Based on my understanding (which isn’t much, please mention any additional things I missed) Marx believed that the “proletariat” (the workers) were being abused by the “bourgeois” (the owners) in the capitalist system, and that the proletariat should seize control of the state and the means of production (“dictatorship of the proletariat”), and that the end goal was a stateless, classless society where everyone was equal, and that the state would “wither away”.
As we all know, a perfect communist society was never achieved, and that the state never ended up withering away for any of them.
How would Marx react to the Soviet Union under Stalin and his purges, Khrushchev to his denouncing of Stalinism and brutal crushings of protests in the Warsaw Pact states, to Gorbachev and his “glasnost and perestroika” reforms?
How would Marx react to the communist states that took power in Latin America, Africa, and Asia? Would he be happy that a communist state was able to compete with the capitalist U.S. in terms of global dominance, twice (Soviet Union during the Cold War, PRC in the modern day)?
Note: I am neither procommunist or anticommunist. I think that some if Marx’s ideas were quite good (everyone should be equal, classless society, etc.) but others not so much (history tells us what happens when there is a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, the state never withers away like Marx imagines it would, as power corrupts all)
In China they aren’t in bread lines and a lot of people there seem to have a stable life. A few Chinese people I know do genuinely say that life did get better than what it was under the communist party. Keep in mind, this country was still getting peasant girls into harems for the emperor who couldn’t leave his palace ever during victorian times
I blame the Japanese Imperialists for this.
CCP was about to lose, but of course, fucking imperialists ruining China as per tradition.
Imagine that worldline where the invasion never happened.
ROC wins, warlord period ends and country stablizes. Then eventually they start to liberalize. ROC built nukes, maintains sovereignty, becomes a bastion of freedom.
Modern China is definitely better, but CCP’s China wasn’t the only possibility we have, there are much better alt-timelines.
(Disclaimer: I have nothing against the Japanese people, I’m only mad at the Imperialists specifically)
As for Breadlines… I mean… glances at parents
I don’t know if there are breadlines, but definitely a lot of poverty… very underdeveloped. My parents have extremely frugal behaviors… especially my mom.
In the villages, the only bathrooms are the communal ones…
I have a memory of it being late at night and walking to the bathroom with my dad…
Like, you literally have to leave your own house to go to the bathroom lol.
No big roads leading to the village, I remember there being a tiny path and we rode cheap motocycles to… I guess the market areas? That’s where you can even get a bus to Guangzhou.
We don’t have time machines so we can’t really speculate…
But I don’t think ROC would be wasting crutial time on some “cultural revolution” stuff and actually starting on building the country. But then again, if Japanese Imperialists didn’t invade, it would’ve been a much better timeline anyways. War ruins shit.