Because it wasn't socialism. It was a centrally planned capitalist economy. There were still commodity production, accumulation of value and a State that regulates value. The only way in which USSR and the Eastern Block was socialist is the way they called themselves. If they called themselves aliens, it would make about the same sense. Even Lenin called the system "State Capitalism" in his works. Socialism in the classic Marxist sense -- which is the exact same thing as communism, communism/socialism divide nonsense comes from Stalin and makes no sense -- is the society after capitalist economy collapses, and the natural force that makes capitalism possible is value generation. It's simply by-definition not possible to talk about socialism in a society that still has value (money), the division of labor (job), class (worker vs employer) and state (a body that regulates trade which is integral to capitalism). Marxism is above all materialism and ideologies like Marxism-Leninism is the most anti-Marxist thing imaginable.

Ideological flamewar is tedious and off topic here. An open internet forum will never have anything new or interesting to say about any of this; it will simply reset Groundhog Flamewar Day. Therefore, please don't do this on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Still better death than being dragged out of house in the middle of night to work in gulag and end up getting shot in the back of ones head.

In this nasty capitalism you can at least have hope, in soviet union there was no hope.

>In this nasty capitalism you can at least have hope, in soviet union there was no hope.

Any evidence to back either of these claims up?

Yes. Go read The Gulag Archipelago. The ignorance of those comparing Stalinist USSR to modern capitalism is astounding.

I think the ignorance is on you for not knowing the USA & allies version of Capitalism has killed far more people since WW2 than Stalin could've ever dreamed of, most of those wars unjustified and based on lies. Now add in poverty, drug addiction, preventable deaths from lack of health insurance, slave trade in Libya, refugees from wars we created, etc. This is far more destructive, but it's ok to not criticize it because you probably live cozy.

Thanks to capitalism, TOTAL numbers of people living in poverty are decreasing at an unprecedented rate. Every global measure we look at shows quality of life improvements like this, as capitalism and democracy have spread. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

Also, I do regard starving and enslaving constituents as much worse ethically than conquering another tribe or nation.

What people continuously insist on not understanding (both self-claimed socialists and capitalists) is that capitalism is supposed to be much better than earlier systems. This is the central argument of Marx. He claims the world is in a never-ending struggle between social classes. It's very obvious that capitalism is better than older systems because it's the product of earlier conflicts; so your argument does not mean anything to me. The idea is to make it even better.

Thanks to Capitalism, those people were put into extreme poverty in the first place. How many millions need to continue dying from poverty, war, and poor hygiene for Capitalism to get the same nonsense thrown at it? It's only $30 billion a year to end world hunger, but world capitalism won't step up to the plate, instead spending it on new military toys to bomb those people in extreme poverty. How much food is wasted on top of that?

http://www.fao.org/NEWSROOM/en/news/2008/1000853/index.html

It's not pure, unbridled capitalism, though.

Uh... I'm convinced that you both are very wrong (both you and the comment you're replying to). We approach to this problem entirely wrong. Nobody needs to be convinced that capitalism is bad or socialism is good, or that socialism kills people or whatever. This sort of ideological/political discourses that usually emphasize Great Men (like politicians who convince people best about why capitalism is good/bad) are the very center of the problem of both (1) authoritarian governments like USSR killing people (2) social injustice killing people. The real real problem is always the actual materialistic forces that drive people. I'm a software engineer because I like the job, it pays very well and lets me live comfortably. I got this job because my family was rich enough to send me to university where I studied CS. When you're talking about the inequality between me and a poor person, this is the real difference, not my ideology or a poor person's ideology. This fundamentally means that ideologies -- authoritarian or not -- like Marxism-Leninism are not an answer to the real problem, nor is talking to people about your religion, Jesus Christ or evil capitalism. The heart of the problem, as always if the material conditions in which people live, the condition of the workers.

The problem you've identified can only be addressed at the individual level, which socialism eliminates as a possibility because there is no individual, only group identity.

Furthermore, even if it is implementation details, maybe the implementations we have had so far are the best that humanity can do.

I would argue that the True Scotsman's communism is actually worse than the flawed implementations. It is complete garbage.

The fact that there could exist a privileged class within communist societies, a class that had better access to higher grade goods, education and everything else, was actually an improvement.

It gave people something to strive for: get in with the right people, to get the kids better schooling, and so on.

People need that; nobody who is capable of hustling wants to be equal to a sloth who rest on his laurels.

Is that socialism though? It did begin that way but sticking a label on a savage dictatorship doesn’t make it true.

"Dictatorship of the proletariat" necessarily collapses into plain dictatorship almost immediately, because there's no room for pluralism and dissenting factions. That's the problem with all the Leninist/Trotskyite/Maoist inheritors of Marxism. It was also the key difference between the social-democrat states of Europe west of the Berlin wall and the Communist states east of it.

No it doesn't , DotP necessarily means factionalism and such, democratic centralism simply necessitates an agreement to be abided to by all constituents of said group

Since this account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle, we've banned it. That's not allowed here, because it destroys the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

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Much more explanation if anyone wants it:

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Ceaucescu's hated austerity was because it was attempting to pay off the national debt to western countries.

There are plenty of other notionally capitalist countries that have suffered bitterly under a similar kind of debt yoke (e.g. Greece).