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Communism bad
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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Literally every argument with a diaspora person from a former socialist republic whose country got destroyed and impoverished by the Capitalist shock doctrine in the 90s.
Blaming capitalism alone ignores that many socialist economies were already in long-term stagnation before the 1990s. Shock therapy often caused real harm, but it didn’t destroy thriving economies — it was applied to systems that were already failing.
Economic growth was positive, just slowed. There were numerous reasons for this, from recovery from world war II and the population crisis it caused, to needing to maintain millitary parity with a much wealthier adversary, to economic liberalization, but despite all of this, growth was positive and the systems working. Instead, the soviet union was killed. It didn't collapse under its own weight and failing systems, but was dismantled on purpose.
The idea that socialist economies were stagnating was used as justification for applying the Washington Consensus and shock therapy, where the west looted the former soviet union for parts and destroyed their economies. Key life metrics plummeted, production crumbled, and took decades to approach their soviet levels.
The line going up just means GDP per capita increased, not that the system was healthy. USA's GDP continues to go up, would you consider our current economy healthy? Post 60s, Soviet growth slowed and was mostly driven by oil, not productivity. That hides a lot of inefficiency and fragility that GDP doesn’t show. When oil prices dropped and reforms started, the economy collapsed because it had very little resilience left, not because capitalism suddenly “killed” a thriving system.
To be clear - I'm not saying that shock therapy didn't cause harm, I'm just saying that the USSR was clearly not booming by the time it was applied.
GDP in the context of a heavily industrialized socialist economy vs a dying imperialist country where finance is dominant is entirely different. Production continued to meaningfully grow in the USSR, while what we see in the US Empire is a decay in the superprofits stolen from the global south and a hollowed out industrial base, AI bubble, etc, none of which applied to the USSR. Additionally, the economy exploded after the dissolution of the USSR, not before.
The USSR was stable. It was growing slower than before for a number of reasons, but it remains true that it didn't collapse, it was killed. Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? by Stephen Gowens is a good essay on some of the factors at play during the dissolution of the USSR. Socialism works.