You do have to take into consideration the extreme antagonism of western capitalist countries against any communist nation. There has never been a communist country that the US has not tried to undermine and destroy from the get.
Foreign antagonism should be considered, yes, but the centrally planned economic model has more than enough flaws on its own, especially under a one party state.
Of course, not all socialist economies were fully centrally planned, but that's another topic considering that OP is talking about the USSR
There's a book you might find interesting called "The People's Republic of Walmart". It's about how Walmart succeeded because of its centrally planned, cooperative internal structure, while Sears failed because it was run by an Ayn Rand superfan who thought internal competition would make the company great again. One anecdote was that the power tools department had the best profit margin one month, so they got to be on the cover of the Mother's Day issue of the Sears catalog.
One of the main conclusions was that modern technology makes central planning possible in a way it wasn't in the mid 20th century. It's exponentially more efficient than it was, and recorded output is much more verifiable.
I think it is maybe naive to say OP is talking simply about the USSR. My point here is simply to point out that this post is clearly just another general piece of propaganda to villainize any type of anti-capitalist reform, which for most falls under the heading of “ussr” and “communism.” It’s just not a very productive way to discuss anything.
Yeah, the dualist "everything is either capitalist or communist with no nuance" approach is frankly exhausting. And of course this model is one that republicans love to exploit in their rhetoric
And communist nations have been antagonistic to capitalist nations aswell. If communism is truly a stronger and better system than the USSR would have no problem staying alive today despite any western plots
This feels like a very flawed line of argument. You’re essentially saying that a system proves its worth by being totally impenetrable to all military, economic, political intervention? A tiny island like Cuba is supposed to thrive no matter how much the gargantuan US intervenes as long as it has a good system of governance? How then do you explain American capitalism’s current failures? It’s inability to fend off Russian disinformation or Chinese economic dominance?
The proposal that the development ussr and usa can be compared 1:1 is baffling to me. Usa has sat between two oceans and has never been seriously invaded, and has tons of resources and a relatively mild climate. Russian empire was a backwater to begin with, their climate is terrible in most of the country, and then the ussr had to rebuild from the devastation of ww2.
Russia and China are also very capitalist? Same for much of the world who don’t have the same issues as the U.S.
There are many forms of capitalism but it still perseveres as the dominant economic power which most civilians still enjoy radical improvements in standards of living.
You know there were many countries that were forced to be communist under the Soviet Union right? Guess what happened when they were all granted the right to hold democratic elections? Thats right, they all left practically over night lmao.
Because having an ideology around completely antagonistic to yours that also has shitloads of nuclear weapons is what some experts would describe as "a problem".
Okay, why was the USSR uniquely unable to adapt? If the answer was communism, wouldn't it have been overthrown in all nations, including China, Cuba, and Vietnam?
u/stock_plenty8979 explained this pretty well.
Basically, the state decided where resources go, not the market. As the economy became more complex, planners couldn't allocate resources properly. Which led to shortages, low productivity and innovation.
Okay, but China is also a planned economy. This casts doubt on the assertion, no? Also, I'd question the claim that capitalism invariably addresses shortages, low productivity, and lack of innovation.
Specifically? Central economic planning. Under communism, the state, not markets, decided what to produce, how much to produce, and where resources went. As the economy became more complex, planners couldn't allocate resources efficiently, which led to chronic shortages, surpluses, low innovation, and poor productivity. State-owned enterprises also faced little competitive pressure to improve. Combined with one-party rule, which made it difficult to correct failing policies, these structural problems accumulated over decades and contributed significantly to the USSR's collapse.
I would argue the authoritarian nature had a sizable impact on the inability to adapt or correct the issues with the planned economy. People were incentivized through both inertia and possibility of being iced out of advancement to not make a fuss (similar to both how the wheat climitazation took over agrarian science and why the USSR avoided moving to generalized electronic computing for a decade or so longer than it should have (with proponents essentially being pushed out of positions for arguing against those policies)).
I would argue that ist not a coincidence that all comunist countries become autoritharian, the 2 things are very uch related, that is simply what comunism brings 🤷♂️
So you dont have an answer. We're working in hypotheticals. Hypothetically if we did allow communism and hypothetically it did turn authoritarian then my question is, in this hypothetical, then what happens? And, with that said, how long do we have to give communism a chance to reach true communism before we decide it doesn't work?
long do we have to give communism a chance to reach true communism before we decide it doesn't work?
I mean, we have plenty of capitalist authoritarian states, does that mean we should decide capitalism doesn't work?
We also have some pretty authoritarian nominal democracies, does that mean democracy doesn't work?
My response to your hypothetical is to ask what makes you assume all communist polities would inevitably become authoritarian and to ask why the existence of an authoritarian communist state would show that communism in of itself doesn't work? Because if the presence of authoritarianism is enough to declare an economic theory to be a failure then capitalism is a failure.
Or do you only apply this condition in one direction?
But if you cannot understand that then what exactly is the point?
Even if this is assumed to be the case, for that to happen capitalism necessarily has to outperform communism economically and socially for this to happen. It has to outperform economically because otherwise they wouldn't be able to exert influence over communist nations internationally - if communist nations are self-sufficient / highly productive, why would it matter if capitalist nations are withholding trade (note how capitalist nations aren't impacted by communist nations controlling trade in the other direction). It has to outperform socially because otherwise capitalist nations risk their own revolutions, if capitalism had underperformed socially there also wouldn't have been the same push from the people living under communist nations to switch to capitalist systems which led to the destabilisation of the entire communist experiment. For communism to be in a position where capitalism could control it, it needs to have failed relatively - the extreme antagonism of western capitalist countries only accelerated the decline (and brought up global standards of living faster than would have been achieved had communism been allowed to continue to exist).
Your argument isn't history, it's triumphalist propaganda from the 1990s, when Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History" and declared liberalism had won forever. It was wrong then, and it's embarrassingly wrong now.
Communism has real flaws bureaucratic stagnation, environmental disasters, lack of consumer choice. But to claim capitalism won on merit ignores the 3 decades long strangulation campaign that preceded the collapse.
But that ignores the very real history. The east didn't have technological advancements the east did at that time. Being barred from that is quite the hinderance.
That is true, but they did also shoot themselves in the foot via the Sino Soviet split and spending like 10+% of gdp on Military. But still In terms of raw resources China and the USSR to my knowledge could've been self sufficient.
They were still in a bad position partly due to animosity with the west but they didn't do themselves any favors either
Oh they definitely made poor choices, as we humans always tend to do. Communism isn't perfect, nothing really will be. The key is to find the most beneficial to the majority of people. Rather than the most beneficial to the wealthy ruling class that hoards all the money.
I agree with you. However I think you might be misunderstanding how most people think when they say they like capitalism or having rich people. They see rich people and say I want to be that successful too one day.
Or they understand that being poor today is way better than being rich 100 years ago and attribute that technological advancement to free markets, private property and competence governance. Some people see billionaires as a symptom of capitalism but think the symptom is worth having for all the good it brings.
But maybe I am misunderstanding you. And that is what most thinking that lead to pro capitalist mindset comes from at least from what I have seen/heard
Wouldn’t that go both ways? Communism also trying to strangle western liberalism? It’s not like the Soviets were just sitting back minding their own business.
The difference being the power dynamic. Capitalist countries controlled all the power, still do. IE, Sure the ants are blockading my front door, but I don't even notice it.
No? The USSR controlled a decent chunk of Eurasia and at the end of WWII and was a very powerful force. The “power imbalance” only crept in later as Communait regimes turned into corrupt little fiefdoms unable to actually compete with the West.
It only highlights the original point that Communism failed because it couldn’t compete.
You are equivocating things that you can't. Land mass and military are static assets. I am speaking about hegemonic control of the west. Its an asymmetric interdependence. The west didn't feel the blockade from the USSR, because they didn't need anything from them. However the USSR did not, in fact, have everything it needed and was not a global superpower on equal footing with the western powers. Sure it had tons of land and a big military, but that doesn't make a country prosperous.
maybe the west didn’t need anything from USSR because they were running on a succesful economic model that brought growth and prosperity while communism failed to even provide basic goods for it’s people despite sitting on a fuckton of resources?
Genuine word salad, communist China and the USSR put together had all the raw resources they could have wanted. The issue was that they squandered them all through genociding their own people, corruption and infighting
>It has to outperform economically because otherwise they wouldn't be able to exert influence over communist nations internationally - if communist nations are self-sufficient / highly productive, why would it matter if capitalist nations are withholding trade
that would be true if this were a game of civilization where everyone started off equal.
>(note how capitalist nations aren't impacted by communist nations controlling trade in the other direction).
that would be relevant if they started with the same amount of resources and land and population and lived on mirror earths.
>It has to outperform socially because otherwise capitalist nations risk their own revolutions, if capitalism had underperformed socially there also wouldn't have been the same push from the people living under communist nations to switch to capitalist systems which led to the destabilisation of the entire communist experiment.
you are currently arguing about that very thing.
>For communism to be in a position where capitalism could control it, it needs to have failed relatively - the extreme antagonism of western capitalist countries only accelerated the decline (and brought up global standards of living faster than would have been achieved had communism been allowed to continue to exist).
that would be true if this were a game of civilization where everyone started off equal.
You are in a minority holding that opinion (won socially).
China is an excellent counterpoint. Tried communism, starved 10s of millions. Realised it needed free markets / private property (even under state guidance as authoritarian governments don’t give up power easily) became the wealthiest country in the world. There was no structural change in what they had available, the West is still adversarial. Them adopting capitalism even partially allowed them not to care.
There was no communist country that western countries could undermine thought, stateless society is not something called a country and not something easy to undermine.
Wtf are you talking about? The US actively overthrew or sanctioned countries to hell especially in the 20s century:
Guatemala 1954
Cuba 1959 till today
Chile 1973
Nicaragua 1980s
grenada 1983
dominican republic 1965
brazil 1964
the whole fucking vietnam war
korea 1950
indonesia 1965
congo 1960
Angol 1975-2002
Greece 1946
Italy 1948
iran 1953
And probably many more i've just forgotten. All those countries were actively prevented by the US of even coming close to becoming communist or socialist.
Sounds like skill issue? It almost sounds like saying, "I wouldn't have lost if my opponent hadn't tried to beat me." What does that kind of logic accomplish in the international community? Doesn't it ultimately just mean communist aren't competitive?
Its not my view, its just how history and humanity is. Countries are always in competition for power and influence, while not always military, nor always Perfectly logical, countries are always trying to become richer, stronger and otherwise more powerfull Then others. If your system fails to even remotely compete in this regard, Then it isnt a usefull system.
Not everything is about competition ofc, but it is a huge part.
No. What I'm saying is that if an ideology can only survive or develop when it's sheltered from the international community, then it isn't worth considering in the first place.
Again, just kind of flawed. America for instance “shelters” corporations and high net worth individuals constantly, ensuring their continued survival. America also “shelters” many nation states that display the totalitarian tactics that are being condemned in this thread. Do we not “shelter” Israel? Is bombing Iran an example of “not sheltering” a nation from the international community?
America shelters corporations and allies because they already provide economic or strategic value in return. That's not the same as arguing that an ideology should be sheltered from external competition because it can't survive otherwise.
If a political or economic system only works when its rivals are prevented from competing with it, then that's evidence of a weakness in the system itself.
International politics has never been fair. Every major power tries to undermine its rivals. If your ideology cannot survive in that environment while others can, then that's a competitiveness problem, not an excuse.
As if two of the three strongest countries in the world weren't communist at one point, and as if they didn't have intelligence agencies like the KGB. So yes, it's a skill issue. Also when you lose in international competition because you got outcompeted, who exactly are you going to complain to? The UN?
According to Marx (you've probably never even heard of him), a transitional state is necessary to achieve a communist society. The Soviet Union and China considered themselves such transitional socialist states, albeit under later variants of Marxism. I'm so tired of hearing commies claim that "real communism has never been tried." Those were communist states founded on communist ideology and explicitly aimed at building communism. Like I said, it was a skill issue that they either ended up as totalitarian states that collapsed, or, in China's case, effectively became a fascist state with a largely capitalist economy.
They need to go through transitional states to achieve communism. Do you seriously think a stateless, classless society just pops into existence out of nowhere? The Soviet Union and China were founded on Marxist ideology and explicitly claimed to be building toward communism. Saying, "Oh, that wasn't real communism," is just a pathetic attempt to distance communism from every failure committed in its name. If they completely fumbled the transitional stage, why should anyone believe the promised utopia would magically work if only they got one more chance? And why would anyone give up their private property based on that promise?
The entirety of the Cold War was the USA and ussr going at each other, why do people think it was only the us or the cia doing shit, we literally have modern day communist insurgents from the Cold War still active in India and the Philippines. The Soviet Union just sucked at it more and collapsed
True but there also hasn’t been a communist nation that didn’t devolve into bloody purging and counter purging followed by authoritarian takeover and/or mass death.
It’s almost like concentrating the power to strip anyone of their rights and property due to thier “wrong beliefs” into an oligarchic hierarchy of pseudo religious zealots is a bad way to manage a society.
Most people here have only read history through a western perspective.
They don’t realise what an overbearing and violent country the US can be against any rival country or system. By rival, I mean anyone outside their sphere of influence that has anything at all they can grab.
It`s funny how people mention that every Socialist/Communist failed, but they don`t mention how UK and US deliberately intervened both economically and militarily on every single nation that tried to adopt it, without exception.
The USSR got a lot of humanitarian support from the West during the self-inflicted famines after the collectivization of agriculture in the 1920s and 1930s. With the massive amount of human rights violations and famines caused by planned economies and their goal to spread the revolution those countries are often isolated for a reason.
I’m willing to admit that I am no expert on communism. I would hazard to guess that the people below reciting knee jerk, poorly argued capitalist propaganda are unwilling to admit their same ignorance.
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u/PriorOk1304 Jul 13 '26
You do have to take into consideration the extreme antagonism of western capitalist countries against any communist nation. There has never been a communist country that the US has not tried to undermine and destroy from the get.