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@realcaseyrollins How would you measure a "booming economy" in the context of a communism anyway? Usually we rate the health of an economy by how much disposable income someone has. The whole point of a communism is that there is no distinction between disposable income since there is no code income needed for necessities, those are (supposedly) provided.
Cumulative wealth divided by the population and compared to median wealth? GDP? Growth of businesses?
I don't think disposable income should be the best indicator of a good economy, but rather the economy's ability to perform, grow and expand.
In that case here you go, a graph of previously communist countries showing GDP per capita. You can clearly see how the growth of GDP changed pre and post communism here as well as the cost of the transition itself.
@realcaseyrollins Perhaps, this is largely why I asked you what the indicators should be and then provided whatever that was.
Healthcare in tiny socialist countries can be impressive though, from what I've heard
@realcaseyrollins I am of the opinion that communism generally fails both economically and in terms of personal freedoms.
In the charts I provided you can clearly see that the rate of increase int he GDP is significantly higher post-communism than pre-communism for most of those countries.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins there are as many flavors of Communism as there are flavors of Liberalism.
Libertarian Communists for example have little trust in the State and seek to maximize civic liberties, all that while only allowing economic systems with a republican form.
While it is certainly true there are many fgorms of communism, but definition being a communism ensures you have a very specific set of properties, and you **must** have this to qualify as a communism.
Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to say, and in my opinion correct, that any of the many flavors, if they happen to have the properties needed to qualify as communist, then that quality will ultimately lead to a much worse economy and quality of life than if that communistic property were not present.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins which is why you will very rarely see Marxist-Leninists, Trade-Unionists and Market Anarchists parade together ; their moral compass is far too different to hope for some sorta leftist unity.
Indeed. But their moral compass is less of a concern for me than the fact that the shared property of communism is a harmful factor (in my opinion) to the quality of their proposed governments.
depends how you define "shared property" -> we never witnessed Republics in which the only acceptable legal structures were worker cooperatives and citizen associations. Hell you could still have your (somewhat) free market mechanisms. and I dont see how workers (the real wealth creators) enjoying workplace democracy would be a harmful factor for wealth creation.
there are been a few attempts but they were short-lived, mostly due to external factors, such as wars.
"shared property" is not the definition of communism. Communism is most commonly defined as a system of government where the means of production **and** the means of consumption is controlled.
Contrast this with socialism where only the means of production is controlled.
The definition of "shared property" isnt particularly necessary given the formal definitions.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins both definitions are too restrictive ; it supposes only the Marxist-Leninist model exists.
Fun fact: originally "libertarian" came from the french word "libertaire", which was just a fancy word for anarchocommunist (it was mostly less scary to the average citizen)
and this libertarian model didnt rely on the State to organize production ; it relied on workers themselves, through worker cooperatives, credit unions and social-insurances.
Marxism came only much later
Neither definition is completely limited to the marxist-leninst model, but it will rule out some governments as falling under the definition, and rightfully so.
The thing about definitions is they arent meant to be "rewritten" just because you want something to be communist that isnt. The truth is if the definition doesnt describe something as communist, then it isnt communist, and we shouldnt be rewriting definitions to change that.
Its a semantic discussion, but still an important one. Its why we can actually make useful statements about ommunism and not expect those statements to become useless just because the definition is a moving target. Redefining communism serves no useful purpose as I can see it.
