Did 20th century socialists have a reasonable shot at toppling

No, because market systems are necessary to coordinate economic information and incentives.

no because private ownership of the means of production is an important individual right and by attacking it they only increased corruption and the power of the state

A wave of revolutions across was narrowly possible if the Spartacists won in Germany and the Red Army won the Battle of Warsaw, but I suspect the socialist states would have turned on each other at some point.

>>2805147
No, those dumb socialist gave them more power.

File: Leon-Trotsky.jpg (42KB, 456x600px) Image search: [Google]

42KB, 456x600px

>>2805147
Only if this man could have taken control.

File: 15337445_10211640901561276_6486296834083369982_n.jpg (15KB, 322x322px) Image search: [Google]

15KB, 322x322px

>>2805147
Maybe. That image is pretty telling though. The strategy for pretty much all communist movements of the 20th century was to get the 3rd world/periphery to break with the 1st world/capitalist centre. The idea was, simplified, that stopping the inflow to the centre would accelerate the capitalist crisis which in turn would get 1st world workers to demand more than bread crumbs so to speak.

What you gotta do to determine wether this was succesful or not is to look at what actually happened in the west. Southern Europe (France and Italy mostly) were more or less in a revolutionary/semi-revolutionary state during the 60s. The labour movement in Scandinavia and the UK was radicalized. You could argue that the anti-Vietnam War movement in the US spread to radicalize poor blacks. What you can say for sure is that it wasn't enough. What I think you can say is that the leadership in the west wasn't really up to the task of steering these sentiments in the right direction (european communist parties more or less being cheerleaders for social democracy and all).

>>2805150
They're good, but it's myopic and dishonest to state that there can be absolutely no alternative. For centuries it was believed man could not fly.

>>2805174
Meme answer

Trotsky was better for than Stalin but still a but despotic. More importantly, a simple change in executive leadership could probably not rectify the structural problems of internal and international politics that kept the USSR in dismal and fortified isolation.

>>2805215

Tired: Trotsky
Wired: Bukharin

Actually, they did.

Sino-Soviet split however fucked everything hard for socialism long term.

>>2805159
Individual ownership is an important right, but private ownership does not respond to a need, does not create wealth for those who need it, and does not favour investment. Why do you say that ?

>>2805215
No, Trotsky would have expanded the revolution and would have saved the ussr from isolation. About the internal structural problem, remember we are talking about Russia.

>>2805147
After WW1 was probably the best chance. Europe should've gone socialist, but it didn't, and fascism caused WW2.

File: film__3640-the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari--detail.jpg (20KB, 350x215px) Image search: [Google]

20KB, 350x215px

>>2805275
If Trotsky tried to expand into Poland and even into Germany there is no way Churchill or the allies would defend him and his country would be destroyed.

>>2805301
1) THE USSR COULD HANDLE NAZIS SINGLE HANDLY DUHHHH
2) If he expanded into Poland, he wouldn't have left Hitler rise to power. The Weimar republic was unstable and the communists could have taken the power.
Also the allies didn't defend the ussr (or so little), they just fought against the same foes.

No, but I believe any such movements will have a better shot at it in the future, what with mass automation looming over our heads in the next few decades.

>>2805518
and these movements will fail and a new ruling elite will be established

no. because the communists were all run by oligarchs. family and connections mattered more for advancing in a communist state than merit.

high ranking party members and military elites had limos, luxurious offices, dachas for vacations, western goods, etc.

everyone else was stuffed into a commie bloc apartment. put on a waiting list for a phone. ate the same rationed domestic shit food, forever. then the police or domestic intelligence service would arrest you for complaining about the government.

File: Paris_Commune.jpg (122KB, 1102x773px) Image search: [Google]

122KB, 1102x773px

>>2805147
Maybe if Spain and Germany felled to the socialists they might have a chance. But really it was the splits in the Internationals that really fucked them up

>>2805150
first post, best post
/thread

>>2805634
Except it's the worst. You can't just say "REEE THE FREE MARKET IS THE SOLUTION". I regret I don't have the ancap meme saying "when there are roads".

File: 1480460206931.jpg (97KB, 500x727px) Image search: [Google]

97KB, 500x727px

>>2805150
>>2805634

>>2805714
Bruh, I'm the first poster, and I think social democracy is better than pure laissez faire.

But eliminating markets destroys standards of living.

>>2805588
>limos, luxurious offices, dachas for vacations, western goods
hardly. they were very limited compared to capitalist elites. gorbachev lived in a small flat. the gap in income was at best 5:1 between the poorest and richest in the USSR. the image of communist party leaders living in luxury is a complete fabrication made up by bitter exiles who actually did live in luxury.

File: cubahdi.png (63KB, 347x729px) Image search: [Google]

63KB, 347x729px

>>2805721
>But eliminating markets destroys standards of living.
Then why does socialist Cuba (surely the truest remaining socialist state) rank ahead of most countries in the region, and have a life expectancy on par with capitalist powerful states like Turkey and Brazil?

>>2805150
They for now and certainly were at the technological level of the 20th century. There's no reason we couldn't develop AI-managed resource allocation in the future.

File: Cuba in 1950.jpg (27KB, 501x287px) Image search: [Google]

27KB, 501x287px

>>2805726
Because they were wealthy to begin with, on account of high US investment.

They could have been another Bermuda or Macau if it wasn't for the insane death cult that managed to seize control of their island.

The way to resolve the contradictions of the market is to harness the markets to create effective government programs.

The way to resolve the contradictions of communism is with summary execution of anyone infected.

>>2805736
>Because they were wealthy to begin with, on account of high US investment.
Cuba was a shithole for the mass of the population. It was an American colony run by the mob. Most people lived in shacks, servants of the white elite.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/cuban-revolution-fidel-castro-casinos-batista/
>Bermuda or Macau
A shitty tax haven? No thanks. That produces nothing.
>The way to resolve the contradictions of the market is to harness the markets to create effective government programs.
Cuba already has resolved the contradictions of the market just fine. Even in spite of the US embargo which has cost it billions.
>The way to resolve the contradictions of communism is with summary execution of anyone infected.
As usual with reactionaries, violence is only good when it's treading on the working class.

>>2805726

So Cuba is socialist now? Because when the regime confiscates everyone's boats so they can't leave, they were state-capitalism.

>>2805759
I consider it socialist. Some might not. Every country in the world could be classed as state capitalist to varying degrees, but Cuba adheres to Leninist principles enough for me to see it as socialist. And even if it wasn't, Cuba's anti-imperialism is enough for me to admire.

>>2805758
>Cuba was a shithole for the mass of the population

I just showed you that it was better off than the rest of Latin America.

The Batista meme is historical revisionism that the average gringo is too dumb to refute.

>A shitty tax haven? No thanks. That produces nothing.

It produces good lives for the people living there, and products and services that people want.

Having a country sized Caribbean Vegas doesn't sound bad, for the locals, or for the Americans.

>As usual with reactionaries, violence is only good when it's treading on the working class.

I would consider forcing tens of millions of farmers into collective farms where many of them die of starvation to be "stomping on the working class"

Communism is one of those situations where hyperbole is generally justified. They don't deserve life.

>>2805147
No because each attempt ended mass killings and totalitarianism.

Hierarchies are natural my dude.

File: 1482014219743.jpg (100KB, 720x767px) Image search: [Google]

100KB, 720x767px

>>2805772
>I just showed you that it was better off than the rest of Latin America.
And it still is, thanks to the socialist system. In one of those figures listed, infant mortality, it has surpassed the US. Life expectancy is on par with the US. Cuba has 5.91 per 1000 people compared to 2.3 in the US. Fascinating how everything good about Cuba is attributed to the benefits of capitalism but everything since is only testament to the evils of socialism. If Cuba had not been cut off by America for decades to spite it then it would've been even better.
>Having a country sized Caribbean Vegas doesn't sound bad, for the locals, or for the Americans.
It would be a plaything of US capital, where only capital matters and the needs of Cubans are irrelevant. What the Americans want is of no relevance. America has no right in Cuba, to dictate their socioeconomic conditions at will.
>I would consider forcing tens of millions of farmers into collective farms where many of them die of starvation to be "stomping on the working class"
They died due to a famine, if you're talking about the Holodomor, another fascist lie invented by Goebbels. Kulaks horded grain, burned crops and killed cattle deliberately because they couldn't stomach losing their privilege.
>Communism is one of those situations where hyperbole is generally justified. They don't deserve life.
Then don't complain when the gulags open.

If the first world revolutions ever took off, maybe. Namely the Paris Commune pulling through or Italy going radical Communist during Gramsci's heyday.

Honestly though I think we are living in one of the most successful timelines for third world socialist revolution, and it was clearly still not enough. Both China and Russia flipping is huge. The utterly insane comeback story of the Bolsheviks from minuscule radical faction to global hegemon probably won't be full appreciated until centuries later when emotions have cooled. It's crazy how well WWII went for them in the end, in the context of this thread. Like a 1/3 of Europe under Stalin's design.

Still, with a unified and hostile capitalist developed world, the socialists lose the long siege even under one of the most favorable defensive positions.

>>2805805
>It would be a plaything of US capital

Is that another way of saying "good"?

Because the US basically created Japan and South Korea out of whole cloth, and they ended up having double digit GDP growth and actual first world health care.

Being a US puppet kicks ass, if I wasn't born here, I'd be doing everything in my power to make my home country subservient to the US.

>>2805714
Damn, I'm willing to chat with a Marxist on economic philosophy and all, but when they try and pull things like systemic racism into the roll, I clearly see they are divorced from the reality of things.

>>2805301
If Nazi Germany couldn't take out the USSR, Britain certainly couldn't. They would need the combined strength of Weimar Germany (a weak state) as well as France (unreliable)

Such an apocalyptic scenario may very well have led to a socialist bloc stretching from Pacific to Atlantic.

>>2805818
It has its benefits for the local collaborators, sure. The sheer wealth of the US lets them buy off foreign puppets as well as domestic sections of the working class. South Korea was actually poorer than the North well into the 1970s though, and Japan was already an imperialist power that built its wealth by plundering Korea and China, so I'm not sure they fit the bill.

>>2805714
these "contradictions" in "capitalism" make as much sense as the ones in evolution, and take just as minimal an effort to debunk.
>if we came from monkeys, how are there still monkeys?
If capitalism leads to resource production, how are there still poor people?
>if all systems tend toward destruction via entropy, how do organisms manage to get more complex?
if the free market allows for economic and political mobility, how is there still corruption?
>look at the shape of a banana, see how it fits perfectly in a human hand? god made them for us!
Look at all the black people in prison, see how disparity runs along racial lines, that's because of systemic racism!
(which is caused by capitalism for some reason. racists don't exist or acquire power in communist countries.)

but really, in my opinion, the strongest argument for countries "organized" around capitalism is this:
in america, we have amish communes that are allowed to coexist in larger communities containing private property. pockets of communism existing peacefully and relatively unmolested by government.

reverse the situation: there can be no system operating on private property in a marxist society.
this is what happens when you prioritize "social justice" over individual freedom.

>>2805805
Go to Cuba and live there, then.

File: 1494608171525.png (186KB, 1130x581px) Image search: [Google]

186KB, 1130x581px

>>2805880
>how are there still poor people
the wealth of the rich is built off the backs of the poor. even liberals like voltaire knew that.

>>2805147
they were definitley fighting an uphill battle. i would argue that in the form that 20th century socialism came to embody in the majority of cases, and the big powerful ones especially, its chances of success were close to nil. Quite simply because Leninism and the ideologies derived from it reject political pluralism and disregard human rights.

these values have quite simply become ingrained into many populations, however poorly they execute them. thus once there were existing examples of 'socialism', actually just socialism in its leninist interpretation, convincing societies where these practices existed became essentially impossible.

that is not to say there could not have been socialist revolutions of other kinds, more in line with these values in the areas they existed. it almost happened numerous times, but the states (or lack thereof) that would have resulted from these revolutions would still have come into conflict with Leninist states.

>>2805726
All statistics used by international organizations are provided by the cuban government and Brazil can barely be considered a "free market" country.

>>2805887
a. i can't speak spanish
b. i have commitments at home
c. cuba can be best helped by other countries, it's only a small island. internally it's ok and stable

>>2805147
> for the people, by the people
More like by the people for the Party.

>>2805851
Japan built all of their wealth after they were pushed out of Korea and China.

In 1945, they were dead broke, and there were millions of families living on the streets.

Ditto for South Korea. Both countries started out under the most brutal poverty and managed to pull a 180 through large corporations and Keynesian economics.

>>2805894
the quickest way to destroy value is to have a committee of assholes arbitrarily decide what it "should" be based on their personal desires and not the objective free-market value.

e.g. putting "social justice" ahead of individual freedom.

"poverty sucks" is something everyone agrees with

"let's outlaw poverty by requiring houses to be free" is the absolutely retarded response that gets you widespread slums


Wealth is not built off the backs of the poor.
If that were the case, your communist society would be doomed from the beginning.
Voltaire was very smart but he can be wrong.

>>2806079
You're right its the fat cats on wall street make all the wealth, I never realized wow. What would happen if al the factory workers quit and you couldnt hire any more, would the man who owns the factory be as rich as he was? Think with your head, the man sitting on his ass letting capital make his billions doesn't contribute anywhere near as much to society as a car factory worker. Use your brain

>>2806079
>objective free-market value.
the market is not objective. it is ruled by the whims of the rich, inherently rigged, excludes the masses from influencing its direction and is ultimately dependent on human labour

>>2805195
Sure, but there currently isn't one that isn't fluff in the sky based on appealing to scientists to theorize, discover, and invent the prerequisite technologies first.

And in reality the resources would be better spent on improving humanity as is rather than trying to usurp all of society for a dream.

>>2806098
Ask yourself this.

If the shareholders own companies, and the shareholders want money, why don't they fire the executives so they can make more money?

>it's because executives are necessary to manage large enterprises, and economic coordination is a form of productive labor

>>2805160
Socialism in one country was a Stalinist idea, I doubt it

>>2805215
This, socialism without democracy is tyranny

>>2806123
The shareholders dont produce anything either you retard, they're still bourgeoise. Money is a representation of goods. Think. Of course economic coordination is important, managers can still be elected or any other form of coordination.

>The serfs NEED the nobles to give them land to farm, dont you understand feudalism!

File: 1450492743546.jpg (83KB, 407x600px) Image search: [Google]

83KB, 407x600px

>>2806079
>objective free-market value.

>>2806138
Shareholders coordinate economic activity though.

In a capitalist economy, investors serve the same function that a central planning committee does in a command economy. They allocate resources based on market pressures.

Unlike the central planning committee, an investor will lose literally everything if they fuck up, and don't get paid anything unless their idea turns out to be right.

They get paid because they took capital, which they owned, and could have spent on things for themselves, and moved their own capital back into the economy. Return on investment increases based on active management and the risk that a shareholder takes by investing.

I think financialization is stupid, but investment is literally the best invention in human history.

File: 1460388732555.jpg (9KB, 240x196px) Image search: [Google]

9KB, 240x196px

>>2806123
>If the shareholders own companies, and the shareholders want money, why don't they fire the executives so they can make more money?

do you have any idea how stocks work?

>>2806149
>They get paid because they took capital, which they owned, and could have spent on things for themselves, and moved their own capital back into the economy. Return on investment increases based on active management and the risk that a shareholder takes by investing.

so instead of getting a job and doing any productive work they're basically just gambling

File: dis18217_consider-the-following.jpg (37KB, 300x301px) Image search: [Google]

37KB, 300x301px

>>2806152
If you have a majority of stocks, in most companies, you run the company.

Hence why you get things like hostile takeovers and activist shareholders.

If worker ownership or elected management actually worked, communism could be implemented by any trust fund baby.

You just buy a company, fire the executives, and then sell it at the increased value. Repeat indefinitely until Harvard Business School is a ghost town.

You are now aware that communism is the economics equivalent of a free energy device.

>>2806157
Hit the nail on the head partner.
>>2806149
Command economies and free markets are not the only options

>>2806157
Are you one of those econ brainlets who rage at Youtube celebs for not doing a "productive job" (because apparently every last man woman and child on Earth must work in the steel mill to quantify your relentless Ron Swanson worship)?

>>2806170
Mixed economics is still a form of free market economics.

There's quite a wide margin of successful formulas, but if you try to abolish private property, money, or banking, you're pretty much begging for state failure.

>>2806170
>muh third opshun

Go back to bed Strasser, adults are talking.

>>2806175
>Leopold 2 is my hero!!!!! He did so much hard work!!!!

>>2806169
Well you're missing a crucial part of the process, the reason the executives are rich and can make more money for the owners is because they make profit off of the surplus value of the worker, allowing them to perform the same amount of work (Minus the capitalist man taking his cut) but they make more money for the boss man to use to grow the company. You are now aware that capitalism is based on theft(your ready made reply "but its voluntary and sheiitt if they wanted to be rich like me they should have been born with money") But yes, there are certain companies that have done just that and are doing fine. Look up food cooperatives

>>2806198
You didn't answer my question.

If worker ownership is more efficient, that is, it produces more output relative to the input of capital, why is it not the standard?

Are the shareholders giving the executives their salaries out of the goodness of their hearts?

>because hierarchies are intrinsically necessary in specialized societies

>>2806062
>managed to pull a 180 through large corporations and Keynesian economics
well at least you're honest, unlike the neoliberal idiots who think they privatised and cut their way to glory

>>2806231
We must bomb the communists and vote out the neoliberals.

Only then will the true light of mixed economics shine through the hearts of men, and deliver us to the promised land.

>>2806241
>vote out the neoliberals
people have been trying for 40 years with no luck

>>2806248
That's because the communists went and fucked up left wing populism for everybody.

But yeah, the true path to righteousness is restoring the New Deal and equality of opportunity.

That and deporting all the illegals.

>>2805150
Great another episode of "I never learned the definition capitalism and socialism in school"
>markets are innate and exclusive to capitalism
There is market socialism, you know 'social democracy', market anarchism. Free markets can actually exist in socialist economies, whereas capitalism needs authority to capitalize.

>>2805268
Are you going to stop me buying luxuries that do not "respond to a need" or "create wealth for those who need it"?

How does literally investing in a company "not favour investment"?

Why aren't I allowed the freedom to build a business or invest my beer money? Why must you take it from me afterwards? Am I really that much of a threat to society? You don't trust me but you trust someone who wants the authority to violate my rights.

>>2806260
A social democratic economy still has the capital in private hands.

Capitalism is a spectrum from Articles of the Confederation level limited government to Sweden level economic intervention.

As long as markets allocate resources and there is are rationalized, constitutionally protected property rights, things should work okay.

>>2806209
They produce the same amount of goods, the difference is the capitalist at the head of receives more of the capital and so instead of these goods and services being used to better the lives of the people providing the goods and services they are given to someone to be able to make more money off their money by hiring more people to do more work for them. Same amount of capital but if you provide everyone the full products of their work there is no way they can compete in a free market economy where there are companies that take some of that. There you go.

>>2806259
>A man born with nothing has the same opportunity as a billionaire

There is no such thing as equality of opportunity in capitalism

>>2806275
I'm talking specifically about executives and managers.

Why do stockholders pay them if they don't increase value?

>>2806280
The entire idea of Social Democracy is that no man is truly born with nothing, that there is a bedrock foundation that every member of society can rely on.

It has worked out significantly better in practice than Marxism-Leninism or Maoism.

>>2806265
>state protecting absentee ownership and the capitalization of land/labour
>be fine
Fine for who exactly? Property is theft
Capitalism isn't about markets it's about turning a profit from things that don't personally belong to you . Hence 'capitalism', as in 'to capitalize'

>>2806299
Well social democracy was just a bare-minimum example of social ownership of means of production. I actually argue for market anarchism.

>>2806299
Read my responses again and better your reading comprehension, they increase value FOR THEM, not overall the money is just distributed upwards.

I have never advocated for either of those ideologies and they are a corruption of what communism is.

>>2806301
Capitalization is good though.

A society does well when the means of production are efficiently utilized.

Open markets create the strongest incentives for individuals within a society to use capital efficiently.

>>2806318
>they increase value FOR THEM

For the shareholders or for themselves?

>>2806098
The rich don't make all the wealth, but they do play an important role in the economy by investing based on profit motives. The existence of large concentrations of investable wealth allows the economy as a whole to function better than it would otherwise. If all money was evenly distributed and there were no wealth concentrations, the system would be stagnant because there would be no concentrations of wealth that could be rapidly deployed into promising economic sectors.

>>2806157
Investing IS doing productive work in the sense that it's a form of higher-level management, and thereby allows the economy to function better than it would otherwise.
Your argument is like arguing "what's the nervous system for? the muscles and digestive system do all the productive work. let's get rid of the brain."

>>2806323
Irrelevant, whoever is profiting off of the surplus value taken from the proletariat. A man does not simply produce more goods because he has someone taking from his paycheck at the end of the day.

>>2806353
be that a corporation or a sole propriertorship, the bourgeoise being THEM.

>>2806353
Well, it's very relevant when you consider the structure of corporate law in the United States.

The shareholders don't have to hire managers.

They choose to.

If the managers don't make the company produce more stuff, why do the shareholders continue to pay them?

>>2806375
>the US is what made Lenin crush the Kronstadt sailors

pls

File: image.jpg (919KB, 4999x3488px) Image search: [Google]

919KB, 4999x3488px

>>2806320
>to use capital efficiently
Too bad that doesn't mean allocate resources efficiently, look at the housing market collapse, post industrial waste, or pic related. Market efficiency is a spook of the highest degree.
Socialist markets are wayyyyyyyyyy better

>>2806377
Kronstadt has little to do with American imperialism, nor was it some critical moment. The Bolsheviks still went on to establish a socialist state that stood up to America.

>>2806375
Fucking US, sending Stalin all that lend-lease to help him fight Hitler and forcing Mao to launch the Great Leap Forward.

>>2806386
But average standard of living was higher in the worst stages of the housing crisis in the US than at literally any point in the history of the USSR.

>>2806115
>>2806098
>free market
>ruled by someone

Perhaps your rich fat-cats are anti-free-market by definition. If they didn't have government granting their arbitrary definitions of value, we would have a healthier system.
one of you admits this yourself
>it's not objective because it's ruled by the whims of etc etc

The market is plenty objective. It's the PEOPLE that aren't.

Just as rabbits and tigers and etc obey the rules of natural selection, so do the "fat cats" obey economic rules.
When people come in and try to alter the forest to be advantageous for only one species, the whole system runs out of wack.

You favor the predators, they get fat until there's no more prey.
You favor the prey, they eat the grass until there's no more, and they die.
(Meanwhile, the predators which are still around somehow enjoy a temporary surplus in idiot prey)

>>2806395
Try including the people that make up the supply chain of the consumer economy.
The USSR wasn't socialist and didn't have successful markets, so it's really a strawman anyways

>>2806391
>sending Stalin all that lend-lease to help him fight Hitler
Lend Lease is overrated and was only ever done reluctantly. Aid to USSR paled compared to aid to Britain, which did fuck all on land until 1944.
>forcing Mao to launch the Great Leap Forward
Aggravated by natural conditions such as drought. You'll notice that was the last famine China ever had too, after centuries of them.

>>2806144
>my fallible human beings are more suited to be determining objective values than your fallible human beings

>>2806397
>economic rules
Those rules are dependent on what system exist. Capitalism is not a natural, biological system, genetically hardwired and inescapable. It was created by man and it can be modified or destroyed. It's incredibly unstable and inherently prone to disaster.

>>2806404
Okay.

Is your philosophy something that has ever been implemented successfully in practice.

By "successful" I mean "improved standards of living relative to capitalist democracies"

>>2806397
More like favoring the plants, your analogy is dumb

>>2806422
>incredibly unstable and inherently prone to disaster
>USSR1991.jpg

>>2806425
Chile before the coup, Catalonia.

>>2806422
It's been pretty stable for 400 years or so... it goes with the grain of human psychology better than most of the other systems.

>>2806428
Standards of living went down in Chile under Allende, and Catalonia got rekt.

If I were a colonist headed out towards unpeopled lands, and looking for an ideology to follow, those two examples would not lead me towards communism.

>>2806411
>You'll notice that was the last famine China ever had too, after centuries of them.
Sure, but I think that has more to do with overall advancing technological levels that with communism. It's not like the Western world is plagued by famine.

>>2806427
>The entire world in 2008
>The Great Depression

>>2806435
>US survived Great Depression
>US survived Great Recession
>at no point during either of these events was the United States a worse place to live in than the USSR

>>2806427
The USSR was still pretty stable at that point. Could easily have been saved, were it not for Gorby's cowardice.
>>2806429
>been pretty stable for 400 years or so.
Did you miss 2008? The 1929 crash? The 1970s oil crisis? The Long Depression of 1873-96? The South Sea Bubble? The list goes on, recessions happen at least once a decade, debt keeps mounting up...

>>2806438
It's not like the west hasn't had cowardly, incompetent leaders who led their countries onto the rocks.

Buchanan and Chamberlain spring to mind.

File: sovietindustrialoutput.jpg (48KB, 491x324px) Image search: [Google]

48KB, 491x324px

>>2806437
The USSR continually grew with rapidly rising living standards, life expectancy, literacy etc all while the US and the rest of the world languished in the 1930s. The West knew it too; cities like Magnitogorsk were marvelled at.

>>2806404
>The USSR wasn't socialist
how so?
why is it that every country that attempts to be socialist ends up failing to do so?
is there some flaw in the socialist system which prevents it from being realized perhaps?

why is it that every "failed capitalist" society still has scores of fat college students with access to free wifi and 24-hour subway sandwiches complaining about market injustice?

why is it that after a bloody communist takeover, countries tank economically while after bloody capitalist takeovers you have chilean miracles?

most importantly: what single philosopher invented capitalism?

fact: marxism was cooked up as an edgy alternative to the natural way of things in the 20th century and hasn't managed to be implemented correctly even once, while capitalism evolved from the ashes of dead systems naturally.

It's as deformed as the bull terrier's crooked nose.

>>2806438
Those downturns were temporary instabilities that did relatively little damage compared to the wild and murderous turbulence that took place in many communist nations.

>>2806449
They never passed the US.

Why wouldn't they, if they had a better system than the US?

For that matter, why did Japan and South Korea go from being poorer than the Soviet Union to being richer than the Soviet Union?

Why did Japan have double digit economic growth for most of the 60s, when the USSR topped out at 6% even during the height of industrialization?

>>2806426
What's the difference?
Favor the plants and everything else dies just the same. Ecosystems, nigger.

>>2806435
The initial depression occurred when governments started favoring certain banks over one another and got way worse the more it involved itself.
We were only able to escape the debt of the New Deal programs through World War, and it's been that way ever since.

>>2806450
>bloody capitalist takeovers

My autism compelled me to interject here.

Civil strife of any kind is poison to the effective implementation of capitalism.

You never want to have a bloody capitalist revolution, because the people who were spilling all of the blood will use their blood spilling abilities to influence the markets in their favor.

>>2806473
>favoring certain banks

inb4 this is "free market" "capitalism"

>>2806265
No, not really.
A social democracy will have the largest corporations, the workhorses of the economy, and then sit on 51% of the stock and block anything that would be a dick move.
The main reason it works, is that it enables the smaller corporations a chance for profit in the large companies fail. But it also forces the economy to be bigger, since the big corporations keep the states economy at a higher level than without them.

If you don't think its like this, your professor failed you badly, you don't even know how Swedens post aristocratic economy is built.

>>2806453
Those "temporary instabilities" plunged millions into poverty, hunger, homelessness and despair. Both world wars and all imperialist conquests of the last few centuries have been spurred by capitalist demands for profit and markets, a far higher death toll than even the most fantastical estimations for socialist states. It's not socialism that is waging war in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria.
>>2806456
>They never passed the US.
>Why wouldn't they, if they had a better system than the US?
Well the US was starting from a far better position and was not directly scarred by two world wars and a civil war in 30 years, in which Russia lost more than any other country.
>For that matter, why did Japan and South Korea go from being poorer than the Soviet Union to being richer than the Soviet Union?
They had the luxury of being rebuilt by US capital. Also SK's GDPC in 1990 was $6,642, the USSR's was $8,700. However that doesn't take into account the extensive welfare in the USSR, which meant workers were far better off than their capitalist counterparts, despite nominally being paid less.
>Why did Japan have double digit economic growth for most of the 60s, when the USSR topped out at 6% even during the height of industrialization?
Again, Japan had a strongly consumer oriented economy geared by the US to ensure markets for its goods, whereas the USSR was not permitted the same.

>>2806511
>Well the US was starting from a far better position and was not directly scarred by two world wars and a civil war in 30 years, in which Russia lost more than any other country

But Russia had an economic rally after WW2. The decline began in the 1970s. If the privations of WW2 were the cause, wouldn't you expect the decline to begin after WW2?

>They had the luxury of being rebuilt by US capital

So the US was so rich that it could afford to not only beat the shit out of the Soviet Union and China in the Cold War, but it could also create the world's second largest economy out of whole cloth?

That is actually what happened, but it happened that way because capitalism is basically the konami code of economics.

>>2806375
>when capitalist governments go toe-to-toe with capitalist governments, sometimes the challenger wins, sometimes he doesn't
>when Marxist governments go toe-to-toe with Capitalist ones, the Marxists fail
>when Capitalist governments HELP Marxist governments, Marxist governments fail
More like we can see where the common failure denominator is

File: Untitled.png (7KB, 292x198px) Image search: [Google]

7KB, 292x198px

>>2806526
>when Marxist governments go toe-to-toe with Capitalist ones, the Marxists fail

>>2806265

yes

>>2806498
>Swedens post aristocratic economy is built.

it's failing.

>>2806531

Thing is, Vietnam is still third world, while South Korea is getting with the program.

>>2806524
>But Russia had an economic rally after WW2. The decline began in the 1970s. If the privations of WW2 were the cause, wouldn't you expect the decline to begin after WW2?
Firstly, the Soviet economy did not pick up until around the time Stalin died. The issues were longstanding and didn't come out of nowhere in the 1970s. And again, the point is that the USSR had to rebuild while the US did not.

>So the US was so rich that it could afford to not only beat the shit out of the Soviet Union and China in the Cold War, but it could also create the world's second largest economy out of whole cloth?
Both the USSR and China were undone from within. Without people like Deng and Gorbachev, they wouldn't have succumbed to the US. It didn't single handedly create Japan either; Japan was already a rich country with wealth built by imperialism.

>>2806526
>>when capitalist governments go toe-to-toe with capitalist governments, sometimes the challenger wins, sometimes he doesn't
the only winner in that scenario is capital. the richer country will always gobble up the lesser
>>when Marxist governments go toe-to-toe with Capitalist ones, the Marxists fail
better tell that to the 58000 americans rotting in vietnam or the millions of germans killed by the red army, or the Kuomintang
>>when Capitalist governments HELP Marxist governments, Marxist governments fail
because embargoing and sabotaging economies for decades is helping

>>2806447
They didn't see the dissolution of their countries and the replacement of a decent state by oligarchs and crooks.

>>2806566
Buchanan literally did.

Based Lincoln brought it back from the edge.

>>2806511
I don't think there is any serious reason to believe that WW1 or WW2 were precipitated by capitalism. They were precipitated by standard geopolitical dynamics that have existed since the time of Thucydides and before. As for the imperialist conquests, sure, they were spurred by capitalism, but non-capitalist societies do plenty of conquering and imperialism themselves.

>>2806450
>the natural way of things in the 20th century
really fucking spooky

>communism totally works you guys! just look at this one poor shithole that has some better cherry picked stats.
>i uh uh uh can't movethere, I have reasons.

>>2806655

i know right
don't even get me started on gender

>>2806450
It wasn't socialist because the producers did not control the means of production

>>2806450
>wifi and subway
I lean heavily towards an-prim and study life sciences.
>bloody communist takeover
Ikr Bolsheviks are almost as bad as fascists.
>single philosopher invented capitalism
Irrelevant it's an emergent social institution.
Socialism has been around way longer than capitalism
>Marxism
Yeah Marx was a schiz. He was right about alienation and some other junk tho. Anyone calling themselves Marxist is dumb. Not as dumb as someone who thinks Marxism=socialism tho

>>2806734
They did and didn't to varying degrees at different times
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Trade+Unions+of+the+USSR

Regardless, how is it that this happens in literally every country that sets out to establish socialism?

>>2806762
>fascists
name three countries mr.biologist

>>2806762
>Anyone calling themselves Marxist is dumb

Anyone advocating socialism and NOT calling themselves Marxist is dishonest, because all forms are derived from his concept of historical materialism, which has modeled nature backwards.

>>2806835
Francoist Spain axis Germany and Italy

>>2806831
>country
>(state)
Found your problem

>>2805147
Yes, they would need to have won the soviet-polish war.

>>2806850
socialism existed before marxism senpai, though marx's ideas came to dominated socialist thought

>>2806850
That's blatantly false

File: nazicorporations.jpg (27KB, 581x481px) Image search: [Google]

27KB, 581x481px

>>2806645
>I don't think there is any serious reason to believe that WW1 or WW2 were precipitated by capitalism.
WW1 was precipitated by a massive wave of imperialism and severe domestic issues. Germany, Britain and France all had strident labour movements. Total war offered a chance to put aside class struggle and get men to butcher each other for their national capitalist rulers.
WW2 was a result, at least in part, of the Great Depression (capitalism at its finest), fear of communism spreading and Germany's economy on the verge of meltdown in 1939 after gearing up for total war, thanks to the rise of the Hitler regime and its consolidation of German capital.

>>2806450
I don't disagree with the bulk of this - you'll never catch me defending socialism - but
>after bloody capitalist takeovers you have chilean miracles
the "Chilean Miracle" is a bunch of horseshit. Chile's economy tanked after its shock therapy transition to free market capitalism (well, it's not quite accurate to say it 'tanked' because it was starting from a very low baseline - but it didn't do well, is the point). It only started to really develop AFTER the gov't reintroduced quite a bit of regulation and oversight into the system.

Chile's economic growth after the mid-80s wasn't a miracle, just a demonstration that reasonably regulated liberal capitalism tends to perform better than either socialism or laissez-faire capitalism. Chile's performance in the late 70s, early 80s really should be taken as a REPUDIATION of pure capitalism.

>>2806850
Therefore, we must conclude that the pre-marxian socialists were marxists and marxism violates causality. Those damn commies don't even respect the laws of physics.

>>2806856
Germany was National Socialist, not fascist. But okay.
My line of response was ill-suited.
The point is this:
Fascism is not a catch-all term for totalitarianism. It refers a specific type of nationalist, protectionist government, which does not align with free-market principles or capitalism.

Chile is not on your list, Indonesia is not on your list.
Both countries economies skyrocketed once commies were expelled. Both takeovers were a response to commie takeover and their crippling inflation.

Spain and Italy, Chile and Indonesia, combined, saw less suffering than Authoritarian China, Cambodia, Russia, Venezuela, etc etc.

>>2806866
Sounds more like socialism's problem.

>>2806894
>>2806875
>>2806874

You have my attention. What are these pre-marxian tenets of socialism that you argue for? Are they not realized through mechanisms of individual freedom?

>>2806895
In an anarchist who is not a communist. I don't see the point in this.
>economies skyrocketed
Provide critical evidence
>who cares if they were fucked to peices by international trade (and that little genocide capitalism paid for in East Timor)
>crippling inflation
I know nothing about that

>>2806889
>Chile's economy tanked after its shock therapy transition

The country saw high inflation for one year before things began to turn around, as opposed to the near-decade of astronomical inflation under its preceding government.

>>2805714
>Half the US population is in poverty

These people do realize that the poverty limit in the US is $12,060, which is 50% higher than the average wage in Russia?

>>2806915
You know anarchism, individualist mutualist, obviously communism or ecology weren't forces then. It is realized through individual liberty

>>2806915
Take literally two minutes to google the history of socialism. Marx even spends a lot of time trashing "utopian socialists", so I'm pretty sure you know nothing about marxism either. You shouldn't discuss a subject if you don't know the very basics.

>>2806895
>Cambodia
not sure why you're including that country when pol pot was a CIA funded, Western supported puppet against Vietnam, which was Soviet backed

>>2806925
http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/chile/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-chile-1971.aspx

you can see it rising year-to-year

The point is that you compared the death tolls of repeated failed socialist revolutions to those of several countries, which were decidedly uncapitalist, and sided with Bolsheviks.

Good on you for "being anarchist". I would not understand why such a thing would matter if in your anarchism, private property were made illegal.

>>2806946
>You shouldn't discuss a subject if you don't know the very basics.

I tend learn about subjects through discussion.
It helps when my discussion partner openly presents his views so I can properly judge them from my perspective.

>>2806895
>Germany was National Socialist, not fascist.
Despite the name, the Nazi Party could not be described as socialist under any reasonable metric. I'm not talking theory here, "that wasn't MY SPECIFIC BRAND of TRUE SOCIALISM" - speaking simply by comparison with the other 20th century nations that are generally slapped with the labels "socialist" and "communist."

>>2806933
This is just flatly untrue. Generally I try to avoid simply dumping quotes on people on here, particularly from sources with a strong political bent (which The New Republic certainly has) but I don't want to type up a complete account of how the economy sucked under Pinochet and this is a fair summary. I would like to cite a less ideological source, but I have to step out for a moment and this is the first one I pulled up. In lieu of that I've cut out all the ideological wanking - everything that's not a purely factual statement. All of these figures are easy to verify if you doubt any of them.
>The miracle he oversaw was really just a series of boom-bust cycles: two periods of rapid growth bookended by two deep recessions ... a catastrophic debt crisis in 1982. In the immediate aftermath of the free market reforms in the mid 70s, Chile had the second lowest growth rate in Latin America ... national output fell 15%, unemployment surpassed 20%, and salaries fell 35% below 1970 levels.
>Average per capita GDP growth over the entire course of the dictatorship was less than 2%, significantly lower than the four Christian Democrat and Socialist governments that succeeded him. The poverty rate [hovered] at 40% by the time Pinochet left office
That's a doubling of the poverty rate, by the way - it was 20% when he assumed office, and the final figure was closer to 45%. As regards the "debt crisis", foreign debt increased during the "Chilean Miracle" by a factor of FOUR. Chile's growth rate between 1975 and 1982 was less than half of the Latin American average (1.5% compared w/ 4-4.5%).

cont'd

>>2806947
So what?

why is it that every "failed capitalist" society still has scores of fat college students with access to free wifi and 24-hour subway sandwiches complaining about market injustice?
why is it that even after a bloody communist takeover, countries tank economically while after bloody capitalist takeovers you have chilean miracles?

and best of all,
why do countries that move toward less government involvement in economics, without the bloody revolutions, outperform ones that move toward socialism?

You can see it on the cross-national level in the US. States with less taxes do better, have an influx of migrants from places like California and New York.
Sweden with it's expanding social programs and massive influx of leeches is losing all the benefits it's gained in the past decade off its opened trade.

Source for the quote. Again, don't focus too much on the source - if you want to disagree with any of the actual numbers you're welcome to do so, but again, they're all easily verifiable. https://newrepublic.com/article/116799/egypt-does-not-need-pinochet

Things only started to improve once Pinochet left office and economic regulation was reintroduced. His free-market to the maxx policies simply were not successful.

Before your last post I was wondering if you were simply speaking imprecisely; now I'm thinking you just don't know what you're talking about.

>>2807017
>why is it that every "failed capitalist" society still has scores of fat college students with access to free wifi and 24-hour subway sandwiches complaining about market injustice?
Failed capitalist societies will be found in the third world, not the first world built off their blood and sweat. Your stereotype is just used to brush off injustice.
>why is it that even after a bloody communist takeover, countries tank economically while after bloody capitalist takeovers you have chilean miracles?
The Chilean Miracle is a complete fabrication. Neoliberalism destroyed Chile in the 1970s.
>why do countries that move toward less government involvement in economics, without the bloody revolutions, outperform ones that move toward socialism?
Outperform for who? The rich? Or the masses who run society? Governments always intervene in the economy. Capitalism couldn't survive without massive state intervention every few years to keep it afloat.

>>2807012
>could not be described as socialist under any reasonable metric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP

>that is flatly untrue
http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/chile/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-chile-1971.aspx

I think people are forgetting the mass in roads that socialism has made in most societies

Public works, schools, healthcare, these are all socialist ideas.

>>2807029
>The Chilean Miracle is a complete fabrication
No it isn't. Chile's highest inflation and lowest GDP per capita peaked during the Allende years.

>Failed capitalist societies will be found in the third world
In a different thread you would have called the US a failed capitalist society, but regardless.
No they can't. Sweatshops formed by International coorporations pay more than local companies.

>Outperform for who? The rich?
The rich get richer, the poor get richer. The poorest people in America live like kings compared to the poorest in India.

>Capitalism couldn't survive without massive state intervention every few years to keep it afloat.
It did for years in America until the great depression, when state intervention in bank operations tanked the economy and the pursuing new deal policies would have kept it that way if it weren't for the ensuing wars that continue to finance them.

>>2807068
>Public works, schools, healthcare, these are all socialist ideas.

Private schools always do it better
Community college is shit for a reason

Healthcare is cripplingly expensive and impersonal as doctors are forced to see a certain amount of patients per day and insurance companies are forced to cover a certain amount of people and experimental drugs are forced to cut through legions of red tape

Roads existed since forever and so have people capable of building them

National Defense and a Neutral Court System is all a government needs to implement

>>2806968
>private property
>made illegal
Doesn't work like that, private property is made legal and only exists with authority.
You ought to only possess land you personally interact with and you don't need to pay debt and taxes to do so.

>>2807102
>experimental drugs are forced to cut through legions of red tape
This is not a bad thing

>>2807102
yea we need to go back to the days before public schooling when we had a 20% illiteracy rating, fucking commies dont they know anarchist capitalism is the only way forward? Retard.

>>2807238
In 1870

>>2807052
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP
So? Of course they employed socialist-sounding rhetoric - sometimes. I'm talking about what they actually DID. And while they nationalized some industries they also privatized others that were formerly public, sometimes forcing privatization on a staggering scale. There was a HUGE campaign to transfer ownership of many industries back into the hands of prominent businessmen, who of course were friendly to the state and answered to it on some level, but their industries were no longer directly owned by it - a completely different model for controlling wealth & production than any of the socialist countries used. The Nazi party was generally quite anti-union and although the gov't interfered heavily in many industries (I'm certainly not arguing that Nazi Germany had a free market) the means of production - literally, the factories and farms and so on - remained privately owned, by and large.

I repeat: Nazi Germany could not be called a socialist state by any reasonable metric.

>http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/chile/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-chile-1971.aspx
This does not refute a single thing I said. Chile's economy under Pinochet performed badly in almost every way. I am not just talking about its inflation rate.

>>2807069
>No it isn't. Chile's highest inflation and lowest GDP per capita peaked during the Allende years.
The Chilean Miracle only exists if you ignore all the actual facts about Chile's society and economy between 1975-1982. I've dropped plenty of concrete figures already. Chile's spectacular economic growth occurred well after it abandoned pure monetarism - starting in the mid-80s.

This is not an argument for socialism at all. It is an argument against extremes. It is an argument for a reasonably regulated capitalist free market, something that only complete ideologues conflate with socialism.

>>2807383
Yea Hitler literally arrested and camp'd communists and socialists, that meme that National Socialism and socialism are anywhere related needs to die.

File: Ernst.jpg (103KB, 920x357px) Image search: [Google]

103KB, 920x357px

>>2807427
t. uneducated fucktard

>>2807102
Private schools do better because their market role is being an upgrade compared to public schools

>>2807449
Concise yet comprehensive. An elegant rebuttal. You sure showed him.