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Old 05-17-2010, 02:27 PM
 
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Or the Soviet Union from the 70's on. What made institutions like the PRI or the communist parties in Russia and China similar is that the initial founders had clear idealogical goals. Even Stalin did, he was just insane. But over time the idealogy faded away and what was left was an organization who was primarily a vehicle for those in it to do well economically.
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Old 05-17-2010, 07:12 PM
 
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One notable example of a fast-growing quasi-capitalist country is Vietnam. I was unable to get the link to work, but Foreign Policy Magazine had an article in their January issue titled "Vietnam's New Money." A search on the title should bring the article up.
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Old 05-17-2010, 07:27 PM
 
Location: Eastern Washington
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The Soviets under the "New Economic Policy" of the 20's was a partial example, and current China, Vietnam are pretty much full-on examples of "State Capitalism", they are "Communist" in name only. True Communism means the state owns essentially everything, state "experts" decree what will be produced and what it will be sold for. I love finding old Soviet tableware with the price - a few kopeks normally - engraved or cast right into the handle. Although even this, the use of money, is in a way a corruption of Communism.

It's also important to remember that Capitalism was named by the Communists. Capitalism is not really an "ism" type ideology - it's the concept that a free market willl work better than a centrally planned economy. Capitalism is not an ideology in the same sense that Atheism is not a religion - both are a negation of ideological economic planning and theism respectively.
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Old 05-17-2010, 08:26 PM
 
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Originally Posted by John Walmsley View Post
One notable example of a fast-growing quasi-capitalist country is Vietnam. I was unable to get the link to work, but Foreign Policy Magazine had an article in their January issue titled "Vietnam's New Money." A search on the title should bring the article up.
I think this is the link you were after:Vietnam's New Money | Foreign Policy
Very interesting, thanks.
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Old 05-17-2010, 08:44 PM
 
Location: Earth
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Originally Posted by noetsi View Post
Or the Soviet Union from the 70's on. What made institutions like the PRI or the communist parties in Russia and China similar is that the initial founders had clear idealogical goals. Even Stalin did, he was just insane. But over time the idealogy faded away and what was left was an organization who was primarily a vehicle for those in it to do well economically.
The same is true with the Ba'athists. The ideological goals of Michel Aflaq (founder of Ba'athism) would wind up as merely a pretext for the rule of brute force and personal enrichment by Saddam Hussein and the Assad family, other than a few vague concepts like unification of the Arab world and glorification of the "Arab superman" being parroted by Saddam (much more than by Hafez Assad). Although I'm still not altogether sure about what actually differentiated Ba'athism from Nasserism - both were pan-Arabist, both were secular, both were influenced by fascism and communism, etc. yet Ba'athists and Nasserists did not like each other at all. Can anyone explain this more?
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Old 05-17-2010, 08:52 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
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Originally Posted by bobsmith View Post
Eh, sorry, I think that's less likely than being attacked by the aliens in "Mars Attacks".

China is communist in name only, though it is still authoritarian. .

Did any of the Socialist states ever achieve anything like what was outlined by Marx? The deal was that socialism was supposed to topple corrupt capatalist states, but instead it was only able to make inroads into agrarian, industrial retarded states, which then became industrial states. The deal was that after a brief period or organization, the state would wither away, leaving the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, in every case the state became larger and more repressive. And the second the Soviets let up on the repression, they got their system instantly ash canned by the proletariat.

At best, the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cuba have only ever managed to have some of the trapping of socialism, but never socialist governments functioning as promised in the ideal.
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Old 05-17-2010, 09:05 PM
 
Location: Earth
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Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
Did any of the Socialist states ever achieve anything like what was outlined by Marx? The deal was that socialism was supposed to topple corrupt capatalist states
True. Marx meant for his theories to be applied in Germany specifically or also Britain, France, the USA, Belgium, or even Italy. He even singled out Russia (along with the Ottoman Empire) as being unsuited for the application of his theories for being too backwards and devoutly religious. (Czarist Russia in some ways was like a Christian Saudi Arabia - based on the idea of defending the true Orthodox Christianity from Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, and Protestantism).

Quote:
but instead it was only able to make inroads into agrarian, industrial retarded states, which then became industrial states. The deal was that after a brief period or organization, the state would wither away, leaving the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, in every case the state became larger and more repressive. And the second the Soviets let up on the repression, they got their system instantly ash canned by the proletariat.
Yugoslavia was the only country Communism actually worked in, but that probably had more to do with the personal prestige of Tito. After Tito's death it started to crumble. The "rotating presidency" system - which was specifically designed by Tito to discourage any future strongman from emerging - wound up laying the seeds for civil war as old religious and ethnic hatreds began to resurface.
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Old 05-17-2010, 11:39 PM
 
Location: New York City
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In its strict definition, Communism is when all property is owned and shared equally by the people. Not even USSR reached that stated (that's why it was called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

Anyway, present day China is communist only in the name. Authoritarian? Yes. Fascist? Maybe. Communist? Definitely not.
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Old 05-18-2010, 02:01 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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Originally Posted by MrMarbles View Post
In its strict definition, Communism is when all property is owned and shared equally by the people. Not even USSR reached that stated (that's why it was called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

.
But the USA is not perfectly capitalist, either. No nation will every be perfectly anything. But the OP's meaning of Communist means more or less subscribing to communist principles, to the degree that circumstances allow it under the prevailing structure. Communism was never defined as anything that you can put into effect at 9 oclock tomorrow morning, but rather a goal to be worked toward, overcoming the resistance by those who had a vested interest in their personal control of the wealth.

Socialist was a euphemism, as was Democratic, in their national naming rights.
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Old 05-18-2010, 11:43 AM
 
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True Communism means the state owns essentially everything, state "experts" decree what will be produced and what it will be sold for. I love finding old Soviet tableware with the price - a few kopeks normally - engraved or cast right into the handle. Although even this, the use of money, is in a way a corruption of Communism.
Actually Marxist would disagree what "true" communism is. The form of communism noted above was typical of communist states during the Cold War so the West assumed it was the correct form. But Marxist theory does not support that - it was simply the way Stalin and later Mao chose to implement communism. Marx said very little about what a communist state would look like. He believed people's values would change so dramatically after a communist take over that there would be no need of a state - it would "wither away." He was in many respects a utopian socialist - paying limited attention to structure.

Marx's understanding of what a communist revolution would look like appears to have been gradual value change until the old system collapsed and the new communist world view replaced it. A revolution by a small group of dedicated communist - as actually happened- never enters into his models. Lenin created that, fundamentally changing Marxist views in the process.
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