English-speaking communist countries

[JockSporran]

Why have there never been any English-speaking Communist countries?

[jno]

without getting into debate over whether Anglo-Saxon culture is too based on personal greed to favour communal action, remember that there haven't been many communist countries of any sort, and many of those that have existed have sprung up in countries with a very large oppressed working or peasant class.

[JockSporran]

Sorry, jno, Im not so sure about what you say.

1) 'There haven't been manyCommunist countries' -

At one time (1960-1990) half the world was Communist.

2) '(Communism) sprung up in countries with a large oppressed working or peasant class' -

In that case, what about India, Pakistan, African countries and many of the former colonies of the British Empire which are now Third World?

No, I remain puzzled at this.

[jno]

half the people in the world maybe, but not half the countries: China has a sixth of the world's population and Russia's population is also large, so those skewed the figures a bit. I didn't mean that all countries with a large peasantry went communist - India in particular did not, though some provinces I think did.

[MustafaTickl]

It is not altogether true that there have been no English speaking Communist countries. Jamaica is basically English speaking and throughout his first term as Prime Minister Michael Manley turned the country Communist. Initially there was great enthusiasm for it but it turned Jamaica into an absolute shambles and both he and Communism were eventually voted out.

Russia was an International Communist country, and there were several that were National Communist (Fascist) - Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Rumania for example. Communism, whether International or National, did not spring from from "very large oppressed working or peasant class".

[kaydee9000]

I think India (a former British colony), which has the second largest English-speaking population in the world, is the only country which went pretty close to becoming a communist nation. Many of India's past leaders have had Communist\Socialist aspirations but since India's economic coming-of-age in the 1990s the phenomenon has subsided considerably.