Referring to deaths due to collectivization as a "trope" is a little like referring to the Holocaust, or from American chattel slavery, as a "trope". It's easy to see how inappropriate the term is with the latter two examples; regardless of how you feel about communism, you probably shouldn't say it about the first example.

By way of further example, here's an excellent AskHistorians post on a Soviet collectivization tragedy you probably haven't read about, or at least I never had --- Kazakhstan:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cys9ie/in_th...

Regarding the Soviet Union's growth into one of the great economies of the world, you can talk to people who left there for the west and learn how much of an economic powerhouse it was. Or, for that matter, look at the economy of a country like Poland. The clear evidence does not, to say the least, favor the argument you're trying to make.

> This is a common trope, but is it really true?

While the author above you may have been unfair to the Soviet Union by claiming they made everyone poorer, there's still not much of a defense of socialism. Capitalism has had some spectacular failures, but it has also had unparalleled successes. Neither the slave trade or colonialism are essential or unique to capitalism. Most of the travesties perpetuated by current capitalist countries were before those countries were actually capitalist. The colonialism practiced by the European powers began when those nations were feudal/military autocracies operating under mercantilist thought. As they became more capitalist, they gradually moved away from colonialism. In some cases, even as a country moved away capitalism for themselves, they maintained different forms of governments in their colonies which caused problems. England with India and Belgium with the Congo are two particularly infamous examples. India and the Belgium Congo would have been much better off had their oppressors liberalized them.

In fact, despite the sordid histories of capitalist nations, they have done a far better job of distancing themselves from such practices compared to Marxish governments. You can tally the cost of US-installed dictatorships and compare it to the cost of Soviet-installed dictatorships. You can also compare the impact of socialist and capitalist thought on their respective countries.

As for the Soviet Union's large economy, there are several things to note. First, Russia's previous form of government was feudalism and literally almost anything is better than feudalism though they may very well have been better off had they moved to capitalism instead of socialism. Second, they were bigger than any other capitalist country except the US which gives them a large economic potential. Third, the Soviet Union exported their economic system to East Germany, which was the most prosperous nation of the soviet bloc, but it's standard of living was still far below that of West Germany. West vs East Germany is probably the best economic experiment ever performed on capitalism vs socialism.

When I say communism killed tens of millions of people, I mean that very literally. I don’t just mean that a putatively communist state killed tens of millions of people. I mean that, when the theory of communism was put into practice with collectivized agriculture, it failed so spectacularly that tens of millions of people died. You could go further to the horrors of purges. And there is a fair argument that communism, which involves expropriation of private property, is intrinsically ripe for such abuse. But you don’t even need to go there to get the body count.

Slavery and colonialism, are completely different. They were bad things that were perpetuated by putatively capitalist states, but have nothing otherwise to do with capitalism. There are many definitions of capitalism, but extracting unpaid labor using violence doesn’t fit any of them. And as to colonialism, capitalism actually explains why colonialism had negative effects that have lasted long after the colonizers left. Colonialism robbed countries of their capital. Robbing other countries of capital through violence is not capitalism in any form. Same for U.S.-installed dictatorships. It’s not like the Soviet Union didn’t have an elaborate network of puppet states. That’s orthogonal to capitalism versus communism.

As to environmental issues, that’s perhaps a fair point of capitalism. But socialism has an even worse record in that regard. The Soviet Union was enormously resource inefficient. Even today, the US generates six times the GDP per capita with just 30% more CO2 emission per capita.

This exchange reads to me like one commenter saying "not a true communist!" and one commenter saying "not a true capitalist."

I won't call it either way, because I've seen this argument play out many many times and it never seems to be satisfactorily settled.

That’s a facile and shallow response, and buys into a popular Marxist trope. You could fairly say that if we were talking about whether healthcare in the US is a “free market.” It’s not a gray area like that. You have one example that flows directly from the central principles of Marxism (the failure of centrally planned agriculture) and one example that contradicts the basic principles of free market capitalism (slavery and colonialism). You can’t have a “free” market with forced labor, or where a colony is forced to sell raw materials to the colonizer and forced to buy finished goods from the colonizer. Pinning colonialism and slavery to capitalism is like criticizing filesystem performance in microkernels based on the Linux kernel as an example. Whatever shades of gray may exist in the definition of microkernel, Linux’s filesystem access does not fall into that debatable area.

You're against colonial extraction of raw materials? Congratulations on your keen insight! Have you considered USA's recent misadventures in Latin America? A CIA-backed coup with this very purpose has so far succeeded in Bolivia. [0] Fortunately the one in Venezuela has up until now just embarrassed us. [1] Where will we try this next? Stay tuned!

[0] https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-fore...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/opinion/international-wor...