrink...

This is why modern communists envision a transition based on broad societal consent and why numerous socialist/communist posters have chimed in to say that Soviet/China failed because some despots tried to force it on a people who weren't ready. Ideologically, communism is fundamentally anti-authoritarian. Try to imagine a world without authority, what would it look like? Some people tried this a couple of hundred years ago and they called it communism. You could say "a world without authority is a utopian fantasy" and that's a perfectly valid belief to hold.

Modern day communists, the ones that aren't tankies, know or admit that "you can't force it". If it comes, it comes by the sum total movement of society (aka through Marx's class dialectic).

Similarly, Adam Smith didn't say "I invented a thing called capitalism, here's how you implement it." He wrote an influential book and the countries that followed some of the recipes laid out in the book enjoyed more economic success than others until everyone had to follow his book to survive. This is just natural selection.

So to go back to the thread title and the OP's question, communism cannot currently be selected for because it's anti-competitive and doesn't strive for dominance while every extant country strives for some measure of dominance. Like in nature, animals evolve either to dominate or to flee dominance. They do not evolve to cooperate... except among their own species. Following this analogy to its logical conclusion, communism can happen once every nation views each other as members of their own species, rather than potential prey. This is also why some socialists/communists/anarchists are anti-borders, because borders are geopolitical, social, and cultural divisions between what they see as separated members of a single tribe.

Yes this all sounds very idealistic. I don't deny that. There is a lot of idealism behind socialist/communist theory if you look beyond Stalinism or Maoism.

 

[mescalineeyes]

This is why modern communists envision a transition based on broad societal consent and why numerous socialist/communist posters have chimed in to say that Soviet/China failed because some despots tried to force it on a people who weren't ready. Ideologically, communism is fundamentally anti-authoritarian. Try to imagine a world without authority, what would it look like? Some people tried this a couple of hundred years ago and they called it communism. You could say "a world without authority is a utopian fantasy" and that's a perfectly valid belief to hold.

Modern day communists, the ones that aren't tankies, know or admit that "you can't force it". If it comes, it comes by the sum total movement of society (aka through Marx's class dialectic).

Similarly, Adam Smith didn't say "I invented a thing called capitalism, here's how you implement it." He wrote an influential book and the countries that followed some of the recipes laid out in the book enjoyed more economic success than others until everyone had to follow his book to survive. This is just natural selection.

So to go back to the thread title and the OP's question, communism cannot currently be selected for because it's anti-competitive and doesn't strive for dominance while every extant country strives for some measure of dominance. Like in nature, animals evolve either to dominate or to flee dominance. They do not evolve to cooperate... except among their own species. Following this analogy to its logical conclusion, communism can happen once every nation views each other as fellow species. This is also why some socialists/communists/anarchists are anti-borders, because borders are geopolitical, social, and cultural divisions between what they see as separated members of a single tribe.

Yes this all sounds very idealistic. I don't deny that. There is a lot of idealism behind socialist/communist theory if you look beyond Stalinism or Maoism.

Click to shrink...

I do personally believe that that is the endgame of civilization or we are fucked.

in short, I personally believe we are fucked haha

 

[samoyed]

You should be, what with them being communist. Communism doesn't get to skate by this subject ignoring its past.

Click to shrink...

Here are some of the definitions of "communism".

Wikipedia: In political and social sciences, communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is the philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state.[5][6]

Conservatives: Communism is evil and makes everyone poor

People who fled communist regimes: Communism is a police state

Liberal-capitalists: It's a nice idea but it doesn't work in practice because human nature

Tankies: Communism is the USSR and is good actually

PoliSci 101 Freshman who had a US public education: China is communist

Technical: the belief in a society without different social classes in which the methods of production are owned and controlled by all its members and everyone works as much as they can and receives what they need

Actual communists/marxists: Freedom from the shackles of capitalism

Which one of these definitions are valid? They are all valid; all definitions are valid to the person who uses them.

Click to shrink...

Here's the long and short of my thoughts on Stalinism/Maoism/Authoritarian-Communism.

It's bad, don't do it.

And that's all that I feel needs to be said.