This reminds me of when I explain relativity to laymen, and say that experiments have confirmed predictions made by the theory, and they respond be asking me, w

This reminds me of when I explain relativity to laymen, and say that experiments have confirmed predictions made by the theory, and they respond be asking me, what if they hadn't? It's an odd form of ill-founded question: if special relativity is true, then experiments must confirm it. You can't disconfirm a true theory except by living in a different universe. My circuitous point is, the "hardline" libertarian/anti-communist answer to your question is that the USSR was fundamentally incapable of having turned out better. For them, the USSR failing is the same as the experiments that relativity: they are an inescapable result of a fundamental, unchangeable conclusion. You can't just ask "well, what if it had worked" for the same reasons you can't ask "well, what if the experiments disproved relativity?" Experiments can't disprove relativity because it's true, and communism can't work because it's fundamentally ill-founded. To ask what would happen in a world where communism worked is akin to asking what would you drink if hydrogen and oxygen didn't combine to form water. Please note that I'm playing Devil's Advocate here. I, personally, think that the USSR could have turned out better if it were managed better, although I don't consider myself educated enough on the topic to say how much better. My personal opinions aside, my point is, asking "what if the USSR had worked out better?" is not something you can so easily just ask someone. For some axioms, functional communism is a false statement, and you can't introduce contradictions into an axiomatic system and result in anything coherent. Some people see the USSR failing as an experiment confirming a true statement, not data that serves as evidence for or against a statement. As far as your hypothetical though, I do think that if the USSR's failing was a contingent, rather than fundamental, result, and if it had not failed or at least turned out less poorly, then that would dampen people's opinions against it. Consider that even with the weight of the evidence against it, there are still people who view it as a nice ideal (with varying opinions of attainability). As the practical evidence gets more ambiguous, that viewpoint looks more reasonable.