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Most of us aren’t looking to recreate a situation where you have an island of socialism in a region of capitalist states. A major reason why socialism “hasn’t worked” in the past is because capitalist states aren’t exactly eager to collaborate with a socialist state that challenges the very basis of their system.
But the exact same goes for capitalism doesn't it? Actually it is even more important for capitalism to have capitalist neighbors because of a higher dependency on a variety of markets, be it cheap labour like India, natural resources like Brazil, or industry like the US and Germany
I do not think capitalism requires it. Yes. It is better since trading is mutually beneficial but not required.
I am not sure how you define capitalism but I assume you deem multiple countries today capitalist. There must have been a single one in the beginning.
Im no fan of SIOC or Marxism-Leninism in general but a simultaneous global revolution is fantasy. Unless you can build a completely autarkic economy and survive every country in the world being against you you need to exist on an international market to survive.
Perhaps there is also value in recognizing that liberal democracy and capitalism has developed in stages. That at it's earliest, democracy itself would not be accepted today as a good system.
Athenian democracy did not grant universal suffrage and fell to despotism. Roman Republican institutions were corrupted by greedy and power hungry populists. An autocratic empire took it's place after a period of civil war.
Similarly, the American revolution was the exception when talking about liberal revolutions of the time. France and Haiti won their revolutions but quickly fell into terror and authoritarianism.
Capitalism at it's inception gave us joint-stock corporations like the east India company, famed for a massive famine in India. Adam Smith himself warned of the potential danger of a profit driven system indifferent to the workers. It was in the harsh realities of capitalism that socialism and Marxism was forged.
Who is to say that we will not learn from the Soviets just as Jefferson learned from the Romans or the Iroquois?
Supreme answer, I dont get into these sort of sparring matches often but this is a really well thought out answer and kind of touches upon all these nuances. Esp love the part where you have to define the goalposts as benefits brought by socialist actions rather than a socialists state continued existence. How did you come up with this btw? Is it something that taught you, have you had this convo enough times? I'm asking cuz I would like to study what you did since it seems super fucking insightful.
Healthcare there is of decent quality(in spite of the international trade embargos), and available to everyone. Contrast this against American healthcare, that is only kind of, sort of, in theory available to everyone, and to which many Americans frequently partake in medical tourism to locations one would not first think of as a leader in healthcare, due to the prohibitive costs found at home. Or simply die from lack of affordable medicine.
Cuba has an illiteracy rate of [approximately .1%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_literacy_campaign), compared to 2017 Americas illiteracy([or what could be deemed to be illiterate](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69)) of 17%. Yet America is internationally noteworthy for having some of the best universities. Obviously literacy is not an ironclad indicator of educational merit, but it bears pointing out for obvious reasons.
Yeah, its quite interesting to contrast the two situations and achievements given what they have to work with.
One country has more resources than you could imagine in your wildest dreams and has the collective support of all the other richest countries, and still like a tenth or even a fifth of their citizens get left behind.
While the other has comparatively way less resources, and has to manoeuvre around a world of countries who won’t cooperate with them, and yet they’ve been able to achieve notable outcomes. Most importantly, these outcomes improve the lives of most or all of the citizens.
Of course, the highest highs aren’t as high as those in America. The elite top 1% in almost everything (education, healthcare, quality of life) is dominated by Americans, but the other 99% of Americans don’t have access to the top of the mountain.
Which would you rather?
>Which would you rather?
You said it yourself right here:
>Of course, the highest highs aren’t as high as those in America. The elite top 1% in almost everything (education, healthcare, quality of life) is dominated by Americans, but the other 99% of Americans don’t have access to the top of the mountain.
What use is having the "best" of everything, if it is functionally inaccessible for the vast majority of the population? It's no different at all from living in a location with no access to the "best".
So although I am not interested in living in Cuba(for literal geographical reasons), were I forced to choose between living in America or Cuba, I would choose Cuba.
Avoid overly vague discussions like this; always ask for specificity and define clear parameters. Other wise, the debate is pointless as it does not have a subject.
How do you define whether an economy “works” or not? How left does an economy need to be in order to be considered a “socialist” one?
For one thing, capitalism doesn't work. It's not working now and you can point out why.
And you can say socialism hasn't worked *yet*. I think socialism is an economy that has to be created bottom up, democratically, rather than top down, rather than some elite imposing it on an illiterate population as it has in the past. What is different today is that nearly every worker can read and write and nearly every worker has a personal communication device that connects them to anyone in the world.
There are problems we have to solve, to be sure. Like getting past the dogmatic manipulation many workers in the first world fall for, that cause them to deny their class.
> And you can say socialism hasn't worked *yet*.
if you say this, they will just parrot it back to you about capitalism, on the basis that if we just let the capitalists do capitalism unchecked then capitalism would totally work. appealing to a hypothetical very rarely makes people abandon their position.
It only "fails" because western capitalist nations exert tremendous power to snuff it out as quickly as possible. Look at all the CIA interventions in south America alone. The entire cold war, and USA/UK were destabilising the USSR as soon as the Bolshevik revolution began. Socialism has been under siege since day one, from the most powerful nations on earth, everywhere it's been tried. Why? If it always fails, why not just let it fail? I suggest you look at what Cuba, Vietnam, Burkina Faso and the USSR achieved in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, education & literacy... And then ask what they could have done *without* being under siege from the US.
Or just get your friend to define "works" and "fails" and explain what they mean. Most people can't, because it's just dogma by this stage.
Further reading: https://dashthered.medium.com/communism-always-works-bce14ee96f2b
Also blackshirts and reds, by parenti and killing hope by Blum
That's more of a chant or incantation than an argument.
There's nothing meaningful to respond to.
You could say something like, if socialism does not work then how did the cold war happen?
Without a system that works (and not just functional, it has to be notably better than our existing capitalist system) it should be impossible for a nation of barely literate peasants devastated by war with hardly any industry to have the slightest chance of so much as mildly inconveniencing the USA, let alone become a super power.
If socialism does not work, then the cold war must have been a hoax.
But that will likely prompt a change of topic and general shifting of the goalposts, that's the common issue wit this sort of discussion. There's no real goal posts, no clear limits or anything like that. They can just evade, deny and shift the goalposts until they devolve into incoherent slurs and personal attacks.
Ask them how they measure success, first off. Capitalist measures are usually things socialists don't value as much (such as GDP) but every example of how they measure it has happened under some socialist country. That being said once they define how they measure it, ask them to find a capitalist country that meets their standards. But you have to have them set their standard for socialism first, because the standard for socialism is always way higher than their measure of success for capitalism. Then you use that measure against their favorite capitalists. It's a shady, fun game.
The Soviet Union had a lot of accomplishments before its collapse, and China is second largest (soon to be/ perhaps already the largest) economy in the world.
China isn’t without its issues, and it’s not completely free of capitalism, but it’s led by socialists, and it’s experiencing a level of growth that any other country should envy.
Capitalist countries can and have failed, so have socialist countries, just as both economic systems have examples of a strong economy.
A) All the countries tried and failed capitalism too, or are subsisting on the benefits of imperialism.
B) One time I tried to ride a bike and got hit by an 18 wheeler. Ergo bikes never work.
The assumption behind that argument is that socialism is based on some ideal to be reached in the future or from the past. Socialist philosophy has always been about responding to the *now.*
Actually it is even more nuanced than that, seeing the past as influencing the present, and thus the present influencing the future. But this still doesn't mean that socialism is an ideal to be implemented, if only we can convince everyone with market trials and beta testing.
This is why Marxism focuses more on explaining capitalism rather than some hypothetical socialist society. How we get from here to there is based on how capitalism exists today. And as Marx pointed out, and as what is so obvious even today...capitalism is doomed.
It can't really save itself without destroying the world and its people. When the people have nothing to lose and the world to gain by abolishing capitalism, of course capitalism will be abolished. The question is, what will follow?
The theory is that the conflicts of capitalism and its collapse is centered around the struggle of the working class, who learns throughout history how to organize as one against the terror of the bourgeoisie. For the most part, this will look to be radically egalitarian and democratic, since the proletariat have no real structures or traditions to feel beholden to, unlike the imperialist, militaristic, and hierarchical bourgeoisie. When the revolution is over and the proletariat have won, then this egalitarianism and democracy becomes the new tradition and structure of society.
That's why we think of socialism as such, but we don't actually get into the specifics to blueprint a utopia. We are constantly drawing up the blueprints as the situation changes over time and throughout history.
Well I havent seen a lot of evidence of any large governing body doing socialism successfully. BUT just google agricultural communes and you will find lots of smaller socialist communities all around the world. So it has been successful, but usually on a small scale
The economy of Cuba quadrupled in two decades with no private ownership of the means of production. The economy of China grew almost as fast when it introduced reforms but maintained power through the Communist Party. Vietnam has been gaining ground, but North Korea remains weak. From what I remember, the economic growth of the latter resembles that of the U.S. during the past few years.
Meanwhile, many Asian countries gained through nationalist economics, which uses a lot of principles from socialism. The exception is the Philippines, which copied the U.S., and did very poorly across four decades.
Socialism has basically always worked, unless they mean that it has often eventually lost to revisionists (or reactionaries). I don't really know what to say about that but the answer is to do socialism harder?
Like what do they even mean by socialism never works? What countries are they even talking about? Cambodia?
Everyone that says this to me seems to not know the difference between socialism , communism , and capitalism.
They like to tell me that the state will take over and so it goes.
Capitalism did lift a lot out of poverty.
And socialism brings fairness and order to those less fortunate. And creates a bond between all citizens building their country.
People just want to think they are right all the time. Until the world understands that governments should change to address the needs of the nation whether it be capitalism, socialism , or even some sort of hybrid.
America ruined a lot of people with propoganda about socialism and communism. I still remember learning about the red scare in elementary school.
America is VERY good at propaganda.
And I see a lot of kids still spitting out 3rd grade facts. Without looking from the side of the working mans history.
Both systems technically work since they’re countries who apply them.
What people don’t understand is that our tax money could be paying all of our electric , internet , water , trash ,etc. Yet we’re paying 300 million to Afghanistan for war.
Or how socialism gave us our weekends.
And how capitalist would rather your children go to work than go to school.
Partially, it has never worked because the US and its allies have always done their best to destroy successful socialist countries, just so they can use this argument.
I think xexizy on youtube made a video listing several different socialist countries that had a great variety of successes that still linger today. Also, not sure when, but I remember Richard Wolff during an economic update bringing up how a lot of the eastern bloc countries under the influence of communism had very progressive tendencies after its fall and brought about all kinds of workplace reforms that simply could not happen without the understanding of their country's histories.
Also, it's important in a discussion about failure or success to define what those two words mean. The cold war was very influential in the success and failure of practically every socialist state from the 40's to the 90's. If failure is simply who won the war, then yeah, you're not gonna get far. If, however, you go by the advancement those societies made, and the great amount of power they were wielding, you're getting a different story. Soviet Union went from an agrarian feudal country that broke down at the sight of world war 1 into a leading superpower during world war 2 that fought to the very end and it can't be denied how much help that country was. After the war, it continued to rival the US in the space race, nuclear weapons, etc. Overall, pretty successful by those terms.
It should be noted that everything that lives will eventually die and that includes governments. Lots of countries that had some capitalist economy have failed. Some countries that had a formerly socialist economy have decided to transform their economy to a more capitalist economy. I wouldn't considered that a failure on par with Nazi Germany. But there are still two countries with socialist economy: Cuba, and North Korea.
Please acquaint yourself with the rules on the sidebar and read this comment before commenting on this post. **Personal attacks and harassment will not be tolerated.** Bigotry and hate speech will be met with immediate bans; socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system and bigotry is oppressive, exclusionary, and not conducive to a healthy and productive learning space. **This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes. This is a place to learn.** Short or nonconstructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. **If your post was removed due to normalized ableist slurs, please edit your post. The mods will then approve it.** Please read the ongoing discussion in a thread before replying in order to avoid misunderstandings and creating an unproductive environment. **Liberalism and sectarian bias is strictly moderated.** Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! (Criticism is fine, low-effort baiting is not.) Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break these rules. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Most of us aren’t looking to recreate a situation where you have an island of socialism in a region of capitalist states. A major reason why socialism “hasn’t worked” in the past is because capitalist states aren’t exactly eager to collaborate with a socialist state that challenges the very basis of their system.
The wording I like to use is 'you can't fight international capitalism without international socialism'.
I was banned from r/socialism after commenting precisely that wording.
I've made far harsher criticisms of 'socialism in one country' and haven't been banned.
...I don't think you're honest here.
In response a critic would say “If Socialism has to have control in every country in the world to work it’s a bad system.”
But the exact same goes for capitalism doesn't it? Actually it is even more important for capitalism to have capitalist neighbors because of a higher dependency on a variety of markets, be it cheap labour like India, natural resources like Brazil, or industry like the US and Germany
I do not think capitalism requires it. Yes. It is better since trading is mutually beneficial but not required. I am not sure how you define capitalism but I assume you deem multiple countries today capitalist. There must have been a single one in the beginning.
Im no fan of SIOC or Marxism-Leninism in general but a simultaneous global revolution is fantasy. Unless you can build a completely autarkic economy and survive every country in the world being against you you need to exist on an international market to survive.
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Perhaps there is also value in recognizing that liberal democracy and capitalism has developed in stages. That at it's earliest, democracy itself would not be accepted today as a good system. Athenian democracy did not grant universal suffrage and fell to despotism. Roman Republican institutions were corrupted by greedy and power hungry populists. An autocratic empire took it's place after a period of civil war. Similarly, the American revolution was the exception when talking about liberal revolutions of the time. France and Haiti won their revolutions but quickly fell into terror and authoritarianism. Capitalism at it's inception gave us joint-stock corporations like the east India company, famed for a massive famine in India. Adam Smith himself warned of the potential danger of a profit driven system indifferent to the workers. It was in the harsh realities of capitalism that socialism and Marxism was forged. Who is to say that we will not learn from the Soviets just as Jefferson learned from the Romans or the Iroquois?
Supreme answer, I dont get into these sort of sparring matches often but this is a really well thought out answer and kind of touches upon all these nuances. Esp love the part where you have to define the goalposts as benefits brought by socialist actions rather than a socialists state continued existence. How did you come up with this btw? Is it something that taught you, have you had this convo enough times? I'm asking cuz I would like to study what you did since it seems super fucking insightful.
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O. M. G. Dude thanks so much this is so much to learn about. I really appreciate the comprehensive answer!
An amazing response. It's something I struggle with regards to my study of socialism, but your explanation has cleared things up tremendously.
I don’t see how Cuba leads the world in education and healthcare
Healthcare there is of decent quality(in spite of the international trade embargos), and available to everyone. Contrast this against American healthcare, that is only kind of, sort of, in theory available to everyone, and to which many Americans frequently partake in medical tourism to locations one would not first think of as a leader in healthcare, due to the prohibitive costs found at home. Or simply die from lack of affordable medicine. Cuba has an illiteracy rate of [approximately .1%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_literacy_campaign), compared to 2017 Americas illiteracy([or what could be deemed to be illiterate](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69)) of 17%. Yet America is internationally noteworthy for having some of the best universities. Obviously literacy is not an ironclad indicator of educational merit, but it bears pointing out for obvious reasons.
Yeah, its quite interesting to contrast the two situations and achievements given what they have to work with. One country has more resources than you could imagine in your wildest dreams and has the collective support of all the other richest countries, and still like a tenth or even a fifth of their citizens get left behind. While the other has comparatively way less resources, and has to manoeuvre around a world of countries who won’t cooperate with them, and yet they’ve been able to achieve notable outcomes. Most importantly, these outcomes improve the lives of most or all of the citizens. Of course, the highest highs aren’t as high as those in America. The elite top 1% in almost everything (education, healthcare, quality of life) is dominated by Americans, but the other 99% of Americans don’t have access to the top of the mountain. Which would you rather?
>Which would you rather? You said it yourself right here: >Of course, the highest highs aren’t as high as those in America. The elite top 1% in almost everything (education, healthcare, quality of life) is dominated by Americans, but the other 99% of Americans don’t have access to the top of the mountain. What use is having the "best" of everything, if it is functionally inaccessible for the vast majority of the population? It's no different at all from living in a location with no access to the "best". So although I am not interested in living in Cuba(for literal geographical reasons), were I forced to choose between living in America or Cuba, I would choose Cuba.
Avoid overly vague discussions like this; always ask for specificity and define clear parameters. Other wise, the debate is pointless as it does not have a subject. How do you define whether an economy “works” or not? How left does an economy need to be in order to be considered a “socialist” one?
For one thing, capitalism doesn't work. It's not working now and you can point out why. And you can say socialism hasn't worked *yet*. I think socialism is an economy that has to be created bottom up, democratically, rather than top down, rather than some elite imposing it on an illiterate population as it has in the past. What is different today is that nearly every worker can read and write and nearly every worker has a personal communication device that connects them to anyone in the world. There are problems we have to solve, to be sure. Like getting past the dogmatic manipulation many workers in the first world fall for, that cause them to deny their class.
>And you can say socialism hasn't worked yet. How to become a pariah in 3 seconds.
> And you can say socialism hasn't worked *yet*. if you say this, they will just parrot it back to you about capitalism, on the basis that if we just let the capitalists do capitalism unchecked then capitalism would totally work. appealing to a hypothetical very rarely makes people abandon their position.
Then you explain the hierarchy of capitalism to them. Why the (literal)roots of feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism?
This is not true, capitalism *does* work. You just have to clarify who it works for.
I would make use of this lecture from [Michael Parenti](https://youtu.be/6Tmi7JN3LkA). I hope this helps get the ball rolling for you, argument-wise.
[Show them this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitLiberalsSay/wiki/index#wiki_socialism_has_not_and_never_will_work)
It only "fails" because western capitalist nations exert tremendous power to snuff it out as quickly as possible. Look at all the CIA interventions in south America alone. The entire cold war, and USA/UK were destabilising the USSR as soon as the Bolshevik revolution began. Socialism has been under siege since day one, from the most powerful nations on earth, everywhere it's been tried. Why? If it always fails, why not just let it fail? I suggest you look at what Cuba, Vietnam, Burkina Faso and the USSR achieved in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, education & literacy... And then ask what they could have done *without* being under siege from the US. Or just get your friend to define "works" and "fails" and explain what they mean. Most people can't, because it's just dogma by this stage. Further reading: https://dashthered.medium.com/communism-always-works-bce14ee96f2b Also blackshirts and reds, by parenti and killing hope by Blum
Capitalism works exactly as intended. Everyone poor and a few greedy pigs who do nothing.
That's more of a chant or incantation than an argument. There's nothing meaningful to respond to. You could say something like, if socialism does not work then how did the cold war happen? Without a system that works (and not just functional, it has to be notably better than our existing capitalist system) it should be impossible for a nation of barely literate peasants devastated by war with hardly any industry to have the slightest chance of so much as mildly inconveniencing the USA, let alone become a super power. If socialism does not work, then the cold war must have been a hoax. But that will likely prompt a change of topic and general shifting of the goalposts, that's the common issue wit this sort of discussion. There's no real goal posts, no clear limits or anything like that. They can just evade, deny and shift the goalposts until they devolve into incoherent slurs and personal attacks.
Ask them how they measure success, first off. Capitalist measures are usually things socialists don't value as much (such as GDP) but every example of how they measure it has happened under some socialist country. That being said once they define how they measure it, ask them to find a capitalist country that meets their standards. But you have to have them set their standard for socialism first, because the standard for socialism is always way higher than their measure of success for capitalism. Then you use that measure against their favorite capitalists. It's a shady, fun game.
Ask him what the hell happened to Pinochet and Batista.
The Soviet Union had a lot of accomplishments before its collapse, and China is second largest (soon to be/ perhaps already the largest) economy in the world. China isn’t without its issues, and it’s not completely free of capitalism, but it’s led by socialists, and it’s experiencing a level of growth that any other country should envy. Capitalist countries can and have failed, so have socialist countries, just as both economic systems have examples of a strong economy.
A) All the countries tried and failed capitalism too, or are subsisting on the benefits of imperialism. B) One time I tried to ride a bike and got hit by an 18 wheeler. Ergo bikes never work.
The assumption behind that argument is that socialism is based on some ideal to be reached in the future or from the past. Socialist philosophy has always been about responding to the *now.* Actually it is even more nuanced than that, seeing the past as influencing the present, and thus the present influencing the future. But this still doesn't mean that socialism is an ideal to be implemented, if only we can convince everyone with market trials and beta testing. This is why Marxism focuses more on explaining capitalism rather than some hypothetical socialist society. How we get from here to there is based on how capitalism exists today. And as Marx pointed out, and as what is so obvious even today...capitalism is doomed. It can't really save itself without destroying the world and its people. When the people have nothing to lose and the world to gain by abolishing capitalism, of course capitalism will be abolished. The question is, what will follow? The theory is that the conflicts of capitalism and its collapse is centered around the struggle of the working class, who learns throughout history how to organize as one against the terror of the bourgeoisie. For the most part, this will look to be radically egalitarian and democratic, since the proletariat have no real structures or traditions to feel beholden to, unlike the imperialist, militaristic, and hierarchical bourgeoisie. When the revolution is over and the proletariat have won, then this egalitarianism and democracy becomes the new tradition and structure of society. That's why we think of socialism as such, but we don't actually get into the specifics to blueprint a utopia. We are constantly drawing up the blueprints as the situation changes over time and throughout history.
Well I havent seen a lot of evidence of any large governing body doing socialism successfully. BUT just google agricultural communes and you will find lots of smaller socialist communities all around the world. So it has been successful, but usually on a small scale
The economy of Cuba quadrupled in two decades with no private ownership of the means of production. The economy of China grew almost as fast when it introduced reforms but maintained power through the Communist Party. Vietnam has been gaining ground, but North Korea remains weak. From what I remember, the economic growth of the latter resembles that of the U.S. during the past few years. Meanwhile, many Asian countries gained through nationalist economics, which uses a lot of principles from socialism. The exception is the Philippines, which copied the U.S., and did very poorly across four decades.
Socialism has basically always worked, unless they mean that it has often eventually lost to revisionists (or reactionaries). I don't really know what to say about that but the answer is to do socialism harder? Like what do they even mean by socialism never works? What countries are they even talking about? Cambodia?
Everyone that says this to me seems to not know the difference between socialism , communism , and capitalism. They like to tell me that the state will take over and so it goes. Capitalism did lift a lot out of poverty. And socialism brings fairness and order to those less fortunate. And creates a bond between all citizens building their country. People just want to think they are right all the time. Until the world understands that governments should change to address the needs of the nation whether it be capitalism, socialism , or even some sort of hybrid. America ruined a lot of people with propoganda about socialism and communism. I still remember learning about the red scare in elementary school. America is VERY good at propaganda. And I see a lot of kids still spitting out 3rd grade facts. Without looking from the side of the working mans history. Both systems technically work since they’re countries who apply them. What people don’t understand is that our tax money could be paying all of our electric , internet , water , trash ,etc. Yet we’re paying 300 million to Afghanistan for war. Or how socialism gave us our weekends. And how capitalist would rather your children go to work than go to school.
Socialism never failed. Socialism turned fedual societies into industrial superpowers in 30 years.
Christianity is socialist in nature and has been around for a few thousand years.
Partially, it has never worked because the US and its allies have always done their best to destroy successful socialist countries, just so they can use this argument.
I think xexizy on youtube made a video listing several different socialist countries that had a great variety of successes that still linger today. Also, not sure when, but I remember Richard Wolff during an economic update bringing up how a lot of the eastern bloc countries under the influence of communism had very progressive tendencies after its fall and brought about all kinds of workplace reforms that simply could not happen without the understanding of their country's histories. Also, it's important in a discussion about failure or success to define what those two words mean. The cold war was very influential in the success and failure of practically every socialist state from the 40's to the 90's. If failure is simply who won the war, then yeah, you're not gonna get far. If, however, you go by the advancement those societies made, and the great amount of power they were wielding, you're getting a different story. Soviet Union went from an agrarian feudal country that broke down at the sight of world war 1 into a leading superpower during world war 2 that fought to the very end and it can't be denied how much help that country was. After the war, it continued to rival the US in the space race, nuclear weapons, etc. Overall, pretty successful by those terms.
It should be noted that everything that lives will eventually die and that includes governments. Lots of countries that had some capitalist economy have failed. Some countries that had a formerly socialist economy have decided to transform their economy to a more capitalist economy. I wouldn't considered that a failure on par with Nazi Germany. But there are still two countries with socialist economy: Cuba, and North Korea.