this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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Late Stage Capitalism
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The USSR was the prime example for what happens when communism fails. The USA is the prime example of what happens when capitalism fails. Many of their mistakes are mirror images of each other.
Almost like the real struggle is between powerful greedy cunts and the poor no matter what system is used to fight them... Though one thing is for certain: capitalism further empowers the rich while socialism/communism are supposed to fight against their further acquisitions.
Everyone defending capitalism really sound like serfs trying to protect their king just because, "he fought off the barbarians once!".
It's almost like picking one extreme or the other isn't always the best idea
Or it's almost like allowing greedy people to have all the power results in everyone else suffering. The "extremes" aren't necessarily the problem, the failure to mitigate powers that want everything for themselves is the problem.
Personally, I think capitalism relies on self interest, competition, and rational and informed consumers. Self interest leads to anticompetitive practices, regulatory capture, and monopolies. Informed consumers cannot exist because there is too much information for everyone to know enough about everything. I can't be an expert in the latest computer technology, modern medicine and medical practices, and most effective and efficient farming techniques and still have enough time to make a living... and I'd still be ignorant about sustainable fishing, transportation, and so on. There are entire industries out there that are supposed to help people makes informed decisions and so many of them have been corrupted themselves.
Socialism (at least most of its forms) focuses on democracy and quality of life. It can still be susceptible to concentrations of power in the hands of people who don't value those things... so we'd need to create checks and balances against that. Honestly, I'd be fairly confident that even the US checks and balances (which are failing catastrophically right now) would work better if no individual or organization was allowed to exploit others so much that they could accumulate a billion+ dollars. With that, they could spend hundreds of millions on elections, bribe voters, and threaten politicians with million+ dollar opposition campaigns of they don't submit... which sounds kind of familiar.
I don't think we can call all of the Soviet Union a failure. There were many problems and struggles faced by it, but many of these problems are ones that other AES states have learned from as a lesson, while keeping some of what made it such a progressive movement for the working class to begin with. Free, high quality healthcare, education, and childcare, democratization of the economy and not just government, dramatic reductions in wealth inequality and improvements in production, all showed some of the major benefits of a centrally planned and worker-focused economy.
Of course, it did collapse. It had numerous issues, especially later on as liberal reforms worked against the centrally planned economy. Planning was by hand in an increasingly computerized world, the millitary expenses from the Cold War siphoned resources, the economy was more publicly owned than necessary (Marx believed you need to develop out of private property relations, ie the NEP should have been reintroduced after World War II when Heavy Industry had been developed enough to tackle it), and more.
Overall, we can't simply dismiss it outright, it serves as a very valuable lesson on both good and bad, and anyone building Socialism needs to study it rigorously.
The USSR came with many huge benefits, like doubling of life expectancy, free and high quality education, healthcare, and childcare, an expansion in women's rights and democratization of the economy, and more. It also had numerous problems, but that doesn't change that it was the first Socialist state, and Socialism is the way to go, eventually Communism.
The Black Book of Communism was debunked long ago, from including Nazis killed during World War II as "victims of Communism" to literally making up numbers to get to 100 million dead to being outright disproven once the Soviet Archives were opened up.
Wow, you're fucking insane.
And yet consensus from historians backs what I said, the Black Book of Communism was even backed off by some of its contributors. The opening of the Soviet Archives confirmed a lot of the numbers in The Black Book of Communism were made up, and new historical consensus has largely been formed off of the Soviet Archives.
Again, I lived through it. You're just spitting bull shit.
Lived through what, exactly?