The Immortal Goon wrote:To say that "real socialism didn't work," is to ignore two things:
In the first, most but not all Marxists, would contend that " real socialism," cannot exist in any form except on as a global system because capitalism exists on a global scale and most be dialectically replaced.
That comes down to saying that communism will never be anything put a pipe-dream. Politics is not about having your ideal world presented to you on a golden platter. Politics is about adopting the most appropriate policies to deal with issues in the real world. Thus, communism will always remain a theory.
Anyways, during the 60s and 70s the socialist model had gone "global" almost as much as the capitalist system. I don't believe that communism or any such system will ever again come to be adopted on such a large scale. Real socialism failed not because it lacked global expansion but because the market economies achieved better results both in economic terms and in terms of human liberties.
Second, the argument is a fallacy in that history doesn't work that way. Cromwell became Lord Protector of Britain and failed to make a proper capitalist republic, yet I don't hear capitalists in a republic screaming that the creation of a capitalist republic is impossible because Cromwell failed.
Capitalism like communism (I use these simplifications for the sake of brevity) may succeed or not for a number of different reasons. But the fact remains that the market economy achieved better results than real socialism in virtually all cases, and most notably in the comparable cases of East and West Germany.
Thus, short of a miracle happening, we can safely conclude that communism does not work.
It is pure hubris to expect billions of people to blindly trust an intellectual model that has failed each and every test and caused untold harm to hundreds of millions.
Political Interest wrote: the question is, why did East Germany not open its doors completely as most communists I have talked to want to happen?
Oh, I see! This is an elaborate way of saying that communists don't put their money were their mouth is. I never thought that we needed any proof for that.
In East Germany guest workers were asked to return to their countries. Any guest worker who became pregnant with a German was forced to have an abortion.
Well, not quite. Some managed to stay. Even today there are Vietnamese in Germany who were sent to the GDR as guest workers. Anyways, guest workers in West Germany too were supposed to return to their country. In Germany they say "we invited workers, but humans came." In other words, a laborer is a human being too who has all kinds of personal ambitions that cannot be reduced to his role of being a temporary guest worker. Many will form attachments with their host country and end up staying. Such is the normal course of life.
These policies would be completely unacceptable to most communists in somewhere like England.
Obviously, that is the difference between theoretical and real socialism.