NationStates Jolt Archive

Please correct me if I'm wrong here,but if a country were to live under communist principle, would its economy stagnate?

Please correct me if I'm wrong here,but if a country were to live under communist principle, would its economy stagnate?
Corrected.

YOu're assuming a country must be part of the world market. A small nation, or even a community could function self sufficiently using communist (or i would prefer socialist) ideals.

i dont know relly it depends on the suition ie the soviet union callapsed economacly due to the arms race while china is expeneding

In conditions where Communism is actually working (the Soviet Union was never a Communism nor was any other country in recent history), a Communist society would expand rapidly due to the greed of the work force. That's right, a Communist society is not free of greed. Everyone needs to want more, to get more, everyone needs to work hard. This would trigger rapid economic growth.

Hi superpower,

That communism should necessarily stagnate is the kind of thing they teach us in grade school all over the capitalist world – unfortunately, the capitalist world is pretty much everywhere and as Marx argued the ideas that it perpetuates are not so much objective as they are simply efforts to legitimate Capitalism.

There is much argument about whether Cuba or China or Vietnam or wherever can even be considered ‘socialist’ much less ‘communist’ and some socialists would even call some of these countries or the USSR ‘State capitalist’.

Further these countries have significantly limited trade options such that it is difficult to make a judgement about their economic principles when the conditions they themselves admit are necessary to the survival or communism are not at all in place.

A lot of socialists and communists believe that a high degree of international socialism is essential for the advance of socialist and communist countries – this position is generally associated with Leon Trotsky who was Vladimir Lenin’s right hand man – the idea that communism could thrive in one country was advanced by Stalin who had Trotsky murdered.

A lot of socialists and communists consider themselves followers of Trotsky and would argue that socialism and communism has never really been tried – that it still remains a theory and an ideal about how we should organize civilization and thus to say such economies would stagnate is meaningless as there has never been a relevant test.


You might check out www.marx.org there is so much writing one these topics that it is kind of impossible to recommend this or that

Perhaps, but as long as people are getting what they need, it doesn't matter if the economy is profitable or growing or whatever. The kind of economy valued by capitalists tends to cause a great deal of environmental damage and pointless consumption.