The concept of a millionaire Communist might not sit well with Mao’s Little Red Book, but it appears to be just fine with the modern Chinese Communist Party. The Forbes China 400 Rich list revealed this week that ‘over 90% of the 1,000 richest people tracked by the Hurun Report are either officials or members of the Chinese Communist Party.” The list reinforces the view that the CCP has become more of a cartel or, in some cases, a criminal enterprise than a true political party. Communist officials are routinely accused of breathtaking corruption and use of state power to force peasants from their land in development schemes.
In 2001, President Jiang Zemin announced that entrepreneurs would be welcomed as members of the party. This opened the door for members to cash in on state-owned-enterprises (SOEs) — becoming a new Mandarin class.
There are now 85 million card-carrying CCP members with a waiting list of another 80 to 100 million to join.
On my visits to China, I often ask citizens how they feel about the huge mansions and walled properties of party members. When you land in Beijing, you fly over massive tracts of new mansions for the new Mandarins — located where the air is considered better in the heavily polluted city. The response is always a shrug and a comment that no one is really a communist anymore in China. Yet, you have a ruling class that uses state power to imprison environmentalists and reformers as CCP members profit on state-run enterprises.
They may want to heed the warning of Mao that “The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class forced them into numerous uprisings against its rule…. It was the class struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars that constituted the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society.”
Source: Forbes
Roco, you say ‘you still dont know crap’. I think he does know crap.
Roco – Are markets wrong? The point of markets is to redistribute wealth.
Roco you say “TARP it was a socialistic remedy.”
You feel that socialism is where the powerful give money to the rich, and cut back on public services to “pay for it”?
and yet all Scandinavian countries have longer life spans than the U.S.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_lif_exp_at_bir_tot_pop-life-expectancy-birth-total-population
dhmcarver:
yes I do, I just dont agree with him.
“By the early 1980s, with an aging population and increasingly expensive health care technology, the system had become unsustainable. In a ten-year period from 1972-1982, the health care portion of Sweden’s GDP grew from 7.2 percent to 9.3 percent (see Figure 1).10 Until 1985, the national government reimbursed county councils for health care expenses on a fee-for-service basis. The Dagmar Reform of 1985 changed the reimbursement formula to one of “capitation,” in which counties were reimbursed for the number of patients served. This led to “global budgets” – a fixed amount that each county could spend annually on health care services.”
that means rationing.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA555_Sweden_Health_Care.html
Roco, you do realize that Marx wrote many works other than the Communist Manifesto, don’t you? CM was not Marx’s comprehensive analysis of his economic system, it was a short polemic. So if you are going to keep spouting off about “socialism” and “Marxism”, etc., you might want to demonstrate that knowledge by quoting some other text Marx wrote.
And if you knew anything about Scandinavia, you would know that all of the Scandinavian countries, not just oil-blessed Norway, have similar social models, and similar high rates of education, social equilibrium, health care, etc.
Norway? give me a f ing break. their streets run black with oil. you take that away and they are just a bunch of good looking people selling salmon or a herring sandwich for 5 kroner and asking for a bail out. Much like Greece except colder.
you still dont know crap.
frankly:
he said it in the commie manifesto. right there in black and white.
The workers will need to be controlled by the elite. The Soviet Union was what communism has to become. It doesnt work.
capitalism does work if given a chance. capitalism isnt failing now because spending money on stimulus and buying GM is not capitalism it is fascism/socialism.
Neither you nor Gene H understand economics, oh maybe progressive make believe economics but not real economics.
“here isnt much difference between socialism and fascism. ”
See, there you go displaying your ignorance for all to see. You earlier made it obvious you think there is no difference between Communism and socialism yet even a dumbed down high school education can show you that those three things are different – hell one of them is not even an economic model.
As far as my reading Marx, I – unlike you – have read quite a few economic theorists & actually understand them. You just used an old psychics trick – when caught with no answer suggest someone read some obscure passage from the Bible. That didn’t work on me when I was 12 & you are not very good at it.
It gives new meaning to the phrase, “Money talks and bulls*** walks.”
“There isnt much difference between socialism and fascism.”
Except that there is a huge difference, your ignorance notwithstanding.
I only hope the emotional breakdown isnt too severe when you finally realize that fascism, socialism, and communism are not the same things at all, that in fact fascism has a lot more in common with laissez-faire capitalism than either of the other two systems and that laissez-faire capitalism leads to fascism by default because it allows business to set public policy (beholding only to a profit motive) and not democratic government (beholding to the people) by the nature of making business activity ultra-legal. Communism didn’t work because it didn’t respect either any form of property rights and human psychology as it relates to motivation. Laissez-faire capitalism is failing because it puts property rights paramount to any other consideration and caters to the worst in human nature (sociopaths) by rewarding their bad behavior as long as it’s profitable. However, it is just as doomed as Communism was, just for different reasons. They are both extremist economic and political ideologies with fascism/laissez-faire capitalism on the far right of the spectrum and state-oriented market socialism (like today’s China)/Communism on the far left of the spectrum. The middle path is the only viable path. That path is eventually going to be a blended capitalist/socialist model like practiced in countries like Norway. That is, unless your laissez-faire heroes get us all killed first in the name of P/E statements.
In short, save your ignorance and distortion of political science and economics terminology for people without the education to know you’re full of crap. Fascism and socialism? Not even close to the same thing no matter how many times you say it.
GeneH:
I am perfectly fine with calling the TARP fascism. There isnt much difference between socialism and fascism. So fine by me.
I see you are starting to understand, keep thinking Gene, you are almost there.
I only hope the emotional breakdown isnt too severe when you finally realize that fascism, socialism, and communism are variations on a theme.