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If your first instinct as a westerner is to criticize and lecture 3rd world communist movements, instead of learning from their successes, then you have internalized the patronizing arrogance of the colonial system you claim to oppose.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Meanwhile the success in question: The 3rd world communist countries have managed to more or less industrialize and build up wealth, but under (state) capitalist system with all the bells of whistles which are markets, commodity production, wage labor, etc. In other words, they used capitalism to build up wealth.
Don't get me wrong, I actually think they had some absolutely amazing policies for the workers like free housing and social benefits, and good on them for building themselves up. However, this has nothing to do with socialism (socialist mode of production in this case) or communism as it was achieved with, and is therefore a win for capitalism - the same system that drove colonialism and the system that had already built up wealth for 'non-socialist' feudal/agrarian countries in the 19-20th century.
EDIT: Damn, judging from the amount of upvotes, it genuinely feels like walking into a bar and everyone drawing a gun and pointing at you. This is probably the most antagonistic I've been towards ML (or MLM/Dengist/Maoist) ideology and it's kinda disappointing how there's no actual non-ML Marxists to be seen here.
We've spoken on this before, ultimately you still cling to the "One Drop Rule" as a consequence of undercooked study of Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
Edit: to respond to your edit, non-ML-derived Marxists are a minority among Marxists globally. Trotskyists are a largely western phenomenon, as are Left-comms, so it's unsurprising that there would only be 1 or 2 non-ML Marxists. Further, ML is overwhelmingly the most common umbrella of Marxists these days because it has seen real success, and theory and practice have proven it. There are sub-tendencies, but the umbrella of ML is so well-established because it's correct, if we are to be Marxists.
And I'm adamant that it's a mischaracterization. Identifying the dominant mode of production is not a "one drop rule", it's literally foundational Marxist analysis - modes are defined by prevailing relations of production, not how it's managed or ideological labels put onto them.
But you don't identify the dominant mode of production. You see an overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned economy, and call it "capitalism." There is no transition from Capitalism to Communism for you, it remains Capitalism until every last drop of former society is eradicated. I'm going to recommend What is Socialism? one more time, as it directly addresses your line of thought.