Uh. Yes?
Main Reasons for the collapse of Communism
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Uh. Yes?
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Around here we used to call it the NHS and university grants.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
I dunno, but I've never heard of a communist state with free education and healthcare that could actually match Western standards.
I wonder why.
Tahuti
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Censorship. Although today's Western Universities increasingly face self-censorship.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
That must explain why the Soviet Union was a superpower and the first nation to launch an artificial satellite; why Oxford and Cambridge were still some of the best universities in the world when attending them was free; and why the NHS has been, for so long, the envy of the world.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
That was sarcasm. But yes, you're right. Also, on the eve of the change of regimes, thousands of the previous intellectuals were gathered up and shot, and the next generation was more or less taught to be in the regime's propaganda.
Which, apparently, doesn't exactly help education and other things.
Tahuti
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The Soviet Union was pretty good - scientifically - in any field of science it did not deem politically sensitive, including space faring, as you rightly mentioned. Research in genetics was however tightly repressed in most Soviet universities, for instance, not to mention all the non-exact sciences.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Most likely, during the Space Race, the focus shifted significantly to the space sciences.
Arts, literature, psychology, etc and etc? Not so.
And of course, there's the problem with corruption. It isn't unlikely that many of the professors who led the space missions either were politically assigned, or they bought their way in.
Arts, literature, psychology, etc and etc? Not so.
And of course, there's the problem with corruption. It isn't unlikely that many of the professors who led the space missions either were politically assigned, or they bought their way in.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Lots of the Cold War advances made by the US and Soviets were down to scientists each side took from the Nazis. Wonder what argument one would draw from that.
Population of the Soviet Union has higher literacy than the US population, but the provision of education in the USSR, Western Europe and the USA was very similar.
US has a great university education system of course, but not principally because of private tuition. If you actually look at important scientific breakthroughs made in US institutions, they are almost always funded by the government; MIT for instance lives on US military grants.
Population of the Soviet Union has higher literacy than the US population, but the provision of education in the USSR, Western Europe and the USA was very similar.
US has a great university education system of course, but not principally because of private tuition. If you actually look at important scientific breakthroughs made in US institutions, they are almost always funded by the government; MIT for instance lives on US military grants.
ParkCungHee
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To be fair, lots of the World War advances made by the Nazis were down to scientists they took from Kaiserreich/Weimar Republic. Wonder what argument one would draw from that.Pangur Bán;13332735 said:
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Easy, PCH, monarchies and unstable post-defeat democracies are the best form of government! 
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Nazi Germany was not capable of constructing the nuclear bomb, because German scientists made several grevious mistakes.
1) Already since January 1941 Nazi Germany's nuclear program was derailed into wrong direction, when prof. Walther Bothe commited major mistakes in his calculations concerning the use of coal (graphite) as a moderator in uranium reactor. In his research prof. Bothe used the cleanest available on German market graphite, produced by Siemens company, but he overestimated the level of its cleanness and and the impact of even minimal pollution. Bothe also ignored influence of air located between niblets of graphite. He got a wrong result of calculations and concluded (based on that wrong result), that coal is useless for inhibiting neutrons. Since then Germans concentrated on using heavy water in nuclear reactor - which was terribly hard to obtain and terribly expensive.
In 1942, Enrico Fermi activated in Chicago the first atomic pile with graphite as inhibitor of atoms (something that was impossible according to Germans).
2) Second grevious mistake - German scientists overlooked the technology of excreting isotope U235 from natural uranium using method of gas diffusion of uranium hexafluoride. Germans worked on several methods of separating U235, but they did not manage to develop any of them into stage of industrial scale exploatation (Russians managed to achieve this after WW2).
3) Third major mistake took place in Berlin in June 1942 during the key conference concerning further fate of German nuclear program. Apart from scientists, also other important persons took part in the conference - Albert Speer, prof. Ferdinand Porsche, field marshal Erhard Milch, general Wilhelm von Leeb, admiral Karl Witzell. Prof. Heisenberg tried to explain them various things about the nuclear program. When field marshal Erhard Milch asked Heisenberg how big a bomb needs to be, in order to destroy a major city, and Heisenberg replied that it needs to be not bigger than a pineaple, all guests became very excited. But Albert Speer continued to ask Heisenberg about various things, and Heisenberg started to multiply reservations and doubts, instead of giving clear answers. He made it clear that construction of the bomb was going to last so long, that it was not going to influence the final result of the war.
4) Another factor which "killed" German nuclear program was expulsion of ethnic Jewish scientists from Nazi Germany - for example Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, who escaped to Great Britain and greatly contributed to Allied nuclear program. A committee of experts created by British government in July of 1941, took into account the results of research by Frisch and Peierls, before it finished its work on a top secret report about nuclear weapons.
Jewish scientists expelled from Germany already in 1941 correctly calculated the critical mass of uranium necessary to cause a chain reaction (that was 5,5 kg), while Heisenberg was wrong even in 1945, being convinced that the necessary critical mass was between 100 kg and 1 ton (and in his opinion closer to higher value) - which is proven by talks between Heisenberg and other captured German scientists kept in Farm Hall, secretly recorded by Brits.
So already since 1941/1942 German nuclear program was lagging far behind Allied nuclear programs, which were "light years" ahead of it.
If top German scientists and companies were not even able to produce graphite free from pollution, then what are we even talking about.
1) Already since January 1941 Nazi Germany's nuclear program was derailed into wrong direction, when prof. Walther Bothe commited major mistakes in his calculations concerning the use of coal (graphite) as a moderator in uranium reactor. In his research prof. Bothe used the cleanest available on German market graphite, produced by Siemens company, but he overestimated the level of its cleanness and and the impact of even minimal pollution. Bothe also ignored influence of air located between niblets of graphite. He got a wrong result of calculations and concluded (based on that wrong result), that coal is useless for inhibiting neutrons. Since then Germans concentrated on using heavy water in nuclear reactor - which was terribly hard to obtain and terribly expensive.
In 1942, Enrico Fermi activated in Chicago the first atomic pile with graphite as inhibitor of atoms (something that was impossible according to Germans).
2) Second grevious mistake - German scientists overlooked the technology of excreting isotope U235 from natural uranium using method of gas diffusion of uranium hexafluoride. Germans worked on several methods of separating U235, but they did not manage to develop any of them into stage of industrial scale exploatation (Russians managed to achieve this after WW2).
3) Third major mistake took place in Berlin in June 1942 during the key conference concerning further fate of German nuclear program. Apart from scientists, also other important persons took part in the conference - Albert Speer, prof. Ferdinand Porsche, field marshal Erhard Milch, general Wilhelm von Leeb, admiral Karl Witzell. Prof. Heisenberg tried to explain them various things about the nuclear program. When field marshal Erhard Milch asked Heisenberg how big a bomb needs to be, in order to destroy a major city, and Heisenberg replied that it needs to be not bigger than a pineaple, all guests became very excited. But Albert Speer continued to ask Heisenberg about various things, and Heisenberg started to multiply reservations and doubts, instead of giving clear answers. He made it clear that construction of the bomb was going to last so long, that it was not going to influence the final result of the war.
4) Another factor which "killed" German nuclear program was expulsion of ethnic Jewish scientists from Nazi Germany - for example Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, who escaped to Great Britain and greatly contributed to Allied nuclear program. A committee of experts created by British government in July of 1941, took into account the results of research by Frisch and Peierls, before it finished its work on a top secret report about nuclear weapons.
Jewish scientists expelled from Germany already in 1941 correctly calculated the critical mass of uranium necessary to cause a chain reaction (that was 5,5 kg), while Heisenberg was wrong even in 1945, being convinced that the necessary critical mass was between 100 kg and 1 ton (and in his opinion closer to higher value) - which is proven by talks between Heisenberg and other captured German scientists kept in Farm Hall, secretly recorded by Brits.
So already since 1941/1942 German nuclear program was lagging far behind Allied nuclear programs, which were "light years" ahead of it.
If top German scientists and companies were not even able to produce graphite free from pollution, then what are we even talking about.
ParkCungHee
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Glad we can agree on that.Pangur Bán;13333191 said:Easy, PCH, monarchies and unstable post-defeat democracies are the best form of government!
ParkCungHee
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North Korea's state ideology is "Juche" a Korean word that could be translated as "Autarchy" or better as "Self-Sufficiency." It also used to be a watch word for the South Korean dictatorship. It's essentially an extremely xenophobic breed of nationalism, that seeks to maintain the cultural and genetic purity of the Korean race.
Timsup2nothin
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Communism failed because everything does.
If resources were sufficiently abundant we wouldn't need systems to regulate their distribution. Since we keep inventing such systems it is obvious that resources are not sufficient.
No matter how complex and confusing the system, eventually the people on the short end of it recognize their position and beat up the people on the long end. Expecting anything else is hard to justify.
If resources were sufficiently abundant we wouldn't need systems to regulate their distribution. Since we keep inventing such systems it is obvious that resources are not sufficient.
No matter how complex and confusing the system, eventually the people on the short end of it recognize their position and beat up the people on the long end. Expecting anything else is hard to justify.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
In other words, Communism collapsed because Marx was right. Perhaps not what you mean, but not a position I disagree with. 
Timsup2nothin
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In other words, Communism collapsed because Marx was right. Perhaps not what you mean, but not a position I disagree with.
I guess you could translate that as 'Marx was right', but that's a limited translation and gives Marx credit for a wider scope than he actually had. Marx said capitalism would collapse eventually, and his reasoning was similar to mine...but he was targeting a single economic system without acknowledging that his proposed replacement would suffer from the exact same problem, since it is an inherent problem in all economic systems.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That depends on how closely you identify the socioeconomic system associated with twentieth century Communist parties with the communism predicted-slash-proposed by Marx. Given that the only characteristic of a communist society that Marx was clear on was the absence of commodity exchange and the absence of wage-labour, and given that twentieth century Communist regimes dramatically increased the prevalence of both as a matter of policy, any such identification is going to have to be very heavily qualified.
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