Gonzalothot [none/use name]
Most communists understandably tend to have a very negative opinion of Ceaușescu and consider him to be among the worst socialist leaders of the Eastern bloc. Despite this, a 2014 poll showed that:
66 percent of Romanians would vote for communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-1989) if he ran in the upcoming presidential elections in November
The survey highlights that 69 percent of citizens believe that they lived better during communism
A 2018 study by polling institute Isogep showed that Nicolae Ceaușescu remains the most popular Romanian president. 64.3% had a good opinion of Ceaușescu, followed by current president Klaus Iohannis with 50.7%, the only other president with an approval rate over 50%.
Some history of Romania’s socialist period from a socialist perspective.
Wouldn’t be too surprised if the Cliffite Trots and third campists were.
Movements and organizations Cliffite Trots (like the recently dissolved ISO) showed solidarity with (at least initially):
- The “mujahideen” in Afghanistan against the socialist government and the Soviet Union
- The “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia which brought neoliberal capitalism to power
- The pro-Western “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine
- The pro-Western “Rose Revolution” in Georgia
- The 1991 overthrow of the USSR (trumpeting Boris Yeltsin)
- The Kosovo Liberation Army (a fascist force)
- The middle-class and pro-Western Green movement in Iran
- The Libyan rebels that championed NATO intervention
- The Free Syrian Army that champions NATO intervention
Movements and organizations Cliffite Trots refused to support, and attacked instead as “Stalinist”:
- The Cuban Revolution and the Communist Party of Cuba
- The United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution
- The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China including during the Mao era
- North Korea, even during the Korean War
- The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
- The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Many orthodox Trots (particularly the ones in Latin America) tend to be generally anti-imperialist though.
Phil Donahue lost his job at MSNBC for vocally opposing the Iraq War. An internal memo at MSNBC revealed that they saw Donahue as a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war”.
According to Donahue:
They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer.
It really is funny almost, when you look back on how—how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. We were scolds. We weren’t patriotic. American people disagreed with us. And we weren’t good for business.
Chris Hedges also lost his job at The New York Times for publicly denouncing the Iraq War after they formally reprimanded him. He was booed off a stage and had his microphone cut twice for delivering an antiwar speech.
While this is certainly true and the support for the former Nepalese government was rather minimal, it’s still the worst foreign policy decision China has made post-Sino-Soviet split imo. It was done out of a selfish desire for prioritizing stability at China’s borders because the party at the time was paranoid about right-wing Tibetan exiles in Nepal exploiting the instability caused by the uprisings and establishing a base for promoting Tibetan separatism from Nepal which borders Tibet. The Gyanendra government of Nepal had a policy of prohibiting Tibetan exiles from promoting separatism and any political organizing that would threaten Chinese interests. Certainly not the first time a socialist government has opted for pursuing selfish nationalist interests over socialist internationalism though and it unfortunately won’t be the last.
The Sino-Vietnamese War was a horrible consequence of the Sino-Soviet split that began under Mao, escalated in the 70s, and didn’t really end until the late 1980s. It led to some atrocious foreign policy decisions under both Mao and Deng. Nevertheless, since the end of the Sino-Soviet split, China has largely repaired its relations with the many socialist countries that they had previously spurned during that era (although there is still some tension with Vietnam especially due to South China Sea disputes). Erik Prince involvement in anything is certainly cringe though.
The relations between China and Cuba are today an example of transparency and peaceful collaboration between two nations that hold the ideals of socialism.
China has objectively become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries. I do not hesitate to say that it is already the main engine of the world economy. In what time? In only 83 years after the foundation of its glorious Communist Party and 55 years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Fidel in 2014:
Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
China has become Cuba’s largest trading partner:
The year 2016 saw the first year ever that China became Cuba’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade reaching $2.585 billion, according to a newly released report by the island’s statistics, ONEI.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared in 2017 that China will continue to “put Cuba at a special place in its foreign policy and will as always support Cuba’s legitimate fight for sovereignty and its endeavors against the U.S. embargo.”
And of course Sall unironically believes in Blanchard’s pseudoscientific autogynephilia typology that has been repeatedly debunked.
“Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.”
Also they’re extorting African countries for their natural resources just as western imperialist countries are.
This requires a source, because I’m aware of them having activity in Africa, but what I’ve read about is of a much less exploitative nature than what the western powers are doing.
If you want to talk about socialism, let us not forget what socialism achieved in China. At one time it was the land of hunger, poverty, disasters. Today there is none of that. Today China can feed, dress, educate, and care for the health of 1.2 billion people.
I think China is a socialist country, and Vietnam is a socialist nation as well. And they insist that they have introduced all the necessary reforms in order to motivate national development and to continue seeking the objectives of socialism.
There are no fully pure regimes or systems. In Cuba, for instance, we have many forms of private property. We have hundreds of thousands of farm owners. In some cases they own up to 110 acres. In Europe they would be considered large landholders. Practically all Cubans own their own home and, what is more, we welcome foreign investment. But that does not mean that Cuba has stopped being socialist.
Castro in 2004:
Socialism will definitively remain the only real hope of peace and survival of our species. This is precisely what the Communist Party and the people of the People’s Republic of China have irrefutably demonstrated. They demonstrated at the same time, as Cuba and other brotherly countries have shown, that each people must adapt their strategy and revolutionary objectives to the concrete conditions of their own country and that there are not two absolutely equal socialist revolutionary processes. From each of them, you can take the best experiences and learn from each of their most serious mistakes.
China has objectively become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries. I do not hesitate to say that it is already the main engine of the world economy. In what time? In only 83 years after the foundation of its glorious Communist Party and 55 years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Fidel in 2014:
Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
It was Lassalle and the Ricardian socialists who believed that labor was the source of all wealth.