Communist state... Oxymoron?

[miltonwasfried...man]

Why have supposed 'communist' goverments (The former USSR, China, Cuba, etc) not tranformed into classless and stateless countries? Is the process on going or are they not true to the marxist ideals? Is the dream of marxist world an achievable goal or must there be compromise as we have and are currently witnessing?

Thanks.

[The Man]

Why have supposed 'communist' goverments (The former USSR, China, Cuba, etc) not tranformed into classless and stateless countries? Is the process on going or are they not true to the marxist ideals? Is the dream of marxist world an achievable goal or must there be compromise as we have and are currently witnessing?

Thanks.
They served as temporary countries until a worldwide revolution.. Marx never believed in 'Communism in one country', because it can't exist.. Communism can only work if there are no countries, just an International Communist Republic of Earth.

You can't have a classless, stateless country.

[dernier combat]

Why have supposed 'communist' goverments (The former USSR, China, Cuba, etc) not tranformed into classless and stateless countries?
From their inception until their demise (except Cuba, China, DPRK, Viet Nam and any other holdouts I missed of the bureaucratic coordinatorist system, of which most are in the middle of a transformation in to capitalism), they were class societies and that reality would not change until the material conditions which kept eastern bloc, etc. societies divided in to classes were abolished for good. In the case of Russia, a genuine proletarian revolution transformed in to a revolution of a coordinator class (itself created during the process described below) by way of the Bolsheviks reorganizing production to be under their control in the munitions factories among others during the civil war for wartime production, and this trend was gradually adopted within all sectors of the Russian economy. The situations in China and Cuba involved a lesser degree of working class struggle, and weren't initiated by any significantly large and widespread - almost spontaneous - working class rebellion.

[Ocean Seal]

Why have supposed 'communist' goverments (The former USSR, China, Cuba, etc) not tranformed into classless and stateless countries? Is the process on going or are they not true to the marxist ideals? Is the dream of marxist world an achievable goal or must there be compromise as we have and are currently witnessing?

Thanks.
They were socialist and the transition will take quite a bit of time especially with a very hostile imperial bourgeoisie. Also the USSR does not exist anymore, China is no longer socialist, and Cuba is a small island nation in which it is a miracle that socialism survives (to some extent) so communism is out of the question. You won't see communism arriving until the vast majority of the world's countries are socialist.

[Savage]

Marx never believed in 'Communism in one country'

And of course, Marx considered there to be no difference between a socialist society and a communist society, I believe the only time he separated the two was to refer to communism as the proletarian movement against capitalism and socialism as the product of this movement, but perhaps I am wrong on this.

[Gorilla]

And of course, Marx considered there to be no difference between a socialist society and a communist society, I believe the only time he separated the two was to refer to communism as the proletarian movement against capitalism and socialism as the product of this movement, but perhaps I am wrong on this.

You're not. Socialism referring to the intermediary stage is Second International-speak, which Leninists have picked up. Dictatorship of the proletariat was a name that Marx used (only once or twice) for the political transitionary entity that would lead to communism, but he didn't allow for any distinct category of economic relations in between capitalism and socialism/communism.

[Gorilla]

Is the process on going or are they not true to the marxist ideals?

All societies are in a transition from capitalism to communism. Sometimes there is a government that consciously works to accelerate the process, and they have had mixed success. So far every communist-party government has taken power in a majority peasant society. They have invariably succeeded in carrying out radical land reform and abolishing the privileges of landowning classes. They had also succeeded in building large-scale nationalized industries and comprehensive welfare states - on a greater scale than attempted by social democrats in Western Europe - although those have tended to be dismantled under pressure from international finance, just as the ones in the West have.

It's not a matter of ideals and being true to them. We are historical materialists.


Is the dream of marxist world an achievable goal or must there be compromise as we have and are currently witnessing?

The abolition of feudalism looked like a far-off goal in 1492, even though the systemic crisis of it was already apparent and the conditions of its abolition were well along the way to being constructed. Along the way there was a lot of cruddy compromising and backsliding.

[Xanaphia]

Is the dream of marxist world an achievable goal or must there be compromise as we have and are currently witnessing?



Chances are, it will take some sort of major event, positive or negative, in order for man to change his ways enough for communism to take place on a global level. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying.

[comrade_cyanide444]

A country can be anything from a simple boundary to a bureaucracy.

[Misanthrope]

Rome wasn't built in a day, a fully functioning worker run society will not be either. Especially when the whole world is capitalist.