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Conservatives and defenders of capitalism often state "if socialism/communism is so great, point to one country that did well." I know that there are arguments that quality of life improved for many under socialist countries but I believe the question to be flawed.
The US and other western allies sabotaged any democratic or revolutionary pushes for socialism or communism in countries around the globe. The only countries that actually transitioned to socialism were those that were resistant to outside influence or were heavily influenced by socialist countries like the USSR.
This means that any chance for a country to slowly and democratically transition to socialism was snuffed out and the only sample size we have are countries that usually enacted anti-democratic policies to ensure socialist policies could be implemented.
My question is does this make any sense? Obviously socialist countries would have developed differently without outside influence but can survivors bias be a response to those who claim socialism has never worked?
I think it's a pretty fair point to make.
If every time you tried to run a marathon dozens of people swarmed you and beat you up, you probably would never run a marathon and the fact that you never ran a marathon being held against you later on in life seems a little misguided.
The entire world has developed around one basic system that is lethally hostile to any other way of doing things. There's a kind of ideological Darwinism at play that people kind of recognize but they also don't really seem to understand that any new ideas not only have to sustain themselves but they also have to do so in an environment that is overwhelmingly dominated by an ideology that's polar opposite and represents the antithesis of that dominant ideology.
While I take the point that any theoretical system shouldn't be such a delicate bloom that it can't survive in anything but the most ideal conditions, I think it's unreasonable to expect any system to survive if literally the entire world is determined to crush it.
It's really important to remember the sheer weight of the opposition to proto-socialist/communist systems and just how unbalanced the power dynamic is. We like to think the power of a good idea is able to withstand violent suppression but that's not a realistic perspective, at least not in an actionable sense. I think it's a testament to the power and validity of these leftist ideas that they've endured even through this kind of violent repression but I don't think it's an indictment of the ideas themselves that they somehow can't function when there's so much force arrayed to try and stop them from working at all.
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Except this is not a playground situation.
Sticking with that analogy, it's like being "that kid" in a school with five thousand other kids, the vast majority of whom either love or at least support the bully in what he does and that bully has the ability to call in teachers whenever he wants.
You can build alliances all you want, there's a point at which the power of sheer violence is enough to overcome any system's capacity for resilience. We have this very romantic notion that "you can't kill an idea" but killing the vast majority of the people who believe in that idea is a pretty effective second option.
The flaw in this is authoritarianism or even just having a very strong central state is a fall-back position for literally any governmental system. It's not a problem exclusive to socialist states.
Any state that finds itself unable to garner popular support through popular will or inducement will eventually turn to sheer force to maintain itself and it turns out that sheer force tends to be easier and more efficient with respect to holding together the basic functions of a state that can sustain itself.