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Major props to this comrade, this is excellent agitprop.
The problem with “the socialist / communist countries” is that capitalist social relations, especially production relations, were not abolished in those territories. In China, the Soviet Union or Cuba, wage labour and commodities continue to exist, despite doing so in different forms than in the West. I would not therefore say that these countries are an example of communism. The only thing that changes is the way capitalism is managed.
Having said that, I think that once the communist ideal is reached, through the insurrection, consumerism will diminish. Obviously, this fall in consumerism, from a capitalist perspective, could be seen as poverty, because they do not take into account the sustainability of the planet and its resources. As for health: Medicine and health have become one more commodity in this capitalist system. I think we need to recover community self-care to avoid medical iatrogenesis and we need to eliminate the root cause of the social, economic, hygienic, etc., aspects that make our bodies and minds sick. This is what Ivan Illich talks about in “Medical Nemesis,” a book I recommend.
Why on earth would the PRC or any communist country “abolish production relations”. History has shown that the most important task of any country that frees themselves from colonial oppression, is to build industry, and develop production to uplift their people out of poverty.
Ignoring this task and focusing on “abolishing the commodity form” is ultra-left/anarchist nonsense, trying to insert vague ideological statements instead of the objective material reality and tasks at hand. The PRC went through an entire historical period to learn from and reject this nonsense.
And the PRC is absolutely not capitalist: see here.
Get down to business, all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running the economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic. Since we must necessarily learn quickly, any slackness in this respect is a serious crime. And we must undergo this training, this severe, stern and sometimes even cruel training, because we have no other way out.
- Lenin
That’s a rather reductive way to look at it. You can’t just snap you fingers and go from capitalism to communism. In fact, a big part of the argument Marx makes is that communism will not be possible until productive forces are sufficiently developed. All these countries have communists in power, but they are in a socialist stage of development. Furthermore, the dominant global system is itself capitalist, which puts limits on what individual countries can accomplish internally.
Saying that they merely change the way capitalism is managed ignores a fundamental difference between the two. The goal of private enterprise is to create profit for the owners through appropriation of the value the labor of the workers creates. On the other hand, the primary goal of the state owned enterprise is to provide social value. In this scenario, the labor of the workers directly benefit society and workers themselves. So, while the social relations within the state owned enterprise may resemble those in private capitalist enterprise, their goals are very different.
I would not therefore say that these countries are an example of communism
I don’t think anyone is claiming that either of those countries had achieved communism. They have achieved (to varying degrees) economic socialism, i.e. public ownership of capital. If we define capitalism as a system under which capital is privately owned, then they are not “differently managed capitalism”, at least if you believe that the state there has some degree of democracy and is not completely authoritarian (in which case it could be argued that it’s just capitalism but with a state monopoly on every industry). The truth of course lies somewhere in between (as all of those examples have/had private ownership of capital, and are not entirely democratic), but I would say that their system seems to be generally working better for them than nearly-pure capitalism does for other countries.
