Socialism has never worked....and never will
THIS ENTIRE POST GOES OFF OF ME ACCEPTING THAT EVERY SELF DESCRIBED "SOCIALIST" STATE IS SOCIALIST.
On what analysis are you grabbing this from, and how are you defining "works" by taking any number of measures, ****, we can see that communist states worked on many levels, if you want to look at actual examples of socialism that have existed, such as the anarchists in spain, the free Ukrainians, the paris commune, various small revolutionary movements throughout history, all of them worked phenomenally, until they were crushed by violence. When we talk about revolutionary socialist movements failing, you have to look at how you define "failing." Cuba was in a turmoil, poverty was rampant, women's rights was a joke, infant mortality was high, and the people wanted a revolution, even though Cuba is far from the socialist path, Cuba was consistently attacked and sabotaged by reactionaries, and despite this, healthcare improved, education improved, literacy improved, the poor got housing, food intake increased, and before you pull out the boat story, the ones who left were almost unanimously the upper classes, the ones who lost the revolution, the ones the common people were literally wanting to kill, the castro's had support, remember that. Moving on to other examples, we can look at the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende, who the US overthrew to place Pinochet into power, a ruthless dictator who utterly crushed working families, guess that counts as a failure for socialism as well? **** democracy if it doesn't apply to US interests I guess.. Compare Capitalist Haiti to communist cuba and get back to me. Moving on to Venezuela, people supported Hugo and he won the right to power, the US attempted to overthrow him, and despite all this and the oil crisis, Hugo took oil money and dumped it into public funding, increasing healthcare, education, food intake, literacy, reducing extreme poverty, making one of the most progressive constitutions of all time, and Venezuela ultimately failed due to the Oil prices, which is unfortunate, but do we count capitalism as a failure when the great depression occurred? I don't think you would, so have some honesty. When looking at the history of socialist/communist movements "failing" we get a clear picture. The united states supported the murder and persecution of hundreds of thousands of communists in Indonesia, suppressed left wing ideology through two different red scare type events, and oh boy, let's get onto russia. Russia was in a period of agrarian feudalism, just coming out of world war 1, ruled by heartless tsars, life was barbaric, imperialist domination was wild, women's rights was non-existent, barbarity was rampant, life expectancy was laughable, virtually no medical care, no literacy, virtually no chance at education, etc.. The revolutionary conditions were set, and the bolsheviks rose up, although as a supporter of the anarchists in the ukraine, I heavily critique their actions, however, it is clear that if we describe Lenin's USSR as socialist, it was a phenomenal success. Abortion was legalized, healthcare increased, life expectancy increased, Imperialism was drove out of russia, living conditions were phenomenally increased, as was literacy, etc, etc, and let's not forget the industrialization that occurred, although the process for this under Stalin was horrendous, much like Stalin, who Lenin didn't want to put into power anyway.. Shall we talk about anything else? My mind's wandering.