Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Communism, or more generally, Marxism, is sometimes an appropriate economic and societal ideology, at least for the short term. The primary example of successful Marxism is the U.S. Military: elites making decisions for what is the best for The State at the expense of individuals, all means of production carefully controlled with no personal enrichment, and all soldiers treated uniformly in a strict hierarchy where no one soldier benefits from their personal talents or effort, and is expected to provide those talents and effort whenever it is needed. Militaries are quite effective for their intended narrow purpose but at the expense of most individual liberty. Since people prefer control over their own lives, the impetuous to sacrifice personal autonomy is only made for dire situations.

However, for countries that seem stuck in stuck in time, unable to progress for physical or cultural reasons, Communism can be their best strategy for advancement. Capitalism requires profits; you can't make money from poor people or some Capitalist would be doing it already, so those poor people just pick their cotton by hand and ride their water buffalo in the fields for centuries while the rest of the world moves on. Here's where communism comes in, it doesn't require profits; as long as there's production someplace, the excess can be used to keep an communist economy going. Hence, the people of Russia paid for the tractors and machinery that the Kyrgyzstani people used during the time of the Soviet Union. As long as Russians paid for and managed Kyrgyzstan, it prospered, but when the Soviet Union disintegrated, Kyrgyzstan slowly slid back to its old ways. Communism is definitely "give a man a fish" rather than "teach him how to fish," but some people just can't get the hang of fishing.