I often see these words used interchangeably, though as I understand it there is a difference between the two ideologies, no?
I often see these words used interchangeably, though as I understand it there is a difference between the two ideologies, no?
I’m not a communist but I do think the USSR was a very successful socialism state. Yes, it was poor - but the wealth of a nation isn’t solely tied to the economic system it uses. Russia already had a history of famines, corruption, drinking problems, and was super lacking in technology. And then it also over extended itself for imperialist reasons/spreading socialism (whichever sounds better to you).
And yes it was ruled by some nasty people. But Stalin and Lenin achieved a wonderful turnaround from a wartorn 3rd-world absolute monarchy into a modernised industrialised state that sent spacecraft to the moon and Venus.
If you look into how they expanded their railroads, I mean wow. No capitalist state has done it the way they did. Some precise micromanaging, the persuasion of foreign engineers to settle down in Russia. Stalin got to live like a strategy gamer playing city skylines his entire life.
Instead of asking “was there a perfect implementation of x ideology,” which there has never been for any ideology, we should ask “are there successful implementations of X ideas?” And for socialism, the answer is a resounding yes. People will say that the Nordic states aren’t socialist (instead being “social democracies”) but they undoubtedly implement socialist ideas.
Universal health care - more successful than private health care
Trade unions
Maternity leave…
I know Europe is famous for this but we have that here in Canada too
True, I didn’t mean to tie it to nordic states like that I just wanted to list some successful socialist ideas
USSR’s success was largely fueled my mass murder, political oppression, and lying about economic growth.
they were ‘good’ at centralizing power to achieve certain goals, like military and the space race, but their economy outside of such priority areas, was in shambles. their agricultural and industrial capacity was terrible.
Agriculture yes, industrial capacity no.
dude it took years for anyone to get a car. months to get household appliances shortages of basic things like office supplies were common outside of the government, etc
it was shit outside of military production, because basically it all went to military production.