I’m the chimney sweep now!
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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This argument always comes up, and it's such a bad one when actually considered. The US was the largest world power, right? They also influenced all other western and/or capitalist nations, either through cooperation or threat of cutting them off from the market.
OK, so consider which communist/socialist countries failed. Did they fail in a vacuum? No. They failed with the "democratic" (often less democratic than the opposition, but this was their messaging) nations opposing them. For example, in Guatemala they elected a leftist president who introduced a minimum wage, increased democratic participation in elections, and the next president introduced land reforms to redistribute land to give it to the peasants.
Guatemala was being used by the United Fruit Company (Chiquita now) for their banana empire. These changes hurt their ability to exploit the people and create more profits, so they lobbied the US to overthrow their government. This led to the formation of a dictatorship and reversal of labor reforms. The dictatorship went on to genocide the native populace.
Communism "always fails" because the most powerful nations in the world are afraid of it, so they do everything in their power to ensure it fails. The few that have been able to survive are dictatorships, because they can better withstand pressure from the outside. (This isn't to say dictatorships are good, just that they're more stable when attacked.) They also generally had or enforced cultural hegemony, for the same reason. It's survivorship bias.
We have no idea how well a leftist government would do if not attacked, because it's always attacked out of fear. If it's destined to fail, why are they afraid of it succeeding?
Maybe communist countries always fail (UDSSR, DDR) or transition to capitalism (China), not because of outside forces, but because its a flawed system?
It could be, but we can't know as it is now. Marx said the same for capitalism, and he may still be proven right. He said that capitalism will always lead to communism because it's a flawed system.
Again, if it's destined to fail, why have capitalist countries had to put so much effort into destroying them? If they actually believed they were destined to fail, like they like to say in propoganda, then they wouldn't bother with forcing them to fail.
As an example of a moderate success, Cuba has done pretty well for itself despite being entirely cut off from nearly all outside trade. They have a near 100% literacy rate. compared to the US's 86%. They also have world class Healthcare, again despite being cut off from the rest of the world.
The US has put so much effort into ensuring Cuba fails, yet it's still doing better than the US on many of the metrics that actually matter to the average person. How can this be true if communism is so fundamentally flawed?
Still, 88 % live in extreme poverty (though it can be argued that it is due to sanctions – which should be abolished). More severe are human right violations – no democracy, no freedom of the press, no independent judges.
And at the same time Cuba is moving towards capitalism since 2010– since it worked so well in China and Vietnam.
I agree democracy is good, and it should include the workplace. That is, I think, what the first priority should be. If democracy is good, then democracy is good in the workplace too as well as government.
That is the critical difference between leftist ideals and capitalist ideals. Capitalists are often accepting of democracy (when it's beneficial) in governments, but are always opposed with workplaces.
Leftists generally want more democracy everywhere. Authoritarianism is the issue with all nations, not capitalism or communism or whatever else. Capitalism just opposes democracy, and destroys and other non-capitalist government because it prevents their exploitation.
Again though, there are almost exclusively non-democratic leftist governments because anything else was destroyed because it couldn't maintain control when the capitalists got involved. Cuba is moving towards capitalism likely, or at least in part, because the US won't let them reach their potential if they don't play ball with US capitalist demands.
Edit: Also, what good is a poverty rate in a situation like Cuba? They have essentially zero outside trading partners and nearly everyone is equally impoverished. The US would have nearly a 100% poverty rate compared to the Dederation of Planets of Star Trek. It's useful for some statistics, but equality is probably a better measure for how they're doing internally. Poverty implies a certain standard created by an external source, which again can be useful but also misleading.