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There are two systems: one on paper and one in practice. Much is said about the invisible hand and how a competitive market would create the cheapest products of the highest quality for the lowest price by the nature of competition. But in reality, firms often work together, merge, or cooperate competitively because it is better for a corporation to keep prices high and product quality as low as possible to maximize profits.

But I see the same discrepancy within socialist states. Firstly, on the path to communism, there is socialism, which, as I understand it, is supposed to lead to communism, a moneyless, classless, and stateless society. As Engels and Marx argued, they are supposed to achieve this through a revolution in which a dictatorship of the proletariat takes control of the means of production by force, puts the proletariat in power, and eventually allows the state to wither away. But Marxist theory is flawed in that he never describes how this transition will happen.

No socialist state has ever really withered away. Power always remains, and many people will say that this is because of Western interference or siege socialism. However, I doubt this, simply because of the history of détente. The Cold War was not a continuous state of tension. It reached high points (the Cuban Missile Crisis), but after détente began in the late 1960s, relations improved, culminating in the SALT treaties limiting arms in 1972, and reprochment between china and the west, a gradual easing of tension. Much of Cold War history was relatively peaceful (for the Global North). To prove this, we can look at trade relations between China and the West. After the 1960s and into the 1970s, the communist and capitalist worlds were more interested in coexistence and trade than mutual destruction. States like Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, and India, for instance, never saw as much Western interference (in coups or instability), and in Yugoslavia's case, it became a trade nexus between the nascent EU and the Warsaw Pact.

Arguably socialist Chinese and the capitalist world are arguably extremely interdependent now. If capitalism and the socialist worlds only exist in antagonism, with capitalists wanting to destroy them at any opportunity, then why would the West help invest and trade with China during the period around 1978 and invest in its markets, building up Chinese industry in manufacturing (Nixon's rapprochement with China in 1972), etc.? Or why would they engage in arms limiting treaties together, the ISS, or joint research, etc.? Towards the late Cold War, leaders like Gorbachev and Bush were more interested in coexistence than annihilation. Also remember that China split with the Soviets around 1960, with even some border clashes in 1969. During that period, isolated from the Soviets and the West, from Korea, China actually traded a lot with Japan, its former colonizer, a capitalist country (achieved record growth during the Japanese economic miracle from the mid-1950s to the 1970s.)

The failure of the Great Leap Forward and China's sluggish economic growth in the 1960s and 1950s showcase the limits of centralized state planning of the economy, as Mao's campaigns against nature and the state's outlandish production targets led to large scale lying, like at Dunia. China's GDP graphs support this argument. The Third Front and heavy handed state planning under Mao hurt Chinese economic growth, and it didn't start to grow until the 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping opened the economy.

Without at least some markets or any currency at all, governments don't have price indicators to measure or allocate the value of goods and services. This is why no state, not even socialist ones, has gotten rid of currency or money, and those that try are burned by the experience, like the Soviet experiment.

Wait, hold on. I am not saying that freer markets necessarily lead to more economic growth. Take Japan and its economic growth during the Japanese economic miracle. This can be explained partly by the iron triangle, with bureaucrats, politicians, and businessmen working together. The Japanese government limited certain imports through import substitution policies and focused on developing domestic industry. It used government policy to protect domestic industries from foreign competition while making targeted investments in the private sector to rebuild and develop the Japanese economy. This is called an import substitution strategy, but Japan was also heavily involved in export-led growth strategies. Likewise, China's opening up isn't a vindication of free markets. The Chinese government still controlled the vast majority of industry; most companies aren't publicly traded or open to shareholders. It's a bank-led system, and the Chinese government heavily subsidized industries and levied tariffs to build up infant industries. While China certainly isn't communist, it is close to state socialism, but it does have markets. Market firms are the minority compared to state led enterprises, though few state-led companies have a monopoly.

The United States isn't as free market as we think. The state also plays a significant role in its economy. Look at corn subsidies or the Jones Act, which protects domestic shipping and supports the American maritime industry. Or look at how much money we put into oil, corn, or soybeans, or simply imperialism as market interference with other nations. The United States is not a libertarian free market economy.

Developed countries in both the West and East have historically supported their industries through subsidies, regulations, technical standards, and targeted capital allocation to make them competitive. The same is true of South Korea and, in a different way, China. Their governments were heavily involved in the economy, and state planning played a role in subsidizing and supporting industries. In fact, it is interesting that most developed economies, like France, Germany, China, Japan, and the US, rely heavily on the state to influence how capital is allocated through stock markets, bond markets, banks, and other financial institutions, or simply on subsidies and tariffs for their firms to remain internationally competitive and for the economy to be diversified. Japan, for example, has historically relied heavily on bank financing for capital allocation.

Meanwhile, developing countries face pressure to lower tariffs and liberalize their economies through international trade agreements and institutions. This can limit their ability to protect emerging industries while they attempt to compete with established manufacturers. As a result, some resource exporting countries remain dependent on exporting raw materials rather than developing higher value manufacturing industries, limiting how much of the final value they capture. Countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Namibia rely significantly on natural resources. Here is an article about how the Imf tearing down of trade barriers hurts the Global South through structural adjustment: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2024/04/29/structural-adjustments-complex-legacy-in-sub-saharan-africa/

However, economic exploitation is not unique to capitalism. Consider the Soviet Union and its empire, where Moscow exercised considerable economic and political influence over other socialist states and territories. We can also look at the United States and the United Fruit Company, including American intervention against governments that threatened the company's interests or attempted to nationalize its assets. Economic imperialism is not exclusive to capitalism, because an economy in which the state controls capital allocation can also be imperialistic. The Soviet Union's relationship with Mongolia provides another example of how a state socialist power could exercise economic and political dominance over another country.

So stop saying that communism or capitalism is a monolith or that they are always at each other's throats, because history is much more complicated.

China is a form of state socialism that controls much of its industry and banking. The government has significant power over banks, corporations, and private industry. In contrast, in the United States, corporations and their lobbyists often have the upper hand. Nevertheless, there is a strong relationship of interdependence between the socialist Chinese state and the capitalist West. This is to say that not all socialist and capitalist relations are antagonistic, as we can also see with Yugoslavia and India.

Mao disagreed with Marx's idea that socialism would eventually lead to a classless society. In practice, even when workers are supposed to control the means of production, things are more complex. Take China, for instance. In the beginning, under Mao, workers were very enthusiastic because they felt validated by the system and believed they had real power over the country's economic planning. But as Chinese socialism developed, especially during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, more power came into the hands of bureaucrats who set extreme production targets. This contributed to one of the worst famines in history.

In the Soviet Union as well, there was little to no meaningful worker input into economic planning, with most power concentrated in the managerial and bureaucratic class. In a way, Marxist Leninist single party states seem to substitue the capitalist class with a managerial or bureaucratic class and the poltical party. Abolishing markets doesn't abolish hierarchy or class, as Mao argued. While in idea the workers control the means of production, in practice, a representative of the Socialist or Communist Party will control the means of production in the name of the workers, and the means of production will be controlled by the state. Power is in the hands of party officials, the Politburo, etc., not in the hands of the workers (as seen in the Soviet Union or China).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2158775

Marxists and Communists want to achieve communism and a moneyless, classless society, but within the process, there is a very, very serious roadblock that has yet to be overcome.

While the idea is that there should be a dictatorship of the proletariat, in reality, most socialist states have been under the control of a single figure, such as Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, or Enver Hoxha in Albania and their cults of personality. The dictatorship of the proletariat usually means the supremacy of a Leninist party led by a strongman because the collective working class isn't a physcial thing, it's an abstraction (but no less poweful), and thus needs a leader or representative, and those leaders will compete for power, resulting in purges like Stalin's Great Purge of rivals and restriction of free speech or state criticism, usually justified to protect the revolution but usually just serving the interests of the vanguardist leader.

If the socialist nation relies on the state for everything for capital allocation, production targets, resources, and loyalty and you have a Leninist political party like the PRC or the Bolsheviks that has an obvious interest in maintaining its new power, then why would we ever expect the state to wither away? Once the revolutionary party has power, it becomes the new establishment. Thus, you have a paradox: to change the state, you have to form a state. So how can you abolish a state without a state?

Eventually, the interests of the state and party managers will conflict with the workers and people, just like how in capitalism the interests of representatives in the legislative and executive branches, through corporate lobbying, can conflict with the common people. ((Chapter 1) linked a paper in this as proof. It's about how the Great Leap Forward changed state priorities from the well being of workers into state development in industry to catch up with Britain and the US, and this shift resulted in drastically increased working hours and the same kind of alienation from work that is present in capitalism. The author does a better job than I could.)

https://dokumen.pub/factory-politics-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china-9789004421752-9789004421745.html

I am not saying that Marx's failure to describe the withering away of the state is a failure of communism. I am arguing that this is a flaw that present socialist leaders must amend, because in reality, most communist movements end up as state socialist. I really don't care if it's capitalists, socialists, communists, or whatever. I want a system that can bring the most prosperity, unity, and freedom to my entire national community, not just some elite few.

I have noticed recently that I am quite fond of socialism and communism, more so socialism, but that's beside the point. I mainly wanted to ask, who is to say who gets the dangerous, back breaking, miserable jobs like bricklayers and underwater welders and who gets the easy going, less stressful and physical jobs like artists, singers etc? How it seems it has gone in the past, is people have been forced to do hard jobs without any say, and I'm wondering how modern communists believe the work should be distributed. Because the reality is, is that nobody would willingly do those hard jobs if they knew they could earn a perfectly liveable wage doing a significantly easier job, considering that 67% of bricklayers suffer from work induced injuries, and underwater welders have a 40x higher mortality rate than standard U.S workers. And if someone did willingly do these jobs, they would be one in a billion, and would most likely not be enough of these heroes to effectively keep industries running, and eventually, someone would have to be forced to do it, and what happens if they say no? Force. Authoritarian. At least that's the most logical assumption based on the past. So, commies how should the work be distributed?

Hello all. Not sure where to post this so I chose this sub. I’ve been a communist for most of my adult life but am not that well-read on the history around this specific event. In my past naïve (and dare I say more liberal) days, I used to believe it was a brutal massacre by a violent dictatorship against innocent student protesters.

Now that I’ve become more worldly and aware of Western propaganda, I want to find out the real story, what the history was, and what the nuances were that are always deliberately missed by the MSM.

I see a lot of arguments for stateless communism, but I'm curious about how it actually works in practice.

If someone wants to use their own tools or land to start a private business and voluntarily trade with others in a socialist society, how does society stop them without using a centralized police force or state authority? Genuinely curious about the logistics here.

(I am a minarchist classical liberal and slightly conservative.)

Hello everyone and have one question aboun the icbc and Rothschild & co. For majority of conspiracy theories, the Rothschild familiy Is the really richest family in the world, and their family control majority of bank and central bank of majority western countries. And the icbc Is the biggest bank in china, and Is considerated the biggest bank in the world for stock value. My question Is what Is the biggest bank in the world, and what efects have this in the communism around the world because china Is one communist country in the polítics. Thanks for response

Isn't the mass killing of landlords under Mao zedong just morally as bad as the holocaust?

Ive tried debating this before but it just gets shut down immideitly with a lot of insults.

I'm a minarchist classical liberal (Also slightly conservative) so feel free to challenge my positions

Is it proper praxis to regularly feed our data harvesting overlords literal Marxist propaganda on the day to day going on?

Like. It sucks for the environment, I’m not happy with it. But.Why not jam the machine with quotes and commentary and see what happens?

Does it become based af? Is it our responsibility to jam the machine

There are a myriad of communists who vehemently fight for the paradigm, make conflicts against people who do not fully understand it yet which instead of promoting understanding they are rather veered toward resisting due to the ego game.

That misses the important point of Karl Marx. Adopting communism will just happen on its own in the late-stage capitalism where things become unsustainable, structures are too apparent to be ignored even by common people, and will therefore breed class consciousness and lead to revolution.

Yes, you can argue encompassing it for the fun of it, but it would not make sense at all you are just flaunting your knowledge and empathy for the oppressed by using your jargon and showing people you have the moral high ground. What one should do instead is just make them understand the dangers of capitalism instead of imposing on them outrightly the name of communism which will only sprout immediate resistance due to its already bad reputation.

What is your opinion on FALC (Fully Automated Luxury Communism)? Why do you think it would/wouldn't work? How does it conflict with classical Marxism? Are there any flaws to point out?

Considering that a primary communist critique of capitalism is that a worker must produce a surplus (which disappears into profit) in order to meet their basic needs, and assuming that a person may be born/endowed naturally with a greater ability to produce than another:

How does communist leadership prove that a worker is able to perform at a higher level than they exhibit? If it is determined that a worker should be able to perform more tasks than another, does leadership require that the worker perform better to get their basic needs met?

In that case, a deterioration and halt of all production seems inevitable. Here’s why, on a micro scale:

One worker is reported to produce less than another. Another worker knows they are capable of greater production, but allows their production to fall, matching that of the less productive worker who is having their needs met. Does communist leadership have a way of proving that the worker is “slacking”? If they don’t, work could grind to a halt, as a race to the bottom begins, with workers claiming they are not capable of a task. The only tasks excepted would be physical and so simple in nature as to be impossible to mess up, those tasks which leadership can definitively prove that everyone must be able to do. In this way, society will be performing physical subsistence tasks in short order. If somebody is capable of greater work and performs it, but doesn’t see a reward, that is effectively the same as the despised capitalist surplus. I would like insight into how communism addresses this problem.

I expect to be schooled by people who have read more books, but I have always been curious about this and have not found an answer that satisfies me. Mostly, I have heard it expressed that in the communist future, labor is natural, desired, and effectively fetishized because everyone wants to improve their conditions. However, I don’t think humans would believe this independently… so leadership steps in. What do they do?

To be clear, I’m not referring to foreign military intervention preventing communist countries from successfully transitioning out of socialism. But say a country was able to establish a pure communist society, how would a stateless nation organize military defense? From my understanding, it would require some kind of voluntary militia. But how would you organize that? An effective military requires a hierarchy of centralized command. That goes against the fundamentals of communism. How do you mobilize and train a defense force based on fragmented voluntary participation? Who leads it?
I guess the simple answer would be to envision a world where defense isn’t needed but that’s obviously not the reality of our world, and never has been. Nations are required to defend their way of life and ideals. How would communism handle that?

O povo está indo as ruas, estamos nos opondo contra a ameaça a democracia, gente no país inteiro está nas redes sociais republicando conteúdos, e se organizando para ir as ruas lutar pelo nosso país. Reacendemos uma chama que a muito tempo estava apagada, o sentimento de pertencimento as lutas sociais, as pessoas querem ir pra ruas querem se posicionar, mas não podemos deixar que esse movimento se acabar depois das eleições.

O que está acontecendo hoje deve ser muito bem analisado, muitos movimentos estudantis estão concentrando todo o protagonismo para si, estão restringindo o direito das pessoas exporem ideias e se alguém fala algo de relevante, logo escrevem textões para rebater a ideia, para no fim ser só para concordar sob uma ótica mais especifica. Estão preocupados com o capital político que podem acumular nessas campanhas e não estão convocando a classe mais importante agora, a trabalhadora. Restringir a participação de trabalhadores agora, para propor apenas discussões acadêmicas, não vai aproximar o mais pobre da nossa luta no memento, se essas pessoas, que são quem estão indecisas agora, se não se sentirem representados elas não vão confiar naquilo que estamos querendo transmitir.

Isso de forma alguma é para desincentivar as movimentações, que estão lindas demais, mas se você vai para a rua na sua cidade, se organize com pessoas nos protestos e cobre pela oportunidade de se expressar, você e eu, que somos os mais pobres, devemos ter o direito de nos expressar, somos nós que sentimos na pele todos os dias o que a despolitização está fazendo com a nossa classe.

Cobre, se imponha, não permita que a esquerda acadêmica diga o que você tem pra dizer, porque foi assim que a classe mais pobre migrou para a extrema direita.

I found something interesting regarding a financial imbalance between the Congolais mining company (Gecamines) and the Chinese mining company (Sicomines) regarding major financial inconsistencies and lack of allocation that seems relatively interesting, this was an audit by the state government through the IGF. Presumably the author was Jules Alingete Key, who was known for his charged auditing work in the current administration, but was accused of financial ties to Gecamines before being found to have lacked criminal culpability per the Attorney General’s report in local news.

Audit in question: https://wpstorage7ceb827ed5.blob.core.windows.net/wpblob7ceb827ed5/formidable/17/CONCLUSIONS-DE-L-IGF-SUR-LE-CONTRAT-CHINOIS.pdf

Before I make any meaningful indictment on Chinese firms and their alleged practices in the Congo and mining, it’s worth remembering that a substantial amount of institutes and NGOs are funded by the department of state, which presents a majorly concerning conflict of interest given the geopolitical situation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

I will say that if true, while it doesn’t change that the United States is a blatantly imperialist power, it puts China’s role as a resistor thereof in question.

I've had many discussions with my more leftist friends about problems in china and the parts they do well in, but they often disagree on if china is a communist country or just a capitalist one with a simultaneous strongarming state.

I'm talking about Maoist China, Cuba etc. I don't want to antagonize anyone, but saying "it wasn't real communism" or "outside factors caused those states to collapse". I truly want a good faith conversation, because, for me at least, communism doesn't work in concept. In a utopian society communism could work, but due to human nature I believe that there wont be a succesful communist country.

The labor value theorem also does not make sense for me. The biggest issue for communism for me is the lack of real time updated supply and demand pressures driving price and that communism hinders technological and societal innovation (why would I create something new and unique when it doesn't help me economically?).

Why would I work 40 hrs a week if I get paid the same for 0 hours of work? And how would you allocate recources when market pressure is almost impossible to calculate (for e.g. if you build a road by a mountain, it would take more engineering but less road to go through the mountain, but less engineering and more road to go around, how do you know what to do without a market representitive, which is cost in capitalism)?

Imo communism just changes the power holders from businesses and oligarchs to the state (which is USUALLY less efficient than the free market). Communism doesn't breed ambition (once again imo).

I recently discovered that at heart I am a minarchist, I am very proud of that fact. I saw a video about the Iran conflict from a channel called “The Minarchist” whom came to the conclusion that there are no right sides here. This got me thinking if we really need to destroy communism or if we can just wait it out until they collapse themselves, only problem being that we have countries that are not openly adhering to communist ideology like Australia where I live. The Australian Labor government is very clearly that of a communist nature but is not officially recognised as such which has the potential to be more dangerous.

I don't understand the "class struggle". I view it as dangerous as it splits society into two:
The wealthy and the poor.
And it tries to solve the issue with a violent revolution.
I belive the classes should collaborate on shared national goals and not say: "The owners suck they must all pearish" or "The workers suck we need to exploit them".
Making "classes" hate each other is the best way in my opinion for a downfall of a nation's society.

I’m pretty much a beginner on Marxism at the moment, and I’m trying to learn more about the different Marxist positions on feminism.

I recently found some of Santiago Armesilla debates and videos, he’s a Spanish political philosopher and writer who talks a lot about Marxism and materialism. He argues that feminism is incompatible with Marxism, and he also criticizes Engels’s analysis of women’s oppression and his comparison between the position of women and that of a social class.

He also describes feminism as an identitarian ideology that neglects half of the population and distracts the proletariat from developing class consciousness. He also argues that feminism can function as a tool of liberalism (not American liberalism, but the Spanish liberal tradition that later developed into thinkers like Hayek and Mises), since it focuses on women as a separate political group and on individual rights and identity instead of class struggle.

I don’t really know enough yet to say if he’s right or wrong, so I wanted to get the general Marxist consensus on this matter.

If you have any books or texts to further my understanding on this topic, please link them on the comments i would appreciate it very much.

You, as a communist, what do you think about it?

The reason why this or failed is because of interference from capitalist world powers, or it’s because of the “revisionist” or “Stalin betrayed the revolution”, or “real socialism has never been tried” did I get them all?

And yes I know these aren’t all said by the same person but the fact that from so many there is an excuse it’s always “everyone fault but ours”

It’s like this project it’s so fragile that can be defeated by basically….. anything…..

One of the key reasons I consider myself a communist and anti-capitalist is because I 100% believe that capitalism drives forth social alienation and that the logic of accumulation and survival defeats any attempt to maximize human dignity or freedom. I liked the concept of communism promoting a society where “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

I relate to individualism on a more psychological level than anything; distress and incongruence should be a variation of alienation in this case, and not having the room to critique or having to walk on eggshells in order to do so rarely creates favorable outcomes. In particular I’m concerned about the full extent of self-expression and the rights thereof, being able to dissolve so many of the rigid and traditional barriers or structures that prevent development, being able to develop yourself without having to worry about how many hours you’ve put in and whether rent will eat into your ability to live freely. When free expression becomes less and less important, more scrutinized and less valued, what happens to all the alienated? When people feel like they give too much to society or the collective without getting anything back, can that distress be considered selfishness—do we just not care?

More importantly, I’ve always been skeptical of what the dictatorship of the proletariat actually means. I’d argue that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, together with the instruments of the state, base their power and support on a cultural hegemony like Gramsci discussed, as well as a general soft-power rule. A lot of self-justifying because apparently capitalism is ”the only system where you can make something of yourself.” It is, put simply, something that bases itself in self-interest, self-development, and the illusion of voluntary participation. Shouldn’t a communist revolution base itself initially on these same principles rather than pure control, any notion of a greater good, etc.; who cares about a greater good when you’ve got a family to feed? If Marx was right that material conditions shape worldviews, which I largely understand it to be, it would still leave the door open to self-interested individuals based on their own priorities or desires, repressed or otherwise, emotional or material.

Im open to clarify if this question is confusing, but more broadly, are concepts like humanism and individualism inherently incompatible with the more anti-idealist and collectivist views of communism; on what basis have these values been described as pure idealism?

Pourquoi les communistes historiques ont réprimé les anarchistes après les mouvements de révolution (Cuba, Chine, Russie) ?