I should have said successful communist nations. China isn't communist; it's been capitalist since Deng Xiaopeng opened it up to foreign direct investment in the early 80's. Vietnam is socialist in name only, and is following a similar trajectory to China. The DPRK is a perhaps the only true communist nation on Earth, and we all know what a hellhole it's become. It is the last holdout, and is probably in the final throes of its existence. Something's going to happen there eventually, whether revolution or invasion of a foreign power I don't know, but the world will not tolerate that much longer. Finally, Cuba is socialist, not communist, and even they are trending towards capitalism, not communism, as all nations inevitably do.

Edit: allow me to clarify what I mean by the DPRK being communist. It is not communism as in the endgame of communism on paper; it is the intermediate stage of communism when it is allowed to exist for far too long by a world that is not interested in intervening. The central authority has seized power for itself, but it will never return that power to the people and transition to communism's final stage for obvious reasons. The DPRK is the final stage of communism as it exists in reality.

> I should have said successful communist nations. China isn't communist; it's been capitalist since Deng Xiaopeng opened it up to foreign direct investment in the early 80's.

If you take an equally narrow view of "capitalism" as you necessarily must of "communism" to make this even arguably true (well, and still it wouldn't be true to say China is "capitalist", but at least "not communist"), there aren't any "successful" capitalist nations today either, they all became "socialist" sometime between the late 19th and mid-20th century.

Realistically, most of the worlds major economies are mixed economies, and certainly one can make that case with regard to China -- though its a lot closer to communism than it is to capitalism.

> Finally, Cuba is socialist, not communist, and even they are trending towards capitalism, not communism, as all nations inevitably do.

The Communist Party of Cuba would be as surprised to learn that they aren't Communist (they'd agree that they are socialist, but they'd be baffled at the idea that the two were incompatible.)

At any rate, the idea that all nations eventually trend towards capitalism is ludicrous, especially given that the advanced nations whose systems in the 19th century were the defining exemplars of the term "capitalism" have since all trended toward socialism.

I suggest you look up the definition of "capitalist" and "communist." All successful nations today are, by definition, "capitalist," as in the government respects the right of the people to own property. Yes, there are some successful mixed economies, but they are "mixed" because the government owns some of the means of production alongside the people, not the other way around. And even those few nations have been liberalizing over the last few decades, a trend which continues today.

By the actual definition of "communism" there are no communist nations today, nor were there ever any for the reasons I gave in my initial argument. The definition of communism I've used for this discussion was actually more lenient than how it is defined.

>The Communist Party of Cuba would be as surprised to learn that they aren't Communist

The Communist Party of Cuba would not be surprised at all. They're just playing the game they've been given, and to think that they don't know the score is to assume they are all idiots right off the bat.

>At any rate, the idea that all nations eventually trend towards capitalism is ludicrous

Every formerly communist/socialist nation on the planet save one has moved to liberalize their economy in the last few decades, because communism/socialism is inherently flawed. All nations do, indeed, inevitably trend towards capitalism. If they choose not to, they inevitably fail, and once they pick up the pieces, they inevitably choose the alternative, which has been proven to succeed time and time again.

If you use as weak and binary a definition of "capitalism" as you expressly state that you are, then the idea of nations inevitably trending toward capitalism is even more ludicrous than it is if you use it in a meaningful way -- as it is, even currently socialist nations are "capitalist" (not trending toward it -- which is impossible, there is no way to have a variable distance from it -- but actually capitalist.)

Yes, I've noticed that debates with those who advocate socialism over capitalism tend to devolve into arguments over semantics.

It seems that so very few of you can argue in favor of your favorite alternative to capitalism well enough to refrain from nitpicking. It becomes tiresome after a while.

Using your weak definition of capitalism, I've rarely seen anyone advocate socialism over capitalism, since all socialism that I've seen advocated is compatible with (and even require) your weak definition of capitalism, they aren't alternatives to it.

And, while there's probably some definitions of "socialism" and "capitalism" for which my preferred tuning of a modern mixed economy is more "socialism" than "capitalism", all I've been arguing in this thread is that your Marx-in-reverse arguments about the inevitability of capitalism are as ludicrous as Marxist fanatics arguments about the inevitability of Communism -- and that's not even related to advocacy about the desirability of any system.

Semantics.