Posted on 07/21/2015 8:13:33 AM PDT by C19fan
After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Hanoi, capital of a now-unified, Communist Vietnam, was a bombed-out disasterscape. Residents lived under an egalitarian reign of terror. The grim ideologues who ran the country forbade citizens to socialize with or even speak to the few foreign visitors. People queued up in long lines past government stores with bare shelves to exchange ration coupons for meager handfuls of rice. The only traffic on the street was the occasional bicycle.
Since then, however, Hanoi has transformed itself more dramatically than almost any other city in the world. Today, the city is an explosive capitalist volcano, and Vietnam is rapidly on its way to becoming a formidable economic and military power. “Many revolutions are begun by conservatives,” Christopher Hitchens once said, paraphrasing John Maynard Keynes, “because these are people who tried to make the existing system work and they know why it does not. Which is quite a profound insight. It used to be known in Marx’s terms as revolution from above.” That’s exactly what happened in Vietnam, though the revolutionaries weren’t conservatives. They were Communists.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
As long as the party bigwigs get their “Tribute.”
Like China, they have shifted somewhat from being a totalitarian communist state to being a totalitarian fascist state. In the former, the state lays claim to the ownership of all the means of production. In the latter, the state pretends somewhat to private ownership, but maintains total control over the means of production, despite the fiction.
Quote: “As long as the party bigwigs get their “Tribute.”
And that differs from the USA, how?
Good point.
It’s interesting to see how communism has withered away, even in still officially communist countries as Vietnam and China.
But, how long will regimes such as these stay in power? People who have been exposed to and acclimated to economic freedom could agitate for political freedom as well.
Old farts are just going what they have to do to stay in power.
I wonder sometimes, if good communists such as Uncle Joe Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Ho Chi Minh, are turning in their graves, as communism has either fallen or been fundamentally altered in their countries.
I wonder if they were really committed to communism, or were just vicious brutal human beings, who used communist theory to maintain themselves in power.
Last I knew they had what they called “State Capitalism”. Better than communism in the sense that there are goods to be had but revenue funds the communist government.
It’s always hard to tell.
All we can do is try our best to keep the embers of liberty burning, without compromising our principles or our security.
Not quite. Fascism is more dangerous than Communism because it actually works. And the reason that it works is that the state does not maintain total control of the means of production, but allows a free-ish market to work. Fascism, thus, does not collapse for the reasons that Hayek and von Mises set forth for the impossibility of long-term viability of a centrally planned economy, has a means for effective capital formation, and can actually maintain total social control more easily than Communism can, since the populace can devote themselves to commerce, provided they do not clash with state interests, giving an outlet for social discontents through the pursuit of wealth.
Oldest trick in the world is to gain power on the backs of the masses by claiming to be on their side, Communism was just the latest manifestation of that.
It’s basically as if the Mafia ran a country.
“Good communists.” lol...you remember the definition of a good communist, right? ;-)
There are no communists.
Nobody over the age of 24 thinks communism will work.
The “communists” are people who want wealth and power and see that they can’t get it in their current circumstance.
So, they promise free stuff to idiots and the idiots go out and fight and kill and die for them.
Hundreds of thousands dead in Vietnam, and for what?
The “communists” are riding around in limousines.
Hundreds of thousands dead just to put different people in the limousines.
Anyone talking communism should have their brains blown out. It’s more merciful in the long run.
“They’re still there.
He’s all gone.”
I don’t disagree with you. However, make no mistake, in the end the fascists have total control over the means of production. All they need is the perception of a need to exercise it.
Kind of like China’s stock market tanking and the solution being a ban, enforced at the point of the gun, on selling shares.
LOL yeah pretty much.
“What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions, just like we do.” - Arthur Jensen (Network)
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