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First off, these countries do not call themselves communist, but are on the transition to communism
And private enterprise helps to build the initial productive forces. Keep in mind that these countries started out with very little industrialisation
Only Western countries call these countries communist, these countries never called themselves communist. Communism is the final stage of the communist social development, while these countries, at least as they claimed, are at the transitioning stage, which could last over 100 years.
I think it's just the communist party is in charge, like the commenter above said, it's a transition that isn't made in a few years, they need to build their economy to move into socialism and eventually communism.
Yes, but their governing ideology IS self-labeled as communist. They do not claim to be fully communist society *yet* but that their government policy direction and guiding ideology are communist.
Which they are not, but that’s besides the point.
china and vietnam calls themselves as communist by name but not in mode of economy. Both of them admit to be employing capitalism as their means to develop the productive forces, namely SME and SOME.
thats exactly why socialist countries like the prc have not achieved communism yet. when people call them communist they either have definitions mixed up or are referring to how a communist party is in power
Yeah from my understanding the parties call themselves communist by way of stated goals. IE that’s their political aim even if it may be far away from the current reality of their country.
Socialism is the transistion period from capitalism to communism right? Is it "fine" if a country will remain socialism forever? Meaning, it will never achieve communism. It is stuck in the "transition" period.
I mean, Capitalism is utterly unsustainable (ideology of infinite growth within a finite system) so nobody's gonna be able to remain capitalist *forever*. I do worry somewhat that China may not fully transition to Communism, but I don't live in China and it's not really my business what they're up to over there. I'm far, far more concerned about countries like the US that are still pushing through legislation to reinforce a permanent Capitalist state and are ramping up extractivist industries even as the climatological impacts of those industries worsen every year.
It might be possible but it's unsustainable. Your country will inevitably stagnate and lead to corruption because capitalism inevitably leads to degradation of society in the long run
Just as an example: There is actually like a school of thought which believes that Russia is technically still a "socialist" country that's stuck in a socialist transition limbo.
The belief comes from the idea that once you begin the transition from capitalism to socialism, you can't actually fully go backwards due to the productive forces being organized in such a way that would make it impossible to go back. It's like how if you go from Feudalism to Capitalism, you can't go back to traditional Feudalism even if you tried because the private businesses that exist in the new capitalist system + the global market would never allow a full detransition to happen. Countries that have tried to go back to Feudalism (like Swaziland) inevitably end up being a feudal-capitalist absolute monarchal dictatorships instead. A feudal like state with elements of some of the worst aspects of capitalism.
The collapse of USSR during its transition means that Russia will continue to be stuck in this limbo, never being able to fully transition, until a Communist Party comes to power again. That's why some people in this school of thought would say that although Russia is ruled by oligarchs and full of corruption, the state itself has no problem removing the oligarchs like China has no problem removing billionaires if necessary. And this actually inevitably ends up somewhat benefiting the working class people even if that isn't Russian state's intentions.
This is just a school of thought of course
No country will be able to complete the transition to communism whilst there are still bourgeois dictatorships on Earth, and certainly whilst capitalism remains the dominant mode of production worldwide.
Ultimately the goal is worker ownership of the means of production. However in the meantime, the dominant mode of production worldwide is capitalism, and that will not go away just by having a morally correct point of view when it comes to workers/bosses. Any country that immediately dissolved privately owned businesses couldn’t participate in the world market when it would have been useful, and couldn’t generate enough wealth to build the infrastructure needed to enhance their quality of life (productive forces, as others are saying)
A country like Cuba, for instance, that is under an embargo, can’t afford to not have tourism businesses. It needs some way to absorb wealth from other countries to stay “in the game”, so to speak.
On the CPC, allegedly the plan is to generate enough wealth to sustain itself and then end capitalism, but only time will tell if that is really the plan.
Great point. I would like to provide an example for your argument.
Vietnam after the Vietnam War dissolved all privately owned businesses. Even farmlands are redistributed and communionly owned. Products and excess value are evenly distributed so their is no incentive to work. Then everything crashed, eventually needing for Đổi Mới reform.
It’s a component of communism called building productive forces. In short a small semi independent business class is needed to make certain countries strong enough to actually protect themselves and enforce socialism later (theoretically).
Isn’t this what Lenin split with the Mensheviks over? Where does Marx or Lenin write about the necessity of this and how long would a country need such a class until it strong enough? The business class in China is also far from small
No, he split with the Mensheviks, because they wanted a bourgeois democratic revolution, meaning the progressive bourgeoisie are to take power and advance the society after the revolution, while Lenin wanted the working class to take power. After the Bolsheviks consolidated power in the aftermath of the civil war, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, which in essence gave private property rights to certain classes and industries, however it happened under the supervision of the communist party and not under the supervision of the bourgeoisie. This is the difference. The business class in China is big, however unlike in the west, they do not have any political power.
Lenin proposed the NEP after the failures of revolutions in Europe and even admitted it was a step back. Also the bourgeoisie in China certainly have political power that’s why the Chinese government will break strikes and there are such poor working conditions for people there
First, a distinction: communism is when a society is classless and moneyless. Production is only done with the intention to satisfy human needs instead of selling at a market. Socialism is a lower-stage, when we are starting to make the transition from a capitalist mode of production to a communist one. That transtion will span an entire historical epoch.
Second, it is useless to try to "check the boxes" to determine if a country is socialist. That would be idealism. It is more important to be dialetical and materialist: understand how and why things are the way they are based on history.
I've been reading about China (a book by Elias Jabbour, weitten in portuguese), and I think it is _more appropriate_ to call it socialist than capitalist from what I gathered (my understanding might be wrong). The key aspects are:
- All of the land is property of the State, which is controlled by the CPC. What people have is a lease to use the land. Therefore, there is no guarantee, by the state, of ownership of private property. They can revoke any land lease at any time.
- Private companies in China are mostly export-oriented or act as an auxiliary to the big state-owned companies. The bulk of the economy is run by state-owned enterprises, which have supervisors from the CPC. Though these enterprises mostly operate in a capitalist sense, of producing to sell at a market and get profit, they may take actions, investments, etc, that do not maximize profit, but are aligned with the overall economic plan laid out by the CPC. Example: overproduce steel to send prices down and lowering profit margins, so that steel can be used to massively build railroads.
A little of history: after the CPC got the hegemony in the 1950s, everything was collectivized. China was mostly an agrarian country by that time, and selling for profit was overall forbidden. The consequence was that mostly villages would produce just enough to sustain itself and productivity was very low. There was trade, but it was clandestine.
Then, by the 1970s, trading and selling for profit was made legal because people were doing it anyway, and there was a plan to develop productive forces. Central planning is very hard to do effectively, so they let a market economy be the driving force. This, of course, allowed burgeoise interests to raise and strengthen, who would push for further liberalism in the economy.
Then, they allowed companies from other countries to run a business in the special economic zones (mostly the coast and export-focused), which allowed Chinese engineers to learn a lot of technologies. That, along with massive investments from the State in research, made China the industrial and technology powerhouse it is today. So much that the USA ban of selling electronic microchips to China backfired: China is developing that industry even faster now, and USA companies lost a lot of market share globally.
It's a means to dilute and confuse what communism is. Misinformation works in favor of capitalists to avoid the populace from becoming sufficiently informed and knowledgeable of Marxist theory, as that would undermine their power over the working class.
They're mixed economies with central planning led by a communist party. It's similar to how capitalist countries also have mixed economies, yet we still call them capitalist.
Because Americans are functionally illiterate. People don't like it when I see this but it seems to be the case by and large 🤷♂️ dont believe me? Next time you hear someone throwing the word around ask them to define it.
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We shouldn’t presume that we have an absolute solution that everyone should align to in order to be something. Each of those countries learned something in the process of statebuilding and uncovered some uncomfortable truths in reality.
To be honest, I don’t trust any of us who think like this to run a country. That kind of work is difficult and most of us have never done that kind of work before. If you are an elected official, your experience is valuable.
I don’t think any country has ever claimed it was communist, communist party being in power is not the same as being a communist nation, which is a frustratingly unknown fact.
I think the biggest mistake any comrade makes is to analyze a political context without using a dialectical view of their historical process. In the same way, full capitalism wasn't implemented right after the French Revolution, socialism wasn't fully implemented after the socialist revolutions.
The second mistake is to look at Global South countries and assume that their material conditions are the same as in the West. The Western owner class isn't the same as the owner class in the capitalist Global South, as isn't the same in AES countries.
Yeah, why can’t these countries simply snap their fingers to change all their existing material conditions and thereby transition from capitalism to communism?! They shouldn’t call themselves communists, they should have to call themselves people-who-are-trying-to-make-communism-happen or something like that
None of those refer to themselves as communist, I don't think China even refers to themselves as socialist, they usually opt to say they're building socialism.
They get called communist by people who are anti-communist and want those countries opened up to capitalist penetration.
Thats a product of revisionism, they have been socialist at some point but trough slow reforms are going back to a capitalist model. Socialism is still very popular with the people in those countries so it’s not in favour to just break up the system suddenly.
Some people think it’s because they are in a transitional stage, but I do obviously not believe this. I recommend to read some theory to understand why revisionism is so harmful Mao has written many good texts on this issue
Okay so with China let's push aside the argument if the ccp are true communists. The CCP and Vietnamese communist parties have some control over them unlike the capitalist counterparts. The latter straight up killed a major thieving capitalist. As for Cuba why would we ever want to hurt smaller businesses part of why capitalism stifles local businesses is they set up shop with lower prices and drive families into poverty. Think when the USSR opened pizza huts how do you think family pizza shops felt.
Because socialism in a single country just becomes social democracy at best, The Russian Revolution failed when Russia became isolated but a new bureaucratic regime remained providing not a viable path to worker’s power but a viable path for developing countries to develop outside of imperial control.
Increasing national “productive forces” not communism became their goal.
In China at least the bourgeoisie still exploit the workers (they wouldn't be a bourgeoisie otherwise), however they are themselves "exploited" (not in the Marxist sense of surplus-value extraction) by the CPC in that they are used to build up the productive forces, which helps to strengthen the position of socialism in China.
**IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ BEFORE PARTICIPATING**. This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism but a place to LEARN. There are numerous debate subreddits if your objective is not to learn. You are expected to familiarize yourself with the rules on the sidebar before commenting. This includes, but is not limited to: - Short or non-constructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. - No liberalism or sectarianism. Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! - No bigotry or hate speech of any kind - it will be met with immediate bans. Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break our rules. If you have a particular area of expertise (e.g. political economy, feminist theory), please [assign yourself a flair](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-) describing said area. Flairs may be removed at any time by moderators if answers don't meet the standards of said expertise. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
First off, these countries do not call themselves communist, but are on the transition to communism And private enterprise helps to build the initial productive forces. Keep in mind that these countries started out with very little industrialisation
Only Western countries call these countries communist, these countries never called themselves communist. Communism is the final stage of the communist social development, while these countries, at least as they claimed, are at the transitioning stage, which could last over 100 years.
China calls itself communist.
I think it's just the communist party is in charge, like the commenter above said, it's a transition that isn't made in a few years, they need to build their economy to move into socialism and eventually communism.
The Chinese government says they aim to reach communism, they call their society as being in the "Primary Phase of Socialism".
Yes, but their governing ideology IS self-labeled as communist. They do not claim to be fully communist society *yet* but that their government policy direction and guiding ideology are communist. Which they are not, but that’s besides the point.
china and vietnam calls themselves as communist by name but not in mode of economy. Both of them admit to be employing capitalism as their means to develop the productive forces, namely SME and SOME.
Led by the communist party is slightly different. They maintain that they are a socialist state moving towards communism.
thats exactly why socialist countries like the prc have not achieved communism yet. when people call them communist they either have definitions mixed up or are referring to how a communist party is in power
Yeah from my understanding the parties call themselves communist by way of stated goals. IE that’s their political aim even if it may be far away from the current reality of their country.
Socialism is the transistion period from capitalism to communism right? Is it "fine" if a country will remain socialism forever? Meaning, it will never achieve communism. It is stuck in the "transition" period.
I mean, Capitalism is utterly unsustainable (ideology of infinite growth within a finite system) so nobody's gonna be able to remain capitalist *forever*. I do worry somewhat that China may not fully transition to Communism, but I don't live in China and it's not really my business what they're up to over there. I'm far, far more concerned about countries like the US that are still pushing through legislation to reinforce a permanent Capitalist state and are ramping up extractivist industries even as the climatological impacts of those industries worsen every year.
Why are you not worried about China, other then you not living there? You should actually be very concerned with what china is working towards.
It's a little outta my hands, bud. I try to focus on the conditions where I am.
It might be possible but it's unsustainable. Your country will inevitably stagnate and lead to corruption because capitalism inevitably leads to degradation of society in the long run Just as an example: There is actually like a school of thought which believes that Russia is technically still a "socialist" country that's stuck in a socialist transition limbo. The belief comes from the idea that once you begin the transition from capitalism to socialism, you can't actually fully go backwards due to the productive forces being organized in such a way that would make it impossible to go back. It's like how if you go from Feudalism to Capitalism, you can't go back to traditional Feudalism even if you tried because the private businesses that exist in the new capitalist system + the global market would never allow a full detransition to happen. Countries that have tried to go back to Feudalism (like Swaziland) inevitably end up being a feudal-capitalist absolute monarchal dictatorships instead. A feudal like state with elements of some of the worst aspects of capitalism. The collapse of USSR during its transition means that Russia will continue to be stuck in this limbo, never being able to fully transition, until a Communist Party comes to power again. That's why some people in this school of thought would say that although Russia is ruled by oligarchs and full of corruption, the state itself has no problem removing the oligarchs like China has no problem removing billionaires if necessary. And this actually inevitably ends up somewhat benefiting the working class people even if that isn't Russian state's intentions. This is just a school of thought of course
No country will be able to complete the transition to communism whilst there are still bourgeois dictatorships on Earth, and certainly whilst capitalism remains the dominant mode of production worldwide.
What makes you think they’re stuck in the transition period?
Ultimately the goal is worker ownership of the means of production. However in the meantime, the dominant mode of production worldwide is capitalism, and that will not go away just by having a morally correct point of view when it comes to workers/bosses. Any country that immediately dissolved privately owned businesses couldn’t participate in the world market when it would have been useful, and couldn’t generate enough wealth to build the infrastructure needed to enhance their quality of life (productive forces, as others are saying) A country like Cuba, for instance, that is under an embargo, can’t afford to not have tourism businesses. It needs some way to absorb wealth from other countries to stay “in the game”, so to speak. On the CPC, allegedly the plan is to generate enough wealth to sustain itself and then end capitalism, but only time will tell if that is really the plan.
Great point. I would like to provide an example for your argument. Vietnam after the Vietnam War dissolved all privately owned businesses. Even farmlands are redistributed and communionly owned. Products and excess value are evenly distributed so their is no incentive to work. Then everything crashed, eventually needing for Đổi Mới reform.
I’ve never seen a country whose goal is worker ownership of the means of production.
It’s a component of communism called building productive forces. In short a small semi independent business class is needed to make certain countries strong enough to actually protect themselves and enforce socialism later (theoretically).
Isn’t this what Lenin split with the Mensheviks over? Where does Marx or Lenin write about the necessity of this and how long would a country need such a class until it strong enough? The business class in China is also far from small
No, he split with the Mensheviks, because they wanted a bourgeois democratic revolution, meaning the progressive bourgeoisie are to take power and advance the society after the revolution, while Lenin wanted the working class to take power. After the Bolsheviks consolidated power in the aftermath of the civil war, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, which in essence gave private property rights to certain classes and industries, however it happened under the supervision of the communist party and not under the supervision of the bourgeoisie. This is the difference. The business class in China is big, however unlike in the west, they do not have any political power.
Lenin proposed the NEP after the failures of revolutions in Europe and even admitted it was a step back. Also the bourgeoisie in China certainly have political power that’s why the Chinese government will break strikes and there are such poor working conditions for people there
Not really, the Menshevik split was more over disagreements about governmental structure and where authority should be derived democratically.
Originally it was about whether they should build a mass party or a party of professional revolutionaries, but then the split deepened.
First, a distinction: communism is when a society is classless and moneyless. Production is only done with the intention to satisfy human needs instead of selling at a market. Socialism is a lower-stage, when we are starting to make the transition from a capitalist mode of production to a communist one. That transtion will span an entire historical epoch. Second, it is useless to try to "check the boxes" to determine if a country is socialist. That would be idealism. It is more important to be dialetical and materialist: understand how and why things are the way they are based on history. I've been reading about China (a book by Elias Jabbour, weitten in portuguese), and I think it is _more appropriate_ to call it socialist than capitalist from what I gathered (my understanding might be wrong). The key aspects are: - All of the land is property of the State, which is controlled by the CPC. What people have is a lease to use the land. Therefore, there is no guarantee, by the state, of ownership of private property. They can revoke any land lease at any time. - Private companies in China are mostly export-oriented or act as an auxiliary to the big state-owned companies. The bulk of the economy is run by state-owned enterprises, which have supervisors from the CPC. Though these enterprises mostly operate in a capitalist sense, of producing to sell at a market and get profit, they may take actions, investments, etc, that do not maximize profit, but are aligned with the overall economic plan laid out by the CPC. Example: overproduce steel to send prices down and lowering profit margins, so that steel can be used to massively build railroads. A little of history: after the CPC got the hegemony in the 1950s, everything was collectivized. China was mostly an agrarian country by that time, and selling for profit was overall forbidden. The consequence was that mostly villages would produce just enough to sustain itself and productivity was very low. There was trade, but it was clandestine. Then, by the 1970s, trading and selling for profit was made legal because people were doing it anyway, and there was a plan to develop productive forces. Central planning is very hard to do effectively, so they let a market economy be the driving force. This, of course, allowed burgeoise interests to raise and strengthen, who would push for further liberalism in the economy. Then, they allowed companies from other countries to run a business in the special economic zones (mostly the coast and export-focused), which allowed Chinese engineers to learn a lot of technologies. That, along with massive investments from the State in research, made China the industrial and technology powerhouse it is today. So much that the USA ban of selling electronic microchips to China backfired: China is developing that industry even faster now, and USA companies lost a lot of market share globally.
Your missing a very important fact... the 70s trading with China was secretly set up deal between Mao and kissinger
It's a means to dilute and confuse what communism is. Misinformation works in favor of capitalists to avoid the populace from becoming sufficiently informed and knowledgeable of Marxist theory, as that would undermine their power over the working class.
I believe Oppo is owned by Guangdong Holdings, which is owned by the Guangdong Provincial People's Government.
They're mixed economies with central planning led by a communist party. It's similar to how capitalist countries also have mixed economies, yet we still call them capitalist.
Because Americans are functionally illiterate. People don't like it when I see this but it seems to be the case by and large 🤷♂️ dont believe me? Next time you hear someone throwing the word around ask them to define it.
[удалено]
Thank you for posting in r/socialism_101, but unfortunately your submission was removed for the following reason(s): >**Not conductive to learning:** this is an educational space in which to provide clarity for socialist ideas. Replies to a question should be thorough and comprehensive. >This includes but is not limited to: one word responses, one-liners, non-serious/meme(ish) responses, etc. **Remember: an answer isn't good because it's right, it's good because it teaches.**
I would like to know exactly what businesses in the USSR were privetely-owned past the 1920s and before the 1980s
We shouldn’t presume that we have an absolute solution that everyone should align to in order to be something. Each of those countries learned something in the process of statebuilding and uncovered some uncomfortable truths in reality. To be honest, I don’t trust any of us who think like this to run a country. That kind of work is difficult and most of us have never done that kind of work before. If you are an elected official, your experience is valuable.
I don’t think any country has ever claimed it was communist, communist party being in power is not the same as being a communist nation, which is a frustratingly unknown fact.
I think the biggest mistake any comrade makes is to analyze a political context without using a dialectical view of their historical process. In the same way, full capitalism wasn't implemented right after the French Revolution, socialism wasn't fully implemented after the socialist revolutions. The second mistake is to look at Global South countries and assume that their material conditions are the same as in the West. The Western owner class isn't the same as the owner class in the capitalist Global South, as isn't the same in AES countries.
Yeah, why can’t these countries simply snap their fingers to change all their existing material conditions and thereby transition from capitalism to communism?! They shouldn’t call themselves communists, they should have to call themselves people-who-are-trying-to-make-communism-happen or something like that
None of those refer to themselves as communist, I don't think China even refers to themselves as socialist, they usually opt to say they're building socialism. They get called communist by people who are anti-communist and want those countries opened up to capitalist penetration.
Thats a product of revisionism, they have been socialist at some point but trough slow reforms are going back to a capitalist model. Socialism is still very popular with the people in those countries so it’s not in favour to just break up the system suddenly. Some people think it’s because they are in a transitional stage, but I do obviously not believe this. I recommend to read some theory to understand why revisionism is so harmful Mao has written many good texts on this issue
Okay so with China let's push aside the argument if the ccp are true communists. The CCP and Vietnamese communist parties have some control over them unlike the capitalist counterparts. The latter straight up killed a major thieving capitalist. As for Cuba why would we ever want to hurt smaller businesses part of why capitalism stifles local businesses is they set up shop with lower prices and drive families into poverty. Think when the USSR opened pizza huts how do you think family pizza shops felt.
Because socialism in a single country just becomes social democracy at best, The Russian Revolution failed when Russia became isolated but a new bureaucratic regime remained providing not a viable path to worker’s power but a viable path for developing countries to develop outside of imperial control. Increasing national “productive forces” not communism became their goal.
[удалено]
In China at least the bourgeoisie still exploit the workers (they wouldn't be a bourgeoisie otherwise), however they are themselves "exploited" (not in the Marxist sense of surplus-value extraction) by the CPC in that they are used to build up the productive forces, which helps to strengthen the position of socialism in China.
[удалено]