Political Memes

It's odd to acknowledge the long history of sabotage against socialist countries--by the most powerful country in the history of the Earth--while also implying that socialist countries would fail on their own. If they would fail, then there's no reason to sabotage them. But if you'd like examples, look at the achievements in Cuba, Asia, and, yes, the U.S.S.R.

From Micheal Parentti's Blackshirts and Reds:

E.g 1: "Today, Cuba is a different place. For all its mistakes and abuses, the Cuban Revolution brought sanitation, schools, health clinics, jobs, housing, and human services to a level not found throughout most of the Third World and in many parts of the First World. Infant mortality in Cuba has dropped from 60 per 1000 in 1960 to 9.7 per 1000 by 1991, while life expectancy rose from 55 to 75 in that same period. Smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, polio, and numerous other diseases have been wiped out by improved living standards and public health programs. Cuba has enjoyed a level of literacy higher than in the United States and a life expectancy that compares well with advanced industrial nations."

E.g 2: "Consider Kerala, a state in India where the actions of popular organizations and mass movements have won important victories over the last forty years against politico-economic oppression, generating a level of social development considerably better than that found in most of the Third World, and accomplished without outside investment. Kerala has mass literacy, a lower birth rate and lower death rate than the rest of India, better public health services, fewer child workers, higher nutritional levels (thanks to a publicly subsidized food rationing system), more enlightened legal support and educational programs for women, and some social security protections for working people and for the destitute and physically handicapped. In addition, the people of Kerala radically altered a complex and exploitative system of agrarian relations and won important victories against the more horrid forms of caste oppression. Though Kerala has no special sources of wealth, it has had decades of communist organizing and political struggle that reached and moved large numbers of people and breathed life into the states democracy."

E.g 3: "During the years of Stalins reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism doesn't work" is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history."

In each of these cases, we see socialist policies lead to desirable outcomes despite serious economic barriers. Many capitalist developing nations cannot say the same. We conveniently seem to forget the exploited, overworked, and underpaid millions who suffer and die under the yoke of capitalism. Land, labor, and resources are stripped away and systematically funneled to the world's richest; and somehow we repeat the propaganda that this is the best system we can hope to achieve.