by ericmay | 2025-07-24 16:58:08+00:00
> What I said was that regimes that are identified as Communist have done that, but that they have also all been one particular flavor (Leninism and its derivatives, which explicitly and centrally focus on extreme and pure form of state socialism -- there are other common factors in Leninism and its descendants, like vanguardism, that have some relevance here, too, but I didn't mention them before and won't go into them in detail now, because its a bit afield.)

Ah right, we just haven't tried the right style of Communism yet. Fascism works too, we just have to try the right flavor. Benevolent dictators are a thing. I'm not going to give Communism a pass here unless you're willing to also embrace that other ideologies get to have their "we haven't tried the right one yet" examples too.

Instead I think it makes more sense to use empirical evidence.

When Communist systems are implemented, they by and large fail, except China, and to the extent China hasn't failed - the Chinese Miracle [1] the progress that was made to improve the quality of life of the Chinese people stems not from CCP policies and their implementation of Communism (regardless of minor differences around philosophy) but instead from their embrace of capitalism and markets.

> I also mentioned that the modern mixed economy that has displaced capitalism stricto sensu throughout the developed world itself is also a (more incremental, and less narrowly focussed on a particular pole of socialist systemic theory) implementation of socialist (incl. Communist) ideals, but with elements of both market socialism and state socialism, implemented largely in places that (in line with Marxist theories of the prerequisites for moving on to the socialist phase) had mature capitalist systems, democratic institutions, and working class consciousness, and that continuing to incrementally build on the progress already made in the modern mixed economy was the best road forward.

You're just hand-waving the things you agree with or good as being socialist or communist and the things you disagree with as being functions of capitalism. Of course capitalist economies can adopt programs and policies that are run by the government - that doesn't necessarily make them "socialist". Of course, when we spend a few minutes continuing our examination we find that part of the reason that capitalism and markets are so successful is because they are able to embrace policies and procedures that work regardless of whether they adhere to any specific ideology, other than free trade (obviously this is a loaded term, but I mean it in the most basic sense). Capitalist economies allow communist businesses. You can start one today. In a Communist country I can't own the means of production. One is tolerant of new and different ideas (Capitalism), another is not (Communism).

The intolerance and violence of Communist ideology and Socialism to the extent they overlap, is one of the reasons it fails. People are required to adhere to the ideology, whereas in Capitalist systems the best business, the best ideas, the best ideologies tend to win out. Though of course like any system you can get stuck in a local minimum.

When you think back to China this is precisely what we see happen. The Chinese Communist Party, and they are Communists by any definition, cannot allow business owners or political dissidents who speak out to "gain power" and they operate various spy apparatus and other control mechanisms because they can't permit ideology that threatens the existence of the CCP.

Why is that?

You would probably argue that it's because they are implementing state capitalism. Horse shit.

China wasn't a developed capitalist country when the Communists took over [2]. And as I mentioned previously, any attempt at implementing Communism that we have observed requires seizure of the means of production that exist in the real world today: airliners, factories, financial systems - so either you destroy those things to avoid "state capitalism", or the inevitable result of the implementation of Communism on the nation state, as we have observed, is just state fascism or Communism (not capitalism as you attempt to misdirect blame toward) or it requires a destruction of the nation state and the very means of production else they be seized.

In the real world you are stuck in a loop. You can't implement whatever flavor of Communism you'd like to, because it requires people giving up their stuff to the State and nobody wants to do that. You can implement it politically, but then you just end up with state fascism/Communism (honestly they are really two sides of the same coin in practice and we should oppose authoritarian regimes regardless of whether they are fascist or communist or otherwise) because the State has to seize all this stuff from people. But once they seize it, as we have seen, they just keep it for themselves while everyone else has to work without real ownership.

> Sure there is, because there are other approaches to socialism playing out differently today. That's a pretty good reason to think that other approaches to socialism play out differently than Leninism and its descendants.

Is there a socialist country in existence you would point to that we can examine and compare it with, say, Sweden or the United Kingdom or other developed capitalist countries?

[1] We're strangely quick to give the CCP credit for the miracle, which was opening of their markets, but we're blind to the fact that the poverty and mass death that occurred in China was precisely because of the same group. So it's fair to not really give the CCP any credit here.

[2] You said: "Every “Communist” nation has been an attempt to implement Leninism or one of its derivatives (e.g., Maoism) in a state without developed capitalism, notionally attempting to implement state socialism and often overtly accepting state capitalism as an interim measure (the name “state capitalism” literally comes from the USSR’s own description of what it presented as a temporary measure.)"