The Dictator Files: Chairman Mao

China is not communist anymore since Chairman Deng Xiaoping. People have not revolted because in the last few decades, China's quality of life has increased by a huge amount.

China is very much socially Communist. The Party is absolutely in total control of media, communications (such as internet access and looking in on your phone activity), politics, courts, military, assembly, education, population control, people's movements, and any other arena in which they decide they wish to exercise absolute control. Don't let the economic success fool you. Yes, many people are allowed freer movement and access to a better life than 40 years ago but only as the government allows. Overall, things are moving in a better direction. This is good. However, this country is very much still Communist.

@AkJMB have you read the Manifesto of the Communist Party? I don't remember reading anything about repression in there. You are speaking of totalitarianism not communism. I pitty your brainwashed American perception of Communism. Communism, as Karl Marx intended it to be, is not what you see happening in the "Communist Countries".

The Soviet Union traded with several western countries in the 80s. Were they not communist?

No country has ever been Communist, they have been Socialist States striving towards Communism.

Agreed with amm14 100%, except for the assertion that kal is "better than this".

@amm14 (I believe you am) Perhaps you need to learn the meaning of "or". It's quite simple really. China is pseudo communist. Very few real communist societies exist. The Eskimo settlements before partial assimilation into white nations are a notable example. Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the Americas, turned around and survived by adopting an ethos of everyone shares and everyone works. So yeah, the societies of almost everyone works while a few live very well and hold immense power over the workers are, in fact, pseudo communism.

I'm not a fan of communism but still know enough to know that China and the USSR were not communist in anything other than name. The Communist manifesto predicted a revolution in the most advanced and industrialized countries in the world led by the workers to overthrow the elites. This never happened and never will. Marx was wrong. Russia and China were impoverished agrarian societies. The gangsters that took over did not believe in liberal values like individuality, personal freedom, etc. They used communist phrasings to justify totalitarianism and state religion. I'm not better than this I'm just better than the state or party-run propaganda that you get your ideas from.

Incorrect. The USSR and PRC were genuine Communist states by the definition of Communism as stated by Marx. It was only after Stalin and Mao died that they somewhat liberalized, and USSR only fully liberalized when it collapsed. They were Communist in every sense of the word, and you for some reason desperately accuse them of being affiliated with religion, whether real or state religion, in order to justify your rabid anti-religious beliefs despite the fact that they murdered us Christians in China.

Kal didn't say those states were affiliated with religion. He said they functioned *like* theocracies, which is accurate. China under Mao operated with a cultish adherence to a particular philosophy of living, which itself involved a lot of nonsensical and arbitrary rules ostensibly intended to foster "right living" that in practice only subjugate the people who live under them. The key difference is whether the supreme and infallible being who made those rules is the country's contemporary ruler (like Mao, Kim Jong-il, or Stalin) or someone who lived thousands of years ago. Maoist Chinese scolded their children by shaming them for not living up to Mao's standards. Religious organizations shame people for being sinners. It's the same thing. Private religion is a totally different animal than state religion. If you choose not to eat meat on Fridays because you believe in that, that's great. If the state tells women they have to cover their faces, that's horrific.

Kyote: so it's your position that Marx predicted the proletariat revolution would happen when gangsters and academics assumed power in the poorest, most agrarian, least industrialized countries in their respective continents? And then they would go on to use single-party rule to create a new caste of social elites loyal to the party and privileged above everyone else, while millions of farmers and workers starved to death? That's interesting. Source?

And... is it also your position that religions never use violence against rival religions? So... no killing at all during the Inquisition, Crusades, 30 Years' War, or Muslim conquest of Western India, for example? That's also very interesting. Source?

Also this is 2 years late but, amm, did you not see the word "or"? I said pseudo Communist OR far-right fascist states. Both those on the far-left (Stalin, Mao) and those on the far-right (Hitler, Trump) are just fine with totalitarianism and state control of everything.

edit: okay I guess I didn't bring this up because someone2018 already did. Nevermind.

My view is the correct view. Not the American view. I am generally at odds with most people in terms of their (typically very poor) understanding of politics history and philosophy, regardless of where they went to school. Including Americans. And Russians. And those inbetween. I got my ideas about Marx from reading the Communist Manifesto. He was wrong.

You are correct that most Americans are proudly independent and like to think of themselves as doing things their own way and not needing any help, though. That's been a long-standing cultural cornerstone in the country. Doesn't describe everyone there - it's an extremely diverse country, after all - but it describes a lot of Americans.

As for "rugged individualism" and libertarianism vs statism and socialism... there's undoubtedly a bit of the former in America's historical consciousness... but these days it's a contentious political issue abused by corporations to dupe people into voting for lower taxes on the wealthy.

USSR and PRC and DPRK are not Farright. USSR was a collective leadership society, same as PRC and DPRK. Despite the western propaganda that they were dictatorships. Here is a CIA file showing it: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

Would be nice if people actually read before commenting.

So much rhetorical energy is spent on debating whether the far left or far right is more brutal, but the ideologies of the leaders seem less significant that the methods they use to amass power: ethnonationalism, scapegoating, demonization of intellectuals, cult of personality. You can substitute religion for nationalism or vice versa, but these brutal regimes demand fealty to the "right way to live," which will separate the true Muslims from the infidels or the real American patriots from the socialists, etc., etc. The rise of socialism or capitalism is much less cause for alarm than the rise of nationalism and antintellectualism.

Whether you are far-left or far-right is really just a matter of opinion these labels shift in meaning all the time and whenever rulers claim ultimate power and become totalitarian or authoritarian it typically doesn't matter whatever flavor of BS they were espousing before they got there. Admittedly I called some of the states above far-right just to trigger some people. I have no emotional investment in the labels of right or left, don't identify as either, and criticize people who identify as both; it's kind of funny when they become blindly loyal to a direction.

"Socialist" is an American buzzword for anyone against them.

Even if you think that, it doesn't make sense to use that to describe it on every single question where the great leap forward is the answer. It was a program of industrialisation, not a genocide. It's also incredibly biased in a brainless kind of way. The Great Leap Forward increased industrial production x13, meant that half of the land in China became irrigated and increasing living standards and life expectancy, but no questions ever use these statistics. Instead people on this site only know the propaganda from their middle school history teacher

Well, someone here certainly has learned some propaganda somewhere...

What allowed China to experience economic growth from the 1960s onward?

Deng Xiaoping's rejection of Maoist/Marxist economic policies? (coupled with the enormous hole the country was already in thanks in part to them)