A Few Questions

[OmniaCommunia]

Hello everyone! I'd like to ask a few questions relating to Communism, its history, and the nations who say they employ it.

1. There have, in the course of history, been quite a few nations who are by many believed to be Communist, such as the USSR, China, and Cuba. But doesn't this seem a bit contradictory? A lot of these nations seem to have most things ran by the State. If these countries have healthcare, education, utilities, and most other things ran by the State, doesn't this contradict the whole definition of Communism in the first place- a stateless, classless society without money or a market?

2. According to the school systems here in America, Communism is defined as "an economic system in which the State controls everything". Is this not precisely the opposite of how it works? I feel like education here mixes in a lot of (not quite) subtle Rightist propaganda, especially in that they seem to amalgamate the concepts of Totalitarianism, Socialism and Communism into one big concept that truly doesn't give justice to any of the three ideas. :glare:

Year after year, I remember teachers telling us how "It doesn't work! It doesn't work! It's bad!", but in reality, I don't think they understand what it is at all. If there's one thing I can say, it sure as hell would lead to a much brighter future than being enslaved by a Capitalist system.

3. If a lot of countries are, at least by some people, considered to be Communist without actually meeting the true definition of it, has there ever been a country or society which actually has come close to meeting the definition?

Thanks in advance for answering!

[Redistribute the Rep]

1. China and the USSR were ruled by revolutionary vanguard parties. Basically, these ruling parties are/were supposed to be manifestations of proletarian political power that protect revolutionary interests against reactionary elements. Vanguardists argue that in these semi-feudal states, like Tsarist Russia, it would be impossible to immediately implement socialism because the proletarian revolution will need to be protected from counterrevolution. So no, they're not examples of communism, in the sense of a stateless and classless society, but we can call them Communist (with a capital C) with the understanding that they were run by Communist parties that at the very least nominally supported eventually abolishing the state and classes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism

2. Pretty much.

3. That would depend on whom you ask. For example, anarcho-communists might argue that the Ukrainian Free Territory in 1917 or Revolutionary Catalonia in the 30s were examples of socialism, but other tendencies may disagree depending on how they define the word. George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia would be a good book to check out if you're interested in what Spain looked like under socialism, by the way.

[tuwix]

Hello everyone! I'd like to ask a few questions relating to Communism, its history, and the nations who say they employ it.

1. There have, in the course of history, been quite a few nations who are by many believed to be Communist, such as the USSR, China, and Cuba. But doesn't this seem a bit contradictory? A lot of these nations seem to have most things ran by the State. If these countries have healthcare, education, utilities, and most other things ran by the State, doesn't this contradict the whole definition of Communism in the first place- a stateless, classless society without money or a market?


First of all, as a former citizen of the country called by Western bourgeois propaganda 'communist', I must admit almost all society never believed we're any communist country during the period of so-called 'communism'. And yes, Western bourgeois propaganda has distorted meaning of term communism. The term 'communism' that is used by media has nothing to do with the concept of communism.



2. According to the school systems here in America, Communism is defined as "an economic system in which the State controls everything". Is this not precisely the opposite of how it works?

Yes. Pretty much opposite.



3. If a lot of countries are, at least by some people, considered to be Communist without actually meeting the true definition of it, has there ever been a country or society which actually has come close to meeting the definition?



Yes. there are. There is something called a primitive communism that is natural state where humanity was born. There is a short movie presenting a present society living this way (to see English subtitles, you should click at 'CC' if they don't emerge automatically)

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Besides there are some societies in stage of advanced communism. Some kibbutz in Israel, for example. There are people who can live decades without money an private property.

[AnaRchic]

1. There have, in the course of history, been quite a few nations who are by many believed to be Communist, such as the USSR, China, and Cuba. But doesn't this seem a bit contradictory? A lot of these nations seem to have most things ran by the State. If these countries have healthcare (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#), education, utilities, and most other things ran by the State, doesn't this contradict the whole definition of Communism in the first place- a stateless, classless society without money or a market?
Russia was the start of all of this, these other states were simply modeled on Stalin's USSR. Beginning almost immediately under Lenin, the self-managed democracy of the workers, represented in the soviets, was increasingly stifled and suppressed in favor of Bolshevik party dictatorship, until these very soviets became mere rubber stamp bodies. On top of that, factions in the Bolshevik party were banned, effectively making Lenin, and soon after Stalin, defacto dictator of Russia.

These Authoritarian Marxists were convinced that they had the absolute infallible truth and that they were the incarnate expression of the working classes true interests, so following from this any and all resistance to them must be counter-revolutionary; even when it was the workers themselves who fought back against their oppression. Lenin's Marxism was upheld with religious conviction, and his vanguard theory in combination with this pseudo-religious fervor paved the way for the totalitarian monstrosity that the USSR became.

And yes, communism is a classless, stateless society where the means of production/distribution are the common property of all humanity and economic activity exists to satisfy the needs and desires of all, without money. Such a society would be organized from the bottom up by cooperative free associations.

The closest thing I can think of to real communism that actually existed was revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. That is definitely a subject worth looking into.

[AmilcarCabral]

You know books and magazines are wrong, I used to follow a diet high in carbohydrates thinking that this way of eating was good to lose weight. And I couldn't lose weight for decades. And that's the same thing with politics, history, and many other sciences. Even laws, laws are really written by people, laws are not naturally. Many things in this world are a big lie. So the books that say that communism is a system in which the state owns all corporations and businesses is very wrong, because communism is supposed to be an anarchist system. That's like saying that vegetarianism is a diet of eating meat


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Hello everyone! I'd like to ask a few questions relating to Communism, its history, and the nations who say they employ it.

1. There have, in the course of history, been quite a few nations who are by many believed to be Communist, such as the USSR, China, and Cuba. But doesn't this seem a bit contradictory? A lot of these nations seem to have most things ran by the State. If these countries have healthcare, education, utilities, and most other things ran by the State, doesn't this contradict the whole definition of Communism in the first place- a stateless, classless society without money or a market?

2. According to the school systems here in America, Communism is defined as "an economic system in which the State controls everything". Is this not precisely the opposite of how it works? I feel like education here mixes in a lot of (not quite) subtle Rightist propaganda, especially in that they seem to amalgamate the concepts of Totalitarianism, Socialism and Communism into one big concept that truly doesn't give justice to any of the three ideas. :glare:

Year after year, I remember teachers telling us how "It doesn't work! It doesn't work! It's bad!", but in reality, I don't think they understand what it is at all. If there's one thing I can say, it sure as hell would lead to a much brighter future than being enslaved by a Capitalist system.

3. If a lot of countries are, at least by some people, considered to be Communist without actually meeting the true definition of it, has there ever been a country or society which actually has come close to meeting the definition?

Thanks in advance for answering!