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  • low pollution rate
  • high living standards

Are there any historically model communist countries?

William
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    Subjective, lacks research, may not be history. – MCW Jul 08 '19 at 00:12
  • @MarkC.Wallace I have generalized question and changed information. – William Jul 08 '19 at 00:30
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    Still lacks research. More objective - although it is going to be difficult to distinguish between the Marxist position that all tribal societies are communist (with correspondingly low pollution rates and high living standards), and the commonly accepted position that there are no communist societies. The first step in resolving that would be to research, define, and document the terms. – MCW Jul 08 '19 at 00:35
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    Not to mention that you can't trust communist state statistics. My favorite is the claim that mortality in the CCCP was 0% – MCW Jul 08 '19 at 01:16
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    @Mark C. Wallace to be fair they probably meant morality ;-) –  Jul 08 '19 at 05:29
  • While it wasn't a country when it was communist, Slovenia might have what you are looking for. – Astor Florida Jul 08 '19 at 22:52
  • You might want to look into CSSR, East Germany, or post-WWII Hungary. These were the countries with the highest living standards in the Warsaw pact. While the living standards were considerably lower than in Western Europe at the time, and pollution was a problem, their societies (e.g. education, healthcare, policing) did function reasonably well. Probably better than e.g. most of Latin America. – Jan Jul 13 '19 at 11:01
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    The Warsaw Pact countries, with the exception of the Soviet Union did not call themselves communist countries, but sozialist. The difference (in theory) between the two is whether money exists or not. Since the SU used money, their claim at being a communist society is false. Money in the sozialist countries, being internal, money was not used in trade between them. All of the sozialist countries I visited (from Berlin) during their existence had a very high pollution rate. So based on both counts, none of the Warsaw Pact countries fulfills your conditions. – Mark Johnson Jul 20 '19 at 13:23

1 Answers1

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First, let us discard the "primitive communal societies" (as Marxism describes pre-historic societies): they cannot be compared with anything else and their "communism" has been disputed.

Second, for "modern" societies, the answer is, emphatically, no. Every single communist society attempted either disappeared through attrition (people leaving) or builds a wall to prevent that. The fact that people universally run away from communism is a conclusive proof that it does not offer most people a better standard of living (because most people value bread over circuses).

PS1. The few still existing tiny utopian communities are sustained through a constant influx of volunteers, not organically. They are like a zoo vs biosphere experiment.

PS2. Communism in this context is defined as economic model of communism (lack of private ownership of means of production, IOW, private enterprise being illegal, or at least prohibited from hiring employees), rather than political aspects (lack of liberty and democracy). Cf. authoritarian capitalist regimes in tigers and the current PRC and Vietnam who are communist only politically, not economically.

PS3. In response to the socialist apology in comments:

  1. Benin/Afghanistan are/were socialist in name only, these are agrarian non-collectivized economies, so their "socialism" affects only a small percentage of urban population.

  2. Both Yugoslavia and PRC had "граница на замке" (border is locked up) policy, and still plenty of people tried to escaped (to Austria from Yugoslavia, to Hong Kong from PRC).

  3. Cold War started after WW2, and USSR was locking borders already long before that. "Diplomatic isolation" coincided with relatively liberal NEP, while soviet industrialization was done, to a large degree (from Магнитка to Днепрогэс - both poster children of the Industrialization), by American and other western capital and engineers hungry for application in the aftermath of the Great Depression. In fact, blaming "hostile capitalist surroundings" for all internal problems is a classic Soviet lie, it is sad to see how well it persists.

sds
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    You may want to take a look at the standards of living and migration demographics of the PR China and Vietnam in the last 20 years or so. I am aware of the fact that these two countries are dictatorships and have a tainted human rights record, but your contention that people universally run away from communism seems to be incorrect and to have no basis in reality. – 0range Jul 08 '19 at 20:08
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    PRC and Vietnam are hardly communist in the last 20 years or so - they are authoritarian capitalisms a la South Korea and other "tigers" of 50 years ago. This completely conforms with my assertion that people value bread over circuses. – sds Jul 08 '19 at 20:56
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    Thank you. I accept your argument that PRC and Vietnam are possibly no longer communist economies (politically, they certainly still are communist). However, this opens the question of how that is defined and whether other historically communist countries such as East Germany (you mentioned the wall) had communist economies. Further, it is important to understand that people in East Germany, for instance, did not lack bread. They lacked freedom of speech, freedom of movement, good bread, and, precisely, circuses. – 0range Jul 08 '19 at 22:07
  • @0range: see PPS for definition of communist economy - straight from Marx. – sds Jul 08 '19 at 22:08
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    Your definition is not as clear-cut as you may believe. It is a misconception that private enterprise was illegal in communist states. It was strongly discouraged and owners were harassed in various ways, but it was not illegal. Small retail businesses, bakeries, etc. as well as farms (unless forcibly collectivized) were often still private. – 0range Jul 08 '19 at 22:13
  • @0range: "small" is defined as "no employees". For an industrial society (as opposed to pre-industrial and post-industrial) this basically means that nothing of significance was produced outside state economy. – sds Jul 08 '19 at 22:15
  • PRC is most certainly still "communist" a-la the Soviet Union. One just needs to (1) have been in the Soviet Union or satellite countries to know what it was like and (2) pay a visit to the PRC. It is plain as day. The big difference IMHO is how the PRC does foreign relations. However, China still has plenty of pollution, and most people have relatively low living standards. They will need another 30 or 40 years of growth to lick these problems, and with the environmental changes in Tibet, that might not be possible. – Astor Florida Jul 08 '19 at 22:50
  • That's grossly oversimplified. With "Every" you seem to have a quite small subset in mind, exemplified with "wall"? When did China build the wall you allude to? When did Yugoslavia? How did Socialism in Afghanistan disappear? Then a big factor was that not only own shortcomings brought down the bloc you seem to describe, but a cold war, that is in part forced upon armament and economic boycott. If 180 countries boycott the US, people will run for Mexico? (Target chosen for "the beautiful, biggest wall") – LаngLаngС Jul 09 '19 at 06:45
  • It's not intended as an apology for anything but a request to paint a less 'white' picture of the blackest and bleakest ;) But since your unwilling, let me re-emphasise that the USSR faced a cold war on diplomatic and economic grounds from 1917 onwards, as the elites in US and Europe were intensely hostile from the start. Perhaps you are still interested in the reasons for Rapallo or https://www.jstor.org/stable/40109268 ? – LаngLаngС Jul 09 '19 at 12:01
  • Everything in your PPS screams [citation needed]. In case you didn't notice: I didn't say "all internal problems", but "a factor", and it was undeniably so Perhaps you remember the US invasion of the USSR less well, but I wouldn't call that benevolent industrial capitalist investment? And where is your source for American capital? I only see that 1935 the Soviets bought one US fridge for the Lenin mausoleum… (In fairness, they managed to import for 241 million rubles that year, in total, but that was financed by German and Czech credit?) Unless sourced "large degree, US capital"=fantasy? – LаngLаngС Jul 09 '19 at 12:34
  • @LangLangC: the US intervention during the Russian Civil war was a minor trivial episode. I added links, but I know nothing will ever convince a die hard communist apologist, so I am closing the conversation. – sds Jul 09 '19 at 13:44
  • "Trivial" in your eyes, but I guess exemplary for "hostile" too? Your links do not prove what you wrote, largely they are the opposite, especially if you trace the down the source for Wiki. f you want to continue peddling your white propaganda, do what your uncle Joe, the great Stalin recommends to you, learn to win, by using outright propaganda that tries to prove your point more clearly, like https://www.americanheritage.com/how-america-helped-build-soviet-machine And even that synthetic account cannot sustain your classifications and accusations in A-text or comments. Tried to help. – LаngLаngС Jul 09 '19 at 15:58