Also because capitalism has a much broader global reach, it can hide poverty away in other countries.
The fundamental problem was unproductivity, which resulted in shortages of consumer goods and queuing for things such as sports shoes.
The system boasted enormous production of coal and steel, but was much worse in producing "less interesting" items such as "glue that worked", "washing machine that would not vibrate like hell" or even enough toilet paper. At one point, we had a shortage of sanitary towels.
Dissatisfaction with those elementary things contributed to the Velvet Revolution much more than lack of political freedoms. Plenty of people can live with their mouths shut, but they start getting really resentful if their new shoes leak.
I have no doubt that countries in the periphery of major communist states had it worse... Just like countries in the periphery of capitalist states have it worse today.
If you ask members of the communist elite how communism was, they would probably tell you it was amazing. If you ask the lowest class of capitalists, they will tell you that capitalism is horrible - These days even many members of the middle class will tell you that capitalism is horrible; unfortunately the US capitalist system can't drain China so much anymore (now that China has become an economic superpower) so now it has to drain its own citizens locally.
Why do you think democrats are so keen on increasing immigration? You think they actually want more Elon Musks and Sudar Pichais to compete with them? They want more wage slaves to drain from! Elon and Sundar are immigrant bait!
Americans are going to find out for the first time what capitalism is really about.
When the Russians came to "liberate" certain Eastern European countries, they said: "We have it better than the oppressed people of the USA, and your country is even richer than Russia, so give me that watch!". Fwiw, I think they truly believed they were doing better than the US.
If there is a lesson here for followers of Marx, the ability to make jeans or coca-cola (i.e. whatever fad the lowest-denominator consumers want this month) is a very important characteristic of a system.
[0]: E.g., a CIA backed government killed ~1 million people with connections to the communist party in Indonesia.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/18/how-jakarta-became-...
Not really, satellite states like czechoslovakia had it comparably better to the countries in the union.
Czech part of Czechoslovakia was one of the industrial centers of Europe since the early 19th century and it was mostly spared from the bombing campaigns of WWII. As such, we had much better living standards than ordinary Russians. When the Soviet-led task force occupied us in 1968 to prevent our split from the Soviet Bloc, the obviously better living standard demoralized the Soviet soldiers who genuinely believed that they were coming to our rescue. The first wave was recalled back to the USSR and their replacements were closed off in remote barracks, not to come into contact with our civilian life.
But rural countries like Bulgaria had very shitty living standards in Communism. My father's family is from Bulgaria, even today the country does not look anywhere near as good as the West and may never catch up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StjIv33zJ9c&t=1833
(wait until 30:51 for shoes being glued. Anyone know what the machine at 31:13 is?)
My head-canon for ex-ussr 90's includes "jawa" cycles, "abibas" shoes, and "USA california" caps: what was it like for ex-warsaw pact?
Q. Why were Adam and Eve the first communists?
On the contrary, capitalist system tend to have freedoms (like speech). These freedoms makes a difference wrt. corruption.
I think the argument is that systems with personal freedoms, like free speech, are better at correcting their shortcomings.
I don't know if you can make a communist system with personal freedoms. Maybe.. but classically we've associated communism with planned economies. In my mind, planned economy sounds ideal, until you realize that it's the same as waterfall software development :D