1. China is never was, and isn't Communist.

2. Most modern republics take a little/some/half/much (circle whichever is appropriate) of their rights/constitution from the French Revolution: emphasis on land rights, emphasis on capital, merit/utility over birthright (discounting business dynasties), etc.

Oh, by the way, the US Constitution influenced the Declaration Of the Rights of Man And Citizen, not the other way around.

Let's see, the US was around some 20+ years before the French Revolution and influenced the new constitution of the French greatly, so it could be argued that the constitutions actually derived from the US Constitution, although there is still a birthright clause in it: you can't be president unless you are a natural born US citizen. The Governator can never be president (actually a bit of a bummer).

I never claimed China was a good anything. It is a state run economy, and by most people's definition a communist state inspite your rationalization otherwise. Over the decades we've heard communist go from singing the praises of the workers paradise in the Soviet, than the Chinese systems, to rationalization of their acts, than blaming paticular leaders, now finally denial they were even communist to start with. In this contexts it sounds more like a family in denial their love one is really at their death bed, than defending a system.

"The Governator can never be president (actually a bit of a bummer). "

As a lifelong resident of California, I can tell you the *LAST* thing this country needs is the Presinator. Georgie Junior had more sense and backbone. :-O

It's interesting to me how China's reduced poverty is typically credited (completely) to capitalism... when the reduction in poverty began when the green revolution took hold in China... in the 1980's... long before (partial) liberalization of China's economic system.

China's poverty is due to its State controlled Capitalism.

Dear warsprite, just as there are a multitude of different conservatives, there are many different Communists. Most Communists are libertarians. There are a minority who actually think Stalin and Mao were great people, but most Communists agree Reagan's view of an 'evil empire'. Due to Western propaganda, people (understandably) call the USSR, China, Cuba, North Korea, etc as Communist. Calling a dog a fish does not make it so.

@Dexter: the household responsibility system, which I think you are refering to, was the first of Deng's reforms, by which farmers could sell their surplus crops on the open market. Which sounds like capitalism to me. Deng's famous southern tour, which signalled the opening of the chinese economy to foreign investment, was in 1992 so "long before" is a bit of an exaggeration. Deng himself described this as capitalism with socialist characteristics.

It's a wonder what bit of bug spray, and fertilizer can do. How ever the improper farming of land has caused desertification in large areas. If not at least held incheck or reversed China may see a major reversal in their agraculture.

@ largeham I quiet aware there are different types of communist, or as they might have said back in the day, shades of red. It was not just western propaganda that taged them as communist, so did most communist. For the most part it is only in the past couple of decades that attempts to differentiate these states from communism as you and others are describing now. Seems more like attempts to distance your self from failure. Changing the name does not change the animal, or a skunkcabbage still smells like a skunkcabbage by any other name.

@ largeham "State controlled Capitalism" is a paradox. In Capitalism I own my own means of production, and I keep the wealth that I create. Not sure how/what "state controlled Capitalsim" would even mean....Fascism, perhaps. But if I'm controlled by the state, then I effectively don't own my means of production or my wealth, since I am controlled.

And yes...that means that the United States with all it's heavy-handed regulation is not a capitalist society in a true sense of the definition.

@diplomat61,
See linked graph:
http://benmuse.typepad.com/ben_muse/images/china_poverty.jpg

I think that one could reasonably credit market reform with some of the early-90's to late-90's decrease in poverty (from about 22% to under 10%) (keeping in mind that association does not equal causation)... but clearly the drop from 1980 to 1985 (from about 53% to about 18%) has nothing to do with capitalism.

@largeham What Krellin stated could also be said of communist libertarian.

Warsprite, look at George Orwell, he was an example of a Communist who turned against Stalin (though he gave up those beliefs as well). Hemingway also wrote about how Soviet inspired commissars killed other Republicans and Anarchists in Spain.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2277 The writer talks about how he knew many people in the 70's who despised the Soviet Union, but were still Communists.
And that is why many Marxists now refer to themselves as libertarian Communists, to try and remove the totalitarian connotation.

I also assume "@largeham What Krellin stated could also be said of communist libertarian. " you are talking about it being a paradox. How is it a paradox? Communism is the removal of government, and establishing a mix between direct and representative democracy, ruled from bottom up. A good example would be the Paris Commune of 1871, before the French government crushed it. Russia was becoming this for a brief while in late 1917-early 1918, before the civil war became heated up, and its invasion, and subsequent transformation into a police state.

Modern so called libertarian governments regularly infringe on the rights of its citizens. The PATRIOT Act is a good example, and the issue of homosexuality, if the US government was truly libertarian, it would allow gays to have whatever rights straight people have.

Fascism is state-controlled Capitalism. But it is not a paradox. Capitalism just means that there is a market, where goods are valued with money or bartered. Therefore, a state-controlled economy is Capitalism, just not the well known lasseiz-faire Capitalism, advocated by everyone before Keynes, and what the US states it follows.

This has been a very interesting read. I will try to both succinctly answer the OP's question and add to some of what has already been discussed about the paradox of state-controlled Capitalism.

Capitalism in essence cannot be controlled because, similar to what Krellin said, the very nature of Capitalism is the free exchange of goods, labor, knowledge, and entrepreneurial risk. As soon as you try to control it in any way shape or form, it is no longer free and ceases to be Capitalism; the "-ism" (system, theory, or doctrine) of Capital. I do not think that "state-controlled Capitalism" properly defines the economic and governmental system we find in America. "Corporatism" fits much better as the current American system is designed in such a way as to support government sponsored/favored legal entities (corporations), not the free exchange of man to man.

The system of Corporatism itself creates the moral hazards to which CEOs and boards fall. Removing the majority of legal pitfalls and business shenanigans is as easy as removing the legal favoritism created by the state itself. For example: insider trading. It is illegal (and rightly so), yet the largest investment firms engage in a legal version of it every time a business goes public.

Nice Joan! :)

I agree that America is a Corporatist nation, where the rights of corporations are put above the rights of people. As for the question whether state-controlled Capitalism is a paradox or not, it will probably just devolve into an argument over definition.

"The system of Corporatism itself creates the moral hazards to which CEOs and boards fall. Removing the majority of legal pitfalls and business shenanigans is as easy as removing the legal favoritism created by the state itself. For example: insider trading. It is illegal (and rightly so), yet the largest investment firms engage in a legal version of it every time a business goes public. "
I like this point a lot.

@largeham Paragraph one and two. You just restated in a more elaberate manor with some nice examples of what I all ready stated. This is the first time I ever heard the US described as a libertarian country, I'm sure the Libertarian Party would be surprised that the US is such.

Capitalism is more than just the market. Private property is the keystone of capitalism. Liberitarism also includes private property rights as well and a free market, which is why libertarian-communist is oxymoronic.

@dexter: whilst farmers may not have actually owned the capital the responsibility for feeding themselves and freedom to sell surplus is, in effect, capitalism.

@warspite: the desertification is largely caused by collective farms.

Warsprite, I was agreeing with you, and I said that the government calls itself Libertarian, not that the nation is.
Sate-controlled Capitalism is called so as to differentiate itself from private controlled Capitalism.

Libertarianism is similar to Anarchism, and as there are many different types of Anarchists, there are a multitude of types of Libertarians. Libertarianism is just the belief of personal values and rights, and the Marxists believe that, but also believe that having a market or any type of Capitalist system will infringe on personal rights.

"@dexter: whilst farmers may not have actually owned the capital the responsibility for feeding themselves and freedom to sell surplus is, in effect, capitalism."

@diplomat61, I'm unclear what you are trying to say. Are you trying to claim that farmers in China in the 1980s were operating in a capitalistic system?? That's just plain bizarre, if that's what you're saying. Why exactly does every advance have to be credited to capitalism or democracy or the march of freedom or some other nonsense jingoism? The Green Revolution was a technological revolution that had nothing to do with either capitalism or communism, nothing to do with democracy or anything else political.

Also - if the desertification is caused by collective farms... is that also what caused the dust bowl in 1930's America?? I fail to see the logic here. Desertification is due to poor land management practices such as overfarming and plowing up and down hills (rather than parallel to the contour of the land) - as well as extended droughts and wind patterns. I fail to see how who owns or operates the farm has anything to do with it. One can be in either a capitalist or communist society and either correctly or incorrectly manage the land. Politics is pretty much irrelevant to such a thing.

@Dexter: "that farmers in China in the 1980s were operating in a capitalistic system", they did not own the capital assets so it was not capitalism. However, they were given control of the capital and the freedom to sell any surplus on an open market, which is pretty close to capitalism and that was my point. Your assertion that this is "bizarre" is itself bizarre.

"Why exactly does every advance have to be credited to capitalism." I do not do so, in this post or elsewhere, so I am the wrong person to answer that question.

"One can be in either a capitalist or communist society and either correctly or incorrectly manage the land." Yes, but mismanagement is more common under the latter.

so is management.

"Russia was becoming this for a brief while in late 1917-early 1918, before the civil war became heated up, and its invasion, and subsequent transformation into a police state." - i like communist ideas in general but i don't believe this is the case.

Russia under the Tzars was a totalitarian state and i don't see that cultural norm changing in a short revolution, Lenin re-established the state apparatus (as a transition to 'true' communism) - this state continued to be totalitarian under the rule of the communist party. The transition to by the people never happened and the country continued to be Russia. (though Marx specifically said communism woudln't work in russia - because the diea was to empower industrial workers to increase their production by rewarding them with the fruits of their labour, while russia was still largely a country of peasents working in agriculture.)

@diplomat61, I've just never heard of the pre-1990's system in China being referred to as "pretty close to capitalism"... though I will buy that there are more similarities between human societies than differences. As far as advances being credited to capitalism... isn't that what you're trying to do by defining 1980's China as pretty close to capitalism?

There were intermediating institutions under the Czars. The state did not qualify as totalitarian as Mussolini defined the term. The tyranny that Lenin constructed was of an entirely different order than anything that ever existed under the Czars.

I'm sorry, but no one who "likes communist idea in general" can possibly be considered an intellectually serious person. Marx was by turns either totally wrong or profoundly incoherent.....when he wasn't being astoundingly hypocritical. Plus his antisemitism or deep self loathing is disturbing. As for the invasion excuse, do you think that is what prevented Khomeini from producing his paradise on Earth? Or Robespierre? Pol Pot?

@largeham----I'm afraid you do not know the definition of Corporatism. It is Fascist economics and has absolutely nothing to do with corporations; it is actually the reverse. It generally involves the liquidation of public (joint stock) ownership and state directed planned cartel based economics.

How did we get onto farming?

OK, Green Revolution.....paid for exclusively by the Rockefellers and implemented by corporatist political regimes. So point to each. As for collective farming versus capitalism, I give you Russia. Stolypin completed Witte's plan to privatize Czarist lands to peasants with mortgages, thereby liquidating many of the mir peasant collectives and introducing broad based private ownership. In 5 years Russia agricultural production skyrocketed. The 1913 harvests were not equaled under the Communists until the late 60s. Yields in the rest of the world grew dramatically during that period as large scale mechanization was achieved.

"I'm sorry, but no one who "likes communist idea in general" can possibly be considered an intellectually serious person. Marx was by turns either totally wrong or profoundly incoherent.....when he wasn't being astoundingly hypocritical. Plus his antisemitism or deep self loathing is disturbing."

A criticism of Marxist political ideas based on Marx's personal "hypocrisy" and apparent antisemitism is as valid as tossing out the ideas behind the American revolution because many of the "founding fathers" were slave holders or supported slavery as an institution (and were sexist as well). Hypocrites and bigots, the lot of them. ...but also complex people that were products of their time. To disregard anyone who has a Marxist streak in them as not being "intellectually serious" based on such "logic" you must also be prepared to disregard anyone else who finds value in the published ideas of anyone who is flawed... which would be about everyone by my figuring. As for Marx being wrong... well, being that true Marxism has yet to occur, it seems to me that you are on as firm a ground as criticizing Ayn Rand (a truly libertarian society has yet to occur) or Christ (a truly Christian society has yet to occur), etc. There are plenty of philosophies that are idealistic and may never be realized in full... does that make their ideas "wrong" or worthless?

Your view that Marx was "by turns either totally wrong or profoundly incoherent" is a personal view... one that I would apply to Ayn Rand, for example. ...I do understand that Marx's criticisms of capitalism are quite insightful (I have yet to read a book by him) - even if you don't like his solutions.