If the Soviet leadership had actually tried in earnest to build communism

instead of pretending to build communism, might it have actually worked?

They did try in earnest. It's just that communism requires a brutally authoritarian government to implement. Which of course is """"not real communism"""" which actually just means that communism is impossible.

I think the actual effort to build communism almost completely died off by the late 60s.

By then the party apparatchiks were bothered solely about maintaining status and their perks (nice apartments, consumer goods, dachas etc.)

I really doubt it because they were following Vladimir "I only read the Manifesto and made up the rest lol" Lenin's vision of communism.

My special snowflake type of communism works, it only failed because Lenin/Mao/Kim/Fidel/Pol and anyone else hat ever got the power to try it did it all wrong. But please try again with me and you will see that in my special snowflake kind of gommunizm taking away personal property will not require the creation of a totalitarian state and the process will never ever be missuses to distribute the expropriate property in away that benefits the people responsible for its redistribution.
They stopped the hardcore violence after 50 terrible years because they already tried everything else and didn't want to to die in some party straggle so they just decomposed slowly waiting for the inevitable end. The only good result of it was that by lowering the level of violence in the system, the collapse didn't ruen into a Syrian civil war with nukes. You can thank the 60s-80s leadership for that, it's the only good thing they ever did.

the only people threatened by the notion of communism are exploiters. hence the common response in the west of explaining that any theory of communism today is "special snowflake." communism today requires violent overthrow of the west. the global proletariat, as they say, have nothing to lose but their chains

>My special snowflake type of communism works, it only failed because Lenin/Mao/Kim/Fidel/Pol and anyone else hat ever got the power to try it did it all wrong. But please try again with me and you will see that in my special snowflake kind of gommunizm taking away personal property will not require the creation of a totalitarian state and the process will never ever be missuses to distribute the expropriate property in away that benefits the people responsible for its redistribution.


Why give your opinion on shit you clearly haven't read?

No, what Lenin/Mao/Stalin/Fidel tried to do was not communism as defined by Marx, it was inspired by it.

>try communism
Communism was never something to try. It's not an alternative economic system. It was the proposed end result of Capitalism by Marx. Which is why he plainly said his economic model could only develop in an industrialized capitalist nation and was specifically a model for Western Europe.

What the 20th century revolutions did were use Marx's principles to industrialize their nations to begin with. They changed the model and the end result, attempting to force communism without the required industry.

No, Marx's Communist vision hasn't happened and very well may never happen. But if it were going to, it can only be accomplished by a capitalist power.

You need world revolution to build communism you dummy.

>It was the proposed end result of Capitalism by Marx
I understand that you're trying to use historical materialism here, but it sounds a bit silly.

No.

Why? Because neither socialism or communism works.

This is a big "what if". The outcome depends on how low down the hierarchical ladder the zeal for communism applies.

If we're talking about the leader and his inner circle, they would have to divert resources from preserving their power towards achieving communism at great risk of being replaced by potential usurpers. Too many purges would weaken the state.

I was born in USSR you special type of idiot, and I truly hope that you and your family experience the greatness of communism.
I have read it and you are certainly right, it is shit.

>implying Leninist "muh vanguard" could ever function without deranging into meme dictatorship

>I think the actual effort to build communism almost completely died off by the late 60s.

Probably true, but that still leaves 50 years.

t. Pribalt or Hohol

>the global proletariat, as they say, have nothing to lose but their chains

And their livelihood.
And their lives.

Actually no, but still amusing to see how very quickly the "communist" becomes a Russian nationalist that shills for communism because of muhh empire.

Problem would be the Party and Bureaucracy structure. Evidence showed that any attempts to improve the economy were scuppered by the CPSU.

It was working. The people had adequate food, healthcare, education, housing, and jobs. It just that those pale in-comparison to the more opulent and alluring Western life.

I think the later-end of the Soviet Union was somewhat proof that most humans can never be satisfied with what they have so long as some perceivable person has more than them. It's proof that politics is a folly with trying to appease those who can never be content and will inevitably lead to their own downfall eventually.

This desu

>The people had adequate food, healthcare, education, housing, and jobs
nice social democracy you fag

This. Otherwise you're going to have powerful external threats trying to undermine your shit from the inside and the outside. Kissinger and Nixon flooded the global economy with copper to damage Chile's economy when Allende was elected, in addition to providing tactical and material support to Pinochet. Why do you think most Communist states have ended up dictatorships? Because it would be easy for the people who hoarde most of the world's resources to deploy them against any incipient communist state.

I'd argue it went to shit be because the party elite were so entrenched in the apparatus of the state that they realized they could go from slightly better off than the average citizen to literal millionaires overnight if they managed the transition to privatization correctly.

>My special snowflake type of communism works, it only failed because Lenin/Mao/Kim/Fidel/Pol and anyone else hat ever got the power to try it did it all wrong
Can we stop pretending that traditional communism, with which communists almost always identify their ideology, is some "snowflake type of communism works"? It's pretty retarded.

Khrushchev was their last hope

After his ousting, communism became more of a vague theme than a goal.

>After his ousting, communism became more of a vague theme than a goal.

That's really all it ever could have been.

I know its the old argument but communism is (at least on the grand scale) impossible due to the human nature.
If you guarantee all needs, people will either work as little as possible or wont work at all.

>nothing to lose but their chains
I hate this phrase so much.. you can loose your work, your home, your life, lives of your fammily, setabily and security...

>I know its the old argument but communism is (at least on the grand scale) impossible due to the human nature.

I hate this argument because I feel like it implies that humans are somehow broken just because their behavior doesn't mesh with a fairy tail that some fat beard German came up with.

But the problem was not that individual soviet laborers were lazy, in fact many worked harder knowing that their basic needs were being met because nobody wants to fuck and/or marry a lazy sit-around in any culture (including ours, as most people reading this can well attest).

The problem was that all of their society's capital was overwhelmingly dominated by government bureaucrats which utterly stifled innovation and growth.

>Trotsky was their last hope
>After his ousting, communism became more of a vague theme than a goal.
ftfy

>The problem was that all of their society's capital was overwhelmingly dominated by government bureaucrats which utterly stifled innovation and growth.
So what if we got a political system without those government bureaucrats?

>So what if we got a political system without those government bureaucrats?
You'd have a bunch of unaccountable private interests preforming all the same functions that we need government bureaucrats for, but because they don't call themselves government bureaucrats the people turn a blind eye towards the most reckless aspects of their behavior.

I was more thinking about things like democratic workers councils as a replacement for party appointed people.

People would never go for it because 'muh traditions' but it'd probably be a much more robust and accountable system.

Still though, somebody has to file all the paperwork and if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Trots pls

Your man would've been as much of an authoritarian cunt as Stalin

The USSR was flawed from the start and any hope ended at Kronstadt

>as they say, have nothing to lose but their chains
Not anymore. Modern capitalism has left everybody utterly dependent upon it. Capitalism has afforded the common man just enough luxury to fear any change in the status quo, like a drug addict almost.

It couldnt work because all their efforts were focused on staying on par with the USA which was much stronger in every sense. So they spent insane amounts of money on the military and foreign intervention, leaving socialism/communist policies to rot. You cant build any kind of successful society when you spend all your money on rockets.

Oh hey, a council-communist. Neat.

Maybe, like in like thousands of years or so. The amount of tecnnology that you need for anything, that resembles post-scarcity is just unbelievable.

USA wasnt much stronger. USSR won weapon race in end of 1980s.
Your right, USSR was spending most of resources for war, but wealther was also increasing, so USSR could exist unlimited time without communists' decision to break it.
USSR could easy decrease military exps, but wars were main and only goal of this economical system.

>USA wasnt much stronger. USSR won weapon race in end of 1980s.

On what basis?

The late 80's was the height of American military power. The US navy had nearly 600 ships by the end of the decade.

Tanks.
USSR outproduced the usa in tanks since the 50s that's why the usa invested so much energy into making their ICBMs better. Once the USSR got better at ICBMs the usa started investing in shit like SDI.

USSR created automatic spaceship. Its space group (lasers, etc) could block most of american nukes.
Standart ships or tanks werent important.