Those are leninist/Maoist. If we’re being generous we could call them aspirationally communist. But not actually communist.
2 defining criteria for communism is being stateless. Ie not having an governing state elected or otherwise. Definitely not having a large hierarchical unanswerable centralized government. And the other being classlessness. Something that the large central politburos preclude.
The one thing Leninism shares in the most asinine and negative way with communism. In the actual vision of communism, Marx and others theorized that the workers of the factory, etc. Should own the factory. Social ownership. However, Leninism warps and twists it negatively in that the state owns everything, not the workers. They may claim that the workers are the state. But that’s bullshit as can easily be seen by any time they put down a citizen revolt. Roll out the tanks, etc. Like Tiananmen Square.
Bingo. I lost count of how many times I had to explain to a tankie that the PRC isn’t even communist, and then they double down on trying to feed me some bullshit about how the workers supposedly own the state (because the monoparty happens to call itself communist). Like gtfo no the fuck they don’t, that’s communism in name only.
There’s never once in history been a truly communist society, unless you count early Byzantine monasteries, medieval Dithmarschen, or perhaps the ninja communes in Muromachi-era Japan (namely, the Kōka ikki and Iga ikki). Those are literally the closest things to actual communism that have ever existed, at least in recorded history.
from what i heard, cold war era slovenia got somewhat close. they were technically in the east bloc, but moscow had enough problems with yugoslavia as-is to micromanage them, so they could implement some common sense policies such as letting a factory fail if it doesn’t work and just doing something else instead, without the common capitalist failings of letting some rich guy own the whole thing or making the bankruptcy the workers’ problem. i haven’t looked into it too deeply, so i expect their system was still imperfect in ways i don’t really know about, but afaik they were rather prosperous for a soviet-allied state.
Those are leninist/Maoist. If we’re being generous we could call them aspirationally communist. But not actually communist.
2 defining criteria for communism is being stateless. Ie not having an governing state elected or otherwise. Definitely not having a large hierarchical unanswerable centralized government. And the other being classlessness. Something that the large central politburos preclude.
The one thing Leninism shares in the most asinine and negative way with communism. In the actual vision of communism, Marx and others theorized that the workers of the factory, etc. Should own the factory. Social ownership. However, Leninism warps and twists it negatively in that the state owns everything, not the workers. They may claim that the workers are the state. But that’s bullshit as can easily be seen by any time they put down a citizen revolt. Roll out the tanks, etc. Like Tiananmen Square.
Bingo. I lost count of how many times I had to explain to a tankie that the PRC isn’t even communist, and then they double down on trying to feed me some bullshit about how the workers supposedly own the state (because the monoparty happens to call itself communist). Like gtfo no the fuck they don’t, that’s communism in name only.
There’s never once in history been a truly communist society, unless you count early Byzantine monasteries, medieval Dithmarschen, or perhaps the ninja communes in Muromachi-era Japan (namely, the Kōka ikki and Iga ikki). Those are literally the closest things to actual communism that have ever existed, at least in recorded history.
from what i heard, cold war era slovenia got somewhat close. they were technically in the east bloc, but moscow had enough problems with yugoslavia as-is to micromanage them, so they could implement some common sense policies such as letting a factory fail if it doesn’t work and just doing something else instead, without the common capitalist failings of letting some rich guy own the whole thing or making the bankruptcy the workers’ problem. i haven’t looked into it too deeply, so i expect their system was still imperfect in ways i don’t really know about, but afaik they were rather prosperous for a soviet-allied state.