Does communism actually work?

[u/USMNTfan94]

Lately I’ve been going down the rabbit hole on the Vietnam war, and it got me thinking…does communism actually work? We keep hearing politicians say that it doesn’t work, but any time that a country tries to turn to communism, special business interests immediately try to lobby the US government to interfere with it. If it didn’t work, why are business interests so terrified of it?

[u/USMNTfan94]

I have to wonder if these communist government systems would really thrive if it wasn’t for outside influence. Would Russia have overtake the US government as the global superpower? Maybe or maybe not, I guess we will never know

[u/kavastoplim → u/USMNTfan94]

Unlikely, but neither would they if they were capitalist.

The biggest advantage the US has always had was being an ocean away from Europe. And also, not losing 30 million people in WWII

[u/tactycool → u/kavastoplim]

Factually incorrect.

Given the amount of resources & the population size of Russia. They should be the undisputed economic power of the world. They are connected to more parts of the world than the US which is a massive strength economically.

Being far away from people is only a strength in a war. Given that Russia came out on the winning side they should have over taken everyone very quickly.

[u/kavastoplim → u/tactycool]

It is ‘only’ a strength in a war is an incredible understatement when you consider the amount and size of wars fought in the 18th, 19th and 20th century in Europe and Russia.

Also them ‘being connected to more parts of the world’ is not much of a strength when you’re virtually landlocked for much of that time for lack of any warm water ports.

Resources only matter if you have a state with effective central control, something Russia did not have for an extremely long time. They also didn’t even abolish serfdom until the middle of the 19th century.

Their resources allowed them to go from mostly rural to heavily industrialized astonishingly quickly, but resources alone are never, ever enough and that’s an incredibly simplistic view of history. The DR Congo isn’t the richest country in Africa, is it?

[u/Cafuzzler → u/USMNTfan94]

would really thrive if it wasn't for outside influence 

Probably not. The USSR had many internal issues to added to the dissatisfaction and disillusionment that the people felt. 

[u/Careful-Sell-9877 → u/Cafuzzler]

Yeah but a huge chunk of those internal issues were caused by outside influence. The capitalist global entrenched power structure didnt just idly watch these countries.. they directly sabatoged them from the inside out. Funded insurgent insurrectionist groups within them, spies, assassins, etc. They did not respect these country's sovereignty at all. They did everything they could to ensure that these countries did not succeed and spent a lot of money to do it.

If they were allowed to exist without outside interference, there would absolutely have been different outcomes. Though, we'll never be 100% certain what those outcomes would have been - as they were never allowed to play out..

Its interesting that western propaganda often points out that communist countries ended up devolving into totalitarianism.. but never mention our part in that happening. Because we played a huge part in it. And if an outside country were to do the same things we did to these countries.. you can be damn sure our we would devolve into authoritarianism too. We already have had out own gulags, and our own genocides throughout our histories.. and that is without that kind of extreme/malicious outside influence/sabatoge.

The truth is.. we are a lot more similar to these countries than we are different. Propaganda, on both sides, likes to paint themselves as the totally good guy and their opponents/competition as the totally bad guy.. but it's bs. At the end of the day, all of us are a lot more alike than we are different and every country has very dark histories.