• rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Problem is, communism has never been successfully employed, anywhere.

    In places like current Venezuela, you have cronyism. In places like the old USSR, it was an autocratic variant of plutocracy, where a tiny cadre of political elites ruled over a powerless underclass. Modern China is pretty much the same system.

    All so-called “implementations” have been a thin veneer of “communism” covering up something toxic and horrible that most definitely was never anything even close to communism. Much like how Easy Germany or North Korea were/are “Democratic” simply because that word was/is in their name.

    About the closest we got was with Cuba, which could have seriously shaken up the world had it been given half a chance.

    But Cuba is also what you get when the world’s largest economy bullies the rest of the planet into making a country a trade pariah simply because of ideological differences. Had Cuba been allowed to trade, it would have been an economic powerhouse, and would have likely exported worker’s collectives worldwide and seriously threatened the hegemony of the Parasite Class that rules capitalistic economies.

    But of course, the Parasite Class couldn’t allow this to happen, so Cuba’s experiment was strangled and starved nearly to death. And yet, despite the deprivations and Western malice, it has achieved more per unit of resources available to it than any other capitalist economy out there. It’s doctors are world-renowned, and it’s medical research - especially with cancer - is groundbreaking. Imagine what it could do if it wasn’t brutally suppressed by western trade blockades.

    • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      If Chinese people were powerless, their protests wouldn’t have gotten the CPC to roll back the Zero COVID policy.

    • Ironfist@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Because communism only works on paper. In practice, it always has and always will end in what you described: an autocratic variant of plutocracy, where a tiny cadre of political elites ruled over a powerless underclass.

        • Ironfist@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Similar but not the same, communist countries always end up in tyranny and its citizens always end up escaping to capitalist countries. In capitalist countries you can see some that have better quality of life than others. It depends a lot on legislation, how competent is the government to keep a healthy economy and social investments.

    • terath@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Modern China is in no way communist. It’s more of an autocratic socialism. I mean come on, people own businesses, buy and sell things their businesses make, even their healthcare has significant private components!

      Also, while Cuba’s medical system is good for what it is, the rest of the country is not very functional. If communism were so great everything in the country would be at least as functional as their healthcare despite trade.

      Communism was a nice idea that doesn’t work in practice.