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I wonder how much of the USSR’s success (until it wasn't) can be attributed to Marxism-Leninism rather than the fact that the country produced oil. It’s like a
by worrycue 3y ago
I wonder how much of the USSR’s success (until it wasn't) can be attributed to Marxism-Leninism rather than the fact that the country produced oil.
It’s like attributing the success of Saudi Arabia to its theocratical monarchy.
Oil is basically a cheat code for countries. If you have oil, you will do OK regardless of political/economical system.
Even then, the quality of life in the USSR was pretty poor compared to the capitalist West.
- paulmd 3y agoThat’s actually completely not true at all and resource-rich countries actually tend to underperform (by getting trapped in an economy that only does one thing and when that resource disappears it’s gone). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse You can even see shades of this now with Russia… what is going to happen when the gas runs out, or if western countries block international trade of their gas (as they attempted to do recently)? Nothing good.
- worrycue 3y agoI’m not saying oil rich countries necessarily have strong diverse economies. I’m saying that they do OK regardless of their political/economic system. Saudi Arabia and Russia has been trucking along all these decades despite their less than ideal economies all thanks to oil.