Name one successful communist nation!
Pro-capitalist commenters love slinging this demand around like a trump card.
You can say China, well on its way to overtaking the US as the world's richest nation, but they won't accept that answer.
Leaving aside for a moment that "successful" is never defined - because depending on how you define it communist nations have plenty of impressive achievements - but we'll come back to that in another post.
This inability to name one successful communist nation is supposedly proof of the ultimate weakness of any alternative to capitalism - or so these commenters seem to believe.
But what it really proves is that capitalism's defenders have zero knowledge of American history or how the full power of the American military and intelligence establishment has committed itself to ensuring that there is no such thing as a successful communist nation for over a century now.
You're probably aware that the Soviets never attempted to invade the US. But are you aware that the United States invaded Russia?
From 1918 to 1920 the US, Britain, France, and Japan sent troops into Ukraine and Siberia to try and dismantle the brand-new Soviet Union. Millions were spent to support the White Russians - Russian elites deposed by the Bolshevik revolution. Stopping a successful communist nation from developing was the whole point!
The entire point of the Cold War was to prevent the Soviet Union's success through the threat of violence. That's partly why NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created. The entire point of the Korean War was to keep Korea from becoming a successful communist nation. The entire point of the Vietnam War was to keep Vietnam from becoming a successful communist nation.
Anticommunism has been one of the CIA's core missions since day one. The entire history of the CIA is chockablock with operations designed to destabilize popular independence movements that threatened the existing capitalist order. Coups d'etat in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Dominican Republic (1961), Indonesia (1965), Chile (1973), and more were all designed to prevent successful communist nations from developing. From the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 right up to the continuing trade embargo that still exists today, the US has been using its power and influence to prevent a successful communist nation from developing in Cuba. This is a short list by the way. There are plenty more examples if you want: Nicaragua, El Salvador, the tiny island of Grenada. It just keeps going. I recommend Mark Zepezauer's tidy little volume called The CIA's Greatest Hits for more detail.
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Domino Theory is popularly accepted as the main reason why the Vietnam War was fought. Domino Theory says that if Vietnam was allowed to “fall” to the communists as China had, that Indonesia, or the Philippines, or even Japan could also fall in quick succession. What people misunderstand about this analysis is why communism was viewed as a threat. The shorthand says that communist nations were repressive and that because America valued freedom and self-determination, communist nations could not be tolerated. The real reason that communist nations were a threat is that they valued self-development over foreign capital penetration. Communist nations sought to develop their domestic economies and were done letting Western nations extract wealth from inside their borders as had been common practice during the colonial period.
Countries like the USSR and China represented an alternative economic system that was a threat to ruling class interests in the United States. As Michael Parenti points out, the goal of Anti-communist ideologues like Joseph McCarthy was to prevent any alternative systems from ever “challenging the hegemony of global capitalism.” The US agenda leading up to the Vietnam War was to spread America's version of capitalism to every corner of the earth. The US could not tolerate a successful independent nation in Southeast Asia or any place else because their example could spread like a virus (or topple like dominos if you prefer) across the globe – a danger to US domination. The point was to keep small nations like Vietnam inside the Western capitalist system. After the Vietnamese successfully defeated the French it became necessary for the US to step in and discourage any other countries from following Vietnam’s example or getting any wise ideas about their own independence.
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Even one example of a successful communist nation was too much for the United States or Western capitalism to tolerate. Because even one successful example is seen as a threat to the entire Western capitalist order. That's why every single one needed to be attacked and suppressed, frequently using the full weight of the American defense establishment.
Gee, I wonder why it's so dang hard to come up with one example of a successful communist nation?
Let’s make them pay.