A Marlborough cigarette commercial reads “Experience America” as the House of Soviets of Russia burns in the background as a result of “American democracy” which was introduced into the Soviet Union.
It is better translated as “A Rendez-Vous with America”.
true that’s closer, could also be a date with america
“but 300 brands of the same snack is far better than actually having necessities. a planned economy makes everything sad and dull and therefore socialism doesn’t work”
I think it’s really sad how the collapse of the Soviet Union was celebrated; despite the abject poverty, homelessness and social/economic collapse that came about right after the West had finished plundering the most essential industries of the post-soviet nations. The cruelty of the world celebrating it like a football game while hundreds of thousands died, went missing, etc in societal collapse. In the vacuum, strong oligarchies formed out of the leftover institutions that make up the basis of the politics today.
Marxist nations that exist today such as China, Vietnam, etc learned a lot from it’s collapse. Autarky in a global, economic world rarely works for a nation of scale such as China or the Soviet Union. Retaining a competitive edge in the sciences via open academia and extremely controlled markets via state ownership of critical industries prevents bourgeoise power over the working class and retains an information flow with capitalist nations that prevents “shock” culturally, socially and economically when the outer world reaches in and from falling behind in academia. (Computers, digitization, etc. for example) It also prevents dogmatism; when Marxism is supposed to be a scientific method of thought, walling yourself off from the outside world is bound to lead to dogmatism.
A Soviet Union that reformed like China did would be a global economic powerhouse in tandem with China. The influence they would have over America would be impressive and advance the global cause of socialism by decades. They would have no reason to be involved in scraps with NATO proxies like they are currently, nor would be struggling with the immense economic austerity under neoliberalism or the oligarchs that enforce their will via untold coffers of capital.
The picture you see would have never happened, American would likely chug on the path of decay a bit longer; bolstered by an even more rabid anti-communism that has been tearing itself apart and the very “principles” (heavy quotations) every liberal clings to as a moral rock this settler nation bolsters would be shed like the skin of a snake. Objectively, even liberals from this “timeline” would be happier; no Ukraine war. No “Ebil Pootin”. No “Ruzzzians!!” infiltrating your precious “democracy” as the interventions would have no reason to exist. But of course, the narrative would change. It would be commies in your democracy. It would be Ebil “X Soviet Chairman”. America would find a new proxy nation to engage in abject terrorism on entire russian-speaking minorities in bordering nations to provoke fear in it’s dying, gasping breath.
sigh
Honestly, I think USSR could’ve succeeded as an autarky if the leadership had more vision. The main mistake was trying to compete with the west by playing by western rules of economic development, except only having state owned industry. The rot really started with Khrushchev in my opinion. While he was skilled at political manoeuvring, he didn’t have any imagination for building a socialist system and leveraging the advantages it could afford. He also did idiotic things like shutting down Artels that Stalin encouraged which filled the niche that private sector in the west does in terms of light industry.
The leadership in USSR also didn’t understand the role of the markets as allocators. The problem with the top down command system was that information would end up being corrupted by the time it reached the high level planners. You had a lot of problems like people misreporting numbers to make themselves look good, and general corruption. One solution to that could’ve been digital tracking of the supply chain which almost happened incidentally. A system like that might’ve facilitated the level of transparency needed to do a fully top down command economy. Chinese approach of using markets to allocate labor and resources at the low level combined with a high level plan that directs the goals markets are allocating towards seems to work quite well in absence of high level transparency though.
Meanwhile, the reason China was able to do reforms was due to the fact that the US decided to normalize relations with China because they saw USSR as the bigger threat. USSR would’ve never been let into western markets because it was the primary ideological opposition to the western model. Again, we can blame Khrushchev for creating the whole problem here. An alternative reality would’ve been avoiding the Sino-Soviet split by not denouncing Stalin, and creating a huge Eurasian economic bloc that could’ve competed with the west.
My view is that the root problem that USSR had was that it failed to ensure that competent people ended up in positions of power. The bureaucracy became largely unaccountable and disconnected from the working majority, and that’s the problem that socialist projects have to address going forward. There need to be strong mechanisms for selection of people as well as having power to recall them when they fail at their duties.
A system like that might’ve facilitated the level of transparency needed to do a fully top down command economy. Chinese approach of using markets to allocate labor and resources at the low level combined with a high level plan that directs the goals markets are allocating towards seems to work quite well in absence of high level transparency though.
I totally agree! I suppose I’m not very succinct with words, but I was trying to imply that with an opening of low-level markets to do “low-level planning” while the state plans and owns critical industry combined with their own digitization would work quite well I would think, but I don’t exactly think the Soviet Union would need to open up to western markets like China. It could have been a powerful developing force in Africa, the Caribbean and South America! While America might have never opened their markets, America inevitably would still rot and fall like it is currently; their power waning as they are able to be everywhere but unable to focus their attention everywhere especially with a unified Eurasian bloc.
But yeah, Khrushchev did indeed fuck pretty much everything.
Oh yeah I completely agree with all that. The good news is that even though USSR failed in the end, the west failed to stomp out socialism globally. Now that western model is visibly failing, most of the world is starting to look to China as the example to follow.
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What?
Agent krasnov idiocy probably. Or russiagate
Also, they didn’t get us back enough. A mass dismantling of the U.S military and full balkanization of the United States would be preferable.
