Looks like he was a member of the Republican party.
Tell me no! Couldn’t be - must be a witch-hunt.
Pete
Well they did say he is a member of the Communist party. Since the only people who like Putin are Republicans it only goes to say!
2 Likes
Is Russia still Communist? I thought Yelsin made the new Russia a democracy.
The Communist countries now are China and Cuba. And Russia is less active in spreading Communism globally.
1 Like
Ahhh so that is why you like Putin, you think it’s a democracy. All I can say is Wow.
3 Likes
Russia is a different kind of a democracy in that opposition is limited. So one party rule. But party can remove its leader.
It is no longer communist.
They call that an autocracy it has nothing to do with democracy, no matter what the party on the right would think. It usually has a head of the party that is considered a strong man, who is really weak, sound familiar?
3 Likes
When was it ever, really?
Pete
In the era of Lenin and Stalin, the Soviet Union was very communist. The state did take over all assets and attempt to take care of all citizens equally. They also worked to spread communism throughout the globe. That continued until the fall of the Soviet Union.
Few would deny Stalin was a brutal dictator. But he reported to the Communist party Supreme Soviet which had power to relieve him. Which they did with Kruschev.
“In the era of Lenin and Stalin, the Soviet Union was very communist.”
I suppose it depends on your definition of communism. As outlined by Karl Marx, communism was supposed to be a stateless, classless society where all means of production were collectively owned. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was characterized by a centralized state with a single-party political system and a controlled economy. The state played a dominant role in managing economic production, and the Communist Party had absolute control over the political system. The Soviet Union’s leadership, especially under Joseph Stalin and later leaders, established a bureaucratic system that was far from the classless, egalitarian society Marx envisioned.
Pete
1 Like
Yes. I have to laugh at people who say China is communist. Or Communist. It’s nothing close, although the ruling party still has “Communist” in the title. (Then again there was a famous German party of the 1930s/40s with “Socialist” in the name, and North Korean cabal calls itself the “Workers Party”, which only demonstrates how little a word sometimes matters.)
Mao tried (as have others, never with success), but in the 80’s China adopted many characteristics of free market enterprise, choosing to retain only a few of the largest industries as state owned and controlled. (For reference, this was not functionally different than many European countries at the time, which had large stakes, or owned outright such enterprises as the railroads, steel production, etc.)
China aspired to a system close to this characterization from 1949, in the era of Mao Zedong. Under his leadership, agricultural activity was collectivized, the State appropriated the country’s land, and practically the entire industrial sector passed into the hands of the State.
However, as a result of profound reforms agreed in late 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China began to create ample space for private enterprise, individual initiative, and foreign investment. Ideological purism was replaced by the search for economic and social results, within the framework of a pragmatic perspective, summarized in Deng Xiaoping’s well-known verdict “it does not matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”.
Pro-market and pro-private enterprise reforms and the consolidation of a mixed economy coincide with extraordinary achievements. Between 1980 and 2010, China’s GDP grew at a rate of [close to 10% per year] and 800 million people were lifted out of poverty. These gigantic economic and social achievements are unparalleled in history. Today the world worries about (or is relieved by?) China’s “slow” growth, given that it is around 5% per year. But it should be noted that the rate corresponding to the United States, Germany, and Japan is 2.7, 0.2, and 0.9, and the average for the European Union is 0.7% and 1.5% for the G7.
Who has the most ideal communist economy/government? Cuba?
That’s about right.
Cuba remains one of the few states still adhering closely to Marxist-Leninist principles, but with heavy state control over the economy (though market-oriented reforms have been introduced in recent years).
Pete
Yes, I would say Cuba and North Korea. Both have a top down economic system (not that that’s what a communist state is supposed to be, but they all have been) and remarkably little individual freedom for citizens, with an entrenched cadre of leadership which cannot be removed.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
2 Likes