A socialist or communist state requires the power to reside with the people (ie., democracy, or some similar form), and wealth to be distributed according to need.

The USSR horribly failed the democracy test.

I think that using "socialism" as a catch-all for authoritarianism is intellectually dishonest. Saying North Korea is pure socialism has just as much ground as saying Zimbabwe is pure capitalism. It's not because a dictator claims to be serving the greater good, the will of the nation, democracy, socialism, captilism or whatever that that is also true.

If the USSR was never a socialist prototype, then that begs the question what was it? They certainly thought they were the epitome of socialism.

Personally I do not like the world ‘socialism’ because it is so heavily freighted with propaganda that people cannot think about the underlying phenomena objectively. I prefer the phrase ‘democratic, cooperative economic production’. Clearly the USSR was not an example of such a system. Soviet communism was an economic and political system created by sadistic, autocratic ideologues and imposed by force of terror on a culture with no tradition of democratic institutions. Furthermore, the USSR was fully committed to economic growth and to short term exploitation resources in the pursuit of power and wealth, though admittedly they were much less efficient at this process than we were.

One could have argued that the failure of the democratic Greek city states and the failure of the Roman republic constituted definitive proof that democratic institutions are inconsistent with human nature and should be relegated to the scrap heap of history with greater force of reason than arguing that the failure of the Soviet Union constitutes proof that democratic, cooperative economic production is a practical impossibility. If your intuition tells you than such a form of social organization is inconsistent with human nature I certainly cannot disprove your intuition, but you really need to come up with better supporting reasons for it than the fall of the USSR.

Personally, I find the communism vs. capitalism debate to be somewhat beside the point. We are all heavily dependent on the community in which we live. If Bill Gates along with a mountain of gold bars were transported to an uninhabited world then Bill would be rich no longer. The only true source of wealth is a healthy functioning community. All so called ‘stores of value’ are merely claims against the output of the community. If explicitly recognizing this fact is ‘communism’ the communism is merely common sense.

On the other hand if we are to have any production enterprises above the scale of cottage industries then some method must found of capitalizing such production enterprises. The craft guilds of the middle ages were capitalized industries. The question is whether the current system for investing in production infrastructure, which I call private finance capitalism to distinguish it from capitalism in a more general sense, can function effectively in a world in which production is being limited by the availability of resources. I believe that the clear answer to this question is “no”. The only effective way to deal with resource depletion is to voluntarily limit consumption. In the current economic system limiting consumption would lead to a huge economic depression and massive unemployment. This reality is a fundamental structural defect of private finance capitalism which must be fixed if we have any hope of creating a humane, democratic society in the long term. If it is really true that our only choices are Wall Street or the Politburo, then I fear that the Politburo is our future.

Richard Wakefield,

Nicaragua has been peachy under capitalism?

As far as what the USSR was,Richard Wakefield, from the beginning it was a beleaguered political state, beleagured mainly at instigation of The US and England, two lovely just so socially conscious states.

It was also, Richard Wakefield, the state that saved your ass from German world domination so that bare bum of yours could be chewed to shreds by Capitalist bankers and an elite-run Greenspan with a prime loan to sell you. And that is just a bit of icing on the cake called America, the beautiful capitalist state. Fauugh!

Take a look at what capitalism has done for you and your country Richard Wakefield. A country that lives on burgers and styles its life after such models as Paris Hilton, has 1 in 31 citizens in the slammer, doesn't keep treaties, treats other nations and their people like disposable ass wipe. Cuba Nicaragua Vietnam Irag Afghanistan and even little weensey Granada a withering trail of capitalist bloodletting. Don't talk to me about the mote in a failed Socialisms eye, tell me about how well your country and the world fare with that beam capitalism in yours.