@gungasnake,
gungasnake wrote:
The CCCP had a perfectly even shot at it. They had enough people, enough resources both natural and otherwise, enough brains and talent, universities, and they'd just won WW-II. The train wreck which ensued was systemic, the whole mode of thinking failed.
Between 1918, and 1968, they went from the seventh most industrial country to the second... In that period of time, they went from a country which could not win a battle to one that could first defend its revolution, and then bear the brunt of the Nazi attack during WWII, and then supposedly threaten the entire freedom of mankind... What killed their economy primarily was that Socialism is an honor economy in an honor society... Without honor you have neither, and the lure of Western Money makes honor meaningless...If we see the legacy of Russian Society in the Russian Mob, you can see why leaders have always resorted to such brutality to control that brutal people that is no more than was ever used to cow and control them...
A secondary cause of their failure is that socialism must balance its books, and capitalism can cook its... Long after people have no jobs, no prospects of jobs, and hardly any productive habits, they can still be kept as consumers through their own credit, or by the credit of government... It is through running great deficits that are often incured, and laid upon the future of the people, much of which is used to defend empire, or given directly to the rich, or loaned free to banks which will bleed the population with credit that capitalism has survived...
Under Communism, the state was the largest consumer, and in a sense, the only one, as well as the only employer... Their existence, like the existence of primitive communism was always hand to mouth... The primitives suffering a want of technology did not have a choice, and we through our constant pressure and brinkmanship played out in places like Korea, and Vietnam did not give the Communists a moment of rest until they waved the white flag... The Vietnam War seems to us a defeat, but in economic terms it took only a little of our gnp, but it drained them to the point of fighting on credit we extended to them by way of the Russians... And has it gained us world peace; or is that something capitalism can only live without???
