Main Reasons for the collapse of Communism

Communists still run the world's most populous state.

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There is almost nothing Communist about them today, except for their name and their lack of respect for individual's rights.

It's not that China is "really" capitalist, as if it's some closely-guarded secret that only those with the arcane arts may divine. It's just a plain fact that the People's Republic of China is as much a part of the global capitalist system as anywhere else. If it isn't capitalist, what else could it be?

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Exactly. They have transformed into Capitalists who are just still pretending to be hiding behind their old mask.

Even "transformed into capitalists" risks overstating it. The PRC was always a capitalist state so far as its economic and social structure was concerned; all they abandoned was the pretence that there was something different over the horizon.

The most successful 'communism' has been that practiced by US vassal states in Europe. These countries were better socialists than the Chinese and Russian states that formally adopted it. And vassal socialism is still alive and well!

As has been pointed out. This in no way makes it non-communist. The communist state is the stated end-goal of a communist party. Any communist party based upon Marxism expects the state to evolve through a capitalist/industrial period.

That's what I said, yes: the Chinese Communist Party used to claim that the PRC would pass through a period of state-managed capitalism to socialism, but now they've stopped pretending that there's any realistic alternative to state-managed capitalism.

Now if they just stop oppressing their citizens, and perhaps stopped trying killing the poor Tibetan monks, they'll be completely indistinguishable from the Western World.

They don't even have to stop massacring their own people, they just have to make sure they keep the massacres sufficiently irregular.

Thing with the irregular massacres, is that if someone learns of one, it's even worse than a stream of massacres; you've betrayed the International Community.

daft said:

Were the Korea and Vietnam wars key contributors in the eventual decline of Communism?

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I'm gonna go into the Korean matter in a little more detail than has been given.

Korea was a total strategic victory for the Soviet Union, at the expense of Korea, China and the United States, in that order.

I remember Stalin being floated around in the "Greatest Statesman" threads, and this is one place you can really make the case for it. He pulled one over on the Koreans first, then the Chinese, then the Americans. Every single one of them came out of it not only worse for wear than the Soviets, but actually thinking the Soviets were the ones who's interests they converged with.

It wasn't just the kind of painful slog that the Americans inflicted on the Soviets in Afghanistan. Imagine if the Americans had done that, and done it in such a way that the Soviets were actually hopeful for the role America could play in the conflict. And the Afghanis. AND the Foreign Fighters.

The cost of Soviet involvement and orchestration was minimal. The DPRK forces were strong, and yes, were pulverized by the conflict, but their viability as a fighting force would only go down in time without signficant investment. Their biggest strengths were aging fast: Experience in the Chinese Civil War, and surplus WWII equipment. Unless the Soviets sunk the kind of cash they never would into the DPRK, they would never be a significant military partner in the region.

And when that ran out, they got the Chinese to cover them. The Koreans came off it thinking Stalin had leaned on the Chinese to force them to their aid. The Chinese thought Stalin had cleared the way for them to defend their own interests, and was bogging most of the American forces down in Europe for their sake.

And the Americans were so worried about the Chinese, and impressed with the Soviets limited commitment to the DPRK that they thought for the time the Soviets were the more reasonable, moderate faction that they could depend on to repress the tendency towards conflict with the Capitalist block.

The Soviets weakened the United States greatly for a number of years, and nearly inflicted a major military catastrophe on them, with minimal financial or manpower costs, and more impressively with very limited diplomatic fallout.

Tolni said:

Thing with the irregular massacres, is that if someone learns of one, it's even worse than a stream of massacres; you've betrayed the International Community.

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The thing with the International Community, is that they get over it quick, if you've paid your membership dues.

Traitorfish said:

That's what I said, yes: the Chinese Communist Party used to claim that the PRC would pass through a period of state-managed capitalism to socialism, but now they've stopped pretending that there's any realistic alternative to state-managed capitalism.

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Really? On what basis do you make this judgement? How 'capitalist' rather than 'communist' can they be if the capitalism is 'state managed'? Have they abandoned the goal or achieving a post-scarcity/post-demand economy?

brennan said:

Really? On what basis do you make this judgement? How 'capitalist' rather than 'communist' can they be if the capitalism is 'state managed'?

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Just as capitalist; capitalism is defined by the generalisation of wage-labour, not the predominance of the private sector. Capitalism isn't transmuted into socialism by a red flag and an interventionist economic policy.

Have they abandoned the goal or achieving a post-scarcity/post-demand economy?

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It certainly seems that way. I'm sure that Party officials will express their support in principle for a post-scarcity economy, but that's also true of most Western progressives. It'll appear as something for the far-future with no implications upon the present, or at least none beyond "keep the Party strong".

Communism isn't transmuted into capitalism just because it is currently exploiting capitalism to work towards a post-demand economy.

but that's also true of most Western progressives

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Communism is alive and well then - and spreading.

So are you sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party or what?

Brennan,

You need to show evidence that China is really developing towards Communism, with Capitalism adopted as just an intermediate phase.

I see absolutely no such evidence. They just adopted Capitalism and are fine with it.

Communist states in history preferred so called "Real Socialism" as an intermediate phase (we had Real Socialism in Poland, for example).

1) What form would such evidence take?

2) For what reason do you maintain that adopting capitalist measures to boost productivity negates the claim to be Communist?

Traitorfish

I'm an Argumentative Brit. I have a reputation to uphold 'n stuff.

How exactly is Brennan defining "communism", exactly, that the acknowledged existence of a capitalist economy is not sufficient to prove its absence?

Traitorfish said:

How exactly is Brennan defining "communism", exactly, that the acknowledged existence of a capitalist economy is not sufficient to prove its absence?

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I'm pretty sure Brennan operates on an ideological definition of 'communism', or what is usually called Marxism, instead of the 'Communism' as in the End of Times in Marxist Eschatology. The USSR and Communist China never have been Communist societies in that the goals of communism were realised, rather, it is their formal devotion to the ideology of Marxism that rendered these states Communist.

And he has a point here: Given China's formal declaration of being Communist, it is hard to disprove that it is Non-Communist, given that developing a Capitalist economy is perfectly possible within the framework of Marxism.

Pre-cisely.

Again. Marx himself supported the 1948 Prussian revolution - which he regarded as Borgeois in nature.

No state has ever been 'communist' as Marx envisioned the post-demand state. Every 'communist' state that has ever existed is merely working towards that goal, that in no way requires them to operate, for their entire lifetime, like the USSR under the Bolsheviks.

One might as well claim the the USA is 'socialist really' because they don't actually have a totally free market.

Kaiserguard said:

I'm pretty sure Brennan operates on an ideological definition of 'communism', or what is usually called Marxism, instead of the 'Communism' as in the End of Times in Marxist Eschatology. The USSR and Communist China never have been Communist societies in that the goals of communism were realised, rather, it is their formal devotion to the ideology of Marxism that rendered these states Communist.

And he has a point here: Given China's formal declaration of being Communist, it is hard to disprove that it is Non-Communist, given that developing a Capitalist economy is perfectly possible within the framework of Marxism.

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Well, then you can still take their behavior and question how sincere their ideological commitments are.

After all, I don't think I'd have anyone complain if I said the British Government is not ideologically committed to Presbyterianism, even though they haven't gotten around to shaking of those trappings.

Also, if you consider the PRC's ideology as sincere, they are also capitalist. They are the only major capitalist state on the planet. Their economic position, understood in it's own terms, is anti-feudal.

can democracy/capitalism adopt the free university/college system and the free hospitals stays and prescription medications that communism offered?
oh, yes, we've got the freedom of speech, right to (mostly free of scams)vote and the human rights instead.