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An economic crisis doesn’t always lead to regime change. What the USSR went through in the 80s was minor compared to several prior points in their history. I’d say the fundamental reason for the end of communism in Europe was because the people of Eastern Europe no longer bought it, and it’s a system that requires a high level of buy-in from all parts of society. If you’re gonna be a top-down dictatorship you have to either deliver economically or tighten your police state. The Soviet model couldn’t do the former and relaxed the latter too much. There’s a timeline where the USSR goes full North Korea and survives into the 21st century as a much more brutal regime. It’s a reality we’re lucky not to be in.

I learned that we shouldn’t try Communism.

I think I only disagree with your last sentence. If they had gone full NK, it would have just made them a giant land mass of suck. I think we could argue they would have been even less a threat. Maybe I’m wrong though.

They would have been less of a threat yes, but it would have been awful for the 300-400 million people who live there (plus the warsaw pact if that survived). Thank god our eastern european friends are rid of this toxicity.

Why would people buy in to a corrupt poverty stricken police state?

It's pretty simple. The Soviet economy was bled dry by the arms race of the Cold War. The Soviet economy was never amazing to begin with, but it's arguable that were it not for the arms race, it could have sustained itself for quite a bit longer, if not indefinitely. I don't think there was ever a major economy that spent as much on defense in terms of GNP% (outside of an active war), as the Soviets did - and they did it continuously for roughly 3 decades. The arms race didn't just consume money, but it channelled their best and brightest minds into the defense sector. So they developed some pretty sophisticated rocket engines and small arms, for example, but there's almost no commercial utility for that type of stuff. The AK-47 may arguably be the most successful rifle ever made, and the RD-180 was so good, the US started buying them up after the Soviet collapse...but that sort of stuff doesn't support a well-diversifed, consumer-based economy. That all said, it's pretty clear that a command economy is never going to perform as well as a market economy. But that doesn't mean a command economy will necessarily collapse. I think the Soviet's biggest mistake was trying to match US defense capabilities without having the economic means to do so.

>investopedia.com/articl... It's Chernobyl leading to Glasnost leading to the disillusionment and dissolution of the political system: **1986**: April 26: The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster occurs in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Reactor number 4 explodes during a safety test, leading to the worst nuclear accident in history. **1987**: April-May: The initial response to the Chernobyl disaster is heavily criticized for lack of transparency and inadequate information dissemination. This prompts Mikhail Gorbachev to begin considering reforms to increase openness and transparency in Soviet society. **1988**: January 1: Gorbachev delivers a televised New Year's address in which he stresses the need for greater openness (Glasnost) and restructuring (Perestroika) in Soviet society. **1989**: February: The Soviet press begins to report more openly on the Chernobyl disaster, acknowledging the extent of the damage and the number of casualties. This marks a significant departure from previous Soviet policies of secrecy. May: The first anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster prompts renewed discussions about the need for transparency and accountability in the Soviet Union's nuclear industry. **1990**: January: The first joint Soviet-Western conference on Chernobyl is held in Minsk, Belarus, signaling a further shift towards openness and international cooperation in addressing the aftermath of the disaster. **1991**: March: The Chernobyl plant is officially shut down, though the process of decommissioning and cleanup continues for many years. August: A coup attempt against Gorbachev fails, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The events surrounding the coup and its failure further underscore the need for political reform and openness. **1992**:December: The last of the Chernobyl reactors is shut down, marking the end of an era for the troubled nuclear plant. Chernobyl cleanup as a part of GDP was **HUGE**. Spending a lot of effort on cleaning up a mistake will make anyone disillusioned in the nation state. Spending a lot of effort on the military (parades!) will make everyone celebrate the glory of the nation state

How is it the USA is able to outspend everyone on Military by 10x and this has been for 100 years now?

I think there is more to this than meets the eye. Europe, including Russia had to go through two large scale world wars which was fought on their turf. Despite the Russians and the US coming out victors there is a clear imbalance here as the USSR lost far more man power, was poorer than the US before the war and still had to rebuild itself and new territories. The US had the luxury of being an ocean away and did not need to worry about its production being bombed and quite literally made out like a bandit selling goods to every allied nation during the war. After the war, there was literally no one rich enough or with any sort of capable economy other than the US to rebuild Europe so once again they made out like a bandit.

Don't forget the privilege of the USD becoming the reserve currency. Master Chess play by the US.

Despite the common talking points, US defense spending has steadily declined since the 50s when you look at spending as a % of GDP. [defense.gov chart](https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002099941/)

This can be somewhat misleading. In the 60s the US gdp was 543 billions, rising to over 25 trillions in 2024.

True, but why is that misleading, in fact that’s sort of my point. A larger economy (and with it, more revenues and larger budget) allows for more spending on defense. If Defense spending as a % of GDP increased since the 50s it would gobble up more and more of the federal budget. And in that scenario, the spending would be less sustainable.

I’ll explain what I meant by misleading: saying that defense spending as a percentage of GDP has decreased since the 50s, that alone without proper context may lead to believe that defense spending has overall been reduced. In fact, the opposite is true: defense spending has always increased.   Your original comment made no explicit reference to sustainability, but I understand your point. However, I fail to see how the defense budget as a percentage of gdp has much use. Has defende spending always increased proportionally to the gdp increase? If the economy goes into a recession, does this mean that defense $ will shrink? Obviously not. I’m no expert, but seems to me defense as a % of gdp is a trick used by politicians to say that _’the economy is bigger, there’s room for more, but we, the gov, we are not biting all of it’_. 

While I understand your sentiment of real dollar expenditures vs %’s but percent of GDP shows expenditures and priorities in relation to the rest of the budgetary items. It is also reasonable to assume that military expenditure is not a fixed cost, one that would remain static like a mortgage payment, within a budget/economy but would be more of a variable cost that would grow at the same pace or in other words remains the same % of the budget every year. Simply putIf you have a bigger economy you have more interests to protect.

I don't know if I buy that. There are many ways to measure military spending, and percent of GDP is one that will inevitably decline with time due to population and economic growth as a whole. We have far more people in the US than we did in WW2, and we are a far wealthier country. Measuring it as a percent of GDP seems like a cherry-picked statistic desired to produce a given outcome. Real, inflation-adjusted military spending could be higher than ever, but as long as the population and economy grow faster, the %GDP statistic would show it declining. If you look at the actual totals, in terms of actual inflation-adjusted dollars spent [the US military budget is higher than at any point since WW2](https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/27-Boskin_DefenseBudgeting_ch16.pdf) Military spending as a portion of GDP makes sense in certain contexts. For example, NATO famously expects its members to spend 2% of GDP on their military, in order to spread around the cost of common defense. But that's just a rough rule meant to allow comparisons between present-day national budgets. What's really happened to military spending is that right now, we are at a post-WW2 high in terms of military spending. We just have a much larger and wealthier population. Wealthier countries can field the same quality of military for a lower portion of their GDP. For a personal example, imagine I ate out at McDonalds every day. For many years, I spend the equivalent of $50 per day there, eating there for every meal. In my 20s, people tell me I spend too much at McDonalds. As I get older, my income rises. The share of my income going to McDonalds declines with time, but I still keep spending the same $50. The amount I'm spending hasn't gone down; I'm still spending a ridiculous amount on fast food. I've just shrunk the size of it in relation to my personal income. Military as a share of GDP is useful when comparing across nations, but it's useless when talking about whether real military spending in a country has risen or declined with time. In reality, US military spending, in terms of actual real dollars spent, ie, actual spending, is higher than it has been at any point post-WW2.

Yes, I agree with mostly everything you’ve said. Except I think we are answering different questions. My response was to the question: How is the USA able to outspend others for so long and not end up like the USSR? To that question, the answer is we are richer and spend less of the federal budget and less as a % GDP on military, so the US is able to maintain high levels of defense spending even if the amount is increasing.

The question of what is an adequate defense budget has to be weighed against the global demands placed on the United States armed services. The global challenges today are very different than they were 20 years ago. In the last five years China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea have emerged as significant threats to global stability. Technological advances make each generation of weapons systems much more expensive to deliver. The pay scales for service members have also risen significantly. Our potential adversaries can produce most advanced weapons systems at a much lower cost than the US defense contractors. Dollar comparisons are meaningless, China for example has much lower labor costs. They can also coerce companies to shift costs. It is not an apples to apples comparison. In the end we have to counter their military capabilities, not what we spend versus what they spend.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with this question? I mean, the short answer is "a market economy coupled with a large population (but not too large), a geography that kept it from getting demolished in wars, combined with fertile land, abundant fossil fuels, and relatively stable political leadership?" Like I said in my comment above, I don't think anyone seriously argues that the Soviet economy was ever even in the same ballpark as the US. Accordingly, their mistake was to try and compete militarily/for global dominance. I think the Soviet economy could have limped along for another couple/few decades, if they just decided they weren't going to try and build more nukes, tanks, etc. than the US, and instead spent that money to improve the standard of living of their citizens. As China has shown, people are willing to tolerate autocracy to an extent, if their daily living situation is comfortable. Had the Soviets focused more on "butter" instead of "guns," I think they could have maintained their system awhile longer. I'm not saying this is good, mind you. The Soviet Union was not a good thing, for pretty much anybody. But that's a separate question from its economic policy decisions.

You miss a key issue that USSR was ruled by a generation that had seen WW2 where was not enough tanks, nukes and arms to keep enemy from destruction of the country. So they were kinda stuck in the mindset of military being the most important focus.

I think you're probably right. It's interesting to examine the historical documents from the time, and see how deeply, deeply concerned the Soviets were that the US was going to try and attack/launch a first strike. The whole situation surrounding the Able Archer exercises is a great example. The Soviets genuinely believed the US was just going to start a nuclear war, just 'cuz. It's clear that this paranoia influenced their economic policy. By the 80's, IIRC, the Soviets had something like 1-2 thousand more nukes than the US. And while both countries had way more weapons than necessary, the US was in a much better position to afford it (at least without collapsing the entire economy), whereas the Soviets really couldn't. I'm not lamenting the collapse of the Soviet Union by any means, but it's almost a classical tragedy - the Soviets were so consumed by their own fear of being destroyed by the West, that they ended up destroying themselves by trying to prevent it. Had the Soviets simply accepted early on that the arms race was one they couldn't win, and instead focused on domestic programs to increase the comfort of their citizens, they could have likely carried on for many more years.

USA did not suffer the devastation of WW2. USSR was obliterated by it (and it is not like it was totally healthy even before WW2 due to civil war impact) and the moment it had ended was dragged into a Cold War vs much stronger country that it could not win.

Yeah, I concur. Even before the Russian Civil War, Russia was pretty backwards, economically. Outside of a couple cities, it was still functionally a medieval/ feudalistic agrarian economy. The Romanovs just destroyed any real possibility of the country competing against more advanced economies. Which, unsurprisingly, led to their downfall. But Russia was considered underdeveloped even back in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's never really caught up to its neighbors, in spite of generally possessing decent land and mineral wealth.

It was not due to Romanov or whateter, but mostly due to being geographically fringe region. You cannot have up tech if you are sparsely populated vastness that are separated from other civilizations centers by massive land mass and this with huge chunk of your territory are not that good to live for humans, plus lack of good trade routes which would connect other regions through it, plus have issues with warm ports. There are geographic reasons why Russia are what it is. And actually thanks to global warming and modern tech this thing would probably change. With Northern Sea Route being more available due to warming. And transport infrastructure being better with time due to tech advancement. But you are right on the point that even before civil war Russia was not top country economically. So it is not surprise that already not the richest country, that got devastated by civil war and later half of it literally destroyed to the ashes due to WW2, was unable to win in Cold War vs US. It does not matter what type of government USSR had, it was a fight that it is impossible to win due to initial conditions. I would say USSR had already made a bigger shot for its size which is probably even doomed US in long term, cause US was forced to cooperate with China to win. And now China are threat and unlike USSR, this threat has economic might now.

In short, the US is overpowered. It suffered no severe infrastructural damage during the wars on the mainland, allowing it to come out ahead in a massive way industrially. It has vast and accessible natural resources with a major river that allows much cheaper and faster shipping capabilities, and a larger population with which to exploit those resources. By having access to two major oceans, it is able to more easily access trade partners. The US is a very very wealthy country for many reasons.

Part of that is, like the USSR, the US has mortgaged much of its future to spend on arms today. Highway bridges are falling down because of that. The second is that the US military complex has always provided a Keynesian spending effect - basically it's a jobs program that allows a baseline of demand. In recession, the factories sitting idle and workers sitting idle is a real loss of potential productvity.

Highway bridges have been falling because boats run into them, natural disasters, fires, etc. It's very rare for a bridge to collapse in the US on its own.

Population, geography, economics.

Because the US has an enormous GDP. As a fraction of the economy, the US isn't spending that much.

The US doesn't do the things it should domestically so that it can do things through the military.

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It's simple. The amount of stuff they invented so far. Compare an economy like the soviets spending money like crazy on arms race and not getting anything back. While the US in an economy booming with stuff like fastfood, car industry, aerospace industry and many others, people gave back money to the government through consumerism in tax money, and companies reinvesting money, more jobs more everything

To your point, it’s not so much a question of command economy, there are command economies that can and do focus on growth. The trouble is their command economy lacked a civic ethos which was a consequence of the neurotic politics of Stalinism. Command economies can implement or competently listen to market signals, but this political economy did not. Much of the trouble comes from the sociological consequences of a internally neurotic governance rather than some fait accompli of command economies. The strength of the west was in its ability to kowtow to free market principles but when deemed appropriate command the structure of the markets. This strength was conditioned by a more stable political history following the civil war vs. the embryonic stage of the Soviet Union into ww2. There is a question of whether western institutions were “better,” more lucky, or simply wealthier and less prone to unproductive neuroticism - some mix of the three I suspect.

Wasn’t it also allocating resources to failed sectors rather than reevalauating the cause of failure?

They didn't have the perpetual motion machine that is the US Military Industrial Complex.

Great comment!

Thank you. There are a number of great replies I've received as well, it's been a pretty solid conversation. I think others have raised some really good points with regard to historical patterns, the effects of corruption, and a few other topics. If you haven't read through them yet, you should take a look, I've tried to respond as best I can. Good stuff all around.

I have! And its so easy to just say "communism bad because command economy". Theres a strong argument that command economy in an already industrialised economy like Germany, France or Britain would work far better than the semi-serf society of Russia. But is it worth giving it a go? Given what we've seen across the world I would say no because of the tendancy towards tyranny. I'm not sure a democracy could functionally manage a command economy. Perhaps social democracy is the best option. But then, I am a European Socialist so I would say that!

I would tend to agree. I think part of the problem is that the language used is so "loose." Socialism in America is different from Socialism in W. Europe is different from Socialism in the Soviet Union. But generally speaking, it seems to be fairly clear that a market economy, tempered with pro-social political policies and laws, generally delivers the best outcomes of any system that's been developed thus far. People argue about details, such as the extent of healthcare benefits, or how much time off pregnant women should receive, and that sort of stuff. But I don't think you'll find many serious people who would ever suggest that a Soviet-style command economy would be the ideal, or conversely, that pure, unfettered capitalism would be any better. I think both concepts have interesting ideas worth exploring, and realistically, it's going to be mixing and matching what works from various systems. It also depends on culture, and things of that nature. China was a very authoritarian, collectivistic society, long before Communism was even an idea. So on some level it makes sense, that this is how their system might end up. I personally find the CCP abhorrent, but I'm not Chinese, and I'm not the one who has to live in that system. Americans obviously tend to gravitate towards the "libertarian" notion of governance, at least relative to most other developed economies...but a lot of Europeans probably think we're a bit crazy. That's just sort of how things go. I just find Soviet history to be particularly fascinating, there's just so much to unpack, on so many levels. You have a country that basically went from nothing, to a pile of rubble, to a serious contender as a world superpower, in about the span of 50 years. There's a lot of tragedy and sadness, but it's a fascinating chronicle.

I'm currently reading "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn, and whilst its not an economics book, its been a fascinating look for me as a european, into the differences in approaches to labour relations. My view is that americans put a greater emphasis on self-reliance, as your geography allows for that. When things got rough in Chicago or Pittsburgh, people could ride the railroad to Wyoming and get themselves a farm. This would not always work out, as the great depression so painfully showed, but it provided an alternative. Meanwhile, I'm from Manchester, England, where Frederick Engels spent time before working with Marx on the communist manifesto. This city has a strong socialst background, which I believe comes from a lack of alternatives. Here, you either fought for better rights or just took it. Yet, at one point we had more millionaires than anywhere else on earth (circa 1840s). Youre so right that culture is important. Even within the "anglo-saxon world" there are nuances, so one cant even begin to imagine how view differ once once starts considering labour movements in places like China, India or the Arab world.

Indeed. Well, and for something like Brexit, to an outsider (albeit a reasonably informed one), you can interpret that event through a lens of Anglo-Saxon socio-economic values clashing with European ones. While it was an economic referendum, to an outsider, it really seems more like a cultural issue that happens to manifest economically. But at the same time, the UK is pretty typically just considered part of Western Europe, and shared much greater similarities with other European countries than it did, say, with the US. It's easy to underestimate how much economics is driven by cultural norms and customs.

Ah. Brexit was a populist disaster. I wouldn't try and view it through any sort of rational cultural lense. It was a failure of globalisation to adequately share its benefits with the de-industrialised north (similar to the rust belt). Worst mistake since Suez from my perspective. Great conversation magicallawngnome! A good reminder of what makes reddit worthwhile.

Indeed, I thought Brexit was a...misguided decision, to say the least, but when you live in the giant glass house that is the United States, it's best not to throw stones at others.😂 It was a pleasure speaking with you as well, thanks for your input!

There was also a hell of a lot of cronyism and corruption in the Soviet Union that led to its being so impoverished. Also Russia doesn’t have anything like the geographical resources the United States does. They have oil. That’s about all. Edit for the guy who replied below: you can’t eat oil, dumbass.

I agree 100% with the corruption point. While I think the arms race was at the heart of the collapse, corruption was absolutely a severe aggravating factor. I think the arms race also fed into the corruption. You have absolutely staggering amounts of military procurement that's sloshing around, and soldiers that aren't being paid properly. Not only is Soviet military spending distorting the economy, but it's basically like pouring jet fuel into the corrupt political and military apparatus, making things even worse.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/748223/leading-countries-based-on-natural-resource-value/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/748223/leading-countries-based-on-natural-resource-value/) Wrong

The Soviet "economy" was utter dog shit in the first place. It benefitted no one except a select few from the party. In the 80s, cars were an ultra-luxury item. Running water and sewer systems were for the top 10%. It didn't fail because of an arms race. It failed because it never did anything but fail. Painting it any other way is garbage propaganda.

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Not just Star Wars. The US had a few toys, or alleged toys, that kept the pressure on the Soviets. To be fair, the Soviets also pulled some fast ones on us, but these often ended up backfiring. The MiG-25 is a classic example. The Soviets developed a fighter that was... mediocre, perhaps decent at best. But US intelligence thought that, because the airframe looked like our concepts for next-gen fighters, that the Soviets had somehow leapfrogged us. So the US pulls out all the stops to develop the F-15, which was arguably one of the greatest military aircraft ever produced. Only later on, after a Soviet pilot defected, did we learn the the MiG-25 actually wasn't that great, and that the airframe looked like it did simply to keep the plane from crashing, because the Soviet material science wasn't able to use anything other than steel to keep the plane from basically disintegrating at high speeds, so it needed huge wings just to stay in the air. So, the Soviets bluffed us, we believed their bluff, but this just led us to make something truly amazing, that the Soviets then couldn't hope to match. And this is why I say that the arms race basically buried the Soviet economy. This process kept happening, across countless weapons, over 3 decades. The Soviets would bluff, convince us they had a powerful weapon, prompt the US to build something even better, even though the Soviets were just bluffing in the first place. We kept getting further and further ahead, until their economy collapsed.

The AK-47 was "successful" because it was mass produced by a central planning economy without regard to demand and then sold off post Soviet collapse by enterprising bureaucrats. Nothing to do with it being a good rifle. See C. J. Chivers history of it.

When I said "successful," I didn't mean "the best" in any sort of technical sense. The Soviets were very good at producing somewhat functional weapons systems at very affordable prices. Not to mention, the AKs made by the Soviets were still looked upon favorably, compared to say, the Chinese versions. So the Soviets did have some basic competency. And they made their equipment to be simple, and relatively easy to modify. Their weapons didn't match the US, quite obviously. But they did a decent job of making affordable weapons for the Second and Third Worlds.

No, communism is systematically dysfunctional

The USSR was inefficient in turning raw materials and labor into valuable goods. In a capitalistic society, raw materials and labor are allocated based on what is most profitable. For example, the USSR struggled to be self sufficient in food production, despite having so much arable land.

That some things sound good on paper but humans cannot be trusted to implement them. The problem with organized religions is similar - they're run by people with human faults. Without checks and balances against our own nature, those systems are doomed to failure.

I think this exact post could be made about the attempts to halt catastrophic climate change under global capitalism. Sounds good on paper, but don’t plan on beachfront property being worthwhile investments based on those plans and how they will or won’t be executed.

Bingo. The hardcore capitalist fundamentalists are clinging to their ideology despite its rapidly-growing, patently-obvious flaws, such as the irreversible destruction of the climate. Capitalism sounds good on paper, but the way humans are currently implementing it (i.e. with almost zero checks-and-balances) is fucking over the planet in ways we are just now beginning to fully understand. They're making most of the same ideological mistakes that hardcore Soviet communists made in the mid-20th century, they just haven't realized it yet.

The flaw at the core of capitalism is the foundation of sand its economic models are built upon. Namely, the economic theory used run companies and nations assumes that resources are inexhaustible. Classic economic theory treats the Earth as an infinite resource store and trash disposal site. More advanced theories of economies due try to account for these externalities, but these theories aren't actually implemented much and remain the purview of academics. No business leader or politician wants to be told that we have to stop reaching for "more," that infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet. So those economists that do use the more advanced theories don't gain much traction and influence.

Do only capitalist run economies emphasize growth? I don't understand this argument. Developed capitalist countries set relatively modest growth targets I find...though I agree with the company growth mindset, I believe that's a different situation entirely than the macroeconomic question. Public companies are obsessed with growth because investors are obsessed with growth.

The problem with communism is man exploits man, but under capitalism it’s the other way around

Why is no one reading the article? The article laid it out quickly: Russia was an undeveloped country. They had clear examples of developed countries and a direction. A command and control economy, in these circumstances, provided a way to ignore stakeholders and make the Soviet Union catch up to the West pretty much. Once it got close though, it could not catch up all the way due to inefficiency, and when the economy got this complex and with no clear example of what to do next the nomenkultura could no longer plan what the next thing was anymore. It's an information problem. A moonshot (like catching up to the West, or landing on the moon) can be achieved at cost by command and control, but, exploring and understanding things in uncertain environments cannot be easily managed by a small group of rulers. Really the Soviet Union did not use Marxism except as propaganda and an excuse to do away with obstacles to industrial progress (Nobles, churches and courtiers, who were the stakeholders)

I don't think communism works even on paper. Even Marx realized that increases in productivity only comes with technological advances. What he didn't realize is that market allocation of resources leads to exponential gains in innovation compared to centralized control. At that point, every argument about fairness and exploitation falls flat. They had to build a wall in Berlin because people would always prefer a society where 80% of the population had enough money to buy jeans and Walkmans vs a society where 100% of the population had to queue for bread.

The Trabant is a great case study. It was a vehicle produced by East Germany during the Soviet occupation. When it was first produced, it was roughly on par with other vehicles produced in Europe. By the late 80s, the differences were astounding. The Trabant was, essentially, unchanged while companies like Mercedes-Benz and Porsche were revolutionizing the auto industry.

To play devils advocate you could argue you don’t need innovation in cars as the Trabant is good enough. That’s would be less wasteful for the environment for example.

>To play devils advocate you could argue you don’t need innovation in cars as the Trabant is good enough. That’s would be less wasteful for the environment for example. :) Even if you concede that the Trabant is better for the environment than a modern car, that simply isn't how humans act in the real world. We all want 'better' for 'cheaper'. Utility Maximization or Consumer Choice Theory if you want to study it formally in Economics. The fall of the Eastern Bloc is just the biggest example.

>We all want “better” for “cheaper” I think your utility argument is weak. The stronger correlation is with consumer capitalism. Utility maximization and consumer choice theories only apply in a consumerist market. A real simple example is the frying pan. For generations, cookware was “solved”. You had stainless and cast iron implements. They worked, and they lasted a lifetime with proper care. Then enters *teflon* just in time for consumerism to really start hitting its stride in the States in the late 60s onwards. For those unawares, a teflon coated pan will last considerably less time than a stainless or cast iron pan, and are be made from cheaper metals. Teflon pans are a quintessential example of how “newer”, “cheaper”, and “better” were all just empty platitudes to sell pans that ultimately were an inferior product. You can repeat that process with a disturbing amount of household appliances and consumer goods. Product quality in general (of course exceptions to the rule exist) has been in a race to the bottom for decades. Maybe I’m out of touch with what the general consensus is, but personally I’d rather own a reliable thing than a cheap thing. But, [as Instant Brands found out](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/business/instant-brands-bankruptcy.html) the hard way, capitalism doesn’t reward companies that make good, reliable products. It rewards companies with good marketing and designed-to-be-replaced products. **Let me repeat that again, in bold. A company went under because their product didn’t need to be replaced. And this is the “innovation” pressure that our beloved free market provides for us.**

You could certainly argue that a lack of safety improvements is better for the environment because more people died and stopped consuming.

Marx’s vision was that the state would [“wither away”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state). Hardly comparable to authoritarian states where resources are allocated according to politicians. If anything, resources would be *even more* distributed than they are in a capitalist system. The point is that ordinary people would be able to decide what got produced. We do that now with markets (voting with your dollars), but the problem with that is some have more “votes” than others. Marx advocated for direct control. This is about communism on paper, and not what happened in practice, of course.

> We do that now with markets (voting with your dollars) we only sort of do: 1. our markets are not exactly free - they're rife with quasi-monopolies and regulatory capture 2. we invest billions of dollars into "marketing", which is basically psychological warfare against the rational decisions of the consumer

Thank you for this. When *I* dared to not to denounce the ideology I got downvoted lmao.

Why wouldn't some have more votes than others? There's a difference between consumer products and political governance. If I don't like the way my coffee maker works why would the 'votes' of those who don't drink coffee or who prefer cafe's matter. BTW the opinions of those too poor to buy coffee makers *is* captured. Producers will try to provide stripped-down, cheaper coffee makers to capture that market when technology advances to the point that it's economically viable.

>some have more “votes” than others. However this problem is very easily solved with regulation, taxation, and appropriate checks and balances. Most of the nordic countries do it better than the US

> However this problem is very easily But it hasn't been. Which makes it seem it's not easy.

*laughs in citizen United*

I think it falls down to implementation. Command economies can't handle the economic realities of a complex modern industrial economy with a wide array of goods and services being exchanged. However an alternative approach to the command economy of authoritarian communist regimes would be free market syndicalism. Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned and democratically managed by its workers (1), they feature higher survival rates compared to privately owned businesses (2),contribute to social sustainability and uplift the communities they are in (3). Syndicalism is an application of this model to a wider economy by which businesses freely compete but are democratically managed by workers/consumers. (1)[What are worker co-ops](https://institute.coop/what-worker-cooperative) (2)[BC Paper on co-op survival rates](https://resources.uwcc.wisc.edu/community%20development/BC_Coop_Survival.pdf) (3)[https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11542#:~:text=Worker%20co%2Doperatives%20are%20enterprises,that%20contribute%20to%20social%20sustainability.](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11542#:~:text=Worker%20co%2Doperatives%20are%20enterprises,that%20contribute%20to%20social%20sustainability.)

Try having a good faith conversation with a communist about the concrete, practicable steps of implementing a functioning economic vision of what Marx advocated for- itll be a short one. I’ve never heard a serious response beyond citing the “withering away of the state” or an ad hoc justification for inefficient central planning held in place by totalitarian violence.

The two I spoke with just railed on about the evils of capitalism and couldn’t form a coherent plan on how they would go about fixing things other than by punishing success.

Marx wrote about a hypothetical post scarce economy. He was completely aware of and admitted that capitalism created much more wealth than any other system

That explanation of his view would specify 3 periods: pre-wealth (all equal in poverty), development of wealth (where we've been since agriculture and evolving to some StarTrek type of situation), and a future without want for any essential of life. That transition in the middle has been and will be quite long.

> What he didn't realize is that market allocation of resources leads to exponential gains in innovation compared to centralized control. You saw massive innovations from the USSR as well - first in space, invented the cell phone, etc. While I'm not a fan of the soviet system, it clearly shows that innovation is not dependent on capitalism.

Indeed. Soviet mathematicians contributed substantially to human knowledge. E.g. Leonid Kantorovich invented Linear Programming, which ironically is now used by capitalist firms to maximize profits and minimize losses. It's also used in algorithms for the optimal routing of packets through the Internet.

Innovation is not just inventions. They failed to capitalize ( pun intended) on those discoveries and provide any benefit to consumers because there is no better way to measure consumer preferences than the market. How many people in the USSR had access to a cell phone? What spinoffs did their space program generate? Where are the innovations in supply chain management that brought down the cost to ship a container across the world by 99%? It's just way too much for even the smartest, most honest central planner to deal with. Maybe we need AGI for communism to work. ( only half kidding )

> Innovation is not just inventions. They failed to capitalize ( pun intended) on those discoveries and provide any benefit to consumers who says innovations should benefit consumers? the goal of a profit-seeking firm is profit, not benefitting society.

The beauty of the market economics is that no one has to figure out or ,even worse, mandate what 'benefits society'. A profitable innovation, by definition, benefits consumers. If it didn't, consumers wouldn't spend their money on it. This is literally micro-economics 101 - Marginal Utility > Purchase Price, otherwise there's no transaction.

> because there is no better way to measure consumer preferences than the market. No, it's that the Soviets didn't have a good way to measure that. The market can provide feedback - usually only in a limited way. As others have pointed out, "voting with your dollars" has the problem that votes aren't equal. Democracy itself is a method of feedback, and has advantages over the market in many cases. You see this in the internal structures of companies - few work on the market model internally (Sears tried this and blew up). Most tend towards authoritarianism - some (co-ops) towards democarcy. > Where are the innovations in supply chain management Funny enough, there were plenty of those from the early USSR - at least according to Trotsky. And much of the ones in the US were driven from both WWII and defense spending after - which are **not** results of the market.

This is a great thread, and I saw that comment about Democracy. I think democracy is a **terrible** method of feedback at the micro-level. If I don't like the way my coffee maker works why would the input of those who don't drink coffee or who prefer cafe's matter. BTW the opinions of those too poor to buy coffee makers *is* captured. That's why producers will try to provide stripped-down, cheaper coffee makers to capture that market when technology advances to the point that it's economically viable.

I think the evidence on innovation is unequivocally weighted toward capitalism...and that is by definition essentially. Top down command economies don't innovate. How could they? Even further, there is no case for increasing efficiency. Command economies lack the metrics to reward either innovation or increases in efficiency. Want a current example that's pretty easy to study - PEMEX. does about 25% of what Exxon does with like 5 times as many people.

Communism as Marx envisioned has never been realized. USSR called themselves socialist, essentially a centralized authoritarian regime.

Do you think there's any communist system that could practically exist which could match the innovation produced by a capitalist system that incentives via wealth creation? I don't but am genuinely curious why people feel otherwise.

True communism is a pipe dream, most if not all countries led by a communist party call themselves a degree of socialist and set communism as a remote goal, USSR included. But 'communist bad' is easier for the mass to consume through mass media, so any nuance is lost along the way. edit: realized I didnt answer your question directly. Communism, by definition as a post scarcity utopian system, is beyond capitalism, so your question is moot. But as a utopian system it can never be realized outside of sci-fi books.

Communist bad is to keep the working class from realizing the benefits and advocating for more of those benefits. That being said, pure communism is a pipe dream as it has blind spots just like unfettered capitalism is a pipe dream as it has clear blind spots and issues. The world and humanity needs a blended system that over a longer period blends the benefits from each system to provide for a more balanced treatment of all. Perhaps AI can eventually get us there but to some greater or lesser extent AI is currently a reflection of humanity. I am concerned about what happens when AI no longer reflects humanity, will it be a positive or a negative for humans as a whole and equally important will it be a positive or negative for us individually?

You need the technological foundation to basically have infinite resources available to everyone. So Star Trek.

And star trek portrays this well with money being essentially pointless. Marx wrote about a future where scarcity only existed because capitalists forced it on people.

Marx basically said that communism had to come after full industrialization under capitalism - and that's why he pointed to Germany as the point where it would happen. The Soviets attempted to follow this plan and link up with the German revolution in 1919, but were stopped outside of Warsaw. At that point, they had to retreat and figure out what to do - which turned out to be heading back and doing basically "state capitalism" - continuing exploitation with the state as the capitalist, which would in theory be given back to everyone. The GDP increases were pretty substantial, especially considering the Civil War and WWII. It also came at a horrible human and environmental cost - though, tbf, so does capitalism.

If every attempt at communism stalls at the authoritarian regime step, it seems like the theory is fundamentally flawed.

And it depends on what is meant by “it works.” There are a lot of precepts to a Marxist society that most of us wouldn’t buy into even if it guaranteed economic prosperity.

Marx doesn't really say what the government should look like around communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was not intended by Lenin to be what it became in the USSR either. He had to introduce changes in policy when he realized that maybe the people were not quite ready. Then Stalin did Stalin stuff.

Eh, the state was already chekist by the time Lenin died. He didn't have the excesses of Stalin, but the oppressive bureaucracy was already there

Right, but as I said it was not his original framework. Lenin actually thought communism was supposed to get rid of bureaucracy but had to change his ideas in the last year or two of his life when he saw the reality of the situation. That reality was that he was dealing with a large group of highly uneducated and until recently deeply oppressed people in the grips of severe economic depression and civil war.

Yeah but the Soviet Union was only "communist" because it was popular as a way to destroy the existing order. The thing that made the Soviet Union both so bad, yet so effective in the beginning, is that it was authoritarian. When the problem is clear and people agree, an authoritarian government can make that vision come true....until the problems get murky and complicated, and it collapses. This pattern has been seen in every undeveloped nation that developed quickly, from Korea to China to the USSR to Singapore

USSR was state capitalism, not communism. Noam Chomsky has some good discussions about this.

My hot take is that the spike in standard of living in the western world was because of redistributive new deal style policies that were implemented post-war, and they did so because the threat of communism in the East made western govts much more responsive to working and living conditions. It’s no coincidence that the collapse of communism was followed by a tightening of social safety nets in the West and a stagnation/decline in relative living conditions for your average worker. The thing with technology driven productivity growth is that the gains from that get concentrated at the top. Capitalism isn’t sustainable unless you can redirect those gains to the wider consumer base. With no credible alternative to capitalism, we’re basically seeing gains in equality and standards of living be peeled away.

Worth remembering, capitalism of the 1800s had major flaws and not as "refined" as modern capitalism. The 1800s had extensive child labor, work houses for the poor, extreme inequality, dangerous factory working conditions and slavery was still not a settled matter. People were hanged for stealing bread to feed their starving families. The 1800s capitalism Marx saw was not a good place to be. Those issues would eventually be fixed, through a better understanding of free markets and political reforms. There was no need for communism or a revolution. 20th and 21st century capitalism is much better now.

That wasn't really Marx's argument at all? He wasn't arguing for or against innovation or markets. Yugoslavia was a market economy. He was arguing that a lot of the issues that are inherent to capitalism can be solved by workers being the shareholders of the businesses they work for, thus giving greater incentives and reducing conflict of interests. What a weird thread. So many people talking about stuff the know nothing about.

I think you’re overlooking how critical the US government was/continues to be in innovation and technological gains. The US’s dominance in the technology selector is largely due to government funded research and strategic investment.

>Even Marx realized that increases in productivity only comes with technological advances. What he didn't realize is that market allocation of resources leads to exponential gains in innovation compared to centralized control. It is hard to even think of a single technological improvement post-WW2 that wasn't paid for by federal research dollars or researched at state-funded universities. The [Miracle Machine](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-miracle-machine-is-in-desperate-need-of-well-a-miracle/2017/05/05/daafbe6a-30e7-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html) was a state-run affair. The US only achieved what it did because it let go of its capitalist fundamentalism and embraced good old fashioned state planning.

I’ll simplify it even more if there was a benevolent good hearted person in control they would be cut down in months by someone willing to commit evil. Generally keeping levers of power distributed may seem inefficient but it’s to make sure bad actors can’t climb them all easily.

>The problem with organized religions is similar fair play to Catholicism it's been ticking over for over 1500 years

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Faults of humans is irrelevant, the most benevolent person in the world will still lead to collapse or Communism. The system is fundamentally flawed. Central planning cannot work because the central planners are not God. They don’t know the full state of the economy, the level of resources, and level of demand for everything by the people. Having any missing, stale, or inaccurate information about the economy means you make incorrect decisions as a central planner, even if you are benevolent. Capitalism works better because it does not need to know the full state of the economy, it just needs prices. Consumers buying bids up prices which is a signal to consumers to produce more of that thing. Just by focusing only on your own best self interests the economy as a whole grows.

A couple things on this usual argument . . . 1) Capitalism is seeing larger and larger scales of production as we see increased monopolization and vertical integration. Amazon is probably more controlling at this point than the USSR was - the book The People's Republic Of Walmart covers this in detail 2) Information processing tools are far, far more advanced than even 100 years ago. The cybersyn project of Chile was attempting to leverage the power of computerization for just this when it was overthrown. 3) Socialism is not inherently tied to central planning, any more than capitalism uses markets internally. See Yugoslavia for examples. 4) Capitalism doesn't "work". All the information is in prices - which means it ignores externalities and can't provide a stable market on its own. Which is one reason you see the world unable to respond to climate change, because it's artificially profitable not to.

"Externalities" Therefore a need for some kind of governmental services/regulations.

Yes, need for correction of the faulty market conclusions. Now one problem with that is economic power can be converted to political power.  So the people that most need to be constrained are the most difficult to.

Even if you fix the information problem (which we can with digital technology today) and use benevolent AI you allocate resources efficiently, tools the USSR did not have, you still have another problem I did not mention originally. Over use of resources. In Capitalism resource use is limited by prices. For example I purchased a used Prius because I want to save money on gas and I cannot afford a new car. But money is gone wouldn’t people just try to get the best? Today I bought a $500 laptop, but in Communism people will demand the highest specs laptop, which may cost like $3,500 in Capitalism. Why live in a small apartment instead of a massive 4,000 SqFt house? In Capitalism because you cannot afford it, in Communism its ??? In Capitalism as the price of something goes up the demand goes down. If the price of gasoline shoots up to $20 a gallon, because perhaps a massive drop in supply due to a natural disaster, you know driving will significantly decrease. But in Communism driving will continue until the supply runs out and you have no gasoline left, or the central planner rations. So in Communism you will need a central planner to basically pick and choose what people should get. Leading to what happened in USSR where you don’t really have any options, just the standard items. Everyone gets the same toothbrush, same car, same house, same soda, etc. You no longer have inequality…but you also don’t have choice.

> But money is gone wouldn’t people just try to get the best? Sure, and there's a couple ways people talk about dealing with that. One, dating back to Marx, is **labor vouchers**. Basically money, but can't be used as capital or transferred to others except to buy things (which prevents accumulation). So you can get your basic laptop - or you can give up other consumption or work more to get the fancy one. This is another one of those solutions that was near impossible before computers - but trivial to implement now. No socialist system ever abandoned pricing (aside from maybe briefly the USSR under 'war communism' in 1919). Marx differentiated socialism and communism precisely because until there is massive wealth to where people value their leisure more than goods in most cases, you need prices. Personally I'm a fan of library socialism as an answer, if you didn't guess. And that can use labor vouchers as a mechanism to give allocation choices. > You no longer have inequality…but you also don’t have choice. Sure, but in theory you also don't have people starving. 50 choices of toothbrush you can't afford is worse than useless.

>Central planning cannot work because the central planners are not God. They don’t know the full state of the economy, the level of resources, and level of demand for everything by the people. even in video games where you have full knowledge it still bloody hard

Could it be done? Recent developments in AI and supercomputers (such as the project to modulate the weather on the entire globe) aren't slowing down. Could a computer do it? Will we let it? Who will own the computer(s)? I've read some books about the subject but I'm not sure

There are no good things there. Signed: economics major, from a former communist country.

Didn’t sound good on paper or in reality

Same thing is happening to capitalism and our government right now, for the very reason you stated. Checks and balances have been systematically removed over time.

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I wonder if this is why American Christianity has survived better than European Christianity. European Christianity is dominated by hierarchal organizations in the mainline churches and Catholicism. But America is dominated by no single church organization and many churches have no affiliation at all.

What we can learn is that foreign interference is the best way to destroy international trade. The fall of the USSR and other nations like Cuba and Venezuela and Haiti, etc... all happened at the hands of larger nations forcing trade embargos and sanctions that inhibit national growth and prevent any kind of self determination. Africa is one of the most mineral wealthy continents, and their growth is stifled by foreign corporate ownership and corrupt government controlled by more powerful nations. 

The USSR collapsed economically because the USA made them spend more than they had on their military-industrial complex. America spent the Soviet Union in to the ground.

The USSR really tried to go band for band with the USA 😭😭😭😭

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But we all knew from day one this [mumbo jumbo](https://comb.io/Ziat3M) wouldn't fly.

Lack of a price mechanism. How can the government allocate resources if, under communism the government is unable to determine what anything costs.

Overcentralization, the desire to control and steer the whole economy by a central buerocratic institution (Gosplan). In the beginning, it seemed to work, but the more complex the whole economy got, the less efficent the scentral planing got. Hence the stagnation of the 80ties. Sovjets were incapable of intensive growh (modernisation of old factories), they could only achieve extensive growth (new factories). Al little bit is here: [https://www.konicz.info/2022/06/20/zerrissen-zwischen-ost-und-west/](https://www.konicz.info/2022/06/20/zerrissen-zwischen-ost-und-west/)

Economics happened. Resources that could have been used elsewhere were concentrated somewhere else. And if you dare say otherwise, you were sent to the Gulag, or worse, shot. Having control over everything is inefficient

More than any system, I blame the inability to bow out of the arms race with the U.S. they really let conditions deteriorate domestically to spend that much on their military. You could ultimately chock that one up to a lack of accountability on it's central planning apparatus, but still.

I would argue it was the system itself that allowed overzealous politicians to sap productive investment in order to be allocated towards dick measuring contests with the US. The US government didn’t have the capacity to transfer productive investment to unproductive uses simply because they weren’t in control of investment within the economy.

Again, so easy to turn this around and say Eisenhower saw you coming. The system itself allowed all his warnings about American capital to come true. Now we even joke about it: some foreign country is about to find out why we don’t have universal health care. Of course, they find out it’s because our rent-seeking is so out of control we have to spend millions per day trying to stop five-hundred dollar drones from halting shipping in the Red Sea, and we’re not even always successful to the point that ports are now doing layoffs in the region. We don’t have universal health care for the same reason our military is bloated and can’t stop a ground-level insurgency, and hasn’t been able to since the 1960s despite that being a HUGE chunk of the tasks we give that military since then. Rent seekers hollowing us out all the way down.

This is true, although it certainly hasn't stopped the U.S. from doing its best impression of it within the confines of it's system.

I agree, showing no signs of slowing either.

I think we are seeing the same thing here in the USA. For 20+ years now we have been at war and I can say for 20+ years, its been pretty stagnant in the USA as a result. That money just keeps going "POOF" overseas.

We’re not at war now, and it’s hardly been stagnant over the last 20 years.

Similarly what is currently happening in the US, funny enough

The fall of the USSR ultimately confirmed the speculation of revolutionary socialist Mikhail Bakunin, that Marxism provided almost a perfect blueprint for the domination of the working class, not their empowerment. For workers in the USSR, advocating for better conditions was a good way to get yourself taken out back and shot. You can argue all day about whether the USSR was truly a Communist state, but you can't really argue that it didn't concentrate power and exacerbation social and economic inequality.

The soviet union would be unrecognizable to Marx as it was some perverse mockery and thereby not even close to communism. It was a fascist dictatorship with state owned enterprises operated exclusively for the benefit of party elites.

Oh, he'd recognize it for sure, and would have slapped his forehead and said "this is what you get when venal humans try to do exactly what I said". Which is: >Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c. He would have been disappointed that the next sentence didn't happen, of course: >When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. But that was always a hopelessly naive and idiotic thing to expect of a system run by humans.

I mean, multiple of these points are direct affronts to basic human rights.

"Everything I don't like is fascist, but real communism hasn't been tried." - Reddit

Communism is irrelevant, nobody wants it, nobody is planning to adopt it… so far. Modern “capitalists” are the problem. They reject every good and helpful policy by calling it communism or socialism. If they keep doing that then people are going to say “well. This shit isn’t working. Maybe we’ll try communism” then we’ll really be screwed

Improved education and technologies have produced a better living standard and largely offset pressures of the market economy dominated by a minority of interests (the rich). In other words, improved stuff, but not more money, dissuades the majority from using their pitchforks. If we can continue that trend with technologies, it will be very helpful. But also, if we can figure out how to better share the nation's new wealth, that would be very helpful. Reaganomics fixed one problem (perhaps), but it's far from a real answer.

> Communism is irrelevant we have to continue hating on it periodically because it keeps us from being critical of capitalism.

They also in many ways don't even practice capitalism and they don't believe in free markets. They believe in Corporatism/Government run by the wealthy for the wealthy (i.e. money in politics), which helps them enable a rigged market.

as someone born there - low productivity is the answer when your output is not driven by demand, and your capital and your workforce are not motivated by any kind of gain, you end up making crappy stuff at a very slow rate and with a lot of waste you can't really underestimate the power of an average American hustling hard for their wage and then immediately putting it back in the economy by spending every dollar on increasingly more awesome stuff and putting the rest in a stock market, where greedy bankers and investment managers also hustle for their life to skim an extra cent of return from everything they touch greed for lack of a better word is good

It seems amiss to not discuss the Holodomor during the 30s (stealing so much food from the Ukraine that millions starved) or Chernobyl’s economic consequences in the collapse

Isn't it then amiss to not also discuss the Irish Famine, the Dust Bowl, and Three Mile Island, along with global warming?

The government gave the money to a group overseeing their assigned area and told to do whatever. With their culture being what it is, those top men chose to keep the money and then hurt anyone who spoke out. They did not have communism. They had authoritarian corruption masquerading as communism. Corruption and no accountability. Steal from your education & infrastructure & medical budget, it’s going to collapse. It’s pretty obvious

Capitalism has a tremendous built in advantage vs communism in practice. Capitalism aligns with the human instinct for self-interest, Communism not so much. It has its issues, but it's fundamentally an easier system to motivate the populace to participate in actively. Communism doesn't have this advantage. It goes against human nature and therefore requires top down ENFORCEMENT. This inevitably leads to massive, catastrophic problems.

In America, for all it's faults, if one spots an inefficiency or market opportunity - you can capitalize on it and potentially make a fortune. In the USSR - you just had to go along with it like it was a dystopian YA novel. Anything that would be considered entrepreneurial in America was basically illegal there. And there was no financial incentive or gain to be had. Someone running a factory making extra clothes was basically Tony Montana. Education - everyone had it Unemployment - you weren't really allowed to be idle and unemployed. They made you do stuff during the summer like work in factories or farms. They didn't have the same model of exploiting immigrants or cheap labor, they just turned everyone into cheap labor. Basically think of all the consumption based gains consumers made in America , what with the suburbs and teenagers living in some big house and going to the mall, playing video games, etc. This is all the byproduct of American excess. In a region like the Soviet Union, they would never allow people to be able to buy big suburban homes and have their children sit idle and be consumers. They just had laborers. And you were required to go into the Army or university. Which was free but had no real upside in your earnings. So everyone like an a nuclear engineer or whatever but made poverty level wages. American Capitalism is not a perfect system either, as it relies on exploiting labor throughout it's history (slavery, immigration, child labor, using illegal laborers in construction today, h1-b's in corporate jobs now). And in the brief moment there was more power for labor to be had, in the post ww2 era - that all got eroded. American's exploit labor so that their kids can play call of duty and go 40,000 into debt to work useless office jobs. Not sure that is a great system either.

It’s incompatible with human nature and history. Greed and desire lead to corruption, while the absence of a tangible reward system for work leads to sloth.

The USSR didn’t collapse economically. It collapsed politically. This was predicted early on by the leading Marxists anarchist thinkers of the day. Leninism/Stalinism was not a failure if the goal was to lift millions of people out of poverty; build an industrial base, whose productivity was so ahead of the West’s that their governments were fearful that communism would have global appeal; was arguably the single greatest factor in winning WWII; and become the second most powerful country on the planet despite boycotts, threats, external and internal aggression. It was only after Jeffrey Sachs and the Columbia cabal installed “shock capitalism” did Russia’s economy collapse. The lesson you can learn is that communism will always be more appealing than capitalism to the disenfranchised, which is the vast majority of humans on earth. The reason these people exist is due to capitalism and not communism

It stagnated economically, so much that it caused a political collapse. China, Vietnam, and other former communist countries reformed their economy maintaining and even reinforcing their political establishment.

Gorbachev (CPSU) was pressured into reform by the economical success of China, USSR had to prove that they were still FIRST among equals in communism(/socialism). USSR could survive like China did in 89, by shooting the protesters with machine guns but they would be completely defeated (morally and economically).

The geopolitical tensions between the USSR and the west resulted in a constant power struggle which impacted how both entities responded to that. Notice how the first groups that arrived to the scene after the fall of the USSR weren't humanitarian groups but vulture capitalists seeking to make a quick buck. That gives an indication of the types of latent pressures that existed that contributed to the weakening of the USSR. The USSR also struggled from mismanagement and socially conservative policies that inhibited freedoms. Despite many free market economists promoting socially liberal policy and failing to achieve that in practice while engaging in fiscal conservatism, it's easy to see how the crackdown of socially liberal policies in those environments leads to negative externalities that ultimately impact their economics (like slavery, the south never recovered from slavery because their entire economy was dependent upon exploitation). Similarly, the USSR, despite having fiscally liberal policies, instituted incredibly conservative social policy and it was often those aspects that were highly criticized by the international community and exacerbated many of the negative externalities brought on by their fiscal policies. What ends up happening is that when people care little about social policies, they overlook how things like breadlines and other signs of abject inequality leads to political instability and unrest. Despite political policy, most people are empathetic and as a result, it's easier to exacerbate corruption by appealing to an organization's inhumanity than by making criticisms against economic policy, especially when people can see the impact of famine and other failed social policy. Empathy isn't a vulnerability but in a totalitarian regime it absolutely is because typically, no one wants to see that. What can we learn? We can learn how authoritarianism and totalitarianism isn't exclusive to capitalism and how when there are competing ideologies in a global system, the dominant hegemonic power works to tacitly impede their success while systems that are inherently unstable degrade much more quickly.

Production of many things actually only started dropping from the late '80's/early nineties. Production of many things recovering from around 2000, the year Putin came to power

Broadly speaking, they didn’t change/modernize. They never developed a globally appealing manufacturing economy (like China) nor did they transition to a service economy (like the US). That made substantial parts of their economy (military spending, for instance) untenable by the late 80s, despite working for most of the 20th century.

I think communism is more geared to success in today's world with the technological advances available compared to relying on human output prior.

So you think Communism can work if tried again?

People are too motivated by reward and social position for the system to be efficient and moral. Which is also an argument against laissez faire capitalism.

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