QUESTION: Hello Martin –
In today’s “Spread The Love”, you mention at the end that today, neither Russia or China are communist.
I think the assertion that Russia is not communist is probably believable and something most of us have heard in one form or another since 1989…
But how can you say China is not communist?
If they aren’t, please tell me what they are…Thank you!
MSC
ANSWER: Communist means the government owns everything. There is private ownership and stock markets, which do not exist in communism. The government continues to call itself the CCP.
However, in reality, they are no more Communist than the United States. There are many rich Chinese buying art, real estate, and even ancient coins. Communism collapsed in 1989, they just did not want to change the name of the government, for that would be admitting Mao’s ideas were wrong.
I went behind the Berlin Wall before it fell. You did not own your home. You were assigned a place to live. You could not move without permission, and you were not allowed to get a car without government permission. Communism failed because it was more concerned with “equality” and ignored human nature.
When the United States began, there was the Federalist Party v Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalists collapsed, and then the slavery issue split the party of Jefferson into the Democratic (slave party) v Republican. Today, the Democrats do not stand for any democratic process; they are still functioning as a representative party under a Republic. They also never changed their name to reflect the true nature of their party.
The post Is China Really Still Communist? first appeared on Armstrong Economics.