Opinion of people who refer to China as Communist

[Lambsbread]

options 2 and 3 for me.

[ElectionsGuy]

lol.

[bedstuy]

The famous Bill Gates quote on China's economic system is more or less true, "it's capitalism on steroids."

However, for several reasons I do not care about that particular misapprehension about the economic system in China.  For one thing, by the dictionary definition,  there has never been a communist country ever in history.  If anything, we should retire the world communist as a description of economies.  For another thing, China purposefully keeps its political system obscure and even American political scholars are hazy on the particulars.  And finally, in the common parlance, communist government implies authoritarian, unamerican and centralized, which capitalist China still is.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

options 2 and 3 for me.

lol.

Why? It may have a market economy, but it hardly is a free market. It's state "capitalism" with a communist name. The Communist Party embraces "scientific socialism" and operates like any other ruling Communist Party. I hardly think it is fair to mock those who refer to China as communist when it is barely capitalist either.

[ElectionsGuy]

options 2 and 3 for me.

lol.

Why? It may have a market economy, but it hardly is a free market. It's state "capitalism" with a communist name. The Communist Party embraces "scientific socialism" and operates like any other ruling Communist Party. I hardly think it is fair to mock those who refer to China as communist when it is barely capitalist either.

I'm not trying to mock those who think it is, but I don't think China is a communist state anymore. And I don't think its capitalistic at all either though. Somewhere in between.

[freefair]

HPs. Even on the social-political civil rights issues, it's still vastly, vastly better than pre 1989 communist states.

[Indy Texas]

There aren't any countries that are communist in the Maoist or Marxist-Leninist sense in existence anymore. Communist parties are in power in China, Vietnam and most of Southeast Asia, but they've stopped being command-and-control economies since the mid-'90s. The fact that the Chinese economy has produced millionaires and billionaires more or less precludes a traditional communist system. And I'm pretty sure aggressively persuading private, foreign companies to open factories and hire your citizens isn't especially communist. Some people cite North Korea, but after Kim Il-sung died, Kim Jong-Il removed pretty much any references to Marxism or communism from the country's constitution and state propaganda and focused exclusively on Juche and his own cult of personality; North Korea is basically a very authoritarian fascist state at this point, not a communist one.

[DINGO Joe]

I vote for Orwellian Capitalism

http://world.time.com/2013/12/09/china-here-are-some-great-things-about-toxic-air/?hpt=hp_t3

[Redalgo]

lol gets my vote - the only instances of communism coming close to implementation in the world I know of predate the founding of the People's Republic of China.

[Oak Hills]

There aren't any countries that are communist in the Maoist or Marxist-Leninist sense in existence anymore.

Methinks you have forgotten Cuba.

[Hatman 🍁]

Well, they are communist officially, as is North Korea, Laos, Vietnam and Cuba.

Of course, technically the US is a "democracy", isn't it?

[dead0man]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country? 

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

[freefair]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country? 

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

I'm on the right and I don't see any real communism outside of Cuba and NK. Maybe Venezuela soon, but not for now.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country?

You clearly have no clue what Communism is. Which isn't very surprising, mind you.

[dead0man]

Maybe you can help me out?  Use small words.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country? 

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

I'm on the right and I don't see any real communism outside of Cuba and NK. Maybe Venezuela soon, but not for now.

North Korea has openly abandoned "communism" as a label/goal. They're basically Nazis at this point (with "Korean" substituting "Aryan").

[Oakvale]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country?  

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

The one thing that virtually all strains of modern communist have in common is that they insist communism has never been really tried.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country? 

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

The one thing that virtual all strains of modern communist have in common is that they insist communism has never been really tried.

It has in isolated instances, and has tended to work well until quashed by an outside power (the Paris commune, the Petrograd Soviet, the anarchist communes in Spain, etc.). And the "communist" states like the USSR or pre-Deng China didn't even claim to be communist; instead they claimed to be socialist states in transition to communism.

[Hatman 🍁]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country? 

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

I'm on the right and I don't see any real communism outside of Cuba and NK. Maybe Venezuela soon, but not for now.

North Korea has openly abandoned "communism" as a label/goal. They're basically Nazis at this point (with "Korean" substituting "Aryan").

The only genocide the North Koreans are committing are against their own people. Or is there something I'm not familiar with?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country? 

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

I'm on the right and I don't see any real communism outside of Cuba and NK. Maybe Venezuela soon, but not for now.

North Korea has openly abandoned "communism" as a label/goal. They're basically Nazis at this point (with "Korean" substituting "Aryan").

The only genocide the North Koreans are committing are against their own people. Or is there something I'm not familiar with?

True, but that's because there are basically no ethnic minorities in either Korea.

[Marnetmar]

I don't see why people that call China communist should all be HPs just for being uneducated. The general norm is to call them communist.

That said, I voted lol

[minionofmidas]

Dirty  Communists.

[Redalgo]

I love when western lefties argue that certain places are not communist.  It's like people saying Obama isn't black or that LBJ wasn't a dick.  Do they call themselves communist?  Is the state "all powerful"?  Does the state own or control all the important industry?  Is the local chapter of the Communist Party the only "party" and it runs the country?  

Just because you can't check off every box doesn't mean Sean Connery isn't a true Scotsman.

Communism is a variety of anarchy under which property is owned in common, there is no money, and production is directed toward satisfying the needs of all members of society. The overarching aim is to liberate everyone from economic subjugation, thereby empowering them to do as they please in life. Marx reckoned machines could do the sh**tty jobs nobody wants while human beings could voluntarily do the jobs they love, under an assumption that people who do not produce and contribute anything meaningful to society will become unhappy. Communists themselves are often socialists in practice today who in theory want communism to be achieved later on.

During the Cold War what we saw was Second World countries implementing socialism in a violently authoritarian or totalitarian (rather than a peaceful, democratic) fashion, usually in keeping with some spin-off on Lenin's views of how best to transition from capitalism to communism. A centrally-planned economy is socialist, not communist, in character really and communism itself cannot exist while the state does - in much the same way that anarcho-capitalism cannot truly exist until the people in power dissolve the state.

More simply put, China's leaders call themselves communist but are overseeing an economy in which the government and firms often collaborate to advance national interests while neither being entirely capitalist nor socialist. They clearly have a mixed economy, and I am tempted to describe it as corporatist - sort of like how a fascist economy works or like that of the U.S. during World War II. Those among Chinese leaders who are not corrupt would probably describe their economy as socialist, however, but much like how Americans describe their own economy as capitalist it is not without its influences from alternative ways of thought. I hope that helps?

[Cassius]

China is run by a Communist Party, which likes to proclaim that it has enacted Communism, so it's a forgiavable sin for those who are unaware of the ins and outs of Marx's fantasy ideology to call it a Communist state.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Maybe you can help me out?  Use small words.

Two words: income inequality.