Dennis said:
>I'm not sure that communism has ever existed on this planet.
Yup, I think I'd even go further and just say it hasn't yet. But I'm talking about communists, big-C (of the various parties) and little-c (not in the parties).
^^^^^^^
CB: For the record, all the Communist Parties of the socialist countries specifically have held that there wasn't communism anywhere on the planet whether in the SU or Cuba or China. The Soviet Union "named" itself a union of soviet _socialist_ republics. China , however, was and is a _people's_ republic, as is Viet Nam, in recognition that those societies at the time of their national liberataion revolutions did not have sufficient capitalism, and thereby proletariat, to even claim to be socialist, let alone communist.
My hypothesis on advent of capitalism in China and Viet Nam is that the Communist Party strategies there are taking a very what is sometimes referred to as vulgar, Marxist approach; they have to have capitalism before they can have socialism. It is the completely antagonistic pole from the time when it was theorized that China and other primarily peasant-working peoples' nations could bypass capitalism to socialism. No, now they are following a very "stagist" ,more stagist than even Leninist,( because Lenin's theory was a half stage-skipper for Russia; there were a lot of debates that Russia couldn't have a socialist revolution because it didn't have enough capitalism) historical materialist approach. Really they are following a form of Menshevism. No, stage skipping, no substituting cheerleading and vanguard party activism for socialism for the socio-econ.material base for socialism. It would be a form of objectivism, if those CP's were following this.
Also, by this approach, China and Viet Nam would have to wait for a revolution in an advanced _capitalist_ country. The world socialist revolution cannot start in a "backward" economic country. This is a reasonable lesson of the history of the Soviet Union, etc. In this regard , it would be a return to a more dogmatic or "fundamentalist" even, Marxism, as this was a theorem of Marx and Engels.
Maybe ?
I don't mean to ignore that it raises unanswered questions as to what exactly is the role of the CP's in a significantly capitalist country
>"Developmental
>state socialist" might be the best term for Vietnam today -- not too
>different
>from, say, 1950s Japan or 1970s South Korea.
Yeah, I guess that's about right from what little I know of the place (I taught English to a couple of young Vietnamese students, one definitely from among the elite, and just asked them how things were going.). Getting further away from the socialism, though, aren't they, than before?
But I was reacting primarily to Michael's kneejerk response (which I could've set my watch by). I was just wondering about the point of calling such a group as the Communist Party of Vietnam "Leninists" given that they don't seem interested in Marxism at all. Or are they, I'm just not up on things?
Todd