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?
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Notes -
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.
A part of answer might be that USSR early gave equal rights to high IQ Jews which partially offset the inefficiency of planned economy, then after creation of Israel most Jews eventually left and economy became less free in 1960th-s. In some things, it wasn't (unironically) real communism:
abortion banned by Stalin
education in schools after 7th year was paid
...I could even speculate that if Stalin had better health and lived longer, he'd change mind on genetics too...
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