That may be because the phrase communism is often used incorrectly. According to Marx, at least how they taught it to me in school, socialism is meant t be a temporary thing only. The goal is to reach communism. In communism there is no money for example. If a society would turn to communism immidiatly it would collapse, because people are unable to deal with it. They have to learn it at first. Just think of the money thing. If there would be no money every people would like to own everything and no one would go to work anymore. That's why there is socialism at first: to prepare the people. You could now argument that there never have been communism and you wold be right (well, there may have been some small experiments).
Well, that's a good question actually. I guess all those people - Stalin, Lenin, Honecker, Pol Pot, Mao, Fidel - may have been good guys initially. However, every movement needs a leader, a face. These people are usually popular, at least amongst the participants of the movement. It's a bit like these leaders would be the messiahs that rescue the society. I guess this is the point where those leaders get mad. They simply like it too much to have power over the people. Next step is, that they develop methods to keep this power. Look what Chavez did recently. At this point they are still loved by the people, that's why nobody stops them. Now these leaders concentrate more and more power on themselfes till it's a dictatorship. Finally they build up a terror state to not loose their power as people got disappointed and unhappy. This is where they start to become paranoid and kill lots of people.
However, this is actually not the topic I think. I don't think there is a dictatorship in Norway and there is also no socialism like you seem to think of. That's why a good definition of socialism is needed here...
you came close. Just going to add from the perspective a former hardline communist.There is a diference between socialism and communism. Socialism is the stage following the industrial revolution. To answer several questions at once i am going to review a brief history of social and economic thought.
Socialism comes after capitalism; capitalism is the economic philosophy that states that the government should have as limited a role in the economy as possible, let free market prices change according to the value of a commodity or service as determined by a society, and that the wages, job benefits, etc. earned while employed, are a formal agreement reached between an employer and a worker without the interference of the government. According
Das Kapital, the capitalist economy will progress at such a speed that production of commodities requires a steady supply of materials that a state can't get from within it's own borders. Marx stresses that this causes imperialism, where the state goes to conquer another state to acquire raw resources. Look at Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. It took materials from canada, australia, and especialy India, to fuel it's industries (for example, cotton from india gets sent to Britain to be made into textiles which get sold to markets in canda and australia which fuels further economic growth.)
A potential consequence of imperialism is that colonies and protectorates are used soley to produce certain raw resources, and the colonial power restricts local industry (India had more industrial output in the 16th century then it did in the 18th century because of British policies). This lack of industries decreases the number of jobs available in a state and leaves the local market subject to variances in market prices; which can be catastrophic for any agricultural nation (In economics, agriculture means raw materials, i.e., Saudi Arabia is an agricultural nation in that it exports crude oil to british companies that process it into other products).
In the industrial nation, employers will begin to slash wages as the materials to produce commodities run out. Additionaly, capitalist buisesses will begin to produce more then they can sell, and as a result their prices will be further cut to make the buisness competitive again. As the process continues, the number of rich buisness owners will decrease because of economc pressure destroying buisnesses and the number of poor workers will dramatically increase; consequently, the difference between the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor will widen to incredible lengths. At this stage, the starving and poor workers are to unite and overthrow the decreasing numbers of bourgoius and establish a socialist state.
The socialist state is to have these features to "cure" the economic problems of capitalism (Marx believes that all social forces are biproducts of economic forces, and thus to change the economic system is to change the social atmosphere of a society):
(
communist manifesto)
1. Abolition of private property
2. A heavy progressive tax
3. Abolition of right to inheretance
4. confiscate property of rebels and dissenters
5. state has an exclusive monopoly over credit, and banks.
6. State controls transportation
7. Creation of agriculture armies of workers and Industrial workers
8. State provides free education to children and that child labor is abolished.
These are the attributes of a socialist state. These attributes are to help the states transition into the communist nonstate. Marx argues that the social thinking needed for communism must be taught to several generations before people have progressed into the state of communism (simarly like how Moore descibes Utopian people as having learned to use toilets of gold so that the people don't see a great use in wealth; although some have considered is book a satire on socialist thought, it was one of the first books left uncensored by the Soviets in the 1930s because of how well it paralleled the government policies of the soviet state). The attributes of a socialist state are to help this problem along until the entire world has become socialistic.
Communism is to occur later. Communism calls for the abolition of the city. The city in a communist world is to dissolve so populations become more evenly spread out in the countryside. Industrial development caused by division of labor is to be abolished, as it "rids a man of his soul and sense of worth," as described by marx. Money and thus credit will cease to exist as people will produce for all and consume only so much as needed. Crime will have disapeared because everyone believes in peace and universal brotherhood. The state will cease to exist as their services are no longer needed to keep control as control is kept through community controls. The world will "ascend" into global anarchy, and thus a communist utopia devoid of starvation, pain, and violence.
There are many states that have turned to socialism, and no state has become a pure communist nonstate (one could argue that the nonstate of catalonia in 1937 could be described as coming the closest to the communist ideal but it to fell to nationalist forces by 1939). All previously considered "Communist countries" are indeed socialistic as they did have governments, money, and state controlled economies and did not achieve an unprecendented level of anarchy in politics and econmics.
THere is a difference however between theory and the actual results of socialistic thought. Few industrial nations became socialist by "revolution." Most became socialist through reform. Most agrarian states or countries under the dominion of imperialist powers became socialistic through revolution. Russia in the early 20th century was lacking an industrial base, so Lenin created a new system of economic and political thought. HE adopted the ideas of plato, in that social revolution could occur if a state was strictly protected by an intelegint elite (plato called them guardians) but lenin called his small revolutionary commitee the guardians of the future socialist russia. His theories allowed small agricultural states to socialists without experiencing the industrial revolution. When the soviet union was established it became a socialist state, and it exported these ideas to other states. This was how socialist thought along the soviet model developed.
Alternatively, socialist democrats as they were called, didn't believe in creating a socialist state through revolution, instead they tried to do it by working with their local governments through political and economic reform. This was what developed in western europe in the last eighty years. as a result their ideas of socialism diverged from the soviet model (eventually china created it's own model that only vietnam and cuba odopted; even if in limited reform). This is where the present confusion on socialism comes from. The soviet model and the chinese model of socialism are aimed at creating the communist utopia, while the social democrats adopted nationalistic tendencies and believed that the values of communism could be achieved without turning to full communist anarchy (for instance social democrats believe in free public education and an economy protected by the state without going through a revolution).
To state it clearly, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, The previous USSR, China, Egypt, Libya, N. Korea, angola, mozambique, India, and vietnam to name a few are/were socialistic. So yes these states are/were socialistic, conversely, the US is not socialistic (at least it is not that way yet, although one could argue that america is heading down this direction); the US in the last twenty years has expienced an intense amount of deregulation of the economy and governmental workings in the life of americans, but since the wars in the middle east america has taken on some socialist qualities to deal with the war, but they are considered temperory measures and not measures that are to permanent, unlike the purpose of the social democrats that believe that their reforms are aiming for more permanent solutions.
As to how a state could fail, they must fail economically ( an econmic collapse) or a political collapse (a revolution or anarchy constitutes politica collapse); economic stagnaton, or the failure to stimulate foreign states is not a prerequisate to failing as a socialist state. Foreign aid is not a quality of socialism, the idea of helping foreign states comes from the ideas of globalization; and idea started by the portuguese 500 years earlier, before the idea of socialism.
THerefore, the only states that have truly failed as socialist states are the USSR, and Eastern Europe socialist governments based on th soviet model.
The USSR faced political collapse and destroyed much of the socialist policies that it viewed contrary to economic growth. Eastern Europe also failed as socialist based on the soviet model since gorbachav left their states to rule themselves. The other socialist states of today have not failed. These states will eventually have to rid themselves of some socialist ideas in order to progress, but they have not experienced an economic collapse, just economic stagnation is not yet economic collapse.
AS to why many consider states as socialistic because they have dictators: these states had dicatators because they followed Soviet styled thought on politics and economics, and many times (as in the case of many african countries) they diverged into seperate spheres of politics because they were agrarian states trying to skip the industrial rev in order to overthrow the imperialist powers. Many just became rulers to take money from the people. But others face legit problems stemming from cross border ethnic differences (not to mention in state domestic differences) that are usually caused by overpopulation and too few intellectuals from Europe and N. America settling there to help these states progress. Imperialism helped in this, but since imperialism has died, these african states face many problems that they can't solve themselves, as such, the failure of socialist govs in africa is not necesarilly because of the fallacies of socialist thought.
TO ANSWER THE QUESTION, USSR AND EAST EUROPE ARE SOCIALIST STATES THAT HAVE FAILED BECAUSE THEY EXPERIENCED POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. sory for the rant.
).
, I believe it was their reasoning that was the "sounder" one and not the other way round
. Forget What i said earlier.
