It's not Communism!

I'm sure others reading this already know, but China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. are not Communistic, they're Socialistic. Communism represents the "perfect" society a nation passes through, according to Marxism. Socialism comes before that, and becomes Communism after the state has withered away (people do things because it's best for society). Here are the "stages" of society according to Karl Marx:
Tribal Communalism
Slave Labor
Feudalism
Capitalism
Socialism
Communism
These are all based on Marx's idea of a "Class Struggle."

Well, yeah, but... what do you wanna point out about it?

Actually, historical experience has shown the model to work more like this:

[Industrial Capitalism][punch] :aargh3: [Revolution][Communism] [Communist Collapse]

You forget the following stage: [Mafia Rule/Growing poverty]

Yes, I do concur with the graphical analysis, and wish to query exactly what this tells me that I would not be able to read in the Communist Manifesto, or a Red propaganda rag...

Errrrrrrmmm, what the devil is the point of this thread? I know all this already. What point are you making?

Originally posted by MajorGeneral2
I'm sure others reading this already know, but China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. are not Communistic, they're Socialistic. Communism represents the "perfect" society a nation passes through, according to Marxism. Socialism comes before that, and becomes Communism after the state has withered away (people do things because it's best for society). Here are the "stages" of society according to Karl Marx:
Tribal Communalism
Slave Labor
Feudalism
Capitalism
Socialism
Communism
These are all based on Marx's idea of a "Class Struggle."

Click to expand...

You are right. In the Soviet Union, we never said that we live in a 'communist' state - we said we lived in a 'socialist state', but ruled by the Communist Party. 'Socialism' was considered as an intermediate social structure during which true, utopical 'Communism' would be built.

Communism is indeed a utopia, where, according to Marx people would be able to 'work according to abilities, and earn according to their needs'.

Socialism in the West means something completely different than it was in the Eastern Block, so I guess that's why in the West the social structure in the Soviet Block was simply named 'Communism' after the name of the ruling party.

The point of this thread is that most people in world are wrong, in that they say Soviet Union, China, Cuba etc are/were communist.

Originally posted by MajorGeneral2
I'm sure others reading this already know, but China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. are not Communistic, they're Socialistic(..)

Click to expand...

China = Capitalistic.

I'M BACK

Anyway, I feel that a lot of times people do get mixed up between communism and socialism. Actually, in alot of places, socialictic principles have been applied under democracies and republics and worked. Communism prefers only one party rule. I think that is the main difference

China doesn't really = capitalistic. Maybe in the modern distorted sense, but not in the original sense, which stressed money as a means to gain personal happiness, rather than power over others. It's really a cronyist socialist state, with a few semi-capitalistic elements like limited private property. It's still quite impossible to do much without political friends.

Yes, socialism is not necessarily the same thing as communism. But Soviet socialism was close enough to something more extreme that communism might as well do as a name for it.

But to care at all is splitting hairs to a certain degree. Condemning someone for calling the USSR or post-'81 Poland or Stalinist Romania "communist" when it's really "socialist" is not too different from condemning someone for calling Franco's Spain "fascist" when it was 'really' just "authoritarian nationalist." Sure, the distinctions are real, but not deep, and not worth dwelling over as far as I'm concerned unless we all just signed up for PoliSci 100, which I'm happy to say I thought I had finished for good in 1989.

There has never been a Communist state (Tribes are not states)
Modern communism=Military Dictatorship

Originally posted by Ozz
There has never been a Communist state (Tribes are not states)
Modern communism=Military Dictatorship

Click to expand...

From my understanding of what you say, there were Communist states and would be: the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovokia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Ethiopia, and Mozambique.

Originally posted by Ozz
There has never been a Communist state (Tribes are not states)
Modern communism=Military Dictatorship

Click to expand...

Better, I think:

Modern communism=one party dictatorship by socialist party

edit

It would be really interesting to see who of all who disagree with the thread starter has really read any works on Communism from Marx, Engels or Lenin.

The original ideas of Communism, as "invented" by Karl Marx, have NEVER been totally or even partly put into practice in any socialist state.

I suggest that all who say that the Soviet Union or any East European country or China is real Communism read the original definition of Communism. There is nothing said of a singly party, or any specific party system at all.

Most of you mistake the real Communism with a "communistic" government, as it is simplified being used in the Civ games, too.

The thread starter´s list is absolutely correct when we talk about the theoretical form of Communism.
And most "communistic" countries have NOT ever declared their system to be true Communism.

In East Germany, the former GDR, where I grew up, our system was Socialism. The one party was a socialistic party. And after the initial struggle to rebuild the infrastructure after WW2, the officials declared the new system of the "Real Existing Socialism". Even they agreed that the complete implementation of the communistic idea was far away.

So you have to make it clear whether you talk about the theoretical form of Communism, as described in those works mentioned above and many fictional books OR if you discuss the existing form of "communistic" governments.
There is a great difference between both terms and one should know exactly what he talks about before dismissing ideas and opinions of others!
So I fully agree with the thread topic.
It´s NOT Communism!

Originally posted by Chairman Qu
China doesn't really = capitalistic. Maybe in the modern distorted sense, but not in the original sense, which stressed money as a means to gain personal happiness, rather than power over others. It's really a cronyist socialist state, with a few semi-capitalistic elements like limited private property. It's still quite impossible to do much without political friends.

Click to expand...

If last sentence is true, then it is China = Corruption. :/

Originally posted by Lucky
It would be really interesting to see who of all who disagree with the thread starter has really read any works on Communism from Marx, Engels or Lenin.

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Well, me for one. Oh and my lifelong best friend was an active Trotskyite for 10 years, and another - in his late fifties - had been brought to Moscow to study during his days as a member of the CP. Oh, and wait, there were all those guys I worked with in BC who were in the CPCML, and so on, and so on, and so on...

Part of the problem here is that some people don't judge everything solely on the "pure" conception as contained in one book or another. Evolution matters too.

Christianity as described to by the disciples of Christ in the Bible or as practiced by the early European church is quite different from its modern incarnation. Would you seriously argue that - in the absence of an extreme literalist following of the bible - that the vast majority of the 900 million-odd christians out there aren't actually christian at all?

The capitalist world as described by Adam Smith is very different from that of today, but would you argue that the differences are so strong as to mean that countries like Canada, Britain, the US, New Zealand, etc. aren't REALLY capitalist?

Come on.

Originally posted by Lucky
It would be really interesting to see who of all who disagree with the thread starter has really read any works on Communism from Marx, Engels or Lenin.

Click to expand...

Well, I have read and studied all of the above authors works, along with quite a bit of other analysis and related material. And I remain of my previous opinion: What is this telling us that we could not read in the Manifesto of the Communist Party?

In the history of the world, a true communist state never existed. The Soviet Union, China, Veitnam, Cuba, etc. were/are simply dictatorships. The beginning of the USSR was promising, with Lenin at its head. When Stalin came to power, greed took over, and the USSR left the path to a Utopian society. Either way, a communist "state" would never exist, because true communism means that the state would dissolve.