I keep running up against this wall when talking to people about communism in the “wild”:
“Give me an example of a real world country that flourished after transitioning to communism.”
When I look at statistics relating to human flourishing, I can’t seem to find any instances where adopting communism lead to more human flourishing. It seems like a lot of people can’t be satisfied with the theory, they need a real world practical example to be convinced that it is viable.
Do you guys have any good examples I can use?
There is none. Capitalism is the era we’re all living right now. It was created from feudal era and expanded global wide with the industrial revolution. Is not just some specific local optional system.
Every “communist” country was/is just another capitalist country with a dictatorship that claims it will end capitalism at some point. Capitalism is the existence of capital and the system that arises from it.
Comunism is being against it, not a system. Go and take a look at the Communist Manifesto, it’s very short and self explanatory. Leninism was one, but it’s technically an extreme form of capitalism: a ridiculously strong state/nation, a extreme separation of classes and a total control of private property and means of production (exactly what communism wants to abolish). They just took the term “marxism” as propaganda (as thr nazis took the term “socialism” or n.korea took the term “democratic”); actual marxists are actually super against leninism.
So, a “communist” system would be anything that arises after the fall of capitalism. It would be a system with no social classes (so no ruling class separate from worker class), no private property (so no state or landlords) and no ownership of means of production (no company owners). And by definition, no capital, so no “lands”, no shares and… please sit down for this… no money.
That’s why capitalists NEED to demonize communism and misinform of what it is. Because communism is basically the idea of abolish capitalism, not a system by itself. Communism in another era could have been something like “we don’t want kings to own these lands and our labor as farmers”.
So no, there is no communist country… yet.
Thanks for the honest answer.
I personally understand why people don’t want to demolish a system from which they prosper and within which they enjoy a high living standard.
Also our brains are deeply molded by capitalism, as part ofnit is difficult to think that there will be some other system in the future (like there were before this one). Thinking that a society without money or nations (as an example) could work, is really really hard to consider. Is like telling a peasant from the middle ages thet he/she could own land.