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>Isn't Communism very similar to your perfect world? All the people were provided for and they worked for everyone and everyone was equal. However, that didn't
by crdoconnor 11y ago
>Isn't Communism very similar to your perfect world? All the people were provided for and they worked for everyone and everyone was equal. However, that didn't work out too well.
A system where everybody was equal was never tried.
A system where the necessities were guaranteed was tried - in the Soviet Union - and it was, by and large, very successful.
It was successful enough, in fact, that Western elites responded to it in the 50s by implementing similar guarantees - NHS, social security, medicare, etc. (McCarthy's witchhunts and the Vietnam war weren't the only responses to communism).
What made the Soviet Union finally unable to keep up economically was the prohibitive cost of the arms race and declining oil export revenues, not the lack of capitalist profit motives.
- arethuza 11y agoI really don't think the UK NHS was created in response to anything the Soviet Union did - the Labour movement in the UK had a long history long before the Soviets were around. The NHS actually shows the power of democracy over an elite - after all the 1945 election removed Churchill and voted in the socialist Attlee government. Attlee was so effective as a leader that even Thatcher spoke highly of him: 'Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the Nineties, he was all substance and no show.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1194059/A-giant-man-Clem-Attlee-stood-decency-duty--stark-contrast-todays-MPs.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1194059/A-giant-ma...
- crdoconnor 11y agoOn the idea that it was all about Atlee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory Do you think the fact that the UK NHS funding model closely followed the existing Soviet NHS model was a coincidence? The Tories fought long and hard in the 40s to make the proposed new 'cover everybody' system insurance based (something like Obamacare I guess) and ultimately didn't prevail. They used all sorts of scare tactics that would seem very familiar today. A large part of that failure was Labour being able to point to the Soviet Union (not yet enemies of the highest order) and go "look, we can achieve the same success in curing infectious disease that they did".
- kofejnik 11y agoUnlike you, I have personally experienced communism and Soviet Union. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.