this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Late Stage Capitalism
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Communism is the will to abolish capitalism, and capitalism has never ended (it's a global system). A real communist system wouldn't have social classes, private property or ownership of means of production... and no country in the world has ever had such a system.
Communism must be a global system, but that does not mean that socialism has not been achieved, which is a necessary prerequisite for communism.
I might argue that anti-colonialism is the will to abolish foreign-based merchantalism. And a lot of the Communist/Capitalist debate is window dressing for a much more material Home Rule versus Foreign Imperialism conflict.
What you get in practice, both in self-proclaimed Communist and Capitalist states, is some gradient of Mixed Economy. Every state intervenes in its economy to some extent (often more aggressively in self-proclaimed Capitalist states when the state leadership needs to prove their ideology works). Every state hosts wholesale and retail markets, be they state-managed or merely regulated or fully privatized or simply underground.
The real dividing line is in who controls the capital - native people aligned with the local popular political movements or foreigners with a puppet government propped up by outside investment/military intervention. What we're seeing in AES states is an effort to localize control of valuable capital projects. What we're seeing in aggressively capitalist states is to outsource the ownership to international business and stateless autocrats.
Can you mention 1 "communist state"?
The PRC, Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and former USSR and Warsaw Pact countries are all examples of socialist states run by communist parties.
Cuba, if I'm looking for something in my own backyard