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There are always gullible fools and scoundrels who think that using government to enslave others, and rob them, is a great career move.
No matter what you call it, compulsory labor for the benefit of someone else is SLAVERY, full or part time.
And confiscation of surplus is theft by government.
Unfortunately, it has many side effects - all bad.
Once the glorious socialist state takes the worker's surplus, he has no incentive to labor more. Why bother making a surplus when the government will take it away? So as surplus declines, scarcity results - but equally distributed, of course. (Russian joke : "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.")
And once the burdens of socialist taxation drive women into the workforce, they have less time to devote to their children - if they bother having any. And -surprise- birthrates are declining in socialist paradises. Though it might be applauded by genocidal maniacs who think we need to be culled to a population of 500,000,000 - it does not bode well for the recipient population.
Why?
If you have a rising recipient population ("takers") and a declining donor population ("taken"), you will eventually have a revolt of the taxpayers or euthanasia of the recipients. Neither is a good thing.
Command economies just shift the decision making that is decentralized in a market economy up to the central planner level. All the conflicts and problems inherent in the allocation of resources don't go away; they are simply foisted upon the central planners who replicate the abuses of market economies within their small clique.
There's a way to decentralize economies, reduce bureaucracy, and prevent the concentration of power that makes totalitarianism possible. They're called markets.
That markets reduce waste compared to command economies is why capitalist societies are richer than communist societies. The fact that the working class in capitalist countries eventually had more materially rich lives than the nomenklatura of the Eastern Bloc is reason enough to abandon communism forever and move on.
Market economies are wealthier and more politically plural than command economies. Tell me what I'm missing if I consider communism a bankrupt idea in theory and practice.
A decentralized command economy would be one where planning in certain arenas would be delegated to authorities out in the far-flung regions, people who know intimately the local conditions and their needs. Someone in Moscow couldn't possibly know what the specific needs are of people living just beyond the west end of the Aleutian chain, in Kamchatka, or in Central Asia. Bureaucrats in western Russia wouldn't have any understanding of the needs of reindeer herders around Lake Baikal, or bordering on the Arctic Ocean. Decentralization might mean letting the reindeer herders vote in their own representative to the regional economics board.
Communism was practiced. It required a command economy for two reasons. Absent markets you need planners. Absent carrots you need sticks.
I'm tired of hearing that communism has never been practiced.
But the citizens and leaders of those countries admitted routinely, that their system hand't reached communism yet. It was a goal, not an accomplished fact. You may consider that to be splitting hairs, but to them, there were. important distinctions.
North Korea and Cuba still seem to have Stalin-style Communism. How could leaders of those countries--or anyone--still think that Communism is a viable and desirable governmental and economic system?
I went to East Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1990 and was shocked at how run-down and devoid of modernity those countries were, by comparison to West Germany. Then I went to the Balkans in 1994 and was shocked at how impoverished Romania was (and less so Bulgaria). I've seen the results of Communism first-hand: poverty.
If leaders of North Korea and Cuba want to keep power, that's a separate issue; if they want to maintain an authoritarian dictatorship in each country, they could do that and ditch Communism, in practice or in name.
Yes, China is Communist, but it has allowed private businesses and some type of market economy, and that has played a role in its progress.
So: how could leaders of North Korea and Cuba--or anywhere--still think that Communism, in its Stalinist way, is at all desirable?
Is any place truly communist anymore though? At least in the textbook definition?
I'll take a stab that this given my studies of undergraduate Sociology between 2002-2005:
1) Like other previous posters have pointed out, there is differentiation from Communism and Authoritarian Dictatorship/Authoritarian Socialism. Communism is the shared aspects of community property, resources, and challenges in which all of its People are equal in power and resource. Socialism has an established State that takes control of all property and operates for what is assumed is the common wealth or the "Great Good;" however, Socialism is highly corruptible with little accountability for and by the People because too much power is held by the State.
Communism simply hasn't existed for any sustained duration because, as I believe, inherent inequality and humanistic traits such as greed, envy, resentment, and the sense of self are destructive to the spirit of a system based on equally shared property and power. Communism ceases to exist once a state or government outside of the collective People is established, turning it into Socialism. Further, once a tier of leaders or a single-leader holds more power and influence over the said collective people, you now have authoritarianism. I cannot recall a single legitimate society throughout history that would fit the definition of Communism. Instead the allure and idealism of Communism has been pitched leading to authoritarianism.
2) Now to address the OP's question, Communism can be appealing to those who have less (they have less or nothing to lose), and I believe there are good people across the spectrum who want to support a system that they believe is "fair." The problem is that fairness is very difficult to define and it appears to be rather subjective. Another factor to consider is that many people are drawn to the benefits or promises of system for change without recognizing all of the consequences intended or otherwise. People love to pitch the virtues and omit the realities. It is my belief that Communism has a very tight tolerance and the ideal system is walking the proverbial tight-rope. In comparison, Capitalism is very tolerant to inequality, greed, envy, resentment, and one's sense of self...often times those traits spur innovation and motivation to overcome a given situation. I feel it is also important to state that I can think of no country that operates on a pure Capitalistic model either.
3) I liken the ideal of Communism with that of the ideal Carnot engine. It exists in a theoretical sense but real-world forces makes it impossible in the practical sense.
... Now to address the OP's question, Communism can be appealing to those who have less (they have less or nothing to lose), and I believe there are good people across the spectrum who want to support a system that they believe is "fair." ...
To my earlier point, "communism" as practiced in the USSR is appealing to persons who are interested in various vocational pursuits, but who are absolute rubbish in what might be termed "entrepreneurial skills" or street-smarts. The example is that of a well-disposed but aimless young man, who enlists in the Army. There is excels... not as a leader but as a low-ranking soldier, perhaps specializing at a tank-mechanic or just an infantryman. Our hero spends a full 20 years in the enlisted military, retiring at the rank of Sergeant or something like that.
The Army-example is similar across a panoply of cultures, economic systems or political systems. It's centrally-planned, gigantic and mechanical, highly bureaucratic. It treats people as cogs, at least in the lower ranks, offering them a minimal but stable sustenance. It has nothing to do with Marx or Lenin or Che Guevara or Mao, per se. Yet another analogy is the American mid-20th-century blue-collar union job.
Some people are good workers, but don't care for the building of wealth or even for the lofty liberties at the heart of the American founding-documents. They want a steady routine, bread on the dinner table, maybe rudimentary but inexpensive healthcare. The massive, unwieldy and stodgy state-systems of the 20th century were pretty good at catering to such a person, assuming of course that our hero had no untoward political opinions and no dangerous ambitions.
Writing in 2021, the irony is that muscular American capitalism actually provided quasi-communist guarantees to millions of workers, right here in America, two generations ago. Few workers at GM or Boeing would have become wealthy. Most were in rudimentary, rote and humble roles. They were harangued by their bosses and led by the nose, by the "elites" of their day.
My point is that the nostalgia felt by the modern American MAGA crowd is actually similar to that of an ex-Soviet citizen of a certain age. It really has nothing to do with philosophy or doctrine. It has everything to do with regret that a simple, prosaic but steady life has slipped away, to be replaced by instability and a sudden requirement to fend for oneself. The communist-vs-capitalist debate, while interesting, is a distraction! The real issue is what happens to unimaginative people of middling talent, ambition or resources.
So: how could leaders of North Korea and Cuba--or anywhere--still think that Communism, in its Stalinist way, is at all desirable?
There's a joke I remember from 1989 and 1990, when many Communist governments collapsed; people pretend to work and the government pretends to pay them. Unfortunately, the line is more bitterly sarcastic than funny.
When people lack incentive they tend to become unmotivated. That's a truism. But to some extent it's the "chicken and egg" phenomena. People who are willing to accept Stalinist-type repression are also unlikely to be easily motivated to work, even if given far more freedom. This is the case throughout large parts of South America, Central America, southeastern Europe (the OP referred to Romania and Bulgaria and to that must be added most of the former Yugoslavia and Albania), Africa and even large stretches of Asia.
As some posters know, Europe is far from my favorite group of countries but there was at least some self-liberation in modern German, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland and somewhat in Slovakia. The Finns notably fought bravely in the "winter war" against Soviet subjugation and they remained far freer than Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. A Stalinist system has to be somewhat self-perpetuating. North Korea is a bit harder to understand but it has always been somewhat of a "hermit kingdom", even pre-Cold War.
Japan and Singapore are the exceptions that prove the rule. Japan, under MacArthur's tutelage, learned to imitate to some extent a capitalist society. It doesn't really have true freedom, nor is it totally repressed. Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore similarly taught a somewhat liberal, somewhat authoritarian system. Myanmar, formerly Burma is an unfortunate example in the other direction. After a somewhat promising period of British tutelage, their "leadership" is taking them in a North Korean direction. The theocracies of the "ummah" are similarly languishing.
Now, what's my point? To quote the Rascals, "all the world over so easy to see, people every where just wanna be free...." But freedom isn't free. It takes work and self-discipline.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kgordeeva
But what's the point of getting a PhD if you're destined to live in poverty like everyone else? Where does the motivation come from?
I have a friend who is a psychologist. He tells me one of his patients had parents who left Albania. They left because, under ancient tribal traditions the only occupation they could hold was that of ditch-digger, in spite of near-genius intelligence. They were not interested in living that way.
Is any place truly communist anymore though? At least in the textbook definition?
There is the theory from the book and there is the reality of practical applied Communism.
China and North Korea both call themselves communist nations, as does Cuba. So there is your definition. It is the real-world application version of communism we are discussing, not the Utopian theory, which is impossible to apply to the real world. So no place meets the textbook definition written by Marx and no place ever has, because it is an impossible Utopian theory that can't exist in man-made institutions.
The actual theory of Communism has proven to be false. In order to have communism, you would have to have robots, or mentally programmed humans with no emotion or self-interest. In only that way could you have the high producers keep producing for the slackers and deadbeats. In the real world, the theory of communism completely breaks down because the hardest workers refuse to do so after most of the fruit of their labors is taken away and redistributed to the non-workers, or less productive workers.
Communism is not possible on the earth. There never has been a truly communist nation and there never will be. What we are discussing is the label "communism" as applied to the former Soviet Union, the PRK, the PRC, etc.
There is the theory from the book and there is the reality of practical applied Communism.
China and North Korea both call themselves communist nations, as does Cuba. So there is your definition. It is the real-world application version of communism we are discussing, not the Utopian theory, which is impossible to apply to the real world. So no place meets the textbook definition written by Marx and no place ever has, because it is an impossible Utopian theory that can't exist in man-made institutions.
The actual theory of Communism has proven to be false. In order to have communism, you would have to have robots, or mentally programmed humans with no emotion or self-interest. In only that way could you have the high producers keep producing for the slackers and deadbeats. In the real world, the theory of communism completely breaks down because the hardest workers refuse to do so after most of the fruit of their labors is taken away and redistributed to the non-workers, or less productive workers.
Communism is not possible on the earth. There never has been a truly communist nation and there never will be. What we are discussing is the label "communism" as applied to the former Soviet Union, the PRK, the PRC, etc.
Actually, North Korea abandoned its claims to Marxism/communism decades ago. It has replaced them with an ideology which has similarities to Marx's tenets, but also distinctions. To a degree this is nothing new. Marx has repeatedly been creatively 'interpreted' to conform to the particular needs of communist leaders around the world. Lenin did this. Stalin then did so. Mao certainly did. However, North Korea seems to have taken it to another level, with the intent of replacing Marx with Kim Il-Sung and of replacing the reverence for the founding figure with something closer to worship. Revisions of the North Korean constitution have successively eliminated references to Marx, to Lenin, and to communism. And therein lies part of the problem. Is China communist? I would say so. Yet most of the elements of its governance are simply authoritarian, and communism is but a flavor of that. The lack of freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia does not make it communist. The death squads in South America in the 1970s did not make Argentina and Chile and Paraguay communist. In China in the 21st century, it seems that the label communism serves as much as anything as simply a national religion, a sort of excuse for the ruling elite to maintain that they are still continuing 'the revolution' and are this irreplaceable. Also, it's worth noting that North Korea calls itself a democratic republic. It is neither. Taking authoritarian states at their word when it comes to labelling isn't wise. Of course, that does go both ways.
However, by noting the differences between applied communism and Marx's ideas, I am not disclaiming places such as the USSR, East Germany, Cuba, the PRC, etc., as communist. That falls into the trap of suggesting that any imperfect application renders an endeavor entirely inauthentic. But the real world always compromises theory. And in the case of communism, it is often used as an excuse to disregard horrors and failures. It's a variation on the No True Scotsman fallacy. I would say that the USSR was the very definition of Marxism/communism because in application it began there and was the driving force behind global communism for the better part of a century.
North Korea and Cuba still seem to have Stalin-style Communism. How could leaders of those countries--or anyone--still think that Communism is a viable and desirable governmental and economic system?
During the Cold War we were told that communism was bad because it was "godless". Now our own society is godless so that cannot be used against communism.
We were told that under communism there was censorship and that books were burned. Now in our society there is censorship, books are taken off popular websites, and unapproved videos are taken down.
We were told that communist governments spied on their own citizens. Now our government spies on us.
We were told that under communism the police only protected the powerful and members of the Party. Now in our society the police are sometimes ordered not to enforce certain laws but the wealthy still have police protection or private security forces.
We have been gradually removing the differences between us and them. Once there is no difference between our system and communism, who can object to communism?
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