Oh yes, we have!
I’ve written repeatedly about this over the years, most recently, here and here.
I count 32 countries that tried, or are still trying, some form of socialism or communism, not just the 20 mentioned by Brivael le Pogam, Mind you, that’s an unimportant quibble. He’s spot on with everything else. Sadly, logic and experience don’t seem to count for much amongst today’s Left….
Here’s Brivael, translated from the French:
The next time you see a lost soul defending economic socialism or communism as a model of virtue, share this post with them. It might prevent another slaughter.
“We’ve never really tried true communism.”
Yes, we have. We tried. About twenty times. On four continents. For a century. And we have the numbers.
China, Great Leap Forward (1958–1962). Independent historians who’ve accessed provincial archives converge on a range of 30 to 45 million deaths. Frank Dikötter (University of Hong Kong), drawing from CCP archives, tallies 45 million, including 2.5 million beaten to death or executed by the militia. Yang Jisheng, former Xinhua agency journalist, after ten years of investigation, counts 36 million in Tombstone. Chinese historian Yu Xiguang, after twenty years of research, reaches 55 million. To put it in scale: that’s the total deaths of World War II, concentrated over four years, in a single country, without war.
USSR. Holodomor 1932–1933, planned famine in Ukraine, recognized as genocide by the European Parliament on December 15, 2022. Gulag, Great Purges 1936–1938, forced displacements of entire populations. The tally in The Black Book of Communism comes to around 20 million deaths for the entire period.
Cambodia, Pol Pot. About 2 million deaths in under four years, nearly a quarter of the population. S-21, Choeung Ek, forced evacuation of cities in a matter of days.
North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, communist Africa, Latin America. Several more million piled up.
Global tally from The Black Book of Communism: about 100 million deaths. Figure echoed in 2006 by Resolution 1481 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and in 2023 by a resolution in the European Parliament. You can debate the margin—80, 90, 100 million depending on methodologies—but as Laurent Joffrin wrote in Libération, hardly suspected of pandering to the right: at 60 million instead of 100, would communism become presentable?
And the “gentle” counter-example? Venezuela. No gulags, no planned famine. Just the methodical application of the program. Result over ten years: GDP contracted by over 75% between 2014 and 2021—the largest economic contraction in peacetime in 45 years, according to the Institute of International Finance. Annual inflation of 130,060% in 2018 according to the Central Bank of Venezuela itself, exceeding 1,000,000% the same year per the IMF. Nearly 8 million people—about 25% of the population—fled the country. The largest exodus in the history of the Western Hemisphere over the last 50 years, according to the OAS and UNHCR. In 2024, 82% of Venezuelans lived in poverty, with 53% in extreme poverty.
Zero exceptions. Zero counter-examples.
Every time, the same mechanism. A self-proclaimed virtuous caste seizes power in the name of the people, and ends up as a nomenklatura holed up in dachas while 99% of the population queues for bread. When Maduro handed out his CLAPs—militarized rationed food boxes—it was the same logic as Brezhnev in the nomenklatura’s reserved stores, sixty years later, under a different flag.
Hayek predicted it all in 1944, in The Road to Serfdom. And Mises even earlier, in 1920, with the economic calculation problem: when you replace market prices with central planning, you destroy the only mechanism capable of aggregating the dispersed information in millions of heads. So you need an authority to decide for everyone. That authority can’t know what it claims to plan, so it imposes by force. And since it always fails—see Venezuela, which followed the sequence to the letter: price controls via the 2014 Fair Prices Act, then nationalizations, then hyperinflation, then militarized rationing—it has to coerce harder and harder just to survive.
Tyranny isn’t a derailment of socialism. It’s its logical equilibrium.
Market capitalism isn’t perfect. It’s just the only system known in history where millions of strangers cooperate without an armed caste forcing them to.
The dead of Kolyma, the Laogai, S-21, and the streets of Caracas ask you not to start over.
I love being wrong—it lets me learn. Ifyou think I’m off on a specific point, tell me in the comments; I read everything.
[Link]
Yun-Ta Tsai is a Senior Engineer at Tesla.
He posts in English (mainly) and in Classical Chinese. A man after my own heart.
Here’s his thoughts on what’s going on right here in this world, right now. Even as wars and civilisational challenges surround us.
Attempted to write a Steam Engine hype at the era of Industrial Revolution as if it was the age of AI —
The steam engine breakthrough is insane right now.
Watt’s separate condenser + new GRPO optimization just dropped the 405 hp-class engine. We went from 7 hp → 70 hp → 405 hp+ in basically three years. One machine now does the work of 50+ men or water wheels — nonstop, rain or shine, anywhere.
Textile mills, ironworks, everything scaling 5-10x overnight. Productivity exploding.
This isn’t incremental. It’s automating physical labor at massive scale. Jobs shifting forever. Society about to look unrecognizable.
The Industrial Revolution isn’t coming. It’s here and accelerating faster than anyone predicted.
Terrified. Excited. Both.
What a time to be alive. 🚂💨
Next post about Yun-Ta will be a bit of Confucius.
This is how…
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| From here |
You stay where you are. The Left moves Faaaar Left.
I want to offer my apologies, on behalf of the French, for giving birth to French Theory (which in turn gave birth to the worst of all ideological monstrosities: wokism).We gave the world Descartes, Pascal, Tocqueville. And then, in the intellectual ruins of post-1968, we gave Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Three brilliant men who forged, in the elegance of our language, the ideological weapon that today paralyzes the West.We must understand what they did. Foucault taught that truth does not exist, that there are only power relations disguised as knowledge. That science, reason, justice, the medical institution, the school, the prison, sexuality—everything is merely a staging of domination. Derrida taught that texts have no stable meaning, that every signifier slips away, that every reading is a betrayal, that the author is dead and the reader reigns supreme. Deleuze taught that we should prefer the rhizome to the tree, the nomad to the sedentary, desire to the law, becoming to being, difference to identity.Taken individually, these are debatable theses. Combined, exported, and popularized, they form a system. And that system is a poison.For here’s what happened. These texts, unreadable in France, crossed the Atlantic. The departments of Yale, Berkeley, and Columbia absorbed them in the 1980s. They found there a soil that did not exist among us: American Puritanism, its racial guilt, its obsession with identity. French Theory married this substratum, and the child of that union is called wokism.Judith Butler reads Foucault and invents performative gender. Edward Said reads Foucault and invents academic postcolonialism. Kimberlé Crenshaw inherits the framework and invents intersectionality. At every step, the matrix is French: there is no truth, there is only power, so every hierarchy is suspect, every institution is oppressive, every norm is violence, every identity is constructed and thus negotiable, every majority is guilty.That’s how three Parisian philosophers, who probably never imagined their practical consequences, provided the operating software to an entire generation of activists, university bureaucrats, HR managers, journalists, and legislators. That’s how we ended up with a civilization that no longer knows how to say whether a woman is a woman, whether its own history is worth defending, whether merit exists, whether truth can be distinguished from opinion.It’s shit for one simple reason, and it must be stated calmly. A civilization stands on three pillars: the belief that there exists a truth accessible to reason, the belief that there exists a good distinct from evil, the belief that there exists a heritage to be transmitted. French Theory set out to dynamite all three. Not out of malice. Out of intellectual play, fascination with suspicion, hatred of the bourgeoisie that had nurtured them. But the result is there. An entire generation learned to deconstruct and never learned to build. An entire generation knows how to suspect and no longer knows how to admire. An entire generation sees power everywhere and beauty nowhere.I apologize because we French bear a particular responsibility. It’s our language, our universities, our publishers, our prestige that gave this nihilism its chic packaging. Without the legitimacy of the Sorbonne and Vincennes, these ideas would never have crossed the ocean. We exported doubt the way others export weapons.What is being built now, in Silicon Valley, in AI labs, in startups, in workshops, in all the places where people still make things instead of deconstructing them—that is the response. A civilization is rebuilt by builders, not by commentators. By those who believe that truth exists and is worth devoting oneself to. By those who embrace a hierarchy of the beautiful, the true, the good, and are not ashamed to transmit it.So, forgive us. And back to work.H/t @Brivael
”America’s Cultural Revolution” by Christopher Rufo, covers this topic. A good read.
🚨 XI JINPING TO TRUMP: “WE SHOULD BE PARTNERS, NOT RIVALS”
This was a remarkable moment.
Standing beside President Trump in Beijing, Xi Jinping openly declared:
“China and the United States both stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation.”
Then came the line nobody expected:
“We should be partners, not rivals.”
That is an extraordinary statement considering the years of:
• Trade wars
• Taiwan tensions
• Tech sanctions
• Military build-ups
• Economic confrontation
• Anti-China rhetoric from Washington
Xi also spoke about making 2026 “a historic landmark” for U.S.-China relations.
Translation?
Something much bigger may now be underway behind the scenes.
Because if the world’s two largest powers move from confrontation toward strategic cooperation, the geopolitical map changes overnight.
Markets.
Trade.
Energy.
AI.
Military tensions.
Global alliances.
Everything shifts.
The political establishment spent years framing U.S.-China relations as an unavoidable collision course.
Now suddenly the language coming out of Beijing is partnership, prosperity and cooperation.
That will send shockwaves through the global power structure.
H/t: Jim Ferguson
Peter Forsythe comment: this is all Chinese duchessing Trump and America. At very best it’s wishful thinking by the likes of Jim Ferguson. At worst it’s delusion.
Still, one can hope it’s true. That something positive comes out of it. Just hope. Not expectation.
In the war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States is “losing.” In fact, the president may have already “lost” his “disastrous and irrational war” with the theocrats in Tehran. Trump is reportedly chastened by his failures, and the far-reaching consequences that America will suffer as a result of this epochal setback are only beginning to come into view.
At least, that’s what we’re hearing from the highest echelons of American public life. Yet, as military historian John Spencer recently observed, these are subjective appraisals. Wars are not won or lost in the comments section, and victors are not determined by vibes alone. Rather, they should be “judged through military capability, economic endurance, political cohesion, freedom of action, strategic leverage, and the ability to sustain power while degrading an opponent’s.”
I've followed John Spencer for a while now. He strikes me as very sound. West Point grad. The article above goes on to describe how the great power losing a war, right now, is Russia.
Let's tease out those 6 John Spencer factors and see how we think the United States is doing against them.
Kind Lie = What sounds good (e.g. Socialism)
Unkind Truth = What works (e.g. Capitalism)
Here is a list of countries that have tried some form of socialism (Marxist, Leninist, or self-declared socialist systems) since Marx. Based on a summary from several AIs. None of them prospered when they were socialist.
The ones in bold are those I’ve visited or lived in. Like China.
This post follows on from one I did recently on socialism. And how Socialism has never succeeded in any country that tried it.
As for the special case of China… it has only prospered economically and socially to the exact extent that it has allowed capitalism, freed up markets forces, to prevail. They want to call it “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Fine. The fact remains that China prospers with capitalism and impoverishes with socialism.
Anyway, here’s the list:
• Soviet Union (USSR/Russia and former republics)
• China
• Cuba
• Vietnam
• North Korea (DPRK)
• Laos
• East Germany
• Poland
• Hungary
• Czechoslovakia
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Albania
• Yugoslavia
• Mongolia
• Cambodia (Kampuchea)
• Ethiopia
• Angola
• Mozambique
• Afghanistan (Democratic Republic)
• Nicaragua
• Venezuela
• Bolivia (under certain periods)
• Chile (Allende era)
• Tanzania
• Somalia
• South Yemen
• Benin
• Congo (various periods)
• Guinea-Bissau
• Burkina Faso (briefly)
• Grenada (briefly)
Kind Lie: Boys can become Girls. As in become. Actually become. Unkind Truth: no, they can’t.
Kind Lie: Islam is a “Religion of Peace”. Unkind Truth: no, it’s not.
Kind Lie: All illegal immigrants are good and productive. Unkind Truth: no, they’re not.
Kind Lie: all cultures are equal. Unkind Truth: no, they’re not.
Kind Lies lead to dysfunctional systems. As in dysfunctional cities. As in those run by progressive Democrats, people full of Kind Lies. Look at the mess in: LA, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York, Minneapolis.
All of them went soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on illegal immigration, soft on allowing sleeping g in streets. And we see the outcome. It’s there in front of our faces. LA has the additional stain of its shockingly incompetent handling of last year’s wildfires. Which burned thousands of houses and killed 15 homeowners.
Kind Lie: Boys can become Girls. As in become. Actually become. Unkind Truth: no, they can’t. Kind Lie: Islam is a “Religion of Peace”. Unkind Truth: no, it’s not. Kind Lie: All illegal immigrants are good and productive. Unkind Truth: no, they’re not.
Kavya K asks “ How can anyone claim to care about women while supporting this barbaric theocracy?”
My answer:
In short, Because they hate Trump more than anything.
“Ifyou support Iran’s regime, you’re not anti-war.
You’re anti-woman.” Listen to Kavya K expose the massive hypocrisy of those who defend the Iranian regime.
She reveals the brutal truth: women in Iran have zero freedom. They are beaten, arrested, raped, and killed for daring to oppose the regime simply for wanting basic human rights.
This is not “resistance.” This is one of the most misogynistic regimes on Earth.
How can anyone claim to care about women while supporting this barbaric theocracy?
The following week, the three return to the bar once again, but this time they request separate checks, so the bartender asks them why they're not splitting the bill equally, since in communism, everyone pays the same fair share. The three communists reluctantly agree, and once again they divide the bill into three equal parts.
The following week, the three communists return, but with a mob of devoted followers, and they protest against the bartender to change the prices of all their drinks to the price of the cheapest drink on the menu.
Out of fear that his business will be vandalized or burned down, the bartender agrees. So the following week, all the communists enter and enjoy their drinks at $6 with equalized prices, and celebrate the successes of communism.
The communists continue with this for several more weeks, until one Friday they return to the bar and find it closed, with a sign outside saying that the bar has shut down due to bankruptcy.
And that, comrades, is how communism works.
H/t Hombre Imparable
A follow on from the story of Democrat hypocrisy over illegal immigration I posted yesterday. Here is a list of Democrats Lawfare against Trump:
🚨Peak Obama hypocrisy just hit different.🚨
Watching Barack Obama lecture President Trump about the “dangers” of weaponizing the DOJ against political opponents — with ZERO remorse for what his own side did — proves exactly what a colossal hypocrite he is.
Here’s the actual record of lawfare they unleashed on Trump and Republicans:
Obama laid the foundation:
• Crossfire Hurricane: FBI launched a full counterintelligence op on the Trump campaign using the fake Steele dossier (Clinton-funded dirt). FISA abuse on Carter Page, spies in the campaign, illegal unmaskings. Obama was briefed.
• IRS scandal: Conservative and Tea Party groups systematically targeted, harassed, and delayed for years while liberal ones got fast-tracked. Lois Lerner and the rest weaponized the tax code.
Biden turned it into all-out war:
• Four bogus indictments designed to bankrupt, gag, and jail Trump during the campaign — Manhattan hush-money zombie case, Georgia RICO election nonsense, Jack Smith’s two federal cases.
• Coordinated raids, leaks, gag orders, and endless lawfare from DOJ, local Democrat prosecutors, and the White House.
• Hunter Biden sweetheart treatment while Trump world got the full Gestapo.
They tried to remove him from ballots, brand him a “convicted felon,” bankrupt him, and lock him up — all to rig the election. Then Obama has the nerve to lecture about “democracy” and “norms”?
No apology. No sympathy for the victims. Just more gaslighting.
This is why trust in institutions collapsed. Americans watched the Russia hoax, IRS abuse, two impeachments, and lawfare circus in real time — and they rejected it.
Trump survived it all and won anyway. The American people saw through the weaponization of justice.
Share this far and wide. The hypocrisy needs to be called out every single time. No more pretending. 🇺🇸
H/t Jordan Wells
