This is a list of nominally communist states that deviated from their previous policies and initiated economic liberalization.
Not included are the many communist states that collapsed and were replaced by liberal regimes (Albania, GDR, Hungary, Poland, Mongolia)
theguardian.com
>nytimes.com
Other urls found in this thread:
scholar.harvard.edu
twitter.com
Insane amounts of external pressure.
This and the fact that once the USSR powerhouse succumbed to liberalization the was no way that the others would be able to hold on their own. So really all that was needed to defeat 20th century socialism was to dismantle the USSR, which was eventually successful.
Because Communist states are flexible and pragmatic in their governance, of course. There is nothing to prevent one from adopting more or less centralized economy, and the first economic policy of the first communist state, namely, the Soviet Union, was also not totally planned, and pretty much the same as that of any current communist states.
I couldn't tell you user. I'd have to be some sort of legendary warlord to figure this out.
This is why R. Wolff pushes for co-ops as opposed to state ownership. The argument is that it is more difficult for a right-wing head of state to privatize worker cooperatives than state-owned industries.
Because they are inflexible and isolated. Capitalism, with all it's flaws, provides huge capital growth, and integrates it's economy with global market system, which is mostly beneficial for such country (although not always, as provided by 3rd world countries). Nearly all of the socialist countries had to introduce some market elements to cope with insufficiency of planned economy (a lot of factor is to be blamed, such as lack of proper technology to correctly allocate resources, huge military expenses and the nature of authoritarian Marxist-Leninist governments), because they were cut off from the external world
Pretty much what everyone has said. There is a reason Cuba fell into a terrible economic crisis after the USSR fell.
wtf i'm a 4 now
I actually think this answer is insufficient. After reading about these countries, I am not getting the impression that they succumbed to external pressure, with the exception of Laos.
how would there be external pressure? The capitalists saying that they want access to your market is only pressure if they have leverage, which they didn't. China mines/mined nearly all of the worlds rare earth metals, and the USSR was energy independent
They were defeated by their enemies and forced to accept terms of surrender which included integration into the global capitalist system.
What is the cold war?
anarcho communism is the only true communism and they are run by statists.
what does anarcho communism even mean and how does it differ from "regular" communism?
It's a sincere question.
Because they all had revolutions when they were still backwards peasant societies with no productive development and these undeveloped states can't singlehandedly stop historic/economic forces from grabbing hold.
ancoms are utopian morons with leftist characteristics.
you can`t access the resources in the capitalist market without their money and the only way to get it is through extremely unfair deals or let then sell their products.
also all raw materials are controlled by cartels.
I suspected as much.
The name of the game in capitalism is accumulation. Who accumulates the most, the fastest, wins. For a small country like Cuba with the world's number one imperial power less than a hundred miles off shore and which keeps them constantly under blockade, you can probably imagine that this is pretty difficult, not only because of the US, but because of the natural resources they have access to, the massive shocks to their economy such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and environmental disasters that make development difficult, hurricanes for instance.
For large countries like Russia or China, the accumulation game is ameliorated somewhat by their size. Much of what they need to create an industrial basis for society is already at hand. Before their revolutions, both had an intellectual class with the sort of background that would enable them to develop. They had universities and scholastic infrastructure, and usually at least the rudiments of an industrial base to start from.
Both had to overcome tremendous deficits to catch up, though, to the very nations that had enriched themselves at their expense. China was pretty much in a state of civil war from 1849 to 1949. I can't reckon at the ultimate wisdom of Deng's economic policies, but imo from a Marxist perspective it makes sense. To catch up to the West in industrial, technical, and intellectual capital would take decades, and not helped in the least bit by hundreds of millions of peasants who for all intents and purposes were living in the 19th century. Opening China meant capital comes in, it meant access to Western universities, it meant advancement and eventual parity with the West much faster than they would be able to accomplish on their own. It might be a deal with the devil, but for now it's paying dividends.
China mines the majority on paper, but that's because all of the African mining companies like Apple rely on are illegal and go uncounted. They aren't anywhere near energy dependent, and there are numerous other industrial inputs that they need or needed, not the least of which was capital.
really makes me think
Anarcho communism eschews hierarchy wherever possible in favour of horizontal organization. Bakunin, Proudhon, and Kropotkin are some names you should look for if you'd like to know more about it.
Resources and cheap labor. It helps when a country is devastated by American bombers and crippled demographically as a result.
Because even the most dogmatic MLs eventually realize that command economies are less efficient than market economies.
Except that isn't true.
It objectively is: scholar.harvard.edu
What said, huge amounts of pressure.
Threats of war, sanctions, often outright blockades of your economy, the constant threat of assassionation, sabotage and other forms of espionage, so on and so forth. Back down, begin to let porky in, and all that goes away and the West treats you as the great savior of your country to boot.
Countless tons of stuff is thrown out every day simply because no one can afford to buy it. Markets are anything but efficient.
Ironic, USSR economy became least efficient with free market reforms.
For a certain value of "efficient", which in bourgeois economic terms is just a euphemism for "profitability".
They are people who think too far ahead of their time.
That's what utopianism is.
t. Marx
Because actual socialist governments allowed the bureaucratic strata to gain too much power and influence. They used that power and influence to enrich themselves, by privatizing state-owned industry into their own hands.
This. A planned economy is feasible but it’s clear that the models used by 20th century experiments were flawed. That’s why new models need to be experimented with. A good policy would be to establish market socialism immediately post revolution, and then set about conducting small scale planning experiments and computer simulations, determining what works best and gradually scaling it up until there is a fully planned economy.
For one the paper seems to be a more complex argument from nature as it is implying that it in the interest of planners to accept bribes out of their greedy nature to increase prices, which leads to my second point, the fucking paper doesn't even know what socialism is. It's treating a socialist economy exactly like a capitalist one where the planners are basically the bourgeoisie with the only difference being that they don't get to take surplus value. The entire premise is based around money and profitability which makes no sense in a socialist context.
This describes basically 90% of the criticism of the big names in antisocialism like Hayek, Mises, etc.
not the same as central planning, read Cockshott
Didn't Poland already liberalize their economy a decade into its existence as a socialist state?
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Most leftcoms contemporary to Leninwere basically Leninists themselves, if less effective Leninists.
I think this is the critical of ML. Sure bureaucrats aren't bourgeoise and their rule can still count as DoP, but what can be done to deter them from basically stealing state enterprises through privatization?
critical counterpoint I meant
democracy?
I think largely the best way to do so without getting ahead of ourselves (i.e. abolishing money, or destroying all capitalist countries in the world) would just be to improve the democratic system. Let worker councils veto bureaucrat/planner decisions, or example.
a buzzword, be more descriptive retard
why can't we have a constitutionally socialist democracy?
You're being dumb, the USSR and other ML states (even le evil north korea) already have muh democracy in place. Asking for more of this vague democracy is nothing but what our faggot neighbors at Holla Forums call "virtue signaling" if you're not willing to go into any sort of detail into what do you mean.
basically described what I had in mind although I think popular referendums should also be a thing.
Possibly like what the USSR would have been if Yeltsin didn't usurp the system during the "coup".
The "bureaucrats" in the late soviet union didn't control things like food and housing, as those aren't worth much money. The real bureaucratic aristocracy was in charge of the big expensive weapons systems. Note how that particular legacy of the soviet union is alive and well while its former people are left out in the cold.
Enver Hoxha talks about this in "The Khruschevites"
Here is his analysis of the symptoms:
Another quote from "The Capitalist Character of the Relations of Production in the Soviet Union", describing the actual material conditions that gave rise to revisionism:
Imperialism and Gorby fucking up thus fucking up the satellite states.
Remember they were banking on world revolution and the fall of the capitalist powers after 1917, and it didn't happen, so they had to make due with the situation they had.
They are not just Harvard students, Andrei Shleifer is the most cited American economist.
Also, why do you think that individuals will not pursue their material self-interest in a socialist economy?
So, is this the power of Marxist-Leninist economics?
Waste has existed in planned economies as well.
Gomulka was a revisionist and was against socialism, he was apart of the Khruschov clique, how could one support the Polish regime after 1956 at all? It was a dictatorship
Why didn't he continue the socialist revolution in 1945 though?
They're still state capitalists or perpetuate the political class so DOP would probably be best to describe them.
Abolish the state and currency, be it throught federalism, exchange through workers councils, or establishing communes. If that can't happen outright, the state should have more horizontal as opposed to vertical via democratic confederalism, or have a similar method found within the Paris Commune (albeit we should be better armed than before).
I think he was focusing on rebuilding the USSR. Invasions into your territory tend to do that, not to mention maintaining control over new territories you seized from the Nazis.
sounds administrative to me
revolution export with war, pretty ridiculous
ww2 was an exception because it rolled back an attacking force, there was no question about the liberating character
there's a difference between supporting revolutions and autistically invading and calling ot one
the people and soviet soldiers were tired of war too, so there's not much of that energy you're talking about
not saying there couldn't have been more done but be realistic here