What is your opinion about Communism?

[Anomalocaris]

Except there is almost nothing communistic in the modern “communist” China,

According to what definition of communism? China is still communist in a lot of ways.

Like what?

Authoritarian and statist?  Those are hardly uniquely communist traits.

One party rule and lack of freedom of press?   Those are hardly uniquely communist either.

These traits are common to all the successful Asian economies during the stage where they progressed from rural backwardness to fully developed status.    None of those others were communist, in fact all of them were quite anti-communist during that stage.

Guaranteed employment and cradle to grave welfare state?  Nope, they dismantled that completely.   There is even less social safety net in the nominally communist and socialist China than there is in the US.

Pay lip service to Marxism and socialism?  So what?  They call capitalism in china with private factories,  stock markets and no social safety net “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.  

Let’s see what are the uniquely defining communist traits.  1. public ownership of land, housing and means of production?   Not in china.  In China 2/3 of the industry and manufacturing is privately owned.   Housing and land are technically government owned, but that’s a sham as the government then sell “exclusive usage rights” to the land and real estate which can be bought and sold, inherited, and entitles the holder of the right to use the land just like if he holds the deed to the land in the US.   2. Capital allocation are centrally planned?  Not in china,  In China most of the capital are allocated via capital markets like stock exchanges.  Even nominally state owned enterprises are traded on the stock exchange to raise funds.

So in China, besides the fact that party delegates still sing the Internationale at the beginning of the party congress every 5 years, and the hammer and sickle is still occasionally seen, nothing else reflects any defining attributes of communism.

---

The hard left is better than the hard right, although somewhere approaching the centre, preferably from the left hand side is best - in my opinion.

That depends on how one defines left and right.

If Stalinist Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia is classified as hard left than scarcely can hard right top these in repulsiveness.

Also, one should not define a pragmatic and effective structure by relation to the lunatic extremes on either side.   A pragmatic and effective structure stands on its own.