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Why has Marxism never worked?

VF500

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By "worked" I mean provided a standard of living on par with capitalist countries. Maybe it's because if several people use the same vehicle, no one takes care of it. Maybe it's being locked behind walls on penalty of death if you try to escape. Maybe it's not having a legal system to handle grievances. China didn't get a legal system started until 1979, three years after Mao finally died. Russia dreaded the coming of the Olympics for fear of who was going to defect at the first chance. I thought it was supposed to be a "workers paradise". Ask any East German about it. I worked for a German owned company for twenty-five years and spoke to several. No one had anything good to say. So come on you commie sypathizers. Give me some reasons why anyone would want to live under communism.
 
I've yet to see evidence that China "hasn't worked."

Depends on what you mean by "worked," I guess.
 
I've yet to see evidence that China "hasn't worked."

Depends on what you mean by "worked," I guess.

I wouldn't really call china to be Communistic.

Communism, like Libertarianism, is one of those things that we have yet to see a real world example of. In either case, whenever it is tried, it ends up taking on elements of other ideologies as practicality overrides ideology at some level, whether that practicality is benign or corrupt.

I guess the real question is why certain philosophies cannot be successfully applied in the real world.
 
I've yet to see evidence that China "hasn't worked."

Depends on what you mean by "worked," I guess.

China really isn't an example of Marxism though. Mao went through an agrarian movement, where Marx said it had to come from the workers. Also, the fact that China is becoming more capitalistic means it truly it isn't Marxist either.
 
China really isn't an example of Marxism though. Mao went through an agrarian movement, where Marx said it had to come from the workers. Also, the fact that China is becoming more capitalistic means it truly it isn't Marxist either.


Some think in China that the market has to evolve from a commodity market into a planned market and if it is forced to fast it won't work.
 
Some think in China that the market has to evolve from a commodity market into a planned market and if it is forced to fast it won't work.

That could be true. It has been a few years since I really focused in on China. My point more was that China really isn't Marxist either though. I honestly can't think of a country that went about it the way Marx said.
 
What's holding them back? Russia said communism couldn't work until all the nations on Earth were communist. Really? Hong Kong, a British colony, did fine with capitalism. It was stuck right up China's butt. That's a cop out. It doesn't work because Marx's idea are a bunch of touchy feely crap. Why would anyone who plays basketball as good as LeBron James want to be paid the same as the twelveth man bench warmer?
 
You wouldn't? But to be fair to Marx no country has actually gone through the process the way he described it. So we have never seen a truly Marxist society.

What's holding them back? Russia said communism couldn't work until all the nations on Earth were communist. Really? Hong Kong, a British colony, did fine with capitalism. It was stuck right up China's butt. That's a cop out. It doesn't work because Marx's idea are a bunch of touchy feely crap. Why would anyone who plays basketball as good as LeBron James want to be paid the same as the twelveth man bench warmer?
 
What's holding them back? Russia said communism couldn't work until all the nations on Earth were communist. Really? Hong Kong, a British colony, did fine with capitalism. It was stuck right up China's butt. That's a cop out. It doesn't work because Marx's idea are a bunch of touchy feely crap. Why would anyone who plays basketball as good as LeBron James want to be paid the same as the twelveth man bench warmer?

Are you going to attempt to make an argument at some point or are you going to keep throwing out emotion based rhetoric?
 
I've yet to see evidence that China "hasn't worked."

Depends on what you mean by "worked," I guess.
I thought I made that clear. I said "worked" means to provide a standard of living on par with captialist countries. Is China on a par with any of the European countries? Pay attention.
 
No, the places communism failed were failures before communism came around. Hong Kong 'works' because it benefits from a privileged economic situation. Also, these 'communist' countries were quite a digression from communism on paper and what marx advocated.
 
China really isn't an example of Marxism though. Mao went through an agrarian movement, where Marx said it had to come from the workers. Also, the fact that China is becoming more capitalistic means it truly it isn't Marxist either.
Really? If you believe that, then what caused the split between Mao and Krushchev?
Retrenchment and Mao versus "Capitalist Roaders"
Then, in 1965, Mao, at the age of 72, came out of seclusion. He complained about the retreat, about the rise of a new class of bureaucrats, a new exploiting class. China, he believed, was going the way of the Soviet Union and becoming a bureaucratic state. The Party, according to Mao, had been taken over by "capitalist roaders" -- by people with a bourgeois mentality. Mao, like Trotsky, was advocating "permanent revolution" -- although he did not label it as such. Reinvigorating his leadership, Mao was about to create what was to be known as the Cultural Revolution
 
What's your point? I dont understand what that reference is supposed to prove?
 
What's holding them back? Russia said communism couldn't work until all the nations on Earth were communist. Really? Hong Kong, a British colony, did fine with capitalism. It was stuck right up China's butt. That's a cop out. It doesn't work because Marx's idea are a bunch of touchy feely crap. Why would anyone who plays basketball as good as LeBron James want to be paid the same as the twelveth man bench warmer?

The Russians never really tried communism. Russia was a society based on peasantry and almost completely underdeveloped when the Bolshevik revolution took place. Lenin essentially said that some of the steps prescribed by Marx were not necessary. Russia and China both adapted certain parts of Marxism to the conditions in their own country. None of them went through the actual process as prescribed by Marx. An analogy to what actually happened would be like me giving you 5 pieces of wood and asking you to build a 7 piece chair but only if you use 1 piece of wood per piece of chair. Not only would it be hard for you to build the actual chair, you most definitely would not build a 7 piece chair.
 
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I wouldn't really call china to be Communistic.
Communism, like Libertarianism, is one of those things that we have yet to see a real world example of. In either case, whenever it is tried, it ends up taking on elements of other ideologies as practicality overrides ideology at some level, whether that practicality is benign or corrupt.
I guess the real question is why certain philosophies cannot be successfully applied in the real world.

You can say the same thing about "true" capitalism. We haven't been a really capitalist country since Woodrow Wilson. You remember him, right? He's the guy who segragated the millitary and all the branches of government because he thought "coloreds preferred to be among their own kind". Look it up.
BTW, What would you consider RED China to be if not communist?
 
You can say the same thing about "true" capitalism. We haven't been a really capitalist country since Woodrow Wilson. You remember him, right? He's the guy who segragated the millitary and all the branches of government because he thought "coloreds preferred to be among their own kind". Look it up.
BTW, What would you consider RED China to be if not communist?

We haven't truly been capitalist, ever. Even with the founding the country, we had the post office and some regulations. That was my point.

I see China to be pretty much an autocratic single party dictatorship.
 
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Your fear of Communism and your misunderstanding of Marxism is pretty obvious. The fact that you consider China a communist nation, when in reality it is communist in name only. The CCP is more akin to a one party dictatorship now.
 
Complaining about people calling China communist is lame. It's like complaing about calling the US a democracy. Let's give each other the benefit of the doubt and not assume that the former is refering to China as a Marxian utopia and the latter proclaiming direct elections/referendums in all matters of state exists.

Communism has never existed. Neither has the free market, capitalism or democracy. I imagine there are complaints regarding the non-utopian status of socialism, fascism, theocracy and monarchy; however, let's not render all of those terms to the realm of fantasy - it's a boring exercise in nihilism.

China, North Korea and Cuba take their economic policy and perhaps even an attitude towards the west from Marxist theory. Not monarch theory, not dictator theory. The idea that the state owns everything comes from somewhere... to try to absolve communist theory from modern 'communist' states because utopia does not exist is intellectually shady. It leads to one conclusion: nothing exists, so stop using terms.

You know damn well that people are refering to China's economic policy (state valuation of currency, public ownership of everything, etc), and not the utopian stateless society that China enjoys, when the term is used.

Stop it.

China, nK and Cuba are communist. So are Russia, Venezuela and Sweden :)
 
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Complaining about people calling China communist is lame. It's like complaing about calling the US a democracy. Let's give each other the benefit of the doubt and not assume that the former is refering to China as a Marxian utopia and the latter proclaiming direct elections/referendums in all matters of state exists.

Communism has never existed. Neither has the free market, capitalism or democracy. I imagine there are complaints regarding the non-utopian status of socialism, fascism, theocracy and monarchy; however, let's not render all of those terms to the realm of fantasy - it's a boring exercise in nihilism.

China, North Korea and Cuba take their economic policy and perhaps even an attitude towards the west from Marxist theory. Not monarch theory, not dictator theory. The idea that the state owns everything comes from somewhere... to try to absolve communist theory from modern 'communist' states because utopia does not exist is intellectually shady. It leads to one conclusion: nothing exists, so stop using terms.

You know damn well that people are refering to China's economic policy (state valuation of currency, public ownership of everything, etc), and not the utopian stateless society that China enjoys, when the term is used.

Stop it.

China, nK and Cuba are communist. So are Russia, Venezuela and Sweden :)

Thats great and all, but in certain cases, a state can be close enough to a particular ideology thats its ok to go ahead and say "state x is y". In China's case, its not very close.
 
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