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Comment by iwr | Hacker News Reader

Compare that to the rapid developments of post-war Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, then post-1990: Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic etc. We have to look at opportunity costs, not just raw improvements.

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None of those situations (which I have any knowledge about) are even remotely comparable to that of Russia at the time of revolution. Germany and Japan had been fully industrialized. Singapore basically grew by attracting capital as a tax haven.

Russia in 1917 was about as developed as Germany or Japan in 1850 - or Britain in 1750.

The funny thing is that this fact means the revolution totally contradicted Marxist doctrine, which predicts communism as a natural remedy to the excesses of capitalism. Russia hadn't even entered the captitalist "phase" yet - it was literally the least appropriate country in Europe to stage a communist revolution in.

IMO, the funny thing is the United states (1950 - 1980) is probably the closest example of the Marxist ideal you can find. After industrialization you had violent conflict between workers and factory owners that resulted in places like GM being gutted by their workers who kept the fruits of their labors. Arguably by the end of the cold war it was more a question of how you organize a communist country than would you create one.

PS: Of course with automation and computing many of the old assumptions stopped applying but it’s hard to complain when someone only sees 75 - 100 and not 150 years into the future.

While I see your point against those examples it's worth noting that Japan in the mid 19th century was a feudal society with hundreds of thousands of samurai, and by WWII they were fielding a massive navy with aircraft carriers capable of striking the USA. And the difference between the wealth of Americans at the beginning of the 20th century compared to the end is also larger in many ways. However, the difference between starving and a full belly is certainly something which people will pay more attention to rather than the difference between being well fed and then acquiring large houses, refrigeration, washing machines, one or two cars, mobile phones, radio, television, landing a couple of guys on the moon and getting them back, computers and the Internet. The scope of western capitalist development in the 20th century is simply staggering compared to any pissant planned economy, and it was done without the most horrific mass murders of the 20th century that we see under the communist regimes.

Also, Lenin's modification of Marxist theory is somewhat irrelevant, the Marxist foundation was entirely wrong on a number of massive points: one more wasn't going to make a difference.

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