Communism isn't the opposite of capitalism. China's both communist and capitalist. It also, incidentally, has extreme levels of poverty.
The communist countries you visited likely did a good job of hiding the homelessness. It's one of the advantages of having that sort of control over your subjects.
> The communist countries you visited likely did a good job of hiding the homelessness.
The communist countries I visited I lived in for quite a while, and no, they didn't do a good job of it, it simply didn't exist. I would have definitely noticed. And yes, I did visit the poorer regions. Now they have homeless people though. But they're no longer communist.
Everybody had a job, everybody had a house. Maybe the job was changing the traffic lights or something similarly inefficient but you'd have a job, guaranteed.
Second this, although the only communist country I knew was Hungary and I got to know it just before the regime change. The Communists built huge housing projects around Budapest specifically to ensure that everybody, no exceptions, had a place to live and a job to work. It might be a stupid, demeaning job - there were no vending machines - but it was work, and a place to call home.
Now, there are tent cities along the Danube and in the corners of the railway easements. Say what you like about the wonders of capitalism and the "fact" that communism just swept the problems under the rug, but anybody who actually witnessed both knows that for the people on the very bottom, communism is far, far better. And for the people in the middle, it was about the same, albeit with fewer electronics. Of course, for people at the top, it's the same; they're just allowed to be honest about their Swiss accounts now.
Chomsky refers to the 'real' communism, which has to date not been implemented by any society (and which possibly can not be implemented with people the way they happen to be).
It always has been a version of an oligarchy.
The same goes for those 'communist' countries out there today.
I think the 'fat cats' simply used the term communism to make the have-nots believe that they were living in a fair society without exploitation. A propaganda device rather than anything else.
When some oppressive hellhole styles itself the People's Democratic Republic Of Wherever, everyone sees through the ruse rather than blaming its failings on actual democracy. I don't see why communism is held to a different standard. There weren't any secret police disappearances or corrupt apparatchiki in Marx's advocacy, were there?
Communism's aim was always the abolition of the state. Technically, communist countries were what Marx called dictatorships of the proletariat, which he thought was a transition stage between capitalism and communism. This transition never occurred, so Chomsky is correct.
Marx was held back by his historical era (as are we all); he believed that evolution consisted of a progression. We now know pretty well that evolution goes any damn way it wants, and imposing a direction as "forward" is wishful thinking at best. The spontaneous dissolution of the state is probable - eventually. Very eventually. Forcing progress, as Lenin hoped to do, was naive, although (imho) well-intentioned.
The breakup of the USSR is not a victory for anybody, really. The very presence of the USSR in the first place was a detriment to the mindshare of communism, and its breakup ensured nothing beyond the fact that Americans could say they "won" the Cold War, whatever the hell that means.
Something like the original communist ideal can be seen - as it's always been - in the spontaneous organization of maker communities and other types of community. But if real communism is ever going to appear among us hominids, it's not going to come out of a State that grants it to the masses. The masses are just going to have to make the State superfluous. And that is not going to happen any time soon, libertarian science fiction notwithstanding (I like my Vinge as well as anybody).
The communist countries you visited likely did a good job of hiding the homelessness. It's one of the advantages of having that sort of control over your subjects.