I’m not familiar with the first but Allende’s socialist policies hit some big issues even before the US took it down and Guatemala wasn’t even socialist much less communist. So they’re good examples of US stopping leftist governments and social policies but imo not good examples of specifically communism working well.
I’m certain this is one. A democratically elected president wanted to redistribute land to the people. The US decides that it’s their business and installs a dictator, who then goes on to commit a genocide, which the US was perfectly happy with.
Does that count as communism working well when the president’s weren’t communists and weren’t implementing communism, rather just general leftist policies?
I’d say they are though. Any theorist would be foolish not to acknowledge emeprical tests of their theory across multiple different conditions imo and readjust their model, but one can argue about this for days.
Except they aren’t tests in a vacuum. They’re tests with the capitalist nations doing everything in their power to ensure they fail.
If you test chemical reactions in the atmosphere you’re likely to get totally different results than if they’re isolated from outside interference.
The only communist countries that had a moderate amount of success were authoritarian dictatorships. That isn’t because it’s required for communism, it’s because that’s what was required to maintain control while the CIA was trying to turn launch a coup. If you didn’t have strict control then you would be couped and it’s over. The same would happen with any for of government with that much pressure trying to collapse them.
If you can’t test in a vacuum you can’t make a ruling on if it can work. In this case, you need to test in as many conditions as possible to get as representative a sample as possible.
I’m not claiming it should be tested in a vacuum. I’m saying the times it’s been tried were while the US would do everything possible to kill any communist or socialist experiment. We should try more times, and also try to influence the US to not intervene.
It would be pretty stupid to just go off on a theory that wouldn’t consider the rest of the world. Unless this communist society was supposed to exist in a vacuum.
You can’t argue it’s always bad if you only look at it in one situation. You can argue it was bad while the US was ensuring it wouldn’t succeed. That’s a different claim though. Make that claim and you’re fine. Make the claim that it proved communism can’t work and then you’re plainly wrong.
If I had billionaire money, I would buy EVE Online and spin off a project: a set of isolated but mirrored galaxies (shards), each with an enforced economic system. After two or so years, I would then allow players to leave their home servers and interact with the other galaxies, doing trade, politics, and war with each other. After another two years, tally up the player QOL and count for each of the servers to determine which economy was most successful.
That would let us simulate the economies by themselves, then see how they interact on even footing.
I wasn’t the one making the original claim. I’m just saying that if the theory expects a vacuum or zero opposition then it’s a pretty poor theory to follow in real world. More like a hypothetical.
It has nothing to do with communism though. Nothing would survive it. It doesn’t require zero opposition, but any functioning government can’t survive well with most of the world trying to collapse it. With that said, Cuba is doing fairly well despite that.
It just makes it sound dubious that it would ever work unless this opposition suddenly vanished. I know the theory was (is) that eventually situation would be such that despite that opposition, it should triumph. But I guess that situation hasn’t been reached.
I don’t know if there’d would be quite as much opposition today. There’d be some obviously, but when the USSR was growing everyone was so much more invested in “stopping the spread of socialism.”
You should look into leninism, which explicitly does not do that at all. Understanding how global material conditions and economic interests affect the local application of Marxist theory is like the whole point of large portion of what Lenin wrote
What empirical tests? Just because a politician uses a label doesn’t make it true, usually the opposite in fact. Remember, the Nazi party (the original German one) rose to power by calling themselves socialists.
Communism as a concept, or what the world actually got?
Because those are not the same thing.
No
plansociety ever survives contact with theenemypopulationWell. There are basically 3 times when communism worked pretty well.
They all ended rather violently due to a ___-backed ____. (You know the words that go in the blanks.)
What are those three times?
“Basically” three. Cuz a reasonable person could disagree that all three are good examples.
I’m not familiar with the first but Allende’s socialist policies hit some big issues even before the US took it down and Guatemala wasn’t even socialist much less communist. So they’re good examples of US stopping leftist governments and social policies but imo not good examples of specifically communism working well.
CIA-backed coup is what I’m assuming the blanks are. Maybe that’ll help you research it.
I got that part but I wanted to hear what they consider the three times communism worked pretty well.
I’m certain this is one. A democratically elected president wanted to redistribute land to the people. The US decides that it’s their business and installs a dictator, who then goes on to commit a genocide, which the US was perfectly happy with.
Does that count as communism working well when the president’s weren’t communists and weren’t implementing communism, rather just general leftist policies?
Fucking United Fruit Company
I’d say they are though. Any theorist would be foolish not to acknowledge emeprical tests of their theory across multiple different conditions imo and readjust their model, but one can argue about this for days.
Except they aren’t tests in a vacuum. They’re tests with the capitalist nations doing everything in their power to ensure they fail.
If you test chemical reactions in the atmosphere you’re likely to get totally different results than if they’re isolated from outside interference.
The only communist countries that had a moderate amount of success were authoritarian dictatorships. That isn’t because it’s required for communism, it’s because that’s what was required to maintain control while the CIA was trying to turn launch a coup. If you didn’t have strict control then you would be couped and it’s over. The same would happen with any for of government with that much pressure trying to collapse them.
Where’s the vacuum you’d like to test it in?
If you can’t test in a vacuum you can’t make a ruling on if it can work. In this case, you need to test in as many conditions as possible to get as representative a sample as possible.
I’m not claiming it should be tested in a vacuum. I’m saying the times it’s been tried were while the US would do everything possible to kill any communist or socialist experiment. We should try more times, and also try to influence the US to not intervene.
It would be pretty stupid to just go off on a theory that wouldn’t consider the rest of the world. Unless this communist society was supposed to exist in a vacuum.
You can’t argue it’s always bad if you only look at it in one situation. You can argue it was bad while the US was ensuring it wouldn’t succeed. That’s a different claim though. Make that claim and you’re fine. Make the claim that it proved communism can’t work and then you’re plainly wrong.
If I had billionaire money, I would buy EVE Online and spin off a project: a set of isolated but mirrored galaxies (shards), each with an enforced economic system. After two or so years, I would then allow players to leave their home servers and interact with the other galaxies, doing trade, politics, and war with each other. After another two years, tally up the player QOL and count for each of the servers to determine which economy was most successful.
That would let us simulate the economies by themselves, then see how they interact on even footing.
I wasn’t the one making the original claim. I’m just saying that if the theory expects a vacuum or zero opposition then it’s a pretty poor theory to follow in real world. More like a hypothetical.
It has nothing to do with communism though. Nothing would survive it. It doesn’t require zero opposition, but any functioning government can’t survive well with most of the world trying to collapse it. With that said, Cuba is doing fairly well despite that.
It just makes it sound dubious that it would ever work unless this opposition suddenly vanished. I know the theory was (is) that eventually situation would be such that despite that opposition, it should triumph. But I guess that situation hasn’t been reached.
I don’t know if there’d would be quite as much opposition today. There’d be some obviously, but when the USSR was growing everyone was so much more invested in “stopping the spread of socialism.”
You should look into leninism, which explicitly does not do that at all. Understanding how global material conditions and economic interests affect the local application of Marxist theory is like the whole point of large portion of what Lenin wrote
Did the bourgeoisie of countries like France and America not do this when they dispensed themselves of the feudal order?
I don’t know what sort of theoretical playbook they were following but seems like that was more succesful
What empirical tests? Just because a politician uses a label doesn’t make it true, usually the opposite in fact. Remember, the Nazi party (the original German one) rose to power by calling themselves socialists.
So you think when they say it now though they mean it?
Either