Well there is a lot to unpack there but let’s start with that last sentence the path forward for any country should be its own to choose and overwhelmingly all countries that had communism and then left it behind haven’t wanted to get anywhere near that type of governance again, and many of them are far better off today than they were under Soviet oppression as the Soviet union was an extractive empire where their satellite countries in the eastern block had a larger population density and were by and large more educated than the average Russian, and this stayed true through the entire existence of the Soviet Union. The fact that the wealth gap on paper between the richest and poorest being as close is kind of the point as to have wealth and influence in any communist regime would not be personal wealth but the individual 's status within the regime and the perks of the job, kind of like how the President and all governors of the US, the french president, the prime minister of the UK, and most other governments give their executive leader free housing in their respective Capitals, but for communists like let’s say Ceausescu had lavish mansions built for them while their countrymen starved. For education you can see in China today or north Korea, or any other Soviet country or non democratic country without a vast amount of easily accessible mineral wealth they will educate their country and publicize it for propaganda reasons on the one hand but on the other they limit the sorts of education the average civilian has access to, in china they have a vast number of engineers and use that to great effect for their manufacturing base, while also polluting their country in a way no democratized country would permit on their soil, but china doesn’t have a lot of political science majors or those who don’t follow their groupthink, in short their people can read and have marketable skills that don’t endanger the power of the CCP, the same could be said about the Soviet union, and even there you had problems such as the belief that all life was equal and so despite oranges peing unable to grow in the Soviet union outside or climate controlled greenhouses they tried to force genetic communism to have oranges grow there and politics encroached on science leading to not much happening and a great loss of productivity. Central planning is not the best form of planning and is only good if you want to economically depress those under central planning control at best, see the current slate of dictates from the Trump whitehouse that have devastated the US economy outside of tech these last 2 years, it was a central planning style dictate without accounting for a myriad of factors or building up american production to pick up the slack instead the tariffs forced the poor to pay more while having fewer benefits and getting squeezed more and more, there are dozens of these decisions that led to major issues within the Soviet union and when it collapsed the countries under the yoke of the supreme soviet were able to better decide what they wanted their government to do, it was unstable for a bit but places like Poland and Estonia are thriving members of the EU who have no wish to follow your purity test and will continue doing their own thing so long as they are able to.
The soviet union was not an “extractive empire.” As the soviet union was not dominated by finance capital, it had no reason for doing so in the first place.
Housing was guaranteed in the soviet union, and outside of wartime the famine in the 1930s was the last major famine.
China does have tons of political science majors. In fact, you can get a degree in Marxism in China. The fact that the majority of people support the system points towards the effectiveness of said system.
Central planning worked incredibly well in the soviet union, and continues to work well in the PRC today (and other socialist countries). Trump making decisions is not central planning.
I recommend you start actually looking into how socialism functions, because you’ve been consistently wrong this entire thread.
Your liberal idealism mistakes imperialist coercion for “choice” and bourgeois metrics for human progress. The USSR lifted semi-feudal societies to industrial superpower status, defeated fascism, and guaranteed work, housing, and education as right ,not commodities. Contradictions like bureaucracy or Lysenkoism were real, but Marxist-Leninists criticize these as deviations under imperialist siege, not proof of socialism’s failure. The “thriving” of post-Soviet states is measured in GDP for oligarchs and EU core capital, not working-class wellbeing: deindustrialization, demographic collapse, and dependent peripheral status followed the “shock therapy” you praise. Ceaușescu’s lavishness was denounced by Marxists as a betrayal of socialist principle, not its essence. Central planning, imperfect under blockade and scarcity, achieved historic gains without colonial plunder. Your argument conflates the degeneration of a besieged workers’ state with the emancipatory project itself. The lesson isn’t retreat to capital, but to advance the struggle with clearer theory and firmer proletarian democracy.
Well there is a lot to unpack there but let’s start with that last sentence the path forward for any country should be its own to choose and overwhelmingly all countries that had communism and then left it behind haven’t wanted to get anywhere near that type of governance again, and many of them are far better off today than they were under Soviet oppression as the Soviet union was an extractive empire where their satellite countries in the eastern block had a larger population density and were by and large more educated than the average Russian, and this stayed true through the entire existence of the Soviet Union. The fact that the wealth gap on paper between the richest and poorest being as close is kind of the point as to have wealth and influence in any communist regime would not be personal wealth but the individual 's status within the regime and the perks of the job, kind of like how the President and all governors of the US, the french president, the prime minister of the UK, and most other governments give their executive leader free housing in their respective Capitals, but for communists like let’s say Ceausescu had lavish mansions built for them while their countrymen starved. For education you can see in China today or north Korea, or any other Soviet country or non democratic country without a vast amount of easily accessible mineral wealth they will educate their country and publicize it for propaganda reasons on the one hand but on the other they limit the sorts of education the average civilian has access to, in china they have a vast number of engineers and use that to great effect for their manufacturing base, while also polluting their country in a way no democratized country would permit on their soil, but china doesn’t have a lot of political science majors or those who don’t follow their groupthink, in short their people can read and have marketable skills that don’t endanger the power of the CCP, the same could be said about the Soviet union, and even there you had problems such as the belief that all life was equal and so despite oranges peing unable to grow in the Soviet union outside or climate controlled greenhouses they tried to force genetic communism to have oranges grow there and politics encroached on science leading to not much happening and a great loss of productivity. Central planning is not the best form of planning and is only good if you want to economically depress those under central planning control at best, see the current slate of dictates from the Trump whitehouse that have devastated the US economy outside of tech these last 2 years, it was a central planning style dictate without accounting for a myriad of factors or building up american production to pick up the slack instead the tariffs forced the poor to pay more while having fewer benefits and getting squeezed more and more, there are dozens of these decisions that led to major issues within the Soviet union and when it collapsed the countries under the yoke of the supreme soviet were able to better decide what they wanted their government to do, it was unstable for a bit but places like Poland and Estonia are thriving members of the EU who have no wish to follow your purity test and will continue doing their own thing so long as they are able to.
This is an absolute firehose of lies.
The majority of people that lived in the soviet union want it back. The establishment of socialism was done by choice, and its dissolution was devastating.
The soviet union was not an “extractive empire.” As the soviet union was not dominated by finance capital, it had no reason for doing so in the first place.
Housing was guaranteed in the soviet union, and outside of wartime the famine in the 1930s was the last major famine.
China and the DPRK are democratic, see Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. The vast majority of the people in China believe China is democratic, and China is now one of the top countries in electrification and combatting desertification. You’re relying on information from decades ago, and mind you they produced for the rest of the world. Pollution per capita based on consumption has always been far higher in western countries.
China does have tons of political science majors. In fact, you can get a degree in Marxism in China. The fact that the majority of people support the system points towards the effectiveness of said system.
The sciences absolutely flourished in the soviet union and other socialist countries. That does not mean they did not make mistakes from time to time, but the fact of the matter is that they went from semi-feudalism to space in half a century. Many incredible inventions, including the mobile phone, were first invented in the USSR.
Central planning worked incredibly well in the soviet union, and continues to work well in the PRC today (and other socialist countries). Trump making decisions is not central planning.
I recommend you start actually looking into how socialism functions, because you’ve been consistently wrong this entire thread.
Removed by mod
Your liberal idealism mistakes imperialist coercion for “choice” and bourgeois metrics for human progress. The USSR lifted semi-feudal societies to industrial superpower status, defeated fascism, and guaranteed work, housing, and education as right ,not commodities. Contradictions like bureaucracy or Lysenkoism were real, but Marxist-Leninists criticize these as deviations under imperialist siege, not proof of socialism’s failure. The “thriving” of post-Soviet states is measured in GDP for oligarchs and EU core capital, not working-class wellbeing: deindustrialization, demographic collapse, and dependent peripheral status followed the “shock therapy” you praise. Ceaușescu’s lavishness was denounced by Marxists as a betrayal of socialist principle, not its essence. Central planning, imperfect under blockade and scarcity, achieved historic gains without colonial plunder. Your argument conflates the degeneration of a besieged workers’ state with the emancipatory project itself. The lesson isn’t retreat to capital, but to advance the struggle with clearer theory and firmer proletarian democracy.