: It sounds as if your saying that if it hadn't been for Capitalism then Socialism/Communism could well have succeded. SDF: Say, isn't Cuba hampered by this thing called an "embargo"?
: Capitalism went to war with Socialism/Communism and forced the Soviets to spend money on defence rather then consumer goods.
SDF: 1) Since the Soviet Union had, by that time, enough in nuclear weapons to destroy human civilization, nobody was "forcing" it to spend money on defense after, say, 1980 -- but there is such a thing as prestige.
2) A society devoted to the spending of money is not "Socialism/Communism". The main point of writing Capital for Marx was to show that ending capitalism means abolishing money.
: But what about the Nazi's attack on Russia? The Nazi's weren't Capitalists.
SDF: I suppose the Nazi subsidy to the Krupp family fortune, etc. is only a tiny flaw in this fallacious assumption?
Russia had an obligation to defend itself and it's citizens.
: But even before the Nazis, the Soviets were liquidating the kulaks in Georgia, to the tune of millions.
: Where was the external threat then?
SDF: You don't suppose the involvement of the major capitalist countries in the Russian civil war of 1917-1923, with the US sending 50,000 troops to Siberia, really happened, do you?
: The same could be asked of the ChiComs. Were they being threatened by Capital when Mao launched his Great Leap Forward?
SDF: I don't suppose the US possessed nuclear weapons or was threatening "Red China" with obliteration back then?
: Wasn't that just a technique to consolidate power and root out 'capitalist-roaders'?
SDF: How do you suppose the above societies industrialized?
None.
