Communism works on paper, but in practice it is hunted down and destroyed by the CIA :V

Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:

• https://wid.world/document/soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016/
• https://wid.world/document/appendix-soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016-wid-world-working-paper-201710/

USSR provided free education to all citizens resulting in literacy rising from 33% to 99.9%:

• http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PubEdUSSR.htm
• http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/anglosov.htm
• http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000013/001300eo.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez

USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960's, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
• https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5054/index1.html

Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:

• https://www.scribd.com/document/430076844/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5-pdf
• https://artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/compar1.png?w=640

USSR moved from 58.5-hour work weeks to 41.6 hour work weeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960:

• https://books.google.com/books?id=x8JYjwEACAAJ
• https://b-ok.cc/book/2669908/77497f

USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996:

• https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
• https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm

In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:

• https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-you-get-by-on-the-average-americans-retirement-income/

GDP took off after socialism was established and then collapsed with the reintroduction of capitalism:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_GDP_per_capita.gif

The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0735675784900482 (sci-hub for access)

• USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox

• The Social Consequences of Soviet Immunization Policies https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-812-03g-Hoch.pdf

Communism always works. Every single time it has been implemented it has been a success; drastically improving the conditions of the vast majority of the lives of the people in those countries, establishing the world’s most proven successful education system, offering the only avenue for nations to escape imperialism, overthrow occupation, and develop up and out of poverty from under conditions of exploitation, eliminating unemployment, progressing science and culture more than ever before in their nation’s timeline of existence, and providing the most value-efficient and successful healthcare systems the world has ever seen.

Continuing to this day, Marxist-Leninist governments remain, in nearly every case, the absolute best government in their respective nation’s entire histories — especially for the poor and minorities — and are deeply missed by the majority of people that lived under communism (and no longer do), who also overwhelmingly regret it’s end.

Communists saved the world from Hitler and fascism, took humans to space; they united and advanced China from a backwards, subservient nation to the position of the next world superpower. Communism made Cuba an international leader in medicine, who recently saved the much richer Italy during COVID-19, developed the DPRK into a cutting edge nuclear power, and liberated more of the planet from the most powerful empires in the world — more often and more successfully — than any other ideology or system, ever before and ever

Capitalism has violently forced its way into nearly every facet of every corner of the world, and socialist states are the only projects that have ever threatened to resist, repel, and overturn that domination, and it is only Marxist-Leninist projects that have ever neared the completion of that objective, thus far, in history.

Communism works, and it works so effectively, all the time, so much so that the only way to get it to stop working is to have the most powerful empires in existence intervene in opposition to it, and even they can only boast mixed success. Communism has always worked, it will always work, and it continues to work right now, even as you continue to deny it.

Name me 2 deindustrialised feudal States that have transitioned to become world superpowers without imperialism and colonisation. uSSR and China.

Capitalism doesn't even work on paper or demonstrably in reality.

Why have socialist countries universally uplifted their population into higher literacy, standard of living, working conditions, women’s rights etc etc?

Easiest dunk is to show that the West REFUSES to let communism “fail” by itself. If socialism represented a bumbling oaf of a society, it would inevitably stumble and collapse of its own accord. No need for attacking Grenada, Vietnam, Laos with open warfare. No need to assassinate Allende or the many socialist politicians that were killed. No need to send armed forces to stop the Russian Revolution. If socialism was purely set up to fail, we wouldn’t see the PRC rising to become a major world power, etc. I could go on, but basically if it will fail, let it. Obviously the west doesn’t let it because it’s a shitty argument from the start, I GUARANTEE you that nobody (high ranking at least) in the US gov genuinely believes this. Maybe a few dumbass senators or Reps but Foreign Policy advisers, CIA/FBI, they understand that socialism is not going down on its own

We can debunk it, but that would involve the party making this claim actually having to read, think, and challenge their past assumptions. They may well do that in some contexts, but not when they're arguing in bad faith and parroting stupid lines like this one.

Calling it an argument is giving that phrase too much credit. In reality it is nothing more than a cliche to get people to stop thinking about why they can't have nice things.

Still, if you want to debunk it, you can point to the many examples of socialism being successful: Compare the quality of life in places like Russia and China before and after the communist revolution (and in the case of Russia, the quality of life after counter-revolution), the scientific accomplishments, etc.

If you want to take the opportunity to properly deprogram someone who said this to you, try to get them to ask the age old question: Qui Bono? "Communism sounds nice but doesn't work in reality" is a mantra that was made with the purpose of getting people to stop thinking it's possible to build a more equitable world. Sounds awfully convenient for the landlords and billionaires who profit from the current system, doesn't it?

As a final point, here are some short videos that can help people understand that socialism does work, and works better than capitalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tmi7JN3LkA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEwojLs0PFw

Also a study on physical quality of life between economic systems:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

honestly i don't bother talking with people that come with childish bad faith arguments like that, it's akin to talking to a lizard.

id try approaching it by asking what exactly do they mean by "works", like works in what sense?

Tell them to explain their logic. They will either shut up or double down on more specific, easily debunkable logic.

It’s a silly argument because it’s basically unfalsifiable. You could lay out the most rational argument for communism and it wouldn’t matter because it’s all just words on paper. It also just kind of ignores the fact that plenty of communist theory has yet to be written. We have to go through a scientific process of experimentation to figure out how to build it. We can hypothesize about how it could work but none of that is set in stone.

"Well it's a good thing I live in paper!" /s

There's nothing to debunk because the claim itself is based on an absurd level of ignorance, they don't even know what they mean by the word communism, and it makes no sense for it to be "tried". The only consistent references that could almost make sense are these

• Communism as a theoretical state of being (classless etc society) posed by me Marx (and some others) as the eventual project and outcome of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As such, it has never been "tried", it can't be "tried", it is more of a goal or state of being rather than a strategy you can adopt. Plus, that project requires that the capitalist class be deposed by the working class such that efforts in that direction could be enacted, which unfortunately has been limited by the extreme and violent reactions of imperialists. It's difficult to do that project when you're just trying to survive the sanctions and wars.

• Communism as in a country run by a communist party. This has been tried, and to great success, with fantastic improvements in quality of life for those living there. What failures we do identify largely fall into two buckets: (1) targeted for destruction by imperialists and they were forced to succumb or (2) fell apart through the former and internal failures to build a robust political system, e.g. someone like Gorbachev should never have even been near the reins of power. Both can be criticized, but neither can be chalked up to, "oh dang commies can't run countries". Alsi, the largest real economy on the planet is run by a communist party and overcame over a century of colonialism and then industrialization to do it.

But really, someone saying this isn't even speaking the same language as us. It's really a conversation between two clueless liberals: one that simplistically craps on "communism" and it "failing" (without pointing to anything concrete) and the other liberal trying to say things like, "well real communism has never been tried".

In both cases, they're in need of a basic education, starting with, "what is a communist?"

Universal economic prosperity does require more than communism, just like an engineer must know more than just geometry. But engineers who deny the law of cosines tend to build shitty bridges