We’re at the point now where labels such as “capitalist” and “communist” is meaningless. China is a purported communist country but is minting more billionaires per year than any other country.
Yeah, I'm not sure "communist" was ever a particularly valuable label, in that anything large and nominally communist was more statist or totalitarian oligarchy, just painted red. My understanding is that as envisioned, the state would "wither away", devolving power to the people, but in practice people who like power were quite happy to seize the levers of the government and never let them go. Oopsie!
As an aside, I strongly recommend Iannucci's The Death of Stalin [1], which is in US theaters right now. The material would be horrific in a serious film, but treating it as a black comedy makes it endurable. I enjoyed it much more than I expected, and the cast is first rate.
The fact that some people once wished the word "communist" to mean something else doesn't matter much. Post-1945 it has had a clear meaning: the empire of Stalin, and its vassals, imitators, and admirers.
"as envisioned" just means some people once told a fairy tale about how nice things would be. The Heaven's Gate cult also "envisioned" riding to paradise on Comet Hale-Bopp.
This is a very good point. It's like trying to trouble shoot a system failure in a bullet train based on a 19th century document detailing train locomotion.
This seems like a strange sentiment when the trajectory of wealth accumulation and power in Capitalists societies track pretty closely with the analysis of Marxism. Unless your saying that all ostensibly communist societies are actually examples of State Capitalism.
I disagree that labels are meaningless. Capitalism is well understood to mean private ownership of the means of production. China is doing a lot of different things and most people understand that.
If it's so well understood why is everyone including those in power acting is helpless? Even the rich warn about the problems. I don't think things like "money", "capitalism" etc are well understood at all. It may not even be possible because those are very fuzzy terms that describe vastly different things depending on what aspects you are looking at and they consist of >90% context. IMO any discussion waving around any of those words can be safely ignored or engaged in only because one is extremely bored and wants entertainment.
That's kind of a confusing line of questioning. People are pointing out problems yes (I often agree with them, I'm a socialist), but that doesn't change the definitions of words. If we muddy the words, we won't even know what we're talking about and that favors the status quo. The remedy for ambiguity is clarity.
As an aside, I strongly recommend Iannucci's The Death of Stalin [1], which is in US theaters right now. The material would be horrific in a serious film, but treating it as a black comedy makes it endurable. I enjoyed it much more than I expected, and the cast is first rate.
[1] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_death_of_stalin/