What were the chances of the Soviet Union outlasting the US, rather than the alternative?
It's interesting to compare the Soviet model of slow and steady growth with the ultimately successful American alternative, that demanded constant expansion to offset regular crises and ultimately took some genuinely drastic measures (the neoliberal transformation) to ensure growth.
Was there any point in Cold War history where it seemed like Western capitalism might fall, and the Soviet economy would stand uncontested?
Ian Gray
Honestly, if the USSR had been able to avoid fucking itself with a political crisis, 2008 would have been the end of American hegemony.
Adrian Williams
No, only the 1929 Great depression.
Isaiah Lee
Really? The late 70s did not cause the USSR to become supreme.
Daniel Morales
That was caused by the period of Keynesian social-democratic class cooperation reaching its limit and neoliberalism coming in to save capitalism.
As we can see now, capitalism has no answer for the contradictions caused by neoliberalism. If the USSR was still around, 2008 would likely marked its ascendency as the new world power, because the Soviet system had shown itself to be incredibly resilient in the face of laissez faire/neoliberal crisis.
Daniel Rogers
Approximately 0%. Follow the capital- SU did not have it. For the Soviets to win they would have had to flip someone more developed, and after 1945 that seems pretty unlikely. I think looking to Germany was correct but it just didn't work out (putting it mildly).
Gabriel Evans
Soviet Russia was only just becoming a functioning economy at this point
Xavier Williams
Huh, interesting point
Jason Long
using gdp as a legit indicator… pol, you should disguise yourself better
usa was in the verge of collapse themselves, only the cheap labor of the euroeast and china have saved capitalism these few past decades, the crisis you see today is the crisis you'd have seen 50 years ago if it wasn't by childminded gorbachov
Joshua Rivera
where can I read more on this
Is there anything like Chuang but for eastern europe??
Brandon Stewart
Sooner than that. People tend to forget how Western companies were expanding in the 90s in the void left by Second World. I wouldn't be surprised, if US economy collapsed in the 90s.
Why would they? The sign of expansion collapsing and attention of Capitalists turning inwards were neo-liberal reforms (Thatcher/Reagan).
They did not have it before the industrialization.
What for? Until the Khrushchev Reaction begun, Soviets were developing much faster than the West.
Ha-Joon Chang? I don't think it's cheap labor alone. New markets were much more important.
Easton Rodriguez
Right now the Soviet Union would be rolling out their version of mIRC.
Alexander Jones
...
Gavin Jones
The Soviets invented rotary-dial telephones because great minds think alike, amirite?
Jaxson Phillips
American education strikes again.
Liam Johnson
Maybe not in 2017, but they would be getting there. Soviet economic development had no booms and busts. They would be unaffected by 2008. Their economic growth was as Brezhnev puts it, slow but steady, while capitalism doesn't function with with crisis.
It is really interesting to think what would have happened if the USSR survived 1991. Would the entire Eastern Bloc have their own internet? Or would the USSR exchange banter with Trump on Twitter and share Holla Forums memes?
Ayden Perez
without crisis*
Hudson Howard
makes me sad to think about :(
Nathaniel Ross
Unless capitalism collapsed while the USSR was around, the chance was zero. Capitalism will always outproduce socialism. Trying to compete with it is doomed to fail, and trying to simply co-exist with it is still very debatable.
Juan Mitchell
Not much, because they stopped gullaging people after the corn man reached power. The gulag program should have to continue until at least our present time, only by now the new socialist man would have been born.
Camden Hill
Would have been better if gorby died in 84 and another guy took power who implemented pic related
Nathaniel Long
Who cares? A world without iShit woul be better
Lincoln Cook
where was there socialism?
The Cold War was a bourgeois capitalist system versus a capitalist society of proletarian intent. Had the Soviets beaten the West at their own game, it's very probably we'd have communism now.