Question

What is commuism and what defines it?

What do you think it means for Chinese people?

Is commuism compatible with free market? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Defination

To define communism appropriately, let's see it from both perspectives, one from Communism as an Economic System and other Communism as an Ideology.

Communism (economic system)- a system in which the means of production are owned collectively by everyone and distributed/used according to need. According to Marx, as socialism progresses and class and hierarchical barriers are broken down, it will transition into communism.

Communism (ideology)- It aims to bring about the communist economic system and protect that which belongs to everyone from being bought out and privatized.

Communism in China

Going by the defination of Communism, anyone would struggle to label modern day China as communist, mostly because the country’s objectives have little to do with class. The Communist Party is there to deliver what they deem to be national goals and priorities and objectives, so there’s no class-based analysis here.

The current constitution of China was created in 1982 is continually revised. The constitution includes many civil rights: free speech, press, worship, the right to trial, and the right to own private property but in practice it is not widely followed. There has been very little done to ensure that new laws instituted follow the constitution. The judicial system does not provide any particular method for review of new laws.

The Communist Party describes its economic model as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, which in practice means the government owns the country’s biggest companies

The Communist Party of China was formed in 1921 under Mao Zedong's control in 1927. Eventually, Mao led a revolution, and the communist party obtained control in 1947. They followed model of development through heavy industry with surpluses extracted from peasants. Consumer goods were left to secondary importance. In the sino-soviet split of the 1950's, Mao split from traditional Marxism-Leninism and developed Maoism, the Chinese interpretation of communism. The Maoists started a strong communist tradition, instituting the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The Great Leap Forward was instituted to help transform China into a heavy industrialized society. However, this was largely considered to be a failure and many Chinese starved to death. In the cultural revolution, Mao overthrew his enemies and millions of people were killed or persecuted.

Communism and Free Market

Before answering if communism compatible with free market or not, let us first see what communism say, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." That statement advocates destruction of markets, not just restriction of them. Real communism is a stateless non market system of society based on free access to good and services and volunteer.Communism will not restrict free market but free market can never compete with free access. Hence we can say that communism is not compatiable with free market. Under communism there is no incentive at the top or the bottom to produce more, whereas in free markets there is the necessity to produce more at the bottom and even greater incentive to produce more at the top.  

Margaret Thatcher once said that “communism is great until you run out of other people’s money”.