Ive had this debate 1000 times and it never changes. Oh and the golden age of capitalism and science you speak of was actually grounded in a communist principle - universal education. The boom you speak of was sparked by ww2 vets receiving free education after returning from war.
And the gulags and prison camps are largely distorted western propaganda , especially the figures often quoted. But ipl even grant you them for now if you can honestly tell me they are worse than the rape camps in the Congo? Oh and Btw Nazi Gernany was capitalist - fascism.
I realize that Nazi Germany was not communist, I merely used it as a comparison for the Soviet camps. I wanted to pinpoint with these examples that communism has caused much suffering as well because of its wrong implementation. If people have no incentive to produce anything, the only way to get them to do it is by brute force as is the case in North Korea and was in the USSR. But force is not as effective as people wanting to do it out of their own incentive.
How can the boom I speak of be triggered by WW2 vets getting free education? The golden age was well under way before WW2, there were so many exciting discoveries being made before that like general anesthesia (which you can sell for big bucks.)
Of course rape camps in the Congo are terrible and I don't know if they are more terrible than gulags or not. But these countries are in a state of war and aren't focused on economic development right now. Isn't the Congo the worse rated country in the world in terms of its economic development?
The problem is that most left wing people in my country don't realize that you can't just endlessly increase taxes for the middle and upper classes to distribute their earnings to the poor because people don't take kindly to the government cutting 40-50% of their paycheck to give it to the poor, the refugees etc. Also, the whole goals of the left party where I live are unrealistic and also not manageable in terms of financing them because then no one will work. Some people here want an unconditional basic income of 1000 Euro. Honestly, then no one would clean the street, work in retail or work in jobs such as being a waitress.