On a lengthy but minor, off-topic digression (excuse me..)
dagmaraka wrote:no, nimh. i am nowhere saying that i lived under communism and thus i and only i know what it looks like. (If I wanted to say it , I would have.)
No, thats not quite what I said you said. Not that "you alone" know what communism looks like. I said that it seemed like you held the communist system you lived under as the definition of communism, and if another system didnt fit its model - ie, didnt have "anyone opposing the ruling party [winding] up in prison or dead" - it's not "real" communism.
dagmaraka wrote:I don't doubt that the followers see themselves as convinced communists, but that's the philosophical level. we're talking systems. Kerala was certainly NOT a communist state by any stretch of imagination, even if ruled by the communist party. India is a democratic (arguably) federation with a plenty capitalistic economy, even in Kerala. Communist party? Whatever, if they want to call themselves that, I don't object. Communist state? Absolutely wasn't. See the difference? That is all I am saying.
Yes, I see what you're saying. System versus ideology, theory versus practice - for sure. And like I said, I dont know anything about India.
But you still have the problem that definitions of what a communist state would/should be about, what it should look like and how it should be achieved, developed over time in different directions. And of course, the Euro-communists never got the chance to implement their version, so we will never know what it would have looked like. But I think it's pretty clear that it would not have involved "anyone opposing the ruling party [winding] up in prison or dead" anymore. Even in the "real existing socialism" of the Soviet communist states, the system developed in somewhat different ways over time, and neither in Tito's Yugoslavia, nor in Kadar's Hungary, did "anyone opposing the ruling party [winding] up in prison or dead" anymore, as the logic of "if you're not with us you're against us" was inversed into its opposite.
So I get your point, but I think that with your definition that if a system doesnt involve throwing everyone who opposes the ruling party in prison or worse, it's not real communism, you overreached, that's all really.
dagmaraka wrote:I do have a question though, nimh: where do you draw a line then between a communist and a social democratic state? if everything is stretchy like you describe, they sort of morph together, which is not an idea that appeals to me.
But, I mean, they do, don't they? Not communism and social-democracy as much, but rather the range that spans from communism through "socialism" to social-democracy. Thats always been a continuum where borders between one and the other have been defined in x number of ways.
I mean, there's parties that we'd consider social-democratic but call themselves socialist, and yet the worst of communist dictatorships also claimed the name socialist; hell, the Russian communist party was called social-democratic until it took over power. I know you're talking systems rather than parties, just saying that these terms - and the people that lived in them, claimed them and/or believed in them - can't be as easily cordoned off as a politicologist would want to.
"Communist", for sure, was long easily distinguishable from all the rest for its fealty to the Soviet Union and model - there were no communist political parties before 1917. But after Khrushchev, both communist parties and communist regimes in the developing world started variegating in their definition of what being communist and ruling in a communist way means. And then you get the question, when is it still communist, when no longer? China, communist or dictatorial capitalist? The way Angola, Mozambique, Namibia developed for a decade or two after independence - communist, socialist, or just nationalist? Or void of principles altogether, the name just a banner to hide a naked grab for power?
Just saying - if you take the midpoint of social-democracy and the mid-point of communist, then the chasm that divides them is huge in all ways, and especially clear in the global north. There is just no comparison. But in between them does lie a continuum where things do kind of morph together, rather than a neat gap. Thats just the way human politics work, I guess - neat ideological and systemic categories get blurred and mixed up and variegated upon until it's not entirely clear anymore where one starts and the other ends. No different than if you look at the shades of conservative vs authoritarian vs totalitarian vs fascist -- there's nothing a mainstream conservative and a facsist have in common, but once you start digging in the continuum in between (Horthy, Antonescu, etc) it's sometimes hard to tell where the exact categorical borders lie.
