Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
This is a common view. I disagree with it, however, for a few reasons. It's sorta like a goalpost shifting or no true Scotsman fallacy. "Why didn't it work? Because it wasn't the real thing!" I think we don't need a pure form to analyze the elements, and then better judge what a pure form would look like. Regardless, why even ask for a "pure" form anyways. What does that even mean?
Again, illustrating my point, the exact same argument can be made in defense of a pure free market system. Renton has done so itt.

I think I'm gonna have to disagree that "pure" socialism hasn't been tried. I think Russia tried it. Socialism was basically a counter to the bourgeoisie as contrasted to the proletariat. Russia did everything it could to create a classless society that empowered the proletariat and eliminated the bourgeoisie
Again, patently false. The USSR never made it but a step past the violent revolution phase, a phase which was thought to be necessary, but likely isn't-- and in actuality probably serves as an obstacle of the ultimate goal. The USSR pushed the idea of a classless society in propaganda, as that was the ideology which allowed the power hubs to entrench themselves. Reading anything about the Soviet era will make it clear that if that was ever a goal of people capable of pushing the society towards it, it wasn't a goal for long.

A good modern day parallel to Stalin's USSR is N. Korea. It's the same "classless" nonsense being drilled into the public, but with no action to back it up. You wouldn't make the same statements regarding N. Korea, so I'm not sure why you'd make them about Soviet era Russia.

I think the trend may be opposite of this, but I honestly don't know, and it will probably always be about a balance. It's like how I think economies work best when they start out as state capitalism and gradually move to free market capitalism. The more dynamic the economy gets and the greater the technology, the easier the markets can provide for wishes and needs. We don't live in a world where it provides for all, but it provides for way more it otherwise would. The only real problems I can see with free market capitalism is it doesn't seem to work well when resources are fixed and limited (truly fixed and limited, not just perceived as such) or when there are no incentives for something. My two main examples would be health coverage for the chronically ill and anything that requires a whole bunch of land

Perhaps the future will be about a mix of free market and cooperative capitalism with virtually no state intervention. I could see this happening, as the value of cooperative efforts is increasing now like it didn't in the past
This is intriguing to me, and I'd be interested in exploring this idea, as well as seeing it explored by those with the relevant expertise.