Prof. Richard Wolff: Capitalism - Not China - Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline

[Igel]

53. Necessarily so, in practice.

Co-ops as an economic system relied on universal buy-in. It wasn't like you could just have a co-op of like-minded people sitting off on the side, surrounded by an economic free-for-all and call it a "government."

We had such co-ops in the US. In fact, we still do. But we don't confuse them with a government or an economic system.



Many did not buy into the idea in the 1920s. Without them, the system was in free-fall. With them, there was too much dissent and confusion. Many of the Soviet leaders honestly believed that they would see communism in their lifetimes.

Ultimately, what was necessary was a strong leader to keep the majority sufficiently invested to all the leader to use force to coerce the unwilling to participate--or silence or even remove the unwilling from society.

In tandem with this was a firm belief that the human soul needed to be re-engineered. People had been corrupted, and a New Man could be forged that would produce the desired outcome. That didn't happen in creches. It didn't happen when the engineers of the human soul had been at work, carefully supervised and monitored in a kind of hothouse for decades. The ideology was starkly at odds with reality, however much many wanted to believe.