Since 1976, communism has gone in a downward spiral. However, this is only temporary. As Mao said, the road has twists and turns, but the future is bright!
Since 1976, communism has gone in a downward spiral. However, this is only temporary. As Mao said, the road has twists and turns, but the future is bright!
I think it was rapidly downhill until the Bolivarian Revolution came around, and now it's slowly creeping back upward. Not that I'm attributing all of that to Venezuela, just that that seems to be the timing. Although then again, the Zapatistas kicked their thing off in the 90s.
Anyway, I think it tends to take a pretty severe global crisis to have the explosions in revolutions like we saw post-WWI and -WWII.
younger folks don't understand the impact Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution had in reinvigorating the international Left. This was the period of End of History, the bourgeoisie felt triumphant, any change for a better brighter future was crushed, Capitalism was the final stage of humanity...depressing.
Makes sense, in general the timing more or less line up. In China, with Mao's death and Deng's liberalization things deteriorated significantally with ~1990s being the rock bottom. All the while soviet union crumbles under gorbachev. Only good thing Deng did was sending in the tanks or else China would look like one of the many failed states in the former ussr. The conditions certainly improved over the last few decades, but by no means are they close to ideal, or even good.
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no, it is called being chinese and a principled communist.
Deng made a lot of compromises with western capitalists that only really look good in hindsight. In the moment, it looked and felt like a capitulation. And there's still a lot of questions as to whether Deng took the best path or simply the most expedient.
Marx would tell you that a period of capital accumulation had to happen. And modern Marxists might even tell you that the USSR failed because it didn't efficiently accumulate capital in the wake of the revolution. But the Chinese have made their own missteps. There's plenty to criticize, even if it does look like they're coming out ahead in the end.
The Iraq War drained US manpower and sapped enthusiasm for the imperial project. Also, the grifter feeding frenzy has replaced all those hard nosed Cold War psychopaths with smooth cheeked Wall Street money men