They both have a bit in common. They’re both communist Asian states that the US went to war with during the Cold War and did not win. But the messaging regarding the two states is a lot different. DPRK is treated like the worst dictatorship ever, that kills you and your family for even thinking that the Kims are less than gods, whilst also starving. But Vietnam, they say… nothing.
Why isn’t Vietnam demonized like DPRK?
So, I don’t disagree with you, but I would like to hear a fleshed out reason as to why Vietnam, China, even Laos, are still socialist workers states. In the recent season of Blowback, they touch very briefly on the fact that Angola stopped being socialist at a certain point, despite it still nominally claiming to be a socialist state, led by and ML party.
So, by what criteria do we judge what constitutes a socialist state?
On the worse end of arguements I’ve heard are “[X AES] is socialist because it is governed by a Communist party, which espouses a Socialist ideology”, which feels flimsy when we take into account states like Angola.
On the better end of arguments, re:China especially, I’ve heard people run down the ways the state interacts with the people, the way socialist relations of production persist despite large scale marketization (i.e. Workers Congresses, Party Committees, Co-ops, Unions, etc.). I would be interested to hear arguments more along these lines with other AES like Vietnam and Laos, as they seems to get talked about less, btw. So if anyone has resources, let me know!
Ultras would say that the marketization of Vietnam and China are a betrayal of Socialism, and a reinstatement of Capitalist social relations. With states like Cuba or the DPRK, Ultras might say that they’re revisionist and therefore not Socialist. But I feel like accusations of Revisionism=no longer socialist feel awfully vibes based.
Let’s say Juche is revisionist for a second. Does that make the DPRK not socialist? They have relations of production and a state form that is most alike those of 20th century European Socialism. So what part isn’t socialist, even if they’re ideologically revisionist? We’re Marxists, not idealists.
Socialism isn’t just when you’re cool and right, and Capitalism is when you’re dumb and wrong. But that feels like how a lot of Ultras treat it. Was Khrushchev’s economic policy disasterous? yes. Did it set up a lot of problems that would cripple the USSR moving forward? Also yes. Did the USSR cease being Socialist the moment he made the secret speech, the way many ultras claim? That’s where they lose me.
My personal belief is that a contradiction between the professed ideology of a governing party and their actual ideology cannot last for very long. If the membership of the Party are Communist and can articulate Communist ideology, it’s a Communist Party and if they’re the party in charge, it’s a Socialist state. The idea that entire parties (of a relevant size) can exist whose members don’t actually believe what they say they believe is Liberalism.
Many Socialists and Communists have ideologies that are revisionist or ineffective but this doesn’t make them not Socialists, it makes them revisionist, ineffective Socialists. Their stated aims should be analyzed according to Marxist dialectics to determine if any given group is still truly Marxist, and there will always be some wiggle room with this.
Personally, I believe that the MPLA is still a Marxist-Leninist party, it’s just a mildly corrupt one. There is a difference between it and just any other “Social People’s Democratic” party in some post-colonial African state. The reason Angola is not typically counted among the “ML States” is because it is not a single-party state; they hold elections where other Parties can and do participate and could hypothetically win.