But how does that average compare to industrialized nations? Both rapidly industrialized during the period you linked to while many other countries were still left behind. One big change would be the expansion of medical care
this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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You don't want to account for too many variables, otherwise you no longer get the desired result.
So is industrialization something that just happens if you are lucky and has nothing to do with policy?
Capitalists industrialized Marxist Leninist also industrialized. At least compare something more apples to apples.
Life expectancy going up is always a good thing however. Now if only the Marxist leninist governments worked on their tolerance of speech. And the capitalist governments stop looking to the Marxist leninist governments for inspiration on how to crack down on speech.
capitalist governments stop looking to the Marxist leninist governments for inspiration on how to crack down on speech.
Capitalism had that figured out long before Marx had a beard.
That may be true. But the governments claiming to be a sub sect of the ideology have surpassed the capitalist in every way. Great firewall of China etc.
Yes both can achieve industrilization but communists had a better track record(higher percentage of countries(and population) that implemented communism industrialized and also with lower inequality) than capitalism when you look at africa and south america and india etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/561htv/map_of_public_sector_employees_as_a_percentage_of/.
And through the comparison with the world avarage there was no comparison with apples and oranges.
That's not a valid comparison. First there is the troublesome issue of sample size. Second there's the issue of whats actually qualifies as communism or capitalism.
There has NEVER been a communist country. So that right there is a huge problem with any claims. Marxist Leninism is not, and never will be communism. Most frequently devolving into outright fascism(modern Russia) or oppressive dictatorial regimes, state capitalist (China) or otherwise (North Korea). As well, a country being west aligned, doesn't make it capitalist.
This isn't a defense of capitalism. Far from. Ideologically I trend libertarian(true libertarian the Déjacque kind) /anarco communist. So I criticize both heavily when they're pulling their bullshit.
The western media during the cold war called communist countries countries that had more than 60% of the employees work for government owned enterprises. And according to that definion most of the world has not been communist for a long time(for longer than 10 years) except those few countries(eastern bloc, yugoslavia, china, cuba, north korea, vietnam, maybe i miss some countries). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size Cuba according to that definion would still today be a communist country. North korea went back to a semi-feudal system i have heard and china has still massive state ownership like 60% of all the wealth is owned by the goverment in china but they have privatized stakes in almost all state owned companies so in the statistic it shows only 8% of the employees work for the goverment. Yes i know the communists in the east didnt even call their countries communist countries they called themselves socialist countries. USSR is short for united socialist soviet republics. And they said they worked towards communism which they thought would take 100s of years.
Liberals pretend they are right wing libertarians. ML pretend to be communist. That doesn't make it true. But it's very humorous that you're trying to use US government misinformation and propaganda to justify it.
Nationalization of industry isn't a core ideology of communism. Having a nation or even a state isn't required for that matter.
I am not justifying anything. I am just describing one use of the word "communist country". In the dictionary you will often see many uses listed of a word. And that was the use of the western media. The actual communists had a different use of the word. But most people, who dont read deep into communist ideology, are more used to the use of the western media thats why i used it that way in this thread.
What is a core ideology of communism is socialism. Understood as seizing most of the means of production from capitalists. And the MLs interpreted that as nationalizing most of it and using it as vanguards for the benefit of the working class. Thats were the more than 60% of employees working for the state comes from.
This, this is the height of something. That's for sure. An ML trying to gaslight a communist about what a communist nation is. Using US Government misinformation/propaganda.
ML are not communist. Marxist leninism was designed and intended as a stopgap. To industrialize Russia and bring it to a point where then magically through some mechanism they never managed to figure out. It would switch over to a communist structure.
Just because some authoritarian or dictatorial structure nationalizes all major industry in a country. Does not make it communist. Just because something has been nationalized does not mean it belongs to the people.
What really matters is that it is clear what MLs want and what anarchocommunists want and that it is clear what they mean when they use the words "communism" and "socialism". And if what anarchocommunists mean with "communism" is real communism and what MLs mean is fake communism then so be it. Thats something i dont care about. I was not trying to gaslight you.
Stuff means things. We don't get to redefine it as we go.
But let me put this forward..
common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.
This is a general characterization of communism. How can a "state" be stateless? Is this Schrodinger's communism?
The problem with Marxist leninism, and why it will never achieve communism. Is because they simply expected the state to wither away. Because as any serious students of History knows. No one has ever fought wars. Everyone always just gives up power without a fight. When you centralize power. The people who have it are always eager to give it up. you get power! And you get power! Everybody gets power!!
The reason Marxist leninist States always develop into capitalist fascism or other brutal authoritarian concepts. Is because of the centralization of power. Those with the power covet and protect it. They will have to be overthrown themselves before and there will ever be a possibility of communism.
The reason ml will never defeat capitalism. It's because they are a lateral move compared to capitalism. Capitalists don't stand to benefit from it. They would lose power. The People Under The capitalist understand that they would not be any freer. In fact they would lose freedom. There's no visible benefit.
The truth is capitalists will likely tear themselves apart before long. Things are already highly toxic. And with increasing automation soon will become untenable. China is starting to decay badly already as well. ML speed run that part. We'll see if the man who made himself president for life then moved into the Forbidden City does the right thing. Or does what anyone in that situation would do. Leave the power to someone in his family. Or a loyal sycophant.
As more of a maoist i would not say China today is socialist with those billionaires owning stakes in those chinese companies and influencing the state to have this high income inequality there now and not offering everybody a job as they used to under mao etc. . Automation has been going on since the 19th century and has not overthrown capitalism and unemployment is not any worse than it was during the great depression. Things are not any more toxic and untenable than during the gilded age in america. One big change now is that there are forums like reddit and lemmy were people get access to statistics like life expectancy which was not the case in the gilded age were the 99% only would read the biggest newspapers which were controlled by the top 1%.
As more of a maoist i would not say China today is socialist with those billionaires owning stakes in those chinese companies and influencing the state to have this high income inequality there now and not offering everybody a job as they used to under mao etc.
I agree. I literally called them out to you as degenerating into state capitalism. All authoritarian governmental structures tend to degenerate along similar lines. With all gains pooling at the top never reaching the people that created them. I will acknowledge that I believe that Lenin and Mao had good intention. The problem is the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They failed to understand and account for very basic behaviors of human nature. For all the things that capitalism gets wrong at least they not only understand it but have actually embraced it. Giving up all pretense. That's the real danger of ml governments as opposed to capitalists. Capitalists are raw and naked about their ambition. Which makes it a little easier to recognize their deficiencies and occasionally counteract them. Whereas ml lie to the face of their people that everything they do is in the name of the people.
Unemployment as we measure is a poor measure of anything. And not something to cite. Calling enequality similar to the Gilded Age as not untenable is extremely ignorant. It's after all was one of the driving factors behind The surge of socialism in the United States. Right now the truth is many people are over-employed and still not making enough to afford the basics our societies should be providing. China like all of them is dangling untenably over a precipice. There are plenty in rural areas that the central government has done very little for overall. And a large number of young people growing disillusioned and dissatisfied with the unanswerable government they are being saddled with. All it's going to take is another unplanned hiccup or two. Another couple pandemics. And shit will likely hit the fan all over.
It seems to me that you think that authoritarian goverments on avarage have a higher gini(income inequality) than democratic goverments and i dont think there is a correlation at all about that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index#/media/File:Economist_Intelligence_Unit_Democracy_Index_2023.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
Yes Europe is democratic and has a low gini but then there is South america and the US and south africa that are democratic and have the highest ginis in the world.
Just to remind you. Left libertarian/anarco communist here. If I defined everything as America and those in its influence define it you would be correct. But America is at best a flawed democracy and at worst something far far worse. Our Behavior internationally has been often imperialist and brutal definitely not democratic.
Post World War II our knee jerk crackdowns on anything much to the left of fascism screams that much. And I think in the long term actually did more to hurt everyone including the United states. It gave so many people much more fuel than they would have had. Simply persisting out of spite to the United states. A lot of the ML countries would have had the wheels fall off sooner if they hadn't been isolated. Even despite Mao ham-fistedly trying his hardest to destroy everything with his incompetence from the start
fair enough
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Capitalism has sabotaged and killed leaders of nations that tried to do better by their people to keep capital markets open for exploitation.
Our species grew/metastasized recklessly and without any consideration for equilibrium/homeostasis with the ONLY naturally hospitable habitat that our species will ever know.
How right you are, comrade Smith
We like to believe the truth about us is inspirational and uplifting. We kind of need to. That doesn't make it true. Smith/the Wachowskis had our number in that monologue(and also in their Second Renaissance anime prequel about the war between humans and AI, humans do everything you'd expect, we weren't the good guys). We don't care about this world. We don't care about the other species on it. We don't even generally care about one another in anything more than empty feel good platitudes.
We just tend to want moooaaaar for ourselves in practice
There's been a bunch of cultures that refute that idea, but they have a hard time fighting off moooaaaar types of cultures. Humans can be almost anything. Good or bad
While the Soviet system had obvious problems, they're often exaggerated in favor of both painting communism as an ultimate evil, and obfuscate what communism (and capitalism) ultimately is, so they can continue to propagate the "right wing = small government; left wing = big government" lie.
When you systematically purge the crippled sick and war veterans or starve out anyone old and inform or sickly and weak that seems to happen who would have guessed.
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Communism and Capitalism both suck. Mutualism is way better.
You might want to check out Robert Wolf. He's a big advocate for worker co-ops, which are a type of communism. Of the cooperative principles, #6 is cooperation between Co-ops. It doesn't get much more mutualist than that.
Worker co-ops are a type of Socialism. Communism is specifically the movement towards a global Socialist Republic free of a State, Class, or Money.
Worker Co-ops are great, but retain the state and money, and alone can allow the resurgence of class.
Communism is literally workers owning the means of production.
Worker co-ops have the workers owning the means of production.
Richard Wolf is a professor of economics. He talks a lot about the different ways a state can be communist. I'd recommend checking him out. (Misspelled his name in the above comment)
The main way he advocates is with democracy at work.
Socialism is Workers sharing ownership of the Means of Production. Communism is a post-Socialist society where the remaining contradictions within Socialism have been resolved.
I'm familiar with Richard Wolf, his work, and that he's a Socialist. I agree, he's a great intro to Socialism for many people, but he doesn't really advocate much for Communism.
A state can be Communist in goal, sure, as in with a stated plan or goal to eventually reach Communism, but Communism can only exist globally once the international proletariat has successfully taken control of all Means of Production.
I suggest reading Critique of the Gotha Programme. It's an important Marxist work that is helpful to understand Communism vs Socialism.
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