this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2022
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Of course it teaches us things, but why do you think that the fall of the USSR implies a critical failure of Marxism altogether? Many capitalist countries have fallen, does that alone mean capitalism was a failure and shouldn't be a thing?
They likely would not only choose to act differently based on lessons learned, but they would have to. Each country is in different conditions. The USSR was formed at the end of WWI from a monarchy and had its capital city invaded in WWII, lost approximately 20-25 million people in the war, and later faced decades of antagonism from Europe and the world nuclear superpower USA (who were almost untouched by WWII) through the Cold War, among a myriad of other rather unique factors.
My point being, the way they acted and decisions they made weren't some universally applicable comparison. They had a unique country, unique culture, a unique set of enemies and a unique set of leaders to approach a different set of challenges. There are lessons to be learnt that can be applied to other places. China's communist party has to act differently based on their challenges and developed their own application of Marxist ideas, North Korea's Juche ideology has a different interpretation based on their situation, etc..
Another point to mention is that the USSR, for much of its existence, adopted the ideology of Marxism-Leninism (which was actually developed by Stalin, not Lenin, based on his understanding of orthodox Marxism and of Leninism). So there are likely to be issues with Marxism-Leninism which aren't inherent in Marxism.
Well, he did lead the country that crushed the Nazi invasion of Europe, helped bring a war-torn nation into a world superpower, and other benefits to much of the citizens there, considering what the country was like before.
I personally don't admire Stalin, there were lots of things he did that I think were horrible. However, his reign did bring many benefits that even former USSR citizens admire.
I can find 10 in 2 minutes. They certainly exist, it's just that most mainstream platforms kick off the communities that admire him, because they tend to be edgelords, obnoxiously racist people who make other users uncomfortable, or merely a reputational risk that hurts a company's profits.
edit: grammar
not trying to mock you or anything, but which ones are these? I am genuinely curious.
Since capitalism has been the most common economic system since its rise in the 19th century, it's the majority of the countries that have fallen since then, and a bunch of sovereign states before. It's a large (and probably contested, based on definitions) list. I am confident, for one example, to list the British Empire in the 1800s onward which embraced free trade, liberalism and a market economy [wikipedia]. It's not a country, but a capitalist empire and the "first global economic superpower" that shrank from this in 1921 to these current 14 overseas territories. I realize it's not strictly a country but it demonstrates the point of a big capitalist system falling. If you don't consider fascism to be capitalist (debatable based on definitions: socialists generally consider them capitalist), then I believe liberal Kingdom of Italy and the Weimar Republic (Germany) before the '20/'30s count too.
A different (IMO better) question is whether capitalism itself was the cause, or how it influenced their downfall. And that's obviously a complex question. Merely being capitalist/socialist/etc. and falling (even for economic reasons) isn't a solid reason to abandon those economic theories, especially when these systems were new and being trialed for the first times.
Why? Why would they have to act differently? What would force this to be so? What if, for instance, they considered that the projected failure of their state 100 years after the founding to just be the price of utopia, and did everything the same way? What if they considered it a fluke, some extremely slight random chance that toppled their government? Like, I dunno, the misspoken utterings of a dumbass East German propaganda minister who should have kept his mouth shut or better yet "lost his job" a year prior?
There's no reason to suppose they'd have to do things differently. It might even be unreasonable to think they would, given human nature and our propensity for trying the same thing over and over, hoping that it will work "this time".
For one, material conditions. They don't have the same resources, the same society, the same enemies, the same trade options, the same existing infrastructure, the same social expectations, etc.. 1917 Russia is not the same as 2022 Portugal, not even close. In fact, it can be argued that if they did act the same, it would violate Marxism, "a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation". It's not some static formula.
Then they'd be laughed at, and hopefully ignored by any organization that takes itself seriously. There are people like that you can find online, and I don't see them getting popular in organizations or their online communities.
Absolutely not. Look at how capitalism has changed since its inception. Even today there are clearly distinct forms, such as comparing the Nordic Model to USA's current economy. They clearly didn't just do the same thing. They had different conditions, difference social values, different pressures from rival economies, different capacity for invading other countries, all which visibly influence how their economic systems and social governance developed.