Just sharing something silly that I decided to put together. Try to see how many of them you can recognize. Optional video essay background music to go along the post.
Tier 1: The big three. On top of the iceberg due to the enormous impact that they have had in the world's history and popular culture, being known by even the most politically illiterate. It is very likely you have been told more than once to move here by angry people during political discussions.
Tier 2: Smaller socialist states that stand out more than the rest in their respective regions. Still well known and recognized, but most people have a weaker grasp on them than on the ones listed on the tier above.
Tier 3: More unlikely to pop up in debates about communism, this likelihood increases drastically if the person you are talking with had a grandmother whose castle, servants and favourite pony were taken away by one of these states.
Tier 4: This tier marks a barrier: an average Jane and Joe is most likely not able to recognize these. However, they do not suppose a very deep level of knowledge for a ML, who should already know about their existence and point one or two facts about them at the very least.
Tier 5: Many people are unable to even point on a map where these countries are located, and much less to even know that they were once socialist states. If you know in depth about them, it is very likely that you put a desproportionately large focus on anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism in your theory journey. It is also equally as likely that you haven't seen the sun in years.
Tier 6: The bottom of the iceberg. These states are almost never mentioned even by the people who are well read on the states on the tier above, despite the very unique and interesting challenges that they had to face as socialist projects. Venturing into these shows a willingness to search for knowledge further away than anything that you will ever need in practice.
Tier 7: The dark depths of socialist history. Some are states that lasted for several years flying under the radar of even the most dedicated MLs, but most of these are ephemeral projects, having lasted as much as the elements at the bottom of the periodic table, or what is the same, about two or three times longer than the average anarchist project. If you know about these, you either live in the place where they existed or you most likely learnt about them not in the pursue of anything practical, but searching for knowledge purely for the sake of it.
Tier 8: Have you ever had a dream that that you um you had you'd you would you could you'd do you wi you wants you you could do so you you'd do you could you you want you want him to do you so much you could do anything?
Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot Cambodia….. Socialist state….
Something doesn’t track here.
Reading too much theory like me leaves you with the sight of a mole for things that are far away, but also with the eyes of a falcon for very tiny and small things that are close. That is the flag of the People's Republic of Kampuchea, not to be confused with the Khmer Rouge's Democratic Kampuchea. The flags are slightly different.
Ahhh, its the Vietnamese backed state, that makes a lot more sense! I forgot that they had a very similar flag, and from a distance all I saw was "Red flag, yellow peaked building", which threw me for a loop.
Thanks for the clarification!
No worries! To be fair I did considering putting in Democratic Kampuchea, as it wouldn't be the only dumpster fire under the name of socialism that is on that list. However I decided not to, on the basis of not wanting to repeat several iterations of socialist (or "socialist") states encompassing the same geographical area. Otherwise, there would be many, many more chinese communist flags from the Civil War era in there and I didn't want to be redundant.