Strongest communist countries?

[ipollux]

What are the strongest, most successful communist countries at this point in time?

[OI OI OI]

Well no communist countries have ever existed.
If you mean "socialist" countries or better deformed/degenerated workers states there are only two right now. Cuba and North Korea. I would say Cuba is far more successfull .
From the countries of the past the answer is obvious. The USSR.

Note:Communism=a stateless classless society which has never existed

[Niccolò Rossi]

If you mean "socialist" countries or better deformed/degenerated workers states there are only two right now. Cuba and North Korea.

Other Trotskyists will claim that Vietnam is a deformed workers state and some will even go as far to include China, Laos, Burma and Syria...

To the OP the term "communist country" is a contradiction in terms. Sorry for being picky.

[Q]

Like OI3 said, communism never has existed. To learn what communism actually is, you mind find this article interesting.

I agree that Cuba would be the more successfull of the two remaining deformed workers states. Despite their parasitic bureaucracy and lack of workers democracy, Cuba still upholds important social gains and therefore still acts as a beacon of what could be possible if we overthrow capitalism.

Further reading on Cuba:
What will happen after Castro? (article).
Castro’s resignation opens up new chapter (article).
Cuba: Socialism and Democracy (book).

[RedAnarchist]

Other Trotskyists will claim that Vietnam is a deformed workers state and some will even go as far to include China, Laos, Burma and Syria...

To the OP the term "communist country" is a contradiction in terms. Sorry for being picky.

Burma and Syria? Why?

[Niccolò Rossi]

Burma and Syria? Why?

What can you expect from (some of the) Trots

Sorry to pick on BobKindles again:

Socialists should advocate the military defense of Burma as a country facing the threat of imperialism, and yet at the same time should also call for internal revolution to destroy the junta and abolish capitalist property relations. The deformed workers state created through the military coup of 1962 under the leadership of Ne Win was able to make many progressive advances, especially in the countryside, and concerning the issue of womens oppression.

Quoted from here. BobKindles also provided a link to this article from the CWI

Another discussion regarding the topic (note CyM post on Syria) can be found here

But hey, why not extend it to "New Deal America, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Kemalist Turkey, Kuomintang's China, Congress Party's India, Idi Amin's Uganda, social democratic European countries and many other similar [countries]" - (Leo), while we're at it?

[BobKKKindle$]

What are the strongest, most successful communist countries at this point in time?

It is impossible for a country to be "communist" because communism is a classless society which can only exist when the current system of nation states has been abolished, by extending revolution to every country. Cuba is a deformed workers state, which means capitalist property relations have been abolished, but the proletariat does not have control of the state apparatus, instead a bureacracy exercises power and suppresses political dissent to maintain hegemony.

But hey, why not extend it to... [etc]

There is a difference between state capitalism (the mode of production which existed or currently exists in the states included in the list you provided) and the property relations of a workers state. State capitalism is used to support the power of the bourgeoisie when the market system is not the most effective means of maintaining the capitalist system (for example, during a war, when the state takes control of the armaments sector to maximize output and safeguard against financial losses) whereas the creation of a workers state requires the elimination of the bourgeoisie through the abolition of private property. This is explained by Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed:

We often seek salvation from unfamiliar phenomena in familiar terms. An attempt has been made to conceal the enigma of the Soviet regime by calling it “state capitalism.” This term has the advantage that nobody knows exactly what it means. The term “state capitalism” originally arose to designate all the phenomena which arise when a bourgeois state takes direct charge of the means of transport or of industrial enterprises. The very necessity of such measures is one of the signs that the productive forces have outgrown capitalism and are bringing it to a partial self-negation in practice. But the outworn system, along with its elements of self-negation, continues to exist as a capitalist system.

Social Relations in the Soviet Union, State Capitalism

[Q]

BobKindles also provided a link to this article from the CWI

I'm not sure why you say that in this context, so I guess you're insinuating the CWI has the position that Burma is a workers state, which we do not.

A quotation from said article should suffice:

Capitalism eliminated

All foreign corporations, banks and bigger companies were nationalised and capitalism was eliminated from Burma. The larger private savings were confiscated with no or little compensation. “Burma’s way to Socialism” was the name of the program implemented but it was a caricature of Socialism. Ne Win had probably never read a book by Marx, Lenin or Trotsky. The fact that Ne Win had no socialist background was shown by the US action after the military coup.

Moe Min Han, a Burmese refugee now living in Europe relates: “In a BBC broadcast, representatives of the US made a positive statement about Ne Win. They thought that he would fight the Maoist guerrillas, which he did. But he created his own Maoist regime”.

Ne Win’s regime was a primitive imitation of Stalinism in the Soviet Union or China, disguised with “Buddhist ideas”. However, Buddhist monks were quick to point out that Ne Win’s regime had nothing to do with their religion.

Stalinism is a system where capitalism has been abolished in terms of private ownership of major industries and the land. Production in society follows a plan instead of capitalist anarchy. Unlike democratic socialism, where the people democratically decide the needs that should be satisfied, Stalinism gives power to small bureaucratic elite that is like a parasite on the planned economy that distributes the resources according to its own interests. To make this possible, against the will of the people, Stalinism also means a one party state with enormous oppression of all opposition.

Even though Ne Win gradually built a terrible terror apparatus, there was a big support for abolishing capitalism in the beginning, especially in the countryside. Peasant committees (where big estate owners, merchants and bankers were excluded), with the right to lease land were formed. In 1963 all peasant debts to the state were written off and an aid program was launched to help farmers with fertilisers, better seed and access to tractors. The state loaned out 700 million kyat (the Burmese currency) to farmers and doubled the number of tractors by importing one thousand from Czechoslovakia. New laws were implemented that meant that farmers could not be evicted from their land. Bankers that had harassed the farmers were severely affected by anti-capitalist laws.(x) A campaign against illiteracy was also launched even the country’s ability to read was already quite high. In 1983, 86 per cent of men and 74 per cent of women could read and write.

These reforms had big support among the poor in the beginning. But it was not long before the contradiction grew between the needs of big capital to develop industry and the need of the farmers. As the antagonism sharpened, oppression became greater and greater.

“After 1967 things developed badly. Ne Win isolated Burma from the rest of the world,” says Kyaw Thet.

Burma became one of many countries that took the path of massive nationalisation. Because of the inability of capitalism to solve the problems that confronted Burmese society a part of the elite saw no other option than to follow the example of China. Capitalism and its representative U Nu had failed to solve the conflict between the state and the ethnic minorities. They had failed to break Burma’s dependence on the big imperialist powers that continued to exploit the country and stop every form of industrial development. And they had failed to give the farmers a decent life, where they could cultivate their own land without being dependent on big estate owners and bankers.

This failure was not because U Nu and his government were less talented than others. It was because the international development of world capitalism at that time, as today, prevented poorer countries breaking out from the grip of imperialism. This fact was explained by the Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, at the beginning of the 20th century. He and Lenin described how capitalism now had conquered the whole world and consequently entered a new phase: imperialism. During this phase, the rich imperialist powers prevent the development of independent capitalist states in the poorer countries. Trotsky explained that a more advanced capitalist development in the poorer countries could only take place if the tasks of the ‘bourgeois revolution’ were implemented. The tasks are:- solving the national question, breaking the grip of imperialism and carrying through land reform so that the peasants can cultivate their own land.

These tasks had been solved in different ways by the growing bourgeois class in the advanced capitalist countries before the imperialist époque. But under imperialism the bourgeois class in the poorer countries were incapable of solving the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. The reason for this was, and still is, the fact that under imperialism, the domestic bourgeois can never grow strong enough and very much dependent on both imperialism and the big estate owners (that would be hit be these reforms). The bourgeois simply do not bite the hand that feeds them!

[Niccolò Rossi]

There is a difference between state capitalism (the mode of production which existed or currently exists in the states included in the list you provided) and the property relations of a workers state.

I seriously do not want to derail this thread, but what exactly are the differences in property relations between the two?

[F9]

there never was a communist country so far,there isnt currently one!Only the future will show if there is going to be one,i hope!

Fuserg9

[Cult of Reason]

Oh come on, it is obviously this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_...ic_of_Naissaar

[Dros]

As pointed out above, there is no such thing as a "Communist Country".

Currently, there are no socialist countries in the world either.

It also depends on what you mean by "strongest".

The socialist country that advanced furthest on the revolutionary road was definitely China.

[ipollux]

So then what is China considered now?

[Lost In Translation]

So then what is China considered now?

At best, China can be considered a developing capitalist nation with a mild socialist background. Even this description is debatable, but it's my take on China.

[PigmerikanMao]

Right now in terms of the socialist state? Cuba is more successful but North Korea holds more military firepower. As for the past, it's obvious, China and the CCCP.

[Dros]

So then what is China considered now?

It's capitalist.

[ComradeHawkins]

It's capitalist.

i second this.

and i might add aristocratic kleptocracy

[Lost In Translation]

It's capitalist.

Wow, you write it so bluntly, it almost hurts to read it.

[Malakangga]

Cuba and North Korea maybe the succesful

[Ismail]

There are no socialist nations left, this is true. The DPRK is the only one that operates least on profit motive, but even that is beginning to change. Also I can care less what the militarily strongest socialist state was/is. The strongest tend to become imperialists in their own right anyway if said nation becomes revisionist.