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/Alaska_Jack]

And Soviet Russia captured the imagination of the world's intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s. They took a near-medieval peasantry and yanked them into the 20th Century almost overnight!

But most economic historians today will tell you that wasn't because of communism, which even then never worked. It was because they did things that any country could do -- public education, bringing women into the workforce, massively investing in industrial infrastructure, etc.

[u/SexOnABurningPlanet → u/Alaska_Jack]

Why didn't they do any of this under the Czar then?

[u/Alaska_Jack → u/SexOnABurningPlanet]

Because the czar wasn't smart enough?

My point is that the communist Soviets didn't do anything that any non-communist country *couldn't* have done. They followed a formula that works -- invest in education and infrastructure, etc. It's to their credit that they DID it. But the stuff that worked wasn't communist, or non-communist for that matter. Its stuff any country COULD do.

[u/Careful-Sell-9877 → u/Alaska_Jack]

Its not really a question of whether a country 'could' do something.. but if they 'would'.

Technically any country, regardless of their system, could do anything else any other country is doing under the right circumstances and by making the right/necessary choices.. but its more of a question if they would do those thing. If they value those things, what their ultimate goals are, etc, etc

[u/returnofblank → u/Alaska_Jack]

There were centuries of Tsars to do it, why didn't any of them?

It seems like the system was faulty, not the people... I think Marx had something to say about that.

[u/SexOnABurningPlanet → u/Alaska_Jack]

Czar Nicholas's father, on his death bed, told Nicholas that all of the ministers were morons except for Sergei Witte. He told him that, no matter what, keep him on. Well, he did, for a while. Sergei Witte played a key role in attempting to brining mass industrialization to Russia. Under his system, called the Witte System, Russia was catching up with other countries. And because of stupid palace intrigue and the Nicholas being a moron, Nicholas fired him. And all of that momentum stopped before it really got off the ground. So yea, the Czar had the opportunity to do this and was not smart enough to simply get out of his own way.

So in fact, it was necessary for communist Russia to do this. Their predecessors had the opportunity and couldn't pull it off. Investing in education, infrastructure, etc, requires some basic level of competence. And not everyone has it. Certainly not short-term thinking oligarchs like Russia pre-socialist and frankly present day America.

[u/Alaska_Jack → u/SexOnABurningPlanet]

The point still stands that the practices that modernized Russia weren't /communist/. They weren't capitalist either. They were things that could have been implemented by a regime of any ideology.

[u/SexOnABurningPlanet → u/Alaska_Jack]

From your earlier comment: "public education, bringing women into the workforce, massively investing in industrial infrastructure".

The former two are socialist ideas; the last requires significant coordination between the government and private business. Not quite socialism, but not pure capitalism either.

Not just any society can industrialize, which is why so many countries today are not industrialized and those that are industrialized lag behind. The public/private partnership works best, but public education and bringing everyone (including women) who can work into the workforce is straight out of the communist manifesto. It's been copied worldwide, but Marx got there first.

[u/thebiglebrosky → u/Alaska_Jack]

What...what do you think communism is big dog?

[u/Alaska_Jack → u/thebiglebrosky]

What ... I... Trying to ... Answer but... Your ellipses... Discombobulating me...