But the internal failures made them more susceptible to US-related factors. US competition and intrigues also played a role. Soon, the economies also stagnated and failed to keep pace with Western ones, the lack of creativity and innovation due to autocracy being a key reason. Despite raising living standards hugely, the highly autocratic systems stifled freedom and dreams of egalitarianism and led to dissent. The rest got replaced largely peacefully, with the change in USSR starting a domino effect in most of the rest, though some, as in Cambodia, had fallen earlier. Of these, only half are still in power: in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Nepal. My focus is on 12 communist revolutionary parties in Albania, USSR, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Nicaragua, Cambodia and Nepal. This excludes the French and Iranian revolutions that lacked such a party Ethiopian and Salvadoran ones where army coups proclaimed revolutions or East European parties where Soviet occupation gave communism.

My focus here is on revolutions led by revolutionary parties with egalitarian agendas. In many, old-order armies also collapsed.

In China and Russia, communism replaced capitalism economically and one-party rule replaced autocracy politically. I see them as non-elite movements, usually armed, that topple an autocratic state and change the political and/or economic systems hugely. Many toppled autocratic regimes but failed to establish fair and successful states.īut one must first define them.

Even historically, revolutions gave mixed results. The revolutionary beats of bands let the yuppie middle-class soldiers of capitalism act like brave revolutionaries in charged weekend concerts, only to go back meekly and happily to their elite capitalist masters’ embrace come Monday. The idea of revolutions today has become a fad, with elite teenagers clueless about Che Guevara’s ideology while fashionably donning T-shirts with his likeness. REVOLUTIONS evoke great romanticism and hopes of a fair world.

Monopoly junior party review