Which country do you think will be the next socialist Republic?

[Lei Feng]

I'm curious about what you guys think.

North Korea(under Kim Jong-Il and especailly under that spoiled brat Kim Jong Un) seems to be going down the toilet.

I don't know much about whats going on in venezuela :confused:

China is virtually another source of cheap labour for the imperialists run by a fake "Communist" Party that is(to paraphrase Mao) "Revolutionary in word, and not in action." :( Comrade Mao would be rolling in his grave(er, coffin).

Cuba seems to be the last bastion on Socialism left in the world and with Fidel getting on in years and the various market reforms, Cuba seems to be on the road China was on in the 70s. Lets just hope Raul doesn't become the Cuban Deng Xiaoping.

Well yeah, tell me what you guys think.

[Le Socialiste]

The working-class, rural workers/peasantry, and the military rank-and-file were never in charge of their respective industries/services in any of those countries. Democratic control of the economy and state never entered into the public's hands, thus making the nations listed state capitalist (at the very least). Our immediate aim shouldn't be the establishment of the next 'socialist republic', but the organization and preparation of the working-class into a unified force.

But to somewhat answer your question, I think Greece is on the brink of popular unrest and potentially revolutionary activity. India might be one to watch as well. It's not entirely possible to determine what form a revolution will take, but we can try to estimate where it might happen and when.

[Ned Kelly]

Hellenic people's republic..

[ВАЛТЕР]

Yeah, Greece seems on the brink of revolution. However, given the fact that it is a NATO and EU state. I don't think that the forces that be will simply allow a revolution to take place. At least not without a serious fight, I think that it an result in a war, where EU and NATO troops try to keep the people they want in power.

[tachosomoza]

Please, don't say the United States.

[Veovis]

Please, don't say the United States.

United Workers' States of America? :cool:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/picture.php?albumid=1016&pictureid=8608

[rednordman]

No one is even close to administering anything close to even a leftwing democracy, but i would say that Greece is the nearest. But that depends on weather it has a strong communist party. And preferably one who isn't afraid to get shot at, and willing to fight back like for like.

Also if the party is either Trotskyist, Left-wing communist or an anarchist movement, than they have virtually no chance either. This is mainly because survival would probably depend of making friends with a superpower who they hate such as China or Russia and having to contradict themselves (which they seem very conscious about).

I would love to think that it would be possible to achieve socialism via peaceful means and democratically but right now (emphasis on 'right now') I don't think its possible. Even if the European Union collapses.

[Strannik]

My personal opinion:

Republic is at best just a temporary tool for international working class. It can't be a "platform" on which you build socialism; it is besieged and starved to death or simply crushed. Once the international class identity is gone, no republic can build a socialism by itself. The smaller it is, the less has the result to do with socialism.

[Rooster]

North Korea(under Kim Jong-Il and especailly under that spoiled brat Kim Jong Un) seems to be going down the toilet.

I have no idea how you can say that Kim Jong Un is worse considering that he's only been the head of state for... what? A month or two? Has there been any massive change since then or something? Do you have your ear on the ground in North Korea? :confused:

[GoddessCleoLover]

People are angry at the austerity program in Greece, but is there any evidence that things are reaching critical mass and that a revolution is likely to occur?

[Q]

Why isn't this in Chit-Chat?

Also, long live the peoples republic of soviet Limburg!

[piet11111]

The country that most directly poses the question of socialism or barbarism is Greece where living conditions are being gutted to the point where the working class faces collective ruin if they don't start a revolution.

[GoddessCleoLover]

What is the ingredient necessary for Greek workers to make the leap from one-day protest actions to a direct revolutionary move against the bourgeois state?

[Q]

For those arguing that a Greek workers state is possible or necessary: Please mind your history.

A workers revolution isolated in Greece would lead to complete disaster as the country would be isolated in no time, leading to extreme poverty, police state measures and probably capitalist counterrevolution after a short amount of time.

What we need is a European revolution, at the very least.

[Ocean Seal]

Guys it probably won't be one country which goes socialist first. It will be at least half a dozen which achieve socialism within the first five years. Unless of course a quite large and stable country achieves socialism which seems even more unlikely.

[gorillafuck]

I think the answer is obvious

zwDvF0NtgdU

[GoddessCleoLover]

Wouldn't it by definition be unlikely that s a stable country would become a socialist republic?

[runequester]

Wouldn't it by definition be unlikely that s a stable country would become a socialist republic?

Quite unlikely. Not impossible, but quite unlikely.

[Lei Feng]

"I have no idea how you can say that Kim Jong Un is worse considering that he's only been the head of state for... what? A month or two? Has there been any massive change since then or something? Do you have your ear on the ground in North Korea? :confused:"

To answer that question, Kim Jong Un is spoiled, inexperienced, and (in my opinion) not fit to run the DPRK. He got his education at a prestigious school in switzerland and is a fan of western culture/sports. He lives a lavish lifestyle far beyond the standard of most North Koreans. He lives like a capitalist. He is a bloody revisionist as far I can tell. He wouldn't know Communism(actual Marxism Leninism, not his grandfather's "Juche" theory) if it slapped him across his face. Unless he brings a decent amount of positive changes to the DPRK and/or renounces the ultra-nationalist tendencies of Juche in favour of true Marxism-Leninism, I'm going to consider him a revisionist.

[Ostrinski]

None. The republican nation-state structure is perpetuated by capitalist relations. A socialist revolution in any given country would negate the existence of that country, not change the political content of the country. Nation states develop in the midst of socialist revolutions as a reflection of the material conditions of isolation.


For those arguing that a Greek workers state is possible or necessary: Please mind your history.

A workers revolution isolated in Greece would lead to complete disaster as the country would be isolated in no time, leading to extreme poverty, police state measures and probably capitalist counterrevolution after a short amount of time.

What we need is a European revolution, at the very least.Absolutely correct, if the Greek revolutions stagnates and doesn't transcend a national uprising, it has already begun the process of a) harsh authoritarianization, scarcity of resources, rationization of basic necessities, all in the name of defending what was gained or b) adapting to the global market and opening its doors to foreign investment. A socialist revolution dies when it loses its momentum, this we should never forget.

[Ostrinski]

To answer that question, Kim Jong Un is spoiled, inexperienced, and (in my opinion) not fit to run the DPRK. He got his education at a prestigious school in switzerland and is a fan of western culture/sports. He lives a lavish lifestyle far beyond the standard of most North Koreans. He lives like a capitalist. He is a bloody revisionist as far I can tell. He wouldn't know Communism(actual Marxism Leninism, not his grandfather's "Juche" theory) if it slapped him across his face. Unless he brings a decent amount of positive changes to the DPRK and/or renounces the ultra-nationalist tendencies of Juche in favour of true Marxism-Leninism, I'm going to consider him a revisionist.In all honesty, none of this is limited to Un, but characterizes the other two as well.

[Comrade Auldnik]

Russia. Or Japan. It's always the one you least suspect.

[CommunityBeliever]

India. The nalaxite uprising is going strong and it may someday succeed. I don't think there will be a successful revolution in a Western country anytime soon.

[Lei Feng]

"India. The nalaxite uprising is going strong and it may someday succeed. I don't think there will be a successful revolution in a Western country anytime soon."

I think so too. India seems like a breeding ground for revolution at this point, especially up in the northern parts. And I also agree with your ideas about western nations. Im not "Third World-ist" but i do acknowledge that revolution is more likely to occur in impovrished nations(third world) where class divisions are extrememly noticeable. It is possible to conduct revolution in the western nations. It is just harder to get through to the Western Proletariat due to belief in false "freedom", voting rights, and tons of anti-communist propaganda. But, All in all, I think India could become a model socialist nation if revolution succeeds there.

[Imposter Marxist]

its hard to tell, becuase all the places with 'revolutionaries' are just places full of thugs with guns, selling drugs, enslaving women, and attempting to construct State capitalism.

you guys should read what Tony Cliff has said on the issue

[m1omfg]

Are you a racist western liberal or a troll? Seems like a troll because this degree of whining about EVIL STATE CAPITALISM and Tony Cliff worship is not a normal Trotskyist behavior. I am not a Trotskyist, but those folks are not wacko like this.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

How can a nation-state become Socialist?:confused:

[ellipsis]

Vermont.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Any RevLefters up in Vermont ready to form the first Soviet?

[Aspiring Humanist]

Is the Vermont secession movement legitimate and at all influential? I rarely hear anything about it and with the way American politics are going right now it seems like a secession would be met with an invasion, at the very least crippling economic sanctions and an arms blockade, hope I'm wrong though, might be going to a college in Vermont

Realistically though I think a middle eastern country will declare socialism after all the protests are done and whatever regime is overthrown

[GoddessCleoLover]

Middle East seems to be going in the direction of the Muslim Brotherhood, not socialism.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Nepal, Greece or Venezuela

[andyx1205]

What happened to real Marxists? A lot of people here have thrown Karl Marx out the window.

We don't need Socialist Republics, we don't need Socialism in one country, we need WORLDWIDE socialist revolution, and the best place for such a revolution to take place is in the developed West (imagine a revolution in Europe starting from Greece and Spain into Western Europe as austerity measures and capitalism's inability to deal with rising problems such as the environmental crisis result in massive grassroots movements in Western Europe).

In India, the Naxalites should NOT take over, this will be bad for India. What the Naxalites are doing, however, is struggle for legitiimate concerns, such as protection of tribal areas against neoliberal policies of expansion and abuse of resources in those tribal areas. Give India time to develop, give it time.

Neoliberalism in India is greatly impacting many Indians, indeed this is a fact, large segments of the population are getting hit HARD.

BUT...poverty has decreased since the reforms in the 1980s.

From wiki:

"After the liberalization process and moving away from the socialist model, India is adding 60 to 70 million people to its middle class every year. Analysts such as the founder of "Forecasting International", Marvin J. Cetron writes that an estimated 390 million Indians now belong to the middle class; one-third of them have emerged from poverty in the last ten years. At the current rate of growth, a majority of Indians will be middle-class by 2025. Literacy rates have risen from 52 percent to 65 percent during the initial decade of liberalization (1991–2001)."

By 2025, the majority of Indians will belong to the middle class.

What India needs is a stronger Welfare State, social democracy, mixed-capitalist economy, so it can develop, and as the majority of Indians become members of the middle class, as new social interests arise, perhaps then they can rise, in the Marxist sense, with a possible dictatorship of the proletariat.

Look, history is nasty. It takes time, yes, unlike many idealists on this forum (I'm new here, I barely post here but I do follow discussions and I respect many posters here), "development" is nasty but it is a process. Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize economist, noted that more people died in India in every 8 years from the years studied (I forgot the years, I think late 40s to the 60s or something) than under Mao's worse years of shame (Great Leap Forward, twenty, maybe thirty...or more million died), that means, every 8 years the coffin in India got filled with as much as under Mao's 1958-61). Perhaps around, according to Sen, there was an excess of a hundred million deaths in Capitalist Democratic India in comparison to Maoist China (which had increasing life expectancy due to social services).

My point is that India will go through a nasty process of capitalism but this process is important and hopefully this process can be made less brutal with social-democratic capitalist policies. India does NOT need a Maoist revolution that will result in socialism-in-one-country.

It's very likely actually for large-scale revolts to occur in large countries like India and China in the future, because the middle class will grow and will have their own grievances against the national bourgeoise, and the peasants/lower classes that have been left out of the "development process" will have concerns as well (hence the last thing we need is a civil war between middle class and peasants).

Conditions for revolution in the Marxist sense is ready in the West and has been for a long time, Marx thought it was going to happen during his time, but it didn't. Perhaps chances for revolution in the West will increase as conditions in the West deteriorate due to Capitalism's failure to combat the environmental crisis (and as I've said before, the environmental crisis is intrinsically connected with social justice).

At the same time, places like India and China and Brazil may also become closer and closer or rather more ripe for revolution, that is, revolution in the Marxist sense.

We don't need another Soviet Union hell-hole bureaucratic tyranny. We need real socialism, and if you ask me what I mean by real socialism, the real revolution that establishes socialism, go read Karl Marx.

In a sense, I am sounding like Georgi Plekhanov, but that is because as he was, I am also more authentically Marxist than Leninist revisionists. Plekhanov insisted that Russia had to pass the Capitalist phase before entering (through revolution) the Socialist stage. He was correct. Lets face the facts. The middle class in China and India have been greatly growing and the economy has been greatly growing ever since they enacted their neoliberal reforms and opened up the economy. This means that these neoliberal reforms in those countries are actually making this countries closer to the conditions required for a real Marxist revolution that will bring Socialism (and as mentioned, to curb the excesses of capitalism, that is, neoliberalism, I recommend social democratic reforms). Unfortunately we have to, as Marxists, support capitalist development in these countries, though I see no reason why any Marxist should support capitalism in the already developed West which is already ready, economically, for a Socialist revolution (what it lacks hence is not anything on economic grounds but rather class consciousness).

Oh dear if just we could resurrect Karl Marx so he can tell the idealists what he told the idealists of his day, "if you're a Marxist, I'm not a Marxist."

Back to the question.

Instead of asking which country will be the next Socialist Republic, a better question is "which country will lead the Socialist revolution?" or rather "which country will ignite the Socialist revolution?"

Kudos, comrades.