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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   3179 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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no question too simple or too silly

This is a real shower thought, but doesn’t the fact that the USSR was rival superpower to America prove without a doubt that communism actually does work? In fact, it works really well?

Thinking about it, it makes no sense to ever retort “well did it work for the USSR?” when someone brings up the prospect of communism. It worked so well that the communist USSR rivaled America and launched the first satellite. If it didn’t work well, the USSR could never have been a competitor to America. One could even argue that America cultural capital is what really led to American dominance later on, which is independent of political system and relies on America’s unique position as cultural crossroads, but that is beside the question.

The USSR was flawed enough that after enough generational turnover for the revolutionary passion to wear off, the elites decided capitalism was better. I do think people overstate the extent to which communism doesn't work, that the arguments made about how bad communism and central planning and authoritarianism are prove way too much. But it's nice to have a wide variety of consumer goods, decentralized technology development, little state-backed political repression, few shortages, and for it to be very hard to expropriate a significant portion of the population or to cause a famine negligently or not. Cultural capital didn't produce the Randalls grocery store Yeltsin visited, it didn't produce America's global lead in technology, etc. "Communism doesn't work" is a reasonable way to say that.

I do think people overstate the extent to which communism doesn't work

Definitely not. Communism is just totally bankrupt as an economic ideology. The only reason why the USSR lasted as long as it did was because they let limited capitalistic ideas seep through pretty quickly. If you want to see the closest thing to Communism as written, read up about War Communism. Everyone hated it.

I agree that the ideology was bankrupt, but the fact remains that it was a rival superpower and did last quite a while. It could've collapsed within three years, and it didn't!

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