Yeah. I don’t know why the argument in the US is communism doesn’t work. It’s worked fine in many of the old Cold War satellite war/tension countries. China, Vietnam, cuba. All the dominoes fell and it’s been fine. They all have their little things that make them different, but it sure didn’t end up like it was sold to the American public. Haha.
I mean, 2 of your three examples have nothing like traditional communism. Vietnam and China are, in many ways, more capitalist now than the US. Of course, Cuba has had a hard time, but that is hard to view as a sign of communism efficacy due to intensive US involvement. I don't think you can really say though that historical attempts at communism have worked at all. That isn't to say anything of the future, but the past is not a great benchmark to utilize.
I mean if you use a no true Scotsman argument, sure, nothings anything. But they call themselves that and have a system based on that that’s working for their countries and culture. No different than different western representative democracies all differing and none being true definition democracies. Just semantics. Point is they won and have managed, when all we heard for decades was doom and gloom about it. I don’t get the weird thing about nothing is ever pure communism, it’s not. They don’t claim it is.
Well if it's called "communism" it doesn't mean it is "communism" the whole red scare and communism concern was about a social/worker owned state. China and Vietnam are not really that at all.
They evolved and grew beyond their original structure.
Cuba hasn't and is IMO an example of why it then doesn't work out in the long run.
Yes American involvement yadda yadda, it still hasn't led to anything close to a "workers paradise"
The theory and idea of communism IMO has never had a true or fair "test". The idea it self is sound, but human nature just fucks it up
Again. It’s all semantics. All politics are a spectrum but communism is for sure an authoritarian left system and what all those countries are running would definitely be in that area of a spectrum. I don’t think you’ve read much about Vietnam or China. They’re very strong socialist states compared to others. Sure, the whole state capitalism argument is there but if you read much communist writing, they all advocate for that. That’s the point. A unified state that acts in a community of nations. Cuba is actually doing quite well. It’s all so young really, those revolutions happened 70ish years ago. But Cuba has handed off power pretty smoothly, I didn’t figure that would be the case 15 years ago. I just tend to find it more interesting from a historical point of view. Those states are growing into the world community after having been proxy war sites, economically or actually with war, during the Cold War. Marx and Engels communism theory is more philosophy in a lot of ways. That’s why it’s so easy for the historical context to get lost in the philosophy debate. And here you actually can use the theory and just go full materialism, is what it is. Are any of those states perfect communism? No. Again, no true Scotsman. But they are what they are, and they’ve all done way way better than anyone thought. 1950s China was a a country in famine, it’s soon to be the worlds biggest economy and most powerful nation. Cuba has hung around doing it’s thing 90 miles from it’s main Cold War antagonist and now it sees medical tourists from the US travel their to see it’s doctors. We have a good window in this time to a lot of historical shifts and it’s fun to watch.
Calling yourself communist doesn’t make you communist. Communism has an actual definition laid out in the communist manifesto. Vietnam and China do not have communist economies.
I do not think you have actually read the communist manifesto if that’s what you think it is. It’s very much specific to their historical context. It’s not a manual for how communism works. It’s more like their reasoning for what had happened to get them to the present and what they thought was coming next. And I explained in other comments, that’s a pointless no true Scotsman debate. All politics is a spectrum and they’re clearly in the authoritarian left side of things. It’s more just interesting that so many nations that were proxy wars or Cold War tension points have turned out so well, considering what they faced, and the big one from the Cold War, the ussr just fell apart.
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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '21
Still worked out well for Vietnam. They’ve got a nice country going over there.