[skeolawn]

Maybe he would, but all the experiments so far have failed for pretty much the same reasons and at enormous human cost.

Meanwhile capitalism in whatever form it's tried has proven itself to be an incredible engine of poverty reduction and human/social progress. There's always been tension between capitalism and democracy and we may be at a point where some of the cracks are showing.

[xbejdjched]

It's worth keeping in mind that we do live in the propaganda bubble of the Soviet Union's arch nemesis.

For their KGB, we had our J. Edgar Hoover. For their political purges, we had our House Committee on Unamerican Activities. For their later economic struggles, we had our great depression.

[cmdkeen]

We never had several deliberately inflicted famines killing millions of people. In every single example you listed Communist countries were demonstrably worse. Humanity is capable of some pretty awful things under any system of government - Communism, or perhaps the way it comes about, has consistently demonstrated that itself better at enabling our worst impulses compared to democratic capitalism.

That people, included in the UK elected representatives, make a case for the Soviet Union and Communist China having done more good than bad is a a terrible failure of history.

[xbejdjched]

But you're missing the point of what I'm saying:

I suggest taking the notion that communism is always bad with a grain of salt, given that our nation has been propagandized to despise communism much as the Soviets were propagandized to hate capitalism.

The Soviet Union went from a third world country of farmer peasants to becoming the world's first spacefaring civilization in only 40 years. Considering where they started, I believe that is quite impressive.

During the cold war, each side's media focused exclusively on the other's shortcomings, turning molehills into mountains, so to speak. To not acknowledge the reality distortion field around reporting of the era is an assault against the historical record.

[cmdkeen]

The USSR becoming the world's first space faring nation is to a large extent the result of the Second World War and the knowledge gained from German scientists - because Stalin purged the nascent Soviet programme during the Red Terror.

Was the breaking of the kulaks - causing the Holodomor which killed an estimated 2.5m-7m Ukranians let alone deaths across the rest of the USSR - a necessary step in the industrialisation of Russia?

Capitalism industrialised - and indeed created industrialisation, with some pretty nasty consequences which led to unionisation and the growth of the middle classes. However none of those nasty consequences were anything close to what Communist regimes have brought us - that isn't bias, historical propaganda, it is just fact on whatever measure you choose to adopt.

[snowwrestler]

Regardless of past propaganda, anyone can go straight to former USSR countries now, to learn what happened there, as millions of regular folks and scholars have. And of course there is the undisputed fact that the USSR failed as a nation, despite its earlier successes.

[the-dude]

How about your native population? And your police force is still shooting former slaves on a daily basis.

[cmdkeen]

I'm British - the police over here killed 3 people last year, and that was an above average year. The USA is not the entire set of Western Liberal Democracies.

[the-dude]

I stand corrected, sorry.

[zepto]

Either capitalism is a new phenomenon and we don't have enough data to know how stable it is beyond outlasting communism, or what you call 'capitalism' is anything except communism - in which case it has failed catastrophically many times throughout history.

Democracy is relatively new, and has proven hard to establish in most of the world, so there isn't a lot of evidence that it's stable.

[borvo]

I think that's fair enough. I guess all we can say is best of what we've tried so far.