>failure of socialism to produce anything useful
The Soviets were kicking America's ass in the space race up until Kennedy said "Fuck everything, we're doing five blades[0]" and shot for the literal moon. They absolutely could produce useful things, the problem was that those useful things were produced at the expense of other, possibly more useful things. Eventually the US was able to exploit this by electing a crazy person to spook the Soviets into overspending on their military, which is why we survived with merely a huge deficit spending problem rather than extreme rationing and starvation.
However, the gross misallocation of resources done under Soviet communism is not unique to Soviet communism. Capitalists do it all the time, the only difference is that free markets usually punish them for it quicker. But they don't always punish. People like Musk can still spend loads of other people's money on useless bullshit, like Twitter, or sending people to Mars[1].
[0] https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...
[1] Mars is a dead rock covered in poison constantly being blasted with radiation. It wants to kill you in more ways than regular ol' space wants to kill you, and making it not kill you is likely impossible given our current technological capability. Anyone going to Mars today will be condemning themselves to living the rest of their lives out in a very small bubble of rad-shielded underground bunker.