How Kerala got rich

Secondly, Catholics are often setting up schools for everyone. India has always had a history of education, especially Kerala, but universal education of even the lower classes is extremely protestant. The church ended up adopting this around the time colonialism started and thus brought universal education to a widespread base in India.

Finally, the idea of touching everyone and treating them equally was against the general zeitgeist of the prevailing feudalistic highly hierarchical indian society. The first conversion attempts of the Portuguese for the south indian brahmins actually were incredibly successful (Nicholas of Tolentino). The Vatican even allows (and still allows as far as I'm aware, although no one does it) vedic rites for Catholics (malabar rites controversy).

However, no one wanted to give up untouchability. The Vatican eventually forced the missionaries to not have separate missions for touchables and untouchables, which basically ended Brahmanic conversions (and is one of the reasons indian Catholics no longer really care to do the vedic rites, since most are now from the lower class. As far as I know, some still do in Mangalore). Caste is still a problem in some christian communities in India but the bishops work to end it and it is officially condemned.

Which is to say, catholicism is associated with labor movement, equal social treatment, and universal education.

Which is also what the communists want.

It's no surprise that Kerala, being way more christian (and Catholic particularly) with a rich and prominent Christian history is thus the center of socialism.

Keep in mind also that communism in feudal countries has basically no relation to the communism you find on university campuses of america.

Now to the west. In the west, the church is seen as conservative, but the church is actually radically left wing in most parts of the world. It's only because leftism (in a global sense) is fundamentally a part of western culture that the church seems right wing because the church does not go as far as some leftist parties in the west.

That's not actually what happened, you should look up some history.

The USSR didn't throw away, communism, the member states just simply left.

And many of those states were then free of the communist party actually did quite well. Russia didn't, Ukraine didn't, but that's the reality when a country splits apart, some parts do well others don't.

> Any China scholar could tell you that China was already implementing market reforms before Deng

Part of it wasn't even voluntary on the party front, they simply accepted what was already happening instead of reversing it again.

> China is still a country operated on the basis of five-year plans.

hose plans are mostly projects of what they hope they can encourage private business to do and some public investment. Guess what many countries do, planning and public investment.

Lots of things they plan don't happen, lots of things that happen aren't planned. The planning is constantly adjust to what actually happens in the economy, including the global context.

> China is still a country where the state owns all land.

Legally maybe, but if you hand out control for 100 years the relevance of that isn't all that great. And that land can be freely traded between people. So in practical terms it works far more like private land ownership then anything the socialist thinkers of the late 19 and early 20th century.

> China is still a country where capital is not allowed to usurp the public interest.

That is just factually false, large companies in China regularly do things that hurt public interest. Unless you mean 'interest of the party leadership' and even then its only mostly true.

> In this, the reforms of Deng and the continued path of Xi are simply the highest synthesis of communism

Lol, they literally copied other East Asian economic models almost 1 to 1. They are just a log bigger and have more people. But I guess copying other successful clearly capitalist countries can be resold as 'highest synthesis of communism' to people who have irrational hate for capitalism.

And China economic growth or wealth isn't all that magically, its simply that China is much bigger then most others who have done it.

> They are the most faithful to Marxism, which has never preached any kind of static dogma, especially as it relates to economic policy.

I love Marxism, since he didn't actually define any outcome beyond maybe 'stateless and moneyless' you can just make up whatever the fuck you want as long as you are claiming to 'get there'. And China doesn't seem to go into a stateless moneyless direction.

Marx's "Historical materialism" is wrong for Western Europe and laudably false for China.

His critic of capitalism seems to be mostly ignored in China. As is his theory of class struggle as in China there is an ever growing Bourgeoisie.

But I guess copying what Taiwan and friends did and calling it 'Marxism' is one way to go.

But yeah, if the economy can't use those people its just not effective.