Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
Boost, a common theme I see you sticking with is socialism doesn't work when it's totalitarian. I used to believe that too, but I don't think I still do. I now think that socialism necessitates totalitarianism, because embedded in the philosophy is means of production for the communal need. I don't see any way that this can be implemented without a totalitarian government.
Your lack of imagination has no bearing on the truth of falsehood of any statement. You know this.

The means of production in the USSR were very much based on communal need. It's why many farms were collectivized, factories manufactured many things that had no purpose other than the sake of manufacturing, and the service sector involved a lot of redundancy. Everybody "needed" a job, and the central government made it so.
"Everybody needs a job" is not a cornerstone of communism. Some megalomaniac decided it was the case-- we still have this "everyone needs to do their fair share" principle, which is simplistic and leads to all sorts of damaging policy, like the defunding of good welfare programs. It's simply not an error solely owned by communism, nor is it an inherent flaw; the belief just happens to have had the favor of the Soviet regime.

As for the Nazis, you're essentially agreeing with me, but spinning it so that it was the fault of "the Nazis" and not Hitler. Pretty much every major blunder is traceable to Hitler. And then there are ones which cannot be proven, but the lack of room for dissent meant that qualified people were discouraged from speaking up and saying "hey, look, dude, endless expansion, without pause to regroup, is just not going to work."

Capitalism vs Communism may have framed the conflict, and they were certainly the ideologies pushed by the two factions, but claiming that because the victor was victorious, the victor's ideology was correct is a utterly poor logic. Look at it like this-- manifest destiny steam rolled the North American continent, and if you asked most people in the first sea to shining sea century, they'd tell you that the natives were overcome because they had a primitive pagan ideology, while they themselves adhered to a Christian ideology.

How is your rendering of history any different? The victory of the west over the Soviets could potentially be a comment on the viability of communism, but first we'd have to agree that the Soviets actually had a communist society, and second you'd have to show some work and not just say "lolwewon!"

And let it be clear, I know that Soviet "communism" is not viable. My point is that there are still valid lessons to be learned aside from "lolcommunism". And further, their failure to implement the system successfully only tells us that they failed to implement the system successfully. Scoffing at anything which could be considered "communism" simply because they failed is to sell ourselves short on potential avenues to a better society.