The Soviet Union was a feudal third world country prior to the implementation of socialism.

Yugoslavia was a fascist dictatorship prior to the implementation of socialism.

Cuba was a fascist slave colony prior to the implementation of socialism.

Viet Nam was a French slave colony prior to the implementation of socialism.

China was a feudal third world country prior to the implementation of socialism.

Laos was a feudal third world country prior to the implementation of socialism.

East Germany was a wartorn fascist dictatorship prior to the implementation of socialism.

Libya was an African slave colony prior to the implementation of socialism.

Ukraine was a fascist dictatorship prior to the implementation of socialism.

As were Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and several others. These days their NATO-backed foreign correspondents cry crocodile tears about the great Soviet horrors, but we forget too easily that these people fought for the Nazis, and killed Jews, and had ruthless monarchies and military dictatorships that sprang out of the Napoleonic era.

They carried out ethnic cleanings, traded women like slaves, burned Jews on pyres, hanged homosexuals from lamp posts. They were illiterate religious fanatics who lived in absolute barbarity. This is what Europe looked like under free market capitalism.

The only failed socialist country I can think of is Cambodia, and the reason why was because Pol Pot was employed by the CIA as a mercenary in order to sabotage it from within. So there's your market forces for you.

Moreover, I don't know why there is this false dichotomy between markets and socialism. Every socialist system has had markets. The difference is that the markets work for the people rather than the people working for the markets.

And it has been a rousing success if you examine it by human standards. Yes, profits took a nose dive, and investment was a bit less stimulated. But they wiped out homelessness, hunger, illiteracy and disease in countries where people used to have smallpox and burn witches.

Prior to Vietnamese socialism, it was legal for a white man to burn a disobedient native. They would put spikes into their anuses and roast them over campfires. That was what capitalism looked like in Asia.

Prior to Chinese socialism, people starved so much so that they would eat the dead, you could buy human flesh at wet markets because of the extreme famine. Famine was so common to China that it influenced their culture for centuries, that's why they have so much diverse meat for sale.

That's why they eat grasshoppers and scorpions, because for centuries, prior to socialism, they starved to the point of where these foods became normal.

And I think it's a little bit rich when western cultures sneer at Chinese wet markets, even though that food was all people had to eat after Britain, Portugal and Spain exported all their food crops and cattle for centuries during colonial plunder.

People love going on about the great leap forward, and the 20 million who starved, but they forget the last famine under imperial China, which took 40 million lives.

And I don't think you can just wave a magic wand and make famine go away overnight. From the looks of things, China's starvation has drastically reduced as socialism has advanced, and today Xi Jingping's five year plan is lifting more people out of poverty than any other government policy on the planet.

Then you can look at Albania, which was again, a fascist dictatorship prior to socialism. It was the first country in Europe to fully electrify so that every single household was connected to a power grid, this is an amazing technological advancement.

Similarly, the USSR was the first country to send the first man, and also the first woman, into space. They also invented the cellular telephone, they invented a lot of the technologies we take for granted today.

Similarly Cuba, they have the most advanced medical research facilities in the world, and the most doctors per capita, and when the pandemic came, they were the ones who sent doctors and medical supplies to bail out free market capitalist countries like Italy, Spain and France.

So I think the part of your argument here that's doing all the work is "To the best of my knowledge."

And I'm not being snide here, I'm Eurasian, this is my culture, I don't expect you to know all the history and stuff. I was raised being taught these things. And a very good English book about it is called Blackshirts and Reds, I recommend you read it if you want to expand your knowledge.

https://es1lib.org/book/981420/378c5d

(Also don't read into the title too much, "rational" in this context is not a compliment, he just means that they had a clear and deliberate purpose that is often mystified by contemporary historians.)

I certainly have read a lot of western books, like Plato's Republic, and Emmanuel Kant, in fact one of my favorite authors is none other than Thomas Paine. I think the man was a genius, and I think he was the most authentic author to real popular American values. It's just a shame he was exiled by the government prior to implementing those values.