Communism In The Past - Have any countries ever been even va

[CubanFox]

Well, have they?

Have any countries been at all communist?

I'm including places like Saxony that were communist for like a year.

[Emmanual Goldstein]

Interesting question. I suppose we should include the time honored leftist answers of the Paris Commune and Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Included with those we might add Grenada or Nicaragua during their own respective revolutionary situations.

However, a more important consideration would be that in times of crisis, vast underground economies can appear that show vaugely communistic principles. From the "unemployment councils" in America during the Great Depression to the social network established by the National Liberation Front of Vietnam in their 30 year independance struggle, these people's economies have risen time and time again.

[Saint-Just]

There are enough countries that have been so absoultely communist that I can't be bothered to name them all, a few: PRC, USSR, Cuba, DPRK, GDR, Albania etc.

Emmanual Goldstein, Orwell wasn't a Marixst. In addition, this character was supposedly meant to reflect Leon Trotsky, I do not imagine Trotsky would quite endorse your avatar. He may to some extent, but I do not think it is much to do with him. He was fairly brutal and led a large army.

CubanFox, since you call yourself that, surely you would say Cuba was a communist country.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

CM how did you get the idea that EG claims Orwell to be a marxist?

BTW Emmanuel Goldstien cool name. Too bad EG was a figure made up to generate hate and energy from the people.

[CubanFox]

Never heard much about the Eastern Bloc aside from Romania. How well did they fare during the "communist" period? I've heard some nice things about Hoxha's Albania...

[malachi151]

Quote: from Chairman Mao on 11:02 pm on June 14, 2003
There are enough countries that have been so absoultely communist that I can't be bothered to name them all, a few: PRC, USSR, Cuba, DPRK, GDR, Albania etc.

Emmanual Goldstein, Orwell wasn't a Marixst. In addition, this character was supposedly meant to reflect Leon Trotsky, I do not imagine Trotsky would quite endorse your avatar. He may to some extent, but I do not think it is much to do with him. He was fairly brutal and led a large army.

CubanFox, since you call yourself that, surely you would say Cuba was a communist country.


I don't consider any country that was not democratic to have been Communist. Without Democracy you don't have Communism.

[Nobody]

Chairman Mao, none of the countries you gave were communist. The closes would have been Cuba, which is socialist, but DPRK is now a monarchy with a Mandate from Heaven (rainbows around the sun anyone?). The USSR stopped having any vestiages of being communist when Stalin came to power, destroying Lenin's dream of pure communism. PRC is closer to being Facist then communist. If they were so communist, they why are they trying to turn Shanghi (spelling) into the next Hong Kong. HK is so capitailistic that is not fun, being a big banking hub and what not. In addition to trying to mimic the Capitailist system, but staterun manner, how are they any better then U$. They remind me of the Italian econmy under Musolli. I need to do more research into Albania. the closes to a communst society we have ever gotten was the anarchists control of Lisbon in the thirties, the Paris Commue, or that little island of 300 inhabants in the Cribbiean.

[Emmanual Goldstein]

Lev, from the little I've read about Albania they were somewhat similar to the DPRK. For anything to be communist from my perpsective, it would have to include dempcratic control over the economy and democratic control over the workplace. If we accept that definition, the places that the Chairman mentioned in his post were not communist.

Thank you, CCCP, for pointing out that I never asserted that Orwell was a Marxist, even though I should probably point out that he wrote an entire book about fighting in a Marxist militia in Spain. In the Chairman's narrow view, I suppose something has to fit his narrow, authoritarian vision of Marxism in order to be good.

[Nobody]

In my opinion a communist society should be one party, becasue the people are happy and don't see a better alternative. If you have to use the army to crack down on dissedents then you are a dictarship of the Party, not of the working class.

[Communist Superhero]

"here are enough countries that have been so absoultely communist that I can't be bothered to name them all, a few: PRC, USSR, Cuba, DPRK, GDR, Albania etc. "

This is an absurd statement and one that you should re-evaluate.

I am not sure exactly what school of thought you assign yourself with, but it surely is not communism.

Communism is a beautiful ideology. It resembles logic out of which grows freedom and the passion for life. It is reality, where every human enjoys the fruits of their labour, and lives side by side in peace and friendship. "Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise." - Leon Trotsky. These are not principles that we as Communists can compromise on, these are principles that should be burnt into our minds.

Communism is a stateless society based on common responsiblity not on state oppression "While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State" - Lenin.

Communism can only be won through an international struggle, not through isolated nations!

In order to make this a reality, the working class must be conscious, they must awake from this day dream and realise their material significance in society. Do you think that the workers in North Korea (it is an outrage to call it the Democratic Peoples Republic) are conscious of their material significance. Do you believe that they live in Freedom and enjoy the fruits of their labour. They live in fear of oppression, they have no food to eat. the government expropriates land from peasents and hands it over to army generals and government officials. There is no common responsibility, there is state control, with a state apparatus to suppress the workers and coerce them into hailing some meglamaniac who thinks he is God.

This my friend, is far from Communism.

in 1940, while Hitler in the west of poland was murdering poles etc, Stalin was enslaving them in the East. Women and children forced to work as slaves in Russia. Are these ideals which Marx or Lenin spoke off? I think not. The mass purges of the thirties, the suppression of any kind of opposition. Stalin rubbed shoulders wiht Roosavelt and Churchil, and carved up Europe with the same Nationalistic zealousness as Hitler. Stalin was a treator to Communism, and demonstrated as much when he ordered an ice pick to be burried into Trotskys head.

The PRC which has just signed up to the World Trade Organization which is partly responisble for the chaos in Argentina, where the police routinly beat and murder members of the working class who protest because they have no food are no better then any bourgois nation. Let us remember Tiannaman Square 1989.

And with all this in mind, all three of those countries have or had vast armies and promote nuclear weapons, of which killed millions of japense workers in 1945. These are not ideals harboured by communists, they are haboured by evil and cruel men who use communism not as a force for the emanciptaion of the working class, but for the suppression of it. These countries do not believe in the consciousness of the workers, but the subornitation of them to the state.

Every day I have to fight and argue with people to try and explain that these countries where not communist, that Communism is an ideology which means to elevate the oppressed from their exploitation, yet there are treators like you who spin the propoganda and give support to the oppressors and exploiters. You make a mockery of mine and my comrades efforts to build a revolution.

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!"

[Pete]

#Moderation Mode

About the past.

Moved here (http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/topic.pl?forum=26&topic=411)

[Pete]

I don't consider any country that was not democratic to have been Communist. Without Democracy you don't have Communism.

Are you using democracy in the bourgeoisie sense? If you are then you are wrong. You can never have communism under any form of borgeoisie democracy. Places like Cuba and the CCCP had their own forms of democracy, but of course the West always has propaganda aplenty for its communist nieghbours, whether true or not. Most of the time they use highly emotive words like Freedom and Democracy to means things which they definitly are not.

Cuba is probaly more free and democratic than America is. I think I read some articles from Chairman Mao on this.

Put of course we must remember that there is no such thing as a communist state. Communism is a global classless society. We have seen Socialist states. The dictatorship of the proletariat. So far the only pratical method that has existed to start the impletementation process has been Leninism, but in Venezuala a new approach is being tried. The ideology is always evolving, but the core stays the same.

it would have to include dempcratic control over the economy and democratic control over the workplace

I would just like to refer you to my above writing :) If you mean 'democracy' as in something like any given Western nation I ask you to think again about the system we live in, but if you mean a more anarchist democracy then ignore what I just said ^_^

Communism can only be won through an international struggle, not through isolated nations!

Individual states will turn socialist and then unite. The workers are divided more on national lines than on class lines, so first they need to see these divisions as the evil they are. And then the third world needs to rise up. The first will never seek change while they are raping the third.

Do you believe that they live in Freedom and enjoy the fruits of their labour

This sounds like American propaganda (take no offense I had the urge to mention this)

the government expropriates land from peasents and hands it over to army generals and government officials.

I would like proof of this.

Stalin was a treator to Communism, and demonstrated as much when he ordered an ice pick to be burried into Trotskys head.

Incorrect. Trots deserved what he had coming. Who lived in palaces after the revolution? Stalin saved communism and the CCCP only fell because of revisionists like Khrushchev and Gorbachev.

Stalin rubbed shoulders wiht Roosavelt and Churchil

To fight against a common enemy. Remember history, the ends, here, justify the means.

Women and children forced to work as slaves in Russia.

Western propaganda.

The PRC which has just signed up to the World Trade Organization

He said WAS. At Tiamen square people where holding Mao's picture.

all three of those countries have or had vast armies and promote nuclear weapons

To defend them selves against capitalist agression. You cannot let ideals get int he way of praticallity. Do you think America would have let China, the CCCP, or N. Korea keep going down their ideological tracks? If it wasnt for revisionism in the CCCP and China they would still be socialist today, only because they where able to stand up against American agression. Remember NATO? The Warsaw pact was signed after America started to rearm west Germany.

And I am not even a Marxist-Leninist...just wait until Cassius finds this. CS by saying some one is not socialist instead of fighting the propaganda you are reinforcing these peoples beliefs that Stalin really did kill tens of millions of people.

[Silent Eye]

Chairman Mao, how can you call any of the above nations "communist." I'd disagree and say they are socialist. If they were communist, they would be in better shape than any western nation. But, they are not. Cuba is strangled by embargo, the DPRK is isolated, China is capitalistic, and the USSR, well, it fell.

how can this be called communism??

[Saint-Just]

Quote: from Emmanual Goldstein on 9:49 am on June 15, 2003
Lev, from the little I've read about Albania they were somewhat similar to the DPRK. For anything to be communist from my perpsective, it would have to include dempcratic control over the economy and democratic control over the workplace. If we accept that definition, the places that the Chairman mentioned in his post were not communist.

Thank you, CCCP, for pointing out that I never asserted that Orwell was a Marxist, even though I should probably point out that he wrote an entire book about fighting in a Marxist militia in Spain. In the Chairman's narrow view, I suppose something has to fit his narrow, authoritarian vision of Marxism in order to be good.


Your accusing me of having a narrow view of Marxism! I accept virtually every country in history that has claimed to be communist as genuinly being communist.



'Thank you, CCCP, for pointing out that I never asserted that Orwell was a Marxist' EM

Actually EM I think you will find that I asserted Orwell was not a Marxist well before CCCP, who said this? Yes, I did:

'Emmanual Goldstein, Orwell wasn't a Marixst'

So CCCP, and EM, what are you going on about, if I had actually suggested Orwell was a Marxist I would like you to ignore all future comments from me, because I'd have to be extremely ignorant to suggest such a thing.

Anyway, Crazy Pete objectively criticised most of the other comments here quite well... I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I have argued all of these things countless times, so has Cassius Clay as Crazy Pete pointed out.

[Cassius Clay]

'Just wait till Cassius sees this'

LOL, to be honest though Crazypete I cant be bothered anymore. Believe it or not I want to debate something other than Joe Stalin, which is what I tend to do at other boards.

Anyway no nation was ever 'Communist' two nations in my mind spring up when talking about constructing Socialism. USSR and Albania, although 1930's USSR did have some wage inequalities it was entering the stage of Socialist transformation (whatever that is, I think I'm to tired), Stalin aimed to do away with the remaining 'Capitalist' elements to the economy, this was interupted by the war and when ofcourse Khruschev came along he established Capitalism.

[Just Joe]

The closest we've come to a real Socialist government is the Paris Commune and the year or so after the Bolshevik Revolution. There have been close calls here and there like Spain but nothing to really last. Stalins USSR was about as good as economic Socialism youre going to find. It can't be seperated from its political inequalities though.